A Californian YouTuber took his Miata to a Nevada ghost town completely frozen in time and found some bizarre attractions

It’s fair to say this Californian YouTuber had a memorable trip when he took his Miata out to a Nevada ghost town filled with bizarre attractions.

Conner, the host of YouTube channel mellow_conner, took his subscribers along for the ride as he traveled through western Nevada

Along the way, he stopped over in Tonopah, an old mining town.

One establishment in particular caught his attention, but we’re not sure whether it was memorable for the right reasons.

What would this YouTuber and his Miata find out in the deserts of Nevada?

Conner has put a lot of work into his Mazda Miata.

He’d taken a lot of time fixing it up, and had even taken it out on a road trip along the California coast.

This time around, he was heading out into Nevada for the town of Tonopah.

In its heyday, Tonopah was known as the ‘Queen of the Silver Camps’.

Nowadays, this unincorporated town is primarily a tourist draw.

Tonopah had a lot of the standard attractions you would expect in a former mining town.

There was the old fire department, a Waterco office, and plenty of pioneer housing.

Nearby was an old cemetery, filled with the graves of those who died in a 1911 mine fire and a 1905 plague.

That latter epidemic earned itself the name of ‘the Tonopah plague’ and primarily affected adult men.

Over the years, the Nevada ghost town has made its mark on pop culture in numerous ways, whether that’s being mentioned in songs or featured on TV shows.

But it’s safe to say that one attraction stands out from all the rest in Tonopah.

This ghost town had a seriously creepy motel in it

Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you the Clown Motel – and yes, it’s just as creepy as it sounds.

This establishment opened up back in 1985, with Leroy and Leona David wanting to honor their late father, Clarence.

And they decided to do so by using his 150 clown statues as interior decoration.

Over the years, the clown population has grown, with more than 4,000 pieces of clown memorabilia filling this building.

That’s a lot of clowns for anybody.

As you might expect, the Motel has attracted its fair share of supernatural lore over the years, as some speculate the place is haunted by the spirits of dead clowns.

When Conner swung by the Motel, he popped into the gift shop, which was rammed full of memorabilia.

Depending on how you feel about clowns, this was either delightful or nightmare-inducing.

Take your pick.

But we have to commend a tourist attraction making its mark.

Why exactly do places like this draw visitors?

Dr. Beth Wielde Heidelberg teaches courses in historic architecture at Minnesota State University, and one of her research interests is dark tourism.

That’s tourism to places linked to tragedies and supernatural folklore.

In her view, the appeal of the Clown Motel can broadly be linked back to it being a ‘Fun Fear Factory’, a term coined by dark tourism theorist Phillip Stone.

“These are places people visit that pose no particular risk, no danger to the visitor, just some entertaining scares,” she told Supercar Blondie.

“These places are set up for this sort of thrill.”

As for the cemetery in Tonopah, she said that would fall on the ‘darker’ end of the dark tourism spectrum.

“People visit these places to learn more about the event and see it in context, to connect with the victims and try to feel what it was like, in some small way, to be there when it happened,” she said.

“Dark tourism isn’t always about a macabre obsession with death, it’s often about really digging in and understanding history in the places where it happened, even when that history is affiliated with tragedy.”

And why exactly does Nevada serve as a dark tourism hotspot?

“[My theory] is that a lot of it has to do with the military presence. Not because the military is inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but it does have a level of security and privacy that makes it mysterious,” she explained.

“Area 51 is in Nevada. The military base near Tonopah likely doesn’t let visitors in just to poke around and explore.

“Between ghost towns, secretive military bases, and being a reasonable drive from Las Vegas if they are on an extended road trip, a place as unique as the Clown Motel would be odd enough to attract some of these visitors.”

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