By Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times (TNS)
Business is so good on the Clown Motel that you just might expect more of the painted faces to be smiling.
But as Vijay Mehar learned in his years as owner of the scariest motel in Tonopah, Nevada, completely happy clowns aren't what most of his customers want.
What they apparently want is fear, disgust, painted faces, circus atmosphere and evidence of paranormal activity. Basically, Mehar said recently, “they want to be afraid.”
Aiming to lure more people off Main Street (aka US 95) to this 31-room motel in dusty, barren central Nevada, Mehar is upping his spooky quotient.
By the tip of 2025, he hopes to have accomplished a 900-square-foot expansion, doubling the scale of the motel's busy, unsettling lobby, museum and gift shop area. Meanwhile, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted house behind the motel, to be built out of 11 shipping containers.
Many details still have to be ironed out, but the concept is that these additions will complement the motel's existing guest rooms, that are teeming with enough clown imagery to place a Ringling Brothers reunion to shame. Mehar also desires to convert an existing room right into a bridal suite.
“America’s Scariest Motel,” the pamphlets on the checkout read. “Let the fear run down your spine.”
There are paintings, dolls and ceramic figurines, each with their very own expression – smiling, laughing, grinning, crying or quietly shrieking. And then there are the neighbors. The motel is adjoining to the Old Tonopah Cemetery, whose residents incessantly died in mining accidents between 1900 and 1911.
Some guests explore the cemetery after dark or google “fear of clowns” (). Others accept a horror film, perhaps considered one of the three filmed locally within the last six years. (“I'm the evil clown in 'Clown Motel 2,'” Mehar confessed.)
Mehar said that on busy days, a whole bunch of individuals stop by the motel, mostly concentrating on the gift shop and the museum's crowded, dusty shelves. The clowns donated there by donors worldwide aren’t on the market.
“When we came here, there were 800 or 850 clowns,” Mehar said. “Right now we have almost 6,000.”
The expansion of the lobby, gift shop and museum provides extra space to display them, together with presidential caricatures hanging on the motel's wall, including Joe Biden and Donald Trump, each wearing a red clown nose.
In the six years Mehar has owned the shop, the gift shop's inventory has grown from hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts to almost 100 products: art, ashtrays, bracelets, bumper stickers, clothing, keychains, magnets, mugs, patches, shot glasses and wallets.
“Do you use knives? I have clown knives,” Behar said, raising one in his right hand. The blades are 4 inches long.
In the hallways and within the motel's understated guest rooms (typically $85-$150; rated 3.5 stars on Yelp and Trip Advisor), the clowns proceed a color scheme of purple, yellow, and red, punctuated by blue and green polka dots is supplemented.
A spot check revealed five clowns in room 102 and a dozen in room 208 (but none within the restrooms). Several rooms are themed, including room 222, which has special accents Clownvis (mainly Elvis as a clown).
If you book this room, the motel warns, you could possibly be woken up by a mysterious “malevolent entity.” The hotel also warns all guests that despite monthly pest control visits, “UFIs (unwanted flying insects)” may occur because rooms are open to the outdoor area. (This a part of Nevada is thought for its many Mormon crickets.)
“If we had paid $60, $70, or even $80, this place might have been worth it,” one unimpressed motel guest recently wrote on Trip Advisor.
“We had a lot of fun and even better, we didn’t get murdered,” wrote one other.
It's a family project. After years as art director, Mehar's brother Hame Anand serves because the motel's manager and has designed its latest facelift, which incorporates two two-story-tall clown figures that attract passing traffic.
Many travelers make the 210-mile drive north from Las Vegas only for the clown experience. When booking or checking in, guests often join for a motel and cemetery tour with tour guide Wanda Crisp.
You could say the Clown Motel grew out of the cemetery. As local patrons tell the story, a miner and clown collector is mentioned Clarence David died in a mining accident in 1911 and was buried within the cemetery. When two of his children, Leona and Leroy, decided to open a motel (then generally known as the David Motel) next to the cemetery in 1985, they displayed about 150 of their late father's clown pictures and figurines.
A decade later, they sold it to longtime Tonopah entrepreneur Bob Perchetti, who remodeled the motel as a part of his effort to spice up local tourism.
The big breakthrough got here in 2015 as a crew from the tv series “Ghost Adventures” got here to film on the Clown Motel, fascinating lovers of kitsch and horror across the country.
At this point, Perchetti (who died this 12 months) was well into his 70s. A couple of years later, he put the 1.2-acre motel property up on the market, asking $900,000 or more $600,000 (Clown collection included). In 2019, veteran Las Vegas motel owner Mehar and his family purchased it.
Mehar, who now splits his time between Tonopah and Vegas, declined to reveal the sale price but said he could repay the loan inside a couple of years. Two to thrice a 12 months, “the paranormal people” book the entire place, Mehar said, “and every other day a YouTuber comes.”
That doesn't mean the motel is a gold mine — Mehar still does many of the repairs and enhancements himself — but it surely has no competitor in its area of interest.
“Do you know the American dream, rich and famous?” asked Mehar. “We’re halfway there.”
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