By MARTIN GRIFFITH
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted: Apr. 22, 2012 | 12:42 p.m.
Updated: Apr. 22, 2012 | 3:53 p.m.

RENO – A loud explosion heard across much of Nevada and California on Sunday morning rattled homes and prompted a flood of calls to law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Sierra Nevada, some reporting fireball sightings.

The sound and the light show were likely caused by a meteor that entered Earth’s atmosphere, astronomers said.

“It made the shades in my room shake hard enough to slam into the window a couple times,” said Nicole Carlsen of the Reno area. “I kept looking for earthquake information, but (there was) nothing. I even checked the front of my house to make sure no one ran into the garage. I wish I had seen the meteor.”

Erin Girard-Hudson of Arnold, Calif., told The Union Democrat of Sonora, Calif., that the loud boom that occurred around 8 a.m. made her 2-year-old daughter, Elsie, cry.

“It knocked me off my feet and was shaking the house,” she said. “It sounded like it was next door.”

No damages or injuries were immediately reported. There were no reports of earthquakes at the time.

Some people reported seeing a brilliant light streak across the sky at the same time. Sightings occurred over roughly a 600-mile line across the two states, including Reno, Elko and North Las Vegas in Nevada, and the San Francisco, Sacramento and Bakersfield areas in California.

Astronomers said they believe the mysterious light was a fireball, which is a very bright meteor. It will take time to determine the path of the fireball and where it broke up, they added.

“From the reports, I have no doubt it was a fireball,” said Robert Lunsford of the Geneseo, N.Y.-based American Meteor Society. “It happens all the time, but most are in daytime and are missed. This one was extraordinarily bright in the daylight.”

Lunsford said it’s “pretty rare” for fireballs to produce a loud explosion. For that to happen, he explained, the meteor must have survived intact until breaking up about five miles above Earth. Most fireballs are visible at 50 miles above Earth.

“If you hear a sonic boom or loud explosion, that’s a good indication that some fragments may have reached the ground,” Lunsford said. “We’ll have to get some people to work on it to pinpoint where it broke up and see if anything can be found on the ground.”

Lunsford said more than 20 people in the two states had filed reports with his group by midmorning about seeing the fireball.

“I have been looking at the sky for 30 years, and I have never witnessed something so amazing and puzzling. It is an event that makes you glad to be alive,” said Matthew Neal of San Francisco. “The main body was bright green and the head was bright red and white.”

Greg Giroux of June Lake, Calif., located along the eastern Sierra just west of Yosemite National Park, also was impressed.

“This was by far the brightest fireball/shooting star I’ve ever seen, especially since it was in full sunlight,” he said. “After the flash, it broke up into pieces, then I lost sight of it as it went behind a mountain.”

In Nevada, the light show was seen as far east as Elko, about 300 miles east of Reno, and as far south as the Las Vegas area.

Marcia Standifer of Spring Creek, near Elko, and her husband were out drinking coffee when they saw the fireball at the same time.

“It was a very bright ball of white light, then dimmer to the horizon,” she said. “We thought this was very unusual due to the bright daylight and how vivid the object was.”

Tracey Cordaro of North Las Vegas said the sighting “took my breath away.”

“It was amazing,” she said. “It looked as if it was disintegrating rapidly, but was still quite large when it disappeared from my view … (It was) bright green, visible in the bright sunlight.”

Dan Ruby, associate director of the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno, said it’s unlikely the fireball had anything to do with the current peak of the Lyrid meteor shower.

“People are putting two and two together and saying it has something to do with the meteor shower,” he said. “But the fireball was probably coincidental and unrelated to the peak of the meteor shower.”

Though the fireball was seen over such a wide area, Ruby said it was likely just “a little bigger than a washing machine.”

Exciting stuff!

Read it at the the source.

Click here for the Press Release

WoOt!

Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?

This exhibit at the National Atomic Testing Museum officially opens March 26, so this will let you have it all to yourself!

How cool is that?

http://www.nationalatomictestingmuseum.org/area51.aspx

Illustration by DAVID STROUD/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

An Alien Cathouse? Really?

I suppose it was only a matter of time, really.

Here is an excerpt from the announcement of this, um, fascinating facility…

“Hof purchased the brothel and adjacent gas station, bar and convenience store on U.S. Highway 95 from notorious longtime Nye County brothel owner Maynard “Joe” Richards.

The store is being rebranded as the Area 51 Alien Travel Center and will feature its own line of merchandise emblazoned with little green men and women.”

Read the rest of Henry Brean’s Las Vegas Review-Journal article here:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/alien-cathouse-brothel-to-feature-girls-from-another-world-136131043.html

Nevada must be most absurd state in the union, based entirely on illusion and illicit activities. Businessmen stroll the boulevard, cocktail in hand, prostitutes hanging on their arms and diapered chimpanzees blowing jacuzzi bubbles in their hotel rooms. And that’s just what goes on with the public. 75% of Nevada is controlled by one government agency or another. Imagine what kind of fun they have with their expense accounts.

Only after civilian groups lobbied for disclosure did the Air Force admit their most top-secret base, nestled up against Nevada’s dry Groom Lake bed between Nellis AFB and the Nevada Test Site, even existed. Originally named after CIA director Allen Dulles’ birthplace of Watertown, New York, the Groom Lake facility is home to the longest runway in the world, where the secret U-2 spy plane was tested back in the 50s and where the stealth bomber was brought out on practice runs before years before it was flashed on network news.

Rumors that Area 51 (as the site is referred to in official documents) is a storage space for crashed UFOs, where alien technology is “back-engineered” and applied to military aircraft, circulated for decades, but it wasn’t until a man named Bob Lazar claimed to have tinkered with alien spacecraft on Las Vegas television in 1989 that Area 51 became a mandatory stop for every amateur ufologist worth his Mutual UFO Network membership.

Almost everyone I’ve spoken to who’s visited the area swears, in wide-eyed wonder, to have experienced something, from harassment by local sheriffs to being chased for miles by a squadron of blue-gray orbs.

I decided now was the time to investigate, so I packed my boyfriend Jon in the car and headed for Las Vegas, where dozens of engineers, pilots and secret agents are rumored to be picked up by private shuttle from the airport for work at the base. From there, we began the two hour drive to Rachel, which lies 15 miles from Area 51 off Interstate 375.

Rechristened the Extraterrestrial Highway in 1996, the 375 is desolate–aside from the occasional lead-footed trucker, the only life you’re likely to encounter are cattle owned by Steve Medlin, whose family has owned acreage around the base since the 60s. His is the only ranch left in the area since the Air Force began seizing land around Groom Lake in 1986. Since then, over three million acres have been wrestled away from the Bureau of Land Management and private citizens in the name of “national security.”

15 miles south of Rachel, we turned onto Groom Lake Road, one of two semi-maintained dirt roads that ring the mountains around the base. After eight miles of dust and bumps, we could make out two security agents watching us from the guard shack up ahead. After parking the car, I could overhear them debating whether or not to confiscate the binoculars I was hiding in my jacket. The crystal blue sky was empty and it was quiet, except for the football game on in the shack. I watched two wild jackrabbits nibble at an apple on the ground, and one guard cracked a joke about “secret agent bunnies.”

I wasn’t terribly impressed. I wanted a taste of danger, and here I was being made fun of by a couple of thick-necked Wackenhut security guards. I decided to get back in the car and backtrack onto a narrow dirt path that traveled closer to the mountains. Apart from the Groom mountains that blocks your view of the actual base, the Nevada desert is as flat as an eleven year old girl. But you don’t need to see the base itself to witness the weird goings-on in the area–the real show is in the sky.

After another eight miles of precarious terrain, I could make out the orange poles that mark the restricted boundary in the distance. There are no fences to keep you out, but the poles are topped with motion-sensing metal globes, that, along with the security tower on the base, can follow the movements of someone picking their nose 20 miles away. But there were no signs of life, even as I came upon a sign that screamed, “Use of Deadly Force Authorized.” I decided to jump out and snap a picture.

Seemingly from nowhere, two white, unmarked Jeeps appeared in a cloud of dust and parked about 50 feet behind us–just enough distance to be intimidating. I decided not to tempt fate. Simply crossing the boundary guarantees you a $600 trespassing ticket, as well as the confiscation of any binoculars, cameras, or recording devices. The Jeeps aren’t a myth; they remained firmly parked until I was well on my way back to Rachel.

It was barely dusk, but already biting cold as we pulled up to the handmade sign for the L’il A Le Inn, about the only place to get a burger, a bed or a beer along the godforsaken 375. Along with the Area 51 Research Center (erected by a computer programmer from Boston a few years ago), it put Rachel, a minuscule eruption of trailers and desert rats, on the map, and plays host to UFO enthusiasts from all over the world.

On this Saturday, most of the town appeared to be drinking beer from cans at the restaurant’s counter. It felt like we had just walked into that episode of the Twilight Zone at the diner full of three-eyed mutants. UFO snapshots taken everywhere from Florida to Belize share wall space with anti-Clinton posters, pro-gun sloganeering and charmingly inept acrylic portraits of various extraterrestrial beings. Conversations revolved around hunting trips, truck repair, and the weather. One of the locals, Dave, eyes me up and down with a lop-sided grin. “I’ve seen you around before,” he says, before I inform him this is my first visit to Rachel. He didn’t want to get into specifics, but told me he “sees weird stuff all the time.” The other guys at the bar nodded solemnly.

I wondered if our government was really in cahoots with aliens as a plunked down three bills for our room. Imagine one of those trailers used as temporary offices at construction sites. Now cut it in thirds, hang up a bunch of fuzzy UFO photos and plop a bathroom in the middle. Viola! After converting the bathtub into a beer cooler, Jon and I sat down to watch a handful of UFO videos provided by the manager. Did the skies above Rachel play host to alien engineering? I wasn’t sure.

We decided to head back out after midnight, but not before donning serious cold weather gear. The trickle of highway traffic, however minuscule, was somehow reassuring as we made our way to mile marker 29. It was inky black in every direction, except for the sea of stars and what appeared to be a CHP car flashing red, white and blue miles down the highway.

The landscape makes you feel like you’ve been transported to the moon. Dark, ominous, flat, and silent, covered in Dalisque Yucca trees, everything starts to feel suspicious–like you’re under surveillance. We had 14 miles to cover before we’d reach the perimeter again, on paths that aren’t so much roads as they are trails where an industrial-strength Weedwacker has been applied.

I felt a knot form in my stomach as I left the tarmac, spinning dirt until coming up upon Steve Medlin’s infamous black mailbox–which was painted white in 1996, apparently to throw everybody off. (These government types are slippery, no?). I could barely make out the saucer-themed graffiti on the mailbox.

I took a deep breath in the name of journalistic objectivity. Even if we did see something weird out here, it’s not like it’s going to beam us up or anything, right? Because it seemed as though the collection of lights I thought was a patrol car was now moving silently across the sky. And it was no longer flashing the colors of the flag, but pulsating green and yellow. Through binoculars it seemed as though the yellow light was orbiting two green orbs, like an electron around an atom. I stopped the car. I could make out a car in the distance, but where was it headed?

Maybe Project Red Light wasn’t a rumor–maybe the Air Force was test flying craft whose force fields make them appear to be “breathing” at Area 51. Whatever was now hanging suspended in the sky looked a lot like the so-called “plasma crafts” that began buzzing Mexico in the early 90s. Jon and I got out of the car. Maybe the atmosphere was playing tricks on us, but there was an amber-rimmed disc banking above the highway. It dipped and swayed and convinced Jon and I to get back in the car and drive back to the L’il A Le Inn.

Over coffee the next morning, the guy running the L’il A Le Inn told us it must’ve been a slow night. “It’s busy all summer long out here,” he said, referring to both the lightshow and the number of people that stay at the Inn to watch. “We get plenty of pilots in here, too. They’re friendly, but of course they can’t talk about anything.”

Our last stop was the Area 51 Research Center, a trailer set up a stone’s throw from the Inn. Snapshots of bizarre-looking aircraft are for sale, along with maps and histories of the secret Air Force projects tested on the base. Donald Emory, the aviation buff who runs the center, barely batted an eyelash as I recounted our tale from the previous evening. “Come back January 23rd,” he said. “That’s Red Flag Day, when planes from all over the world come to compete in exercises.”

My head was spinning. Hundreds of people come out here every year to witness the weird goings-on in the sky. But the issue and the numbers are still small enough that the government can brush aside Area 51 as the product of UFO kookery.

Maybe I’ll sign up for Steve Medlin’s cattle round-up in the Spring. I’d have to take an oath of secrecy, but I’d get to poke around on restricted land for weeks, trading tales with ranch hands, getting closer to the secrets of Area 51 than the lights I saw this weekend took me. Until then, I’ll wear my L’il A Le Inn souvenir t-shirt and wonder what the heck I saw out there in the desert.

It features ten apparently very haunted places in Las Vegas just dying for potential exploration…

Read this article in its original form at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

BY JOHN PRZYBYS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Posted: Oct. 23, 2011 | 2:02 a.m.
Updated: Oct. 23, 2011 | 1:46 p.m.

Las Vegas can be a pretty scary place, and not just for the reasons — eerily hypnotic video poker machines, vanishing home values, those zombielike smut peddlers on the Strip — you’d imagine.

There are, some will tell you, legitimately haunted places in Southern Nevada where some very odd, even spooky, things happen.

In celebration of Halloween, we asked a few people who are well-versed in all things otherworldly to suggest a few places that might serve as stops on a ghastly, ghostly day trip.

Here, we offer some of their suggestions. For each supernatural stop, we’ve included a thumbnail description about why some believe it to be haunted or, at least, supernaturally active. (Note, however, that a few are on private property.)

Are any of these reputed hauntings legitimate? Neither we nor anybody else can say for sure. But the notion that spooks, spirits and other assorted wraiths might wish to hang out in and around Las Vegas isn’t really all that bizarre.

“People love Vegas,” says Janice Oberding, author of the ghost hunter bibles “Haunted Nevada” and “The Haunting of Las Vegas.”

So, Oberding figures, “why wouldn’t ghosts love Las Vegas as well?”

1. LAS VEGAS ACADEMY OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, PERFORMING AND VISUAL ARTS

315 S. Seventh st. (near Bridger Avenue)

Haunted theater or scary story dreamed up to scare freshmen?

Who knows? Who cares? Either way, the story of a spirit named “Mr. Petrie” – spellings differ — that allegedly haunts Las Vegas Academy’s main theater is a good, if vague, ghost story that, Oberding says, predates the school’s 1993 conversion from Las Vegas High School to the fine arts magnet high school.

It makes sense, given that high schools are places where youthful imagination, social highs and lows, and all of the stresses, joys and disappointments of adolescence intersect.

“Anyplace where there’s a lot of emotion, anyplace a person has loved or hated, anyplace where they had an attachment to in life, (spirits) can come back and haunt,” says Tina Carlson, co-director of the Shadowlands website (theshadowlands.net), which includes a state-by-state list of reader-reported, reputedly supernatural places, and director of the Las Vegas Society of Supernatural Investigations.

Oberding has heard that the spirit was a teacher. Robert Allen, creator of Haunted Vegas Tours (hauntedvegastours.com), which takes guests on trips to some of Southern Nevada’s ghostly places, has heard that he was a janitor. Either way, the reasoning goes, maybe Mr. Petrie loved the school in general or the theater so much that he just doesn’t want to leave.

Here’s hoping that an enterprising student at the academy will someday scare up (sorry) a one-act play about the elusive Mr. Petrie. He’d probably be flattered and, if the stories are to be believed, might even be watching from the wings on opening night.

2. SPRING MOUNTAIN RANCH STATE PARK

(18 miles west of Las Vegas off Charleston Boulevard)

What we now know as Spring Mountain Ranch State Park has a long and colorful history involving everybody from Native Americans to Howard Hughes.

Among the park’s historic cast of characters is Vera Krupp, an actress and wife of German industrialist Alfred Krupp, who bought Spring Mountain Ranch in 1955. Krupp loved her trinkets, Oberding recounts in “The Haunting of Las Vegas,” among them a 33-carat diamond that, some say, carried with it a curse.

According to Oberding, Krupp wore what became known as the Krupp diamond wherever she went. Bad move, though, because, on April 11, 1959, a crook named George Reves and a few armed cronies went to the ranch, tied up Vera and her foreman and stole the diamond.

Reves eventually was arrested and sent to prison (the ring was recovered, too), Oberding writes. But the experience spooked (sorry again) Vera so much that she built a bedroom with a hidden passageway in the main ranch house (now the visitors center).

Vera sold the ranch to Howard Hughes about six months before she died. But, Oberding says, some think the ranch house is haunted.

So if, while stopping by for a picnic one of these days, you see a petite blond woman walking around, feel free to say hello to Vera.

3. LAS VEGAS HILTON

3000 Paradise Road (near Riviera Boulevard)

Elvis has not left the building, if you believe those who say they still occasionally see the late entertainer’s spirit at his favorite Las Vegas haunt (still sorry).

Starting in July 1969, Elvis played the showroom at the Las Vegas Hilton (originally the International Hotel) regularly for seven years, entertaining more than 2½ million fans and breaking his own attendance records all along the way.

The Hilton shows marked Presley’s canonization as a Las Vegas legend. So who can begrudge the guy for wanting to stick around at the scene of one of his most significant professional triumphs?

Carlson says many people have reported seeing Elvis at various locations around the hotel, from the showroom to upper-floor hallways. Allen says one of Elvis’ favorite places seems to be a backstage elevator that leads to a greenroom.

One story holds that a maid once saw Elvis backstage and wished him good morning before realizing that he was, well, dead.

Supposedly, Allen says, “she went flying out of there and quit her job.”

4. FLAMINGO LAS VEGAS

3555 Las Vegas Blvd. South (near Flamingo Road)

According to Allen, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel’s suite at the Flamingo, the hotel he opened in 1946, boasted such protective measures as bulletproof windows, 18-inch-thick walls and a secret ladder leading to an underground garage where a driver awaited 24/7 to spirit (sorry, but we’re done now) Bugsy away if necessary.

“He was very paranoid,” Allen says, which makes it particularly bizarre that, when the noted mobster was killed, it was at paramour Virginia Hill’s Beverly Hills, Calif., home, while he was sitting pretty much in the open and reading a newspaper.

Given Siegel’s relative experiences in Las Vegas and Beverly Hills, it’s probably not surprising that, all things being equal, Siegel would prefer to spend his post-mortality time haunting Las Vegas.

“Over the years, there have been hundreds of sightings of Bugsy Siegel by tourists and security guards,” Allen says, most often around the property’s rose garden and memorial dedicated to Siegel.

In fact, Allen adds, “one security guard we talked to said he has seen him dozens of times.”

5. BALLY’S LAS VEGAS

3645 Las Vegas Blvd. South (at Flamingo Road)

Most of the places on our Halloween tour are fun to visit. This one — the site where 85 people were killed in a fire at the former MGM Grand in November 1980 — well, not so much.

So much not-so-much, in fact, that Carlson doesn’t even particularly like stopping by.

“I sense a lot of things in these places,” she explains. “I have been there — my husband and I have stayed there, in fact — and I walked the halls, and it was just an eerie feeling.”

“I don’t like to go where there’s danger, (or) that kind of death. I just don’t like to be there.”

Allen says one story goes that hotel staff and guests have seen 12 ghosts that walk around in a group.

“I talked to a 21 dealer who said one time he was working on a Saturday night, and it was pretty crowded. He saw a group of people watching his table. He glanced up and, within a second, there was nobody there. He said there was no way they could have dispersed in that short a time.”

6. LUXOR

3900 Las Vegas Blvd. South (near Hacienda Avenue)

There are several casinos in Las Vegas that followers of the supernatural claim are, at least in part, haunted.

Among them is Luxor, which Allen says is reputed to be the home of at least five spirits: three deceased construction workers and two people who committed suicide there by jumping from the hotel’s open hallways onto the casino floor.

According to Allen, guests have reported sensing the spirit of one of the latter group, a woman, on the hotel’s 12th- to 14th-floor hallways in the form of cold spots and the sense that someone is breathing on their necks.

Also contributing to Luxor’s supernatural reputation is the fact that the building is a pyramid, a form that many believe to be associated with mystical energy.

“Just wandering around Luxor, it has an energy,” Carlson says. “Pyramids have energy anyway, because there’s something about the shape that draws in energy.”

“I have wandered around there,” she adds, “and it’s just a feeling you get in certain areas.”

A hint: Seek out odd corners and quieter locations within the building and not, Carlson says, somewhere “by the Wheel of Fortune. Just find a corner and feel what you can feel.”

7. THE FORMER CARLUCCIO’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT

1775 E. Tropicana Ave. (near Spencer Street)

Carluccio’s, the Old Vegas Italian restaurant in the Liberace Plaza, has closed. But, Liberace, the pianist and famed Las Vegas entertainer who died in 1987, once owned the eatery, and some say he loved the place so much that he continued going there even after he had no actual need for food.

Liberace developed the plaza, which also was the site of the Liberace Museum, says Allen, who — during his years performing as a comedian in such shows as “Folies Bergere” and “Splash” – not only knew Liberace but attended parties at the entertainer’s home.

Allen says Liberace often would invite friends to the restaurant (then called Tivoli Gardens) after hours and cook for them in its kitchen. “He’d be playing the piano and everybody would be hanging around until 6 in the morning,” Allen says. “He loved that place.”

Now that Carluccio’s has closed, the question becomes: What happens to a ghost when the place he or she haunts no longer is open?

Nobody really knows, Oberding says. Some figure that the spirit might move on, while others believe that whatever is making a ghost haunt a particular place will lead it to stay in that location.

Either way, Oberding says, “I would hope somebody else would open something there.”

8. REDD FOXX’S FORMER HOME

5460 S. Eastern Ave. (near Hacienda Avenue)

Take a look at the sign in front of the offices of Shannon Day Realty Inc. See that little red fox at the bottom?

Consider it a tribute to comedian Redd Foxx, whose spirit, some believe, still haunts the building that once was his home.

“The story is that he lost it because of back taxes, and the belief is he still haunts it because he was angry at the IRS for kicking him out of his home,” Oberding says.

Allen says that after Foxx lost the building, it was the home of an Elvis Presley impersonator and then several businesses.

Every occupant after Foxx, he says, reported witnessing such disturbances as lights turning off and on and doors opening and closing, and hearing the sound of someone running down the hallways when no one was there.

Day, who purchased the property in 2004, has allowed ghost hunters to spend the night at the building to see whatever they could see. In most cases, she adds, they left with what they considered to be evidence of spirit activity.

Still, Day says she has never felt anything particularly otherworldly about the place.

“When we purchased it, everybody said it was haunted, but I don’t see anything, really,” she says.

“I’m pretty live and let live,” Day adds, so if Foxx does want to hang around, “that’s great.”

And that red fox illustration on the sign? “I put that out there as a sign of respect, just because everybody who has been in town long enough would know this is Redd Foxx’s house,” Day explains. “I just thought it was a neat little thing to do, but it wasn’t to keep spirits out or anything.”

9. FOX RIDGE PARK

420 Valle Verde Drive, Henderson (near Warm Springs Road)

This Henderson city park easily qualifies as one of Southern Nevada’s most well-known reputedly haunted places.

“Now this is just rumor,” Carlson says, but the story goes that “the spirit of a little boy likes to swing on the (park’s) swings.”

Carlson has seen only one swing moving — dramatically, she adds, and in the absence of any noticeable breeze — while the swing next to it remained perfectly still. And, Carlson says, devices designed to measure electromagnetic fields have registered activity there.

Meanwhile, Allen says guests on his Haunted Vegas Tour have photographed the swings and noticed some odd things on their photos (check out the photos at www.hauntedvegastours.com/html/ghost_photos.htm).

Oberding says she has been told, although she “can’t find anything to back it up,” that a child was hit and killed by a car while crossing a street near the park and that it’s the boy’s spirit that can be sensed there.

“But, then, I’ve heard the story change around, where the child is a demon that haunts” the park, says Oberding, who adds that she once visited the park and recorded the voice of a child laughing.

Kim Becker of Henderson’s Parks and Recreation Department says city employees — among them, a few who live near the park — have never seen anything of a supernatural kind going on there and that the city sometimes receives calls from ghost hunters who want to go in after midnight to see what may be going on.

“We have to say no, because our parks are closed from midnight to 6 in the morning,” Becker says, although “if somebody wanted to come in prior to that, they would be welcome to do that.”

And if they see anything eerie? “We would totally be interested,” Becker says with a laugh.

10. BOULDER DAM HOTEL

1305 Arizona St., Boulder City

Not that the desk clerk would fess up to it, but there are those who consider this historic Boulder City hotel a tad haunted.

Allen recalls walking in one night and hearing a piano playing. When he walked into the room, no one was there, he says.

And, Carlson says, visitors have reported sensing odd vibes there.

“If you can get a room there, ask for the haunted room,” Carlson adds. “My husband and I stayed there, and we had the blankets torn off of us in the middle of the night.”

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.

Traffic passes the closed Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah on Dec. 19, 2007. The historic hotel was built in 1908. Photo by Jeff Scheid / Las Vegas Review-Journal

Being a long-time fan of ghosts, even the idea of ghosts, if it were possible, this author would surely book a room on the fifth floor of this place in a New York minute when it re-opens… especially as the aforementioned resident is a sweet soul and is rather gracious enough to leave those lucky enough to see her a quite valuable souvenir, direct from the æther!

From Historic Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah gets new life, by Ed Vogel.

“During the Mizpah’s glory days, lore has it that the hotel was where former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey served as a bouncer, Wyatt Earp was a regular and Howard Hughes married Jean Peters.

Or so the story goes.

State historian Guy Rocha has debunked those myths thoroughly.

Dempsey even wrote in his autobiography that he never was a saloon bouncer in his life. Hughes married Peters in 1957 at the L&L Motel, down the street from the Mizpah. And while Earp lived in Tonopah in 1902, he was long gone before the Mizpah was constructed.

The Lady In Red. Click for the hotel’s page on her.

Rocha said in a story that hotel promoters long have taken “great liberties with the past to enhance the history of the business and attract more patrons.” The marketing strategy is an old and unsophisticated one and incorporates the “George Washington slept here” approach.

But not even Rocha can debunk the “Lady in Red” story, at least among people who want to believe in ghosts.

The lady in red was a prostitute who conducted her business with Mizpah patrons in the 1920s. A wealthy man is said to have killed her in a fit of rage when he discovered he was only one of her many customers. He killed her on the fifth floor.

She roams the hotel to this day, according to legend. Those who see her often find a pearl on their pillows or nightstands.

Myth or not, the Clines are promoting the legend on their website.”

What a great story. For me it conjures up a life back in time where things were, seemingly, from my perspective, a lot more “real” than they are now. I might have even done well then. Although I’m pretty sure that to the people then, even Wyatt Earp, things may have been as banal as things are to us… maybe not, eh… it’s fun to romanticize them into a sort of Hollywood-induced semi-reality. Anyway…

I wish the new owners a lot of success and the same to those staying on in this Fortean facility!

Peace.

9/8/2011 • 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Clark County Library

Room: Main Theater

alien!

L.O.W.F.I was recently made aware of a very interesting blog post at a site called Glowing Raccoon. Which is interesting in itself. But this story from the Hill and Nellis Air Force bases is one of a sadly unrequited official experience with UFOs — it is thought provoking, to say the least.

Here is a snippet to tickle thy ganglia…

Nellis OSI challenge coin

I, along with all other new airmen, sat through hours of briefings, most having to do with education, base legal services, and family support. Initially, the FTAC briefings proved to be even more boring than the months of training sessions in tech school.

Then things got interesting. Two agents from the base Office of Special Investigations detachment came to brief us on subjects we should be aware of. At first their instructions were pretty mundane: don’t do drugs, be aware of spies soliciting intelligence, and, of course, keep your eyes open for terrorists.

Their next comments quickly recaptured my attention. The OSI agents were wrapping up their presentation as a recruiting session, open to all first-term airmen. One agent said, “Yeah, we deal with drug busts, sexual-assault cases, and all that, but the real interesting stuff is the X-files type stuff. There are a lot of weird things flying around out there, and we get to investigate it.”

Please do continue on to read the rest of this most intriguing tale and to see the other side of the coin.