Haunted place · Nevada, United States

Old Washoe Club

Updated November 202611 sources How to visit

3 archive documents

A Comstock-era millionaires' club in Virginia City, Nevada, where Lena is said to haunt the spiral stair; Zak Bagans shot his first ghost documentary here.

The story

The Old Washoe Club occupies a three-story brick building on C Street, the main thoroughfare of Virginia City, Nevada, inside the Virginia City Historic District. In the boom years of the Comstock Lode, when silver turned this town into one of the richest places in the West, the Washoe Club was where the men who had made fortunes went to drink and gamble. It is remembered as an exclusive "millionaires' club."

The club did not start here. Its first rooms were in the Reynolds Building on B Street, which was lost when the Great Fire of 1875 swept through much of Virginia City. The members then moved into the Douglass Building on C Street, a structure usually dated to around 1862. That detail matters, because the date 1875 that often appears alongside the building's name is really the year of the fire that drove the club to this address, not the year the building went up. One tourism source instead says the club was built in 1870; no other source backs that up.

From 1887 the bar on the ground floor was known as the Crystal Bar. The club itself lasted only as long as the boom. When the Comstock's fortunes collapsed, the club shut its doors in 1897. The upper floors went on to serve humbler purposes over the following decades: rooms let to lodgers, a doctor's office and storage space. Today the ground floor holds a saloon and shops, and the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property of the historic district.

Like many Comstock buildings, it is unreinforced masonry, which leaves it poorly equipped to withstand an earthquake, and parts of the interior are not up to modern code.

The legend

The Washoe Club is now a heavily promoted haunted building, and much of its lore is hard to pin down. It is worth separating what is widely repeated from what is merely asserted in a single place.

The best-known ghost is Lena. She is said to have been a prostitute who worked in a brothel upstairs, and she appears on, or floats above, the club's spiral staircase. We found no historical woman identified as Lena. A more dramatic version, in which a man killed her in an upstairs bedroom on the third floor and then himself, circulates mainly in online travel lists and has no solid source.

Other figures are each supported by a single source. Witnesses describe a figure at a window wearing a blue dress of the Victorian period, and some accounts seem to blend her with Lena. A girl of about ten, said to have been hit by a carriage, supposedly died in the old doctor's office upstairs. Two people killed in a dynamite explosion next door are said to linger on the third floor.

Visitors and investigators describe being grabbed or scratched in a third-floor space called the Red Room, where a door is also said to slam on its own. The smell of cigar smoke is reported in what was once the poker room, and visitors show orbs in their photographs. A large, chilly room nicknamed "The Crypt" is said to have stored bodies through the winter, when the frozen ground made burial impossible. The Visit Reno Tahoe tourism site adds a deadly 1873 blast with a dozen victims, several suicides and vanished prostitutes, none of which is confirmed elsewhere.

There are good reasons for skepticism. Drawing on the book Weird "Haunted" Virginia City, a travel writer observes that the ghost stories apparently did not take off until new owners took over the building in 1991, and she wonders whether the winter-morgue tale was simply dreamed up to help sell tour tickets. A tour guide interviewed by KOLO 8 in 2020 cheerfully put the tour's balance at "30% history and 70% ghost."

Television did the rest. Zak Bagans shot the original Ghost Adventures documentary, his first venture into ghost hunting, at the club in the mid-2000s (DesertUSA dates it to 2007). The Ghost Adventures series returned for "Washoe Club and Chollar Mine" (season 3, episode 5 on TVmaze and episode 6 in Wikipedia's list, aired December 4, 2009) and for "The Washoe Club: Final Chapter" (season 16, episode 7, aired June 30, 2018), billed as the crew's last visit. Wikipedia also says the club appeared on Ghost Hunters, but no episode could be identified.

What remains today

The three-story brick building still stands on C Street. Its ground floor is a working saloon with commercial space, while the upper floors, long described as unoccupied, now house the Washoe Club Haunted Museum used for tours. The spiral staircase associated with Lena survives, although its upper section is closed because it does not meet code. Visitors on tours are shown the rooms tied to the legends, including the Red Room and the cold storage room known as The Crypt.

Visiting

The building is open to the public through its saloon and through the Washoe Club Haunted Museum, which runs guided ghost tours every day and offers private overnight investigations booked through its official website. In October, the museum has been included in the town's "Haunted Adventure Pass" for Hauntober, available from the town's visitor center on C Street; check whether it is on sale. Expect a show as much as a history lesson, and check the museum's own schedule and prices before you go.

Stay with your guide and respect closed areas: the top of the staircase is closed because it does not meet code, and as an unreinforced masonry building the club is not a place to go poking around on your own. The rest of the Virginia City Historic District lies around it.

The ghosts

Servant or worker

Dynamite blast victims

Said to be Two people said to have been killed in an explosion next door

A single source says two victims of a dynamite blast in the neighboring building linger on the third floor.

Child ghost

Girl struck by a carriage

Said to be Said to be a 10-year-old girl who died in a former doctor's office upstairs

According to a single source, a girl of about ten who had been hit by a carriage died in the doctor's office once located upstairs, and her spirit is said to remain.

Ghostly lady

Lena

Said to be Said to be a prostitute from an upstairs brothel; no historical person identified

Lena is seen on or floating above the club's spiral staircase, and patrons are said to have named her because she appeared so often. A popular tale that she was murdered in a third-floor bedroom has no solid source.