It’s time for me to talk about my experiences at the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel, a place full of mystery that has captured the hearts of many. It’s a long story that started 14 years ago when I was just about to enter my 20’s. I had no idea back then, that the place I would return to over and over again to search for ghosts would be the place I would end up working at.
After graduating high school I found myself a bit lonely and wanting to make new friends. I grew up watching all the old paranormal shows like Ghost Hunters and A Haunting. I was, and still am pretty obsessed with anything related to the paranormal. I had a genius idea one day to try to join a real ghost hunting crew.
After some online searching and filtering through the paranormal teams that looked way too into themselves, I came across a group called G.A.R.P., which stands for Ghost Anomaly Research Project. One phone interview later, I was officially on the team and would soon go on my first paranormal investigation and meet the crew. This was certainly the most exciting thing I had ever done independently as an adult.
We all eventually met at the famous Amargosa Opera House and Hotel in Death Valley Junction, California. This place is just about 20 minutes away from Death Valley National Park and 30 minutes away from civilization. Even though I never lived too far from it, this was my first time visiting.
Me, exploring the colonnade of the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel.
There were just under 20 members in the group at that time. The first strange thing that ever happened to me at this location was that I had an instant familiarity with a couple of the people I met that day. It was a mutual feeling that we had known each other before but we couldn’t figure out how. Little did we know, we would end up being friends for years after. Perhaps it was a knowing that we would be in each other’s life story for a long time or maybe we recognized each other from a past life. I would later come to recognize that this is a common type of occurrence that happens at this location.
The History
The general history of The Amargosa Opera House and Hotel is that it was built in 1923 for the Pacific Coast Borax mining company. The train stop for the T&T railroad was already there and the U-shaped building would be the mining company’s civic city center. The adobe style structure included everything a town needed back in the day.
It had offices, a hospital (including a morgue), a post office, a school, a community recreation hall, and dormitory style living quarters for the miners and their families. It also had a small hotel for wealthy investors and visitors, with just over 20 rooms.
Near the main building, adobe style cottages were built for more important business people to reside in. There was also a swimming pool and a processing mill nearby. Unfortunately, the mining company left Death Valley Junction only a few years later, after finding a better spot to mine Borax.
The railroad would eventually be dismantled and used for its parts during World War II. I read once that the parts were actually sent to Egypt which is kind of interesting to me.
It wasn’t until the late 60’s that a talented ballet dancer and artist from New York named Marta Becket would discover the old Amargosa Hotel and become so infatuated with it that she decided to move there and make it her own.
The Opera House during a night time investigation.
It was her who turned the old recreation hall space into an ‘Opera House’ by hand painting an entire audience on the walls to perform her ballet routines to week after week. She was the one that made the hotel mean something to people again and she gained a cult following over the years. She had her final performance in 2012 and then passed away in 2017. When I first started visiting the hotel Marta was still alive, but I never had the pleasure of meeting her or seeing her live performance.
Investigations
My first investigation and the ones that followed at this location always provided some sort of paranormal activity. We were able to investigate pretty much the whole location. A memorable spot was back in one of the cottages where we heard a story about a little girl drowning in the bathtub. We had activity on our various equipment and people investigating felt cold sensations on their lower legs and hands, as if a little girl was trying to hold onto them.
Investigating the bathtub where a little girl once drowned.
In the Opera House, we would wait to see if any of the theater seats would move up or down on their own as they were reported to do. We only heard a cat meow in there, but we were told there were no cats on the property at the time. Perhaps it was one of Marta’s beloved pet cats from beyond the grave.
The most notorious and filmed spot for paranormal activity there was what they call “Spooky Hollow”. This is the abandoned living quarters of the miners and their families. It’s a very close reflection to the more hospitable side of the still functioning hotel.
Spooky Hollow during the day.
At the end of the hotel hallway there is a huge mirror and on the other side of the mirror is what I like to call the “upside down” version of the hotel. A nearly identical view of a long hallway except for that it is completely decayed and in a state of extreme disrepair. It is indeed very spooky looking.
During the day, this space is picturesque in a historically neglected kind of way. By night, it truly looks like the inside of a nightmare. In fact, every time I was back there at night for an investigation, I had this silly fear that all of the sudden I would realize all of my teammates would be gone and I would be completely alone in the dark.
The old dormitory recreational area at night.
At the end of this hallway was supposedly a haunted room where someone had died by hanging. Some say it was a suicide, others expect foul play. This room is said to be haunted by a man with dark energy. We did feel dark energy back then during our investigations. There was a sort of intimidating trickster like force throughout the hotel. Inside the hotel, we had also experienced a phantom mimic voice that called for one of our teammates.
The room at the end of the dormitory hallway.
Soon, some of the members of the original group called G.A.R.P. split off to create their own team (this included myself). Our new team was called P.R.O.O.F., which stands for Paranormal Research of Otherworldly Forms. Our team still lives on today, though less active, and we have thankfully had lots of great adventures over the years.
A bat flying around during our investigation in one of the old cottages.
The Amargosa Opera House and Hotel never disappointed us and we found ourselves going back every year as our tradition. For a while, we would stay overnight every winter, bearing the cold weather and staying up late in hopes of having more unexplained experiences. Eventually, the management changed and we lost our connection to keep investigating there.
Later, I would find out that the people who had been managing it while we often stayed were allegedly taking advantage of Marta in her old age. The money we would pay every visit to investigate was not going to Marta or the Opera House as we thought, but straight into the pockets of those managers who suddenly booked it out of town one day. One thing I learned about Death Valley Junction and the Amargosa Hotel is that there is an awful amount of scandal and drama that takes place there.
Stay tuned for part 2…
-Tabitha .Z.