The owner saw him first: a grizzled, bearded man leaning around the refrigerator at 2 a.m., staring right at him. During my three nights in that same haunted Airbnb in Beatty, Nevada — the desert town known as the Gateway to Death Valley — I never saw the miner. But I may have heard him.
I made the Airbnb-hosted trip for a Halloween episode of Talking Strange, the paranormal pop culture show (check it out on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you find your favorite shows). Beatty is just shy of two hours from Las Vegas, and although it’s a popular stop for hikers and mountain bikers, it’s also a hub for spooky travelers with a haunted saloon, haunted old casino, a freaky underground church possibly connected to Charles Manson, and a ghost town up the hill.
The Haunted Miner Cabin Airbnb
Home base was three old miners’ cabins joined into one house downtown. Derek Stonebarger and his wife, Dorian, bought the property in 2020 and spent four years restoring it, a side project for the entrepreneur behind Las Vegas spots like ReBAR, Davy’s Locker, and the new art-filled Arty’s Steakhouse. Derek loves old historic bars, which is part of what kept drawing them back to Beatty. The cabins came from the boomtown of Rhyolite.
“Around 1925, so maybe 10 or 12 years after everybody had left Rhyolite, the cabins were brought down to… downtown Beatty,” Derek says.
Travel Nevada notes Rhyolite’s buildings were dismantled and moved as the town died. Today the house is miner chic, with rustic bones and modern guts. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms (one with a whirlpool tub), and a full kitchen with a bar area. Out front is a big patio with a fire pit and plenty of spots to lounge, per the listing. There’s also a sealed room behind the bathroom wall hiding a historic shower. Derek left that corner alone. By then, he’d met his spectral housemate.
Around 2022, at 2 a.m., Derek — who admits he had a few drinks, and had never believed in ghosts — saw a figure lean around the fridge.
“We made eye contact. It felt like it took seven seconds,” Derek says. “And then, when I looked back, he was gone.” The experience changed him. “I was not really a believer, but I know now that there’s something,” he tells me.
He slept on the porch that night. The next morning, he told his wife, “Babe, I saw a ghost last night.” Dorian has never seen anything, but she still gets nervous when Derek falls asleep before her. Derek, meanwhile, can’t stop talking about it. “I’ve been telling people the story ever since, because I know it happened,” he says.
Renting the house out was never the plan, but after that night, he wanted to share it and let guests “see if they can find more… ghosts.”
He still pours the old miner a shot of whiskey before he leaves, and it’s usually somewhat gone when he returns. Maybe it’s evaporation.
As for me, I investigated the cabin, and also left a camera rolling in the empty cabin. Visually, I didn’t capture anything. But the audio caught pops, shifting, maybe a footfall. Could be an old house settling as the desert cools. I still can’t explain it. Then I sat by the fire pit under a sky that earns Beatty its spot on what Travel Nevada calls the Park to Park in the Dark route.
I’m not the only one poking around. The Ghost Adventures crew filmed at the cabin, the Sourdough Saloon, and the Exchange Club for an episode airing later this season.
Ghost Stories at the Sourdough Saloon
The Pahrump Valley Times says locals date the Sourdough to anywhere from the Rhyolite boom to the 1940s. Its ghost stories are less disputed. There’s the Shadow Man pacing one corner (Derek, who has invested in the bar, thinks it may be a reflection), an upstairs rumored to have been an illegal brothel, and, Derek says, several past owners who died in the building.
Bartender Hutch, who owns more than 200 sports jerseys and banters like a pro, tells me about a bartender who looked into the window’s reflection at closing and saw a man on the stool behind her. No one was there. In the back room, where cook Tim runs the kitchen, I felt a heavy vibe at least twice. Not scary, but heavy. When you go, order the pizza and the Sourdough Smuggler sandwich.
Voices in the Exchange Club
Across the street, the Exchange Club dates to 1906, per Travel Nevada, and now wears an ornate steampunk facade. Inside, staircases drop into the dark, and the upstairs, rumored to be a former brothel, still has what is believed to be the original once-colorful carpet.
My guide, electrician Danny, has never seen a ghost. But from his shop in the back, he hears voices. “It’s like people talking, like right outside my door,” Danny shares. He can make out a man and a woman, two or three different voices. He walks the building, but doesn’t encounter a living soul.
The Underground Church With Charles Manson Lore
Behind the Sourdough, an unplanned “follow me” led me through brush and down steps into an underground church with a dirt floor. Locals say Charles Manson frequented it. I couldn’t confirm that, though Manson was arrested at Barker Ranch in the Death Valley backcountry in 1969. It isn’t technically open to the public, but that doesn’t seem to stop any curious explorers. Touring this structure in the pitch black is a daunting and freaky task — as long as you don’t have any concerns about spiders.
Voices in the Rhyolite Ghost Town
Rhyolite boomed after Shorty Harris and Ed Cross found gold in 1904, with the town growing to about 5,000 people in six months, per Travel Nevada. The National Park Service calls the Panic of 1907 “the beginning of the end.” By 1920, 14 people remained. Karl Olson, its Bureau of Land Management caretaker, and unofficial mayor of the ghost town, knows the old maps by heart. Karl is yet another amazing character in the area, who loves talking about history, and trading strange-but-true tales of Rhyolite. And he’s clearly deeply passionate about preserving what’s left of the town.
“This place comes alive for me ’cause I know where they lived,” Karl tells me. “I’m actually going through time.”
Alone on Millionaire’s Hill, near the remnants of a fireplace and chimney, I heard mutterings and whispers. Not wind. I tried to engage. Nothing clear came back. Still, for a brief moment I felt like I had interrupted an old conversation between Rhyolite’s phantom residents.
Also don’t miss the Bottle House (made with reportedly 50,000 old bottles) or the ghostly Last Supper sculpture next door at the Goldwell Open Air Museum.
Death Valley: Artists Palette, Mesquite Dunes, Mosaic Canyon
The National Park Service credits Artists Palette’s rainbow hills to iron oxides and chlorite. The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes feel like another planet — fittingly, they stood in for Tatooine in Star Wars: A New Hope. In Mosaic Canyon, polished marble narrows go eerily silent, and a raven followed me in like a chatty guide as I scrambled up rocks on the moderate-to-challenging hike. No ghosts were encountered on my outdoor adventures in Death Valley, but the area was imposing and magical.
Tips for Visiting Beatty
In addition to the Sourdough, eat at Mama Sara’s for scratch-made burritos and fiery salsas, carry cash, and catch Beatty Days in late October. Come for the ghosts. Stay for the people, the pizza, and the stars.
Listen to the full Beatty episode of Talking Strange and my interview with Derek. Check out Talking Strange on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you check out your favorite shows. And don’t miss new episodes of my show Paranormal Caught On Camera on Travel Channel and HBO Max.
