The Goldfield Hotel

The Goldfield Hotel rises four stories above a town that barely exists anymore, its granite-and-brick façade still dominating the main intersection of Goldfield, Nevada—a place that was once the largest city in the state and is now home to roughly 250 people. The hotel was built to match the ambitions of a boomtown drunk on gold, and it stands today as a monument to how quickly all of that can disappear.

Gold was discovered near Goldfield in 1902, and within a few years the population surged to 20,000. The town supported three newspapers, five banks, and a mining stock exchange. At the center of it all was George Wingfield, a former cattle driver and card dealer who had grubstaked his way into control of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company. The hotel, designed by Reno architects Curtis and Holesworth, opened in 1908 at a cost of over $300,000. Legend holds that champagne was poured down the front steps at the grand opening. The 154-room interior featured mahogany paneling, gilded columns, crystal chandeliers, gold-leaf ceilings, European chefs, and one of the first Otis elevators west of the Mississippi. It was proclaimed the finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco.

But Goldfield was a storm, not a city. Mine output dropped sharply by 1910. A flash flood hit in 1913. In 1923, a moonshine still exploded and ignited a fire that consumed twenty-seven blocks. The hotel survived—stone and brick don't burn easily—but the town was gutted. By the 1930s, the Goldfield Hotel was a flophouse for cowboys. During World War II it housed officers from the nearby Tonopah Army Air Field, and when they checked out in 1945, the hotel closed for good.

The hotel's paranormal reputation centers on Room 109 and a legend involving a woman named Elizabeth—said to have been a prostitute and mistress of Wingfield who became pregnant with his child. The story claims he chained her to a radiator in the room, kept her alive until the baby was born, and then either let her die or killed her. The infant was allegedly thrown down a mine shaft beneath the hotel. It is a vivid and horrible story, and it has no verified historical basis. Researchers at the Central Nevada Museum have noted significant inconsistencies—the mine shafts were dug in 1925, years after Wingfield sold the hotel and moved to Reno, and no contemporary records corroborate Elizabeth's existence.

The legend appears to trace largely to a book by 1980s owner Shirley Porter, likely crafted to boost interest in the property. However, there is a documented shadow behind the myth: a 1904 lawsuit by a woman named May Baric, who claimed to be Wingfield's common-law wife, accused him of abuse, and was given $400 and forced to leave town with their child. She and the child died in obscurity. The Elizabeth legend may be an embellishment of a real and quieter cruelty.

Regardless of origin, the reports attached to Room 109 are persistent. Visitors describe sudden extreme cold, disembodied crying, and an overwhelming sadness that causes some to weep without explanation. Elsewhere, cigar smoke is reported on the first floor—attributed to Wingfield—along with unexplained piles of fresh ash. The lobby staircase is associated with child spirits who tap visitors on the back. The basement became nationally known after a 2004 Ghost Adventures investigation in which a brick appeared to fly across the room on camera. The show returned multiple times. Investigators have reported equipment malfunctions, shadow figures, and physical aggression from an entity known locally as "the Stabber."

Today the hotel is privately owned, closed to the public, and mired in renovation efforts that have stalled repeatedly over decades. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. You cannot walk in. You can only look through the windows at the mosaic tile floors and the mahogany front desk and the elevator shaft, all of it frozen in place since the last guest left eighty years ago.