The Clown Motel

Tonopah, Nevada

Spending the night in Tonopah's Clown Motel could qualify as a true test of courage. Not because of any accommodation shortcomings, but because it's full of clowns. There are clowns on the doors, shelves of clown dolls and collectibles in the lobby, clown paintings on the walls. And if you have a second floor room, you can look out from the balcony and see why the motel is so quiet -- and dark at night. It's the cemetery. The Clown Motel stands right next to Tonopah's dusty, unlit cemetery, closed for a hundred years, packed with the graves of miners in this former Boom Town who died unpleasantly.

Should that be cause for panic? Probably not. But if you've ever seen the movie Poltergeist, and you do spend a night at this unique lodge, spend at least a minute or two wondering if, just maybe, part of a cemetery full of graves of men who died horrible deaths once stretched underneath land now occupied by the Clown Motel.