Category: Paranormal Travel

Virginia City’s most famous haunted saloon still delivers history and atmosphere.

Paranormal activity at the Washoe Club adds real tales of the supernatural.

Introduction

Virginia City, Nevada. The Washoe Club.

The staff handed us the keys for a full overnight lock-in at the infamous Washoe Club. What followed was a mix of history, hospitality, and paranormal activity at the Washoe Club we’ve captured recently.

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History of the Washoe Club

The Washoe Club opened in 1875 during the Comstock Lode silver boom.

Builders created it as an exclusive private club for Virginia City’s elite.

Paranormal activity at the Washoe Club is part of its legendary history.

The building featured fine furnishings, private poker rooms, and the iconic spiral staircase that still stands today.

By 1897 the silver boom had faded and the exclusive club closed. The ground-floor saloon continued operating, while the upper floors remained largely unused for decades.

Authorities reportedly used the building as a temporary morgue during harsh winters. Officials stored bodies from mining accidents inside when the ground was too frozen to dig graves. A horse-drawn carriage struck a young girl; people carried her upstairs to a doctor’s office where she died. These deaths tie the property to the incident. According to reports, Lena, known as the Lady in Blue, was murdered in the building. People still report her apparition near the spiral staircase.

People have reported shadow figures, footsteps, and physical interactions (including scratches) for decades. The location has appeared on Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, and numerous independent investigations.

Today the Washoe Club operates as both a historic saloon and haunted museum, offering daily ghost tours and private overnight lock-ins.

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Atmosphere & Service

The staff at the Washoe Club were professional, knowledgeable, and welcoming. They handled the overnight arrangement smoothly and gave us full access without unnecessary restrictions.

The atmosphere is excellent.

The ground-floor saloon retains genuine Old West character with dark wood.

Historic details and a strong sense of place define the space.

Even before the investigation began, the building carried a heavy, charged energy.

Serious investigators immediately notice it.

It is one of the rare locations that successfully combines authentic history with real potential for activity.

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Equipment Used

We ran a focused kit for both communication and environmental monitoring:

• SB7 Pro Spirit Box – continuous radio-sweep device
• Spirit Chat – Ovilus-style word bank device
• REM Pods – proximity and EMF-reactive sensors
• Wave Shell – motion sensor
• EMF Candle – simple visual EMF indicator
• Multiple digital voice recorders
• Full-spectrum and night-vision cameras

We placed the base camp on the ground floor. Primary investigation took place on the second and third floors.

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Investigation Breakdown

Arrival & Setup (7:00 p.m.) We received exclusive access to all three floors. After a short walkthrough we moved upstairs to begin.

The young girl’s story, recounting that she died here after a carriage accident, ties this room to that tale. We introduced ourselves and invited communication.

The Spirit Chat responded quickly with:

• “George”
• “Symbols”
• “Gave advice”
• “Hidden grave”
• “Harbor”

When we mentioned the building’s use as a winter morgue, the device replied with “hidden grave.” Both investigators noted cold spots and unbalanced physical sensations in specific areas of the room.

Second Floor – Millionaires’ Poker Room We left money on the table (as previous visitors have done) and invited any former members to interact.

Responses became more direct and darker:

• “I am evil… but I am equal.”
• “Fatal.”

Shortly after asking if the presence had died in the building, Mike saw movement in the hallway.

The investigators observed a dark figure. The dark figure caused a clear physical push. Both investigators heard movement further down the hall at the same time.

Audio review later revealed a sharp, aggressive EVP — a distinct “fuck off” — timed with the hallway encounter. It did not come from either investigator or the Spirit Chat.

Additional responses in this area included:

• “Nursery”
• “Throat”
• “Cold hair”
• “Don’t touch” (triggered when a surface was brushed)
• “Revoked”

A young girl’s voice was also captured on audio — soft and clearly different in tone from the darker responses.

Third Floor & Remaining Areas The sensation of being watched and followed intensified. Unexplained sounds were noted. The overall energy remained territorial and charged, consistent with long-standing reports of shadow figures on the upper floors.

Activity came in waves throughout the night rather than remaining constant.

Wind-Down (Approaching 7:00 a.m.) As daylight returned the building grew quieter. We collected equipment, completed a final walkthrough, and locked up.

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Key Evidence Captured

• Visual of a shadow figure in the hallway at the moment we asked it to appear
• Clear physical push during the hallway encounter
• Aggressive and relevant Spirit Chat responses (“I am evil… but I am equal,” “Fatal,” “hidden grave,” “Don’t touch”)
• Distinct hostile EVP (“fuck off”) timed with the hallway event
• Young girl’s voice on audio
• Multiple cold spots and unbalanced physical sensations
• Persistent feeling of being watched and followed on the upper floors

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Final Thoughts

The Washoe Club continues to live up to its reputation. The history is substantial, the atmosphere is strong, the staff make the experience professional and smooth, and the activity can be direct when it chooses to engage.

We left at sunrise with several compelling moments and a clear respect for whatever still occupies the upper floors.

If you are considering a visit or overnight investigation, the Washoe Club is worth it. Just be prepared that not every presence here is interested in a friendly conversation.

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Three nights. One of Canada’s most legendary ghost towns and a chapter in barkerville history. Zero sleep.

Welcome to Barkerville, British Columbia — part of barkerville history as a legendary gold-rush boomtown.

The History That Still Walks These Streets

It all started in 1862. English prospector Billy Barker — a former sailor who had already chased gold in California and the Fraser Canyon — sank a shaft 52 feet deep on Williams Creek against everyone’s advice. On August 17 he hit the lead. In the first day alone his crew pulled out 60 ounces of gold. That single strike triggered one of the richest placer gold rushes in North American history. Over the next decades more than five million ounces would come out of the Cariboo goldfields.

Within three years Barkerville exploded into the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago. Estimates put the peak population between 5,000 and 10,000 people crammed into a muddy, chaotic, hard-drinking boomtown of saloons, hotels, stores, a theater, a library, and every vice imaginable. The Cariboo Wagon Road — a 650-kilometre engineering nightmare completed in 1865 — poured fortune-seekers, freight, and ambition straight into its streets.

Then came the Chinese. In barkerville history, by the mid-1880s they formed roughly half the population. Thousands of men, mostly from Guangdong, built one of the oldest and most complete Chinatowns in Western North America. They ran restaurants, stores, boarding houses, and benevolent societies like the Chee Kung Tong. They worked the claims white miners had already abandoned, endured brutal discrimination, and still dreamed of sending enough money (or their bones) home so their souls could rest with their ancestors.

On September 16, 1868, a fire started in a saloon around 2:30 in the afternoon. In less than 90 minutes the entire town was gone — 116 buildings reduced to ash. No one died, but the loss was catastrophic. The survivors did something almost unbelievable: they rebuilt 90 buildings in just six weeks, wider streets this time, stronger, more permanent.

Through it all rode Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, the towering 6’5″ circuit judge nicknamed the “Hanging Judge” (though the nickname came later and he hated the idea of taking life). He held court in tents, clearings, and eventually the Richfield Courthouse. Murder meant the death penalty by law. Only two men were ever hanged at Richfield — both in 1867 for murder — and buried in unmarked graves. Begbie’s presence kept a lid on a town that could have easily become the Wild West.

One of the families who stayed the longest was the Kellys. Andrew Kelly arrived in 1865. His descendants, including Walter Kelly, eventually owned a huge chunk of the town. Walter built the house we investigated in the 1930s and lived in it until the late 1950s, when the family sold dozens of properties to the provincial government so Barkerville could be saved as a historic park.

The gold faded. The population crashed. By the 1950s only a handful of people remained. But the buildings — and the people who lived and died in them — never fully left.

This is the full report from our investigation. Watch the actual footage here:
👉 https://youtu.be/CJMD4clHKuw

The Crew

• Mike Morin – Lead Investigator
• Anthony Germain – Investigator
• Jeff Webster – Videographer
• Jacob Rice – Editor & Narrator
• Dawn – Barkerville Site Archaeologist
• Tom – Barkerville Historian

Night One: Kelly House – The Family That Never Left

Gear used:
SLS camera • Flux 2 • Ovilus / SP7 Pro Spirit Box • EMF detectors • Static cameras • Digital audio recorders • noise-canceling headphones • Candles for trigger experiments

This was our base. Walter Kelly’s house. Staff told us the upstairs bedroom is the hot spot: feelings of being watched, a stocky 5’5″–5’7″ figure, bed impressions like someone just sat down, and a door that once locked itself… from the inside.

We walked in and the house woke up.

The second we said the name “Kelly,” gear started dying. SLS camera dead. Flux screaming. Spirit box spitting “blaze” and “erase” — on the anniversary of the fire that erased the original town. Mike’s keys moved from the nightstand to the dead center of the bed while we were downstairs. Footsteps upstairs when no one was there. A candle extinguished itself. Something large shuffled across the floor above us.

The Kellys didn’t just own this town.
Part of them still lives in it.

Night Two: The Tong Building – The Ones Who Never Made It Home

Gear used:
SLS camera • Flux 2 • Ovilus / SP7 Pro Spirit Box • IR Blaster • EMF detectors • Static / motion cameras • Digital audio recorders • Candles

Dawn walked us through the brutal truth of Chinese life here. The Tong societies were everything: bank, hostel, hospital, funeral home. If you got sick you went to the “peace room.” If you died, the society tried to dig you up years later and ship your bones back to China so your spirit could rest with family.

One name kept coming up: Ah Mao — a Tong member murdered in broad daylight.

The second we stepped inside, Anthony got hit with pure grief. Overwhelming urge to cry. One clear thought looping: “I want to go home.” Not his home. China.

Cold spots. Candle dies again. IR Blaster triggers like someone just walked past it. Cameras glitching exactly when we asked the hard questions.

These aren’t residual echoes.
These are people still waiting for the ship that never came.

Night Three: Richfield Courthouse – Where Justice Was Final

Gear used:
SLS camera • Flux 2 • Ovilus / SP7 Pro Spirit Box • EMF detectors • Static cameras • Digital audio recorders • noise-canceling headphones

Just up the road sits the place where Begbie brought the full weight of British law to the goldfields. The original log courthouse is gone. The energy is not.

We got direct responses tied to the court, the judge, and from ghostly town folk who were invited to communicate and see the trial. This building doesn’t play games. It still judges.

Final Verdict

Barkerville isn’t just haunted.
It’s still occupied.

Billy Barker’s strike created a city that burned, rebuilt, thrived, and faded — but the people who lived those lives never fully checked out. The Kellys are still in their house. The Chinese laborers are still longing for home. The condemned are still standing before the judge.

We left with drained batteries, corrupted files, clear device hits, personal experiences that still give us chills, and absolute proof that history doesn’t always stay in the past.

If you’ve been to Barkerville and felt something… drop it in the comments. We want to hear it.

Hit like if this gave you chills.
Subscribe if you want more places that refuse to stay quiet.

The gold is gone.
The ghosts are not.

If you love places that look and smell like a hundred years of stories, Merchant’s Cafe & Saloon in Pioneer Square is must-see Seattle nostalgia. Tucked at 109 Yesler Way in the heart of downtown/Pioneer Square, it bills itself as Seattle’s oldest standing restaurant — and walking under that battered marquee feels like stepping into a sepia photograph. 

What it’s like inside

The dining room and bar are warmly old-school: a long century-old wooden bar, pressed-tin ceiling, buckboard-worn floors and vintage pictures on the walls. The vibe is very cozy — lots of wood, low lighting, and small nooks that invite lingering over a drink or a long meal. That same vintage charm, though, can also mean the place shows its age; on my visit (and in a handful of traveler reviews) you can find spots that feel a little grubby — bits of wear that some people call “character” and others just call “dirty.” If pristine is your thing, factor that into your expectations. (Staff and management have, over the years, done restorations and maintenance, but the building is old and frays in places.) 

1. Historic Foundations

The building housing Merchant’s was rebuilt after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, which razed much of Pioneer Square. 

• In the aftermath, the property was reconstructed circa 1890 as the Sanderson Block, designed to host a liquor store/café on the ground floor and hotel rooms above. 
• By 1892 it became the “Merchant’s Exchange Saloon” under new ownership, and the upstairs began accepting hourly rentals — discreetly a brothel in effect. 
• The architecture is of brick, with pressed-tin ceilings, original wooden bar shipped around Cape Horn, and retains much of its late-19th-century interior. 
• A historic designation references the property at 109 Yesler Way as part of Pioneer Square’s National Register listing, with the original date of construction circa 1889-1890. 

So when you walk in, you’re literally sitting in the echoes of miners, lumberjacks, gold-rush hopefuls, and the urban underbelly of turn-of-the-century Seattle.

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2. A Building with Multiple Lives

Over the decades, Merchant’s wore many hats:

• As noted, a saloon and hotel/brothel in its early years. 
• During Prohibition it reportedly operated as a speakeasy and card room. 
• Later: a café, cigar shop (look for the “Havana Cigars” stained glass) and restaurant. 
• The upstairs rooms that once served less‐official uses are now boutique apartments or short-stay spaces (not publicly brothel any more!). 

This varied past adds to the character — and also to the haunted reputation.

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3. Ghost Stories & Paranormal Claims

Merchant’s embraces its haunted identity, with documented ghost-stories, paranormal investigations, and staff anecdotes galore. Here are several of the more vivid ones:

The Haunted Portrait (“Oriental Dancing Girl”)

• A painting of one of the former “seamstresses” from the upstairs brothel hangs in the bar’s back wall. The story goes that the woman in the painting appears to move her eyes, shift position, or be seen standing in front of a vanity in a photo that wasn’t there in the original image. 
• According to the café’s owner: she took a photo of the painting leaning against a wall and saw additional furniture, a ladder, reflections, objects in the photo that weren’t present at the time. 

“Otto” — The Ghostly Manager

• One spirit is said to be “Otto”, a manager circa early 1900s, still “managing” the place. For example: a bartender asked Otto to turn off the TV — it went off instantly. 
• Bottles of wine above the safe were thrown off the rack overnight (no forced entry) following a new wine rack installation. The phantom had apparently objected. A shot of whisky is now left on the safe as an offering. 

Children’s Spirits in the Basement

• The basement of the building (and adjacent spaces) is known for being a particularly active area. Rumour: in a 1938 fire, two children (a boy and a girl) died and their spirits linger, often seen or heard playing in the cellar/semi-underground space.
• Employees report tugging of shirts from behind when alone in the back, small shadow figures, footsteps when no one’s there, laughter.

Women’s Restroom & Slamming Doors

• The women’s restroom (and sometimes men’s, adjacent basement spaces) is a hotspot: doors slam by themselves, faucets turn on/off, whispering voices in men’s ears, a female apparition.

General ‘haunted binder’ and ghost-tour participation

• The staff keep a binder full of reported strange incidents. The building is a stop for ghost-tours in Pioneer Square. 

So yes — if you’re into ghost stories, Merchant’s offers plenty of lore and atmosphere.

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4. Why the hauntings might make sense

Given the building’s back-story, the ghost tales feel consonant with its past:

• A building that housed a brothel, saloon and card-room creates plenty of emotional energy, some might say “residual energy.”
• It survived major events: the Great Seattle Fire, social upheavals, changing uses, loneliness of transient frontier workers — all ripe for shadowy stories.
• The basement and underground spaces are physically old, less light, more hidden — ghost-friendly in the sense of ambience.
  So whether you believe in actual ghosts or just in atmosphere, the place certainly feels storied.

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5. Visiting with context

If you plan to stop by:

• Ask the bartender about the ghost binder; many staff are familiar with the lore and some share experiences.
• If you’re interested in the supernatural, the basement area and restrooms are where many of the claims focus.
• Bring a camera (many visitors have taken “weird” photos), but don’t expect a guaranteed ghost-photo; it’s more about the story and the place.
• Evening visits may have more atmosphere (shadows, echoing steps) although the bar is active so you’ll still have other patrons.

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Practical tips — parking & safety

Pioneer Square is a dense, historic neighborhood; street parking is limited and regulated, and most visitors end up using nearby parking garages or booking a SpotHero/Same-day lot in advance. If you’re driving, plan for parking — expect to hunt, pay for a garage, or reserve a spot ahead of time during busy evenings. Public transit or a short rideshare can save hassle. 

One more practical note: Pioneer Square sees a lot of foot traffic and, like many busy city neighborhoods, petty car break-ins do happen from time to time. Don’t leave valuables visible in your car; stow them in the trunk or take them with you. Several nearby hotels and parking operators even remind guests of the same. (Basic, boring but important: lock doors and hide bags.) 

Should you go?

Yes, if you enjoy historic places with personality — and if you like the idea of a bar that leans into its ghosts. Go for the ambiance, the sense of continuity with old Seattle, and the stories. Don’t go if you need everything to be spotless and the newest. And whatever you do: plan where you’ll park, and don’t leave valuables visible in your car.