Tonopah featured on premier of Kristen Stewart’s new Hulu ghost show

TONOPAH — A group of queer “ghost hunties” road trip to Tonopah to help operators of the infamous Clown Motel connect with an aggressive spirit who supposedly haunts it in the premier of Kristen Stewart’s new quick-witted reality series, Living for the Dead.

The show debuted in mid-October on Hulu and follows a group of LGBTQIA+ paranormal investigators to haunted sites around the country, including their stop in northern Nye County and another in Las Vegas.

Back in January, the crew filmed a paranormal investigation onsite at the Clown Motel in Tonopah before heading to Tonopah Liquor Co. to interview some locals about the town’s haunted history.

“It was a blast and came out so wonderfully,” said Ariana Seeber, who met some of the show’s cast members while they were filming earlier this year in Tonopah.

“They touch on a few things in the show, including the old cemetery as well as Clarence David, who died in the Belmont fire of 1911,” Seeber said.

After being killed in the historic blaze, David was buried in the historic Tonopah Cemetery. In 1985, his children opened the iconic Clown Motel right next to the cemetery to display their late father’s massive clown collection.

The Clown Motel was purchased in 2019 by the Mehar family from Las Vegas, but David’s spirit is believed to still haunt the site.

Connecting with the afterlife is just part of the what the crew of Living for the Dead aims to do in their new series.

“We’re not just here to give voices to those who are no longer with us,” says Ken Boggle, an expert tarot card reader and one of the stars on The Living Dead. “We’re here to make the lives of people who are experiencing it better.”

You’ll have to watch to see how the team’s investigation in Tonopah went.

Tonopah on TV

Tonopah’s Clown Motel and other sites in northern Nye County county have been featured in a number of paranormal ghost shows over the years.

Most recently, a film crew from another paranormal investigation show was there for two days in early October to interview eyewitnesses and historians for an upcoming episode of Season 27 of The Discovery Channel’s Ghost Adventures that was shot on location in Tonopah and surrounding areas.

Season 11 of Ghost Adventures also featured an episode where host and paranormal investigator Zak Bagans faced his coulrophobia (fear of clowns) at Tonopah’s creepy Clown Motel.

Contact Editor Brent Schanding at bschanding@pvtimes.com