Virginia City Named America’s Most Haunted Town in 2026 — What the History Really Shows

Virginia City, Nevada, has just been named America’s spookiest town for 2026. For anyone who has spent a night investigating its nineteenth-century hotels, abandoned mining sites, and historic buildings, the result may not come as a surprise.

I’ve investigated the Comstock for years, including the Silver Queen Hotel, the Washoe Club, Gold Hill’s Miner’s Cabin, and Mackay Mansion. I’ve listened to recordings from rooms where witnesses report apparitions, stood inside places built during the silver rush, and compared experiences shared by people who encountered them decades apart.

But the most compelling part of Virginia City’s story isn’t the new ranking. It’s what the original newspapers reveal about the town long before ghost tours, paranormal television, or modern electronic voice recorders existed.

Why Virginia City Ranked No. 1 in 2026

In its 2026 Spookiest Cities Report, smart-home company Vivint ranked Virginia City first, ahead of Tombstone, Arizona; Eureka Springs, Arkansas; and Galena, Illinois. The report compared 74 destinations, according to October 13 news coverage.

Vivint built its index from seven measures: reported haunted places, reported ghost sightings, funeral-service listings, haunted-house attractions, psychic and astrology businesses, spiritual shops, and online searches for spooky subjects. The company normalized each measure to a 0-to-100 scale and averaged the seven scores equally. Most business and search measures were adjusted per 10,000 residents.

Virginia City led for haunted-house attractions, spiritual shops, and spooky search volume relative to population. Vivint calculated approximately 10,870 spooky-related searches per 10,000 residents for the town, the highest rate in the study. National searches for haunted hotels also rose 315% between 2023 and 2025.

This is an index of reported activity and public interest, not a scientific count of ghosts. Its per-capita method naturally gives small tourist destinations enormous visibility, and some business results may fall beyond municipal boundaries. Yet Virginia City’s first-place finish reflects something very real: extraordinary public fascination with an unusually dense concentration of historic places and firsthand ghost stories.

Before the Ghost Tours: The Comstock’s History of Tragedy and Survival

Virginia City’s history did not begin with silver. Northern Paiute people lived across the region long before the mining boom; later archaeological research by Eugene Hattori documented a Northern Paiute community living in and around Virginia City during the Comstock era.

The silver rush of 1859 transformed the mountainside into a busy industrial city. Below its streets, miners excavated an enormous network of shafts and tunnels. Their work generated wealth and supported families, but mining brought constant risk.

On April 7, 1869, fire spread through the connected Yellow Jacket, Crown Point, and Kentuck mines near Gold Hill. At least 35 miners died, according to a historical marker for the Yellow Jacket fire. The contemporary Gold Hill Daily News described the calamity and the desperate effort to reach men trapped below ground. Its April 1869 reporting can be read in a preserved transcription of the contemporary coverage.

Six years later, on October 26, 1875, a catastrophic fire swept through Virginia City, destroying 33 blocks and much of the commercial district. The scale of the disaster is documented by Nevada State Historic Marker No. 228.

These disasters are not explanations for paranormal experiences. They are essential history: behind every mine accident and burned street were residents, workers, and families whose lives were changed. The places associated with them survive in the town’s architecture, memorials, and stories.

Newspaper Evidence: Virginia City Was Talking to the Dead in the 1860s

Here is where our historical research became especially interesting. I went back to original issues of the Daily Territorial Enterprise, the newspaper that chronicled everyday life on the Comstock. It was reporting organized attempts to communicate with spirits in the 1860s, less than a decade after the silver discovery.

1867: Ada Hoyt Foye and a Public Séance

An October 1867 report describes Spiritualist medium Ada Hoyt Foye appearing before a full audience in Virginia City’s District Court-room. On November 17, 1867, the Territorial Enterprise advertised another public séance with Foye, promoted as a “Rapping and Writing Medium.” Spirit communication was being advertised openly in the local newspaper, not whispered about in secret.

1878: Eilley Bowers and “A Soldier’s Ghost”

On May 16, 1878, the same newspaper carried a story titled “A Soldier’s Ghost.” It referred to Mrs. Bowers of Washoe Valley as a seeress and described reported spirit communication involving a deceased soldier. Eilley Bowers was already a recognizable figure in the region’s Spiritualist culture. The report documents that such stories circulated during the original Comstock era.

Source: Daily Territorial Enterprise, May 16, 1878, p. 3.

1887: Mediums Took the Stage at Piper’s Opera House

The September 11, 1887, front page of the Territorial Enterprise announced a “Grand Conclave of Mediums” at Piper’s Opera House. The advertisement promised “Spirit Power in the Light” and named Alexander Hume and Miss Kate Eddy. The newspaper followed with coverage on September 13, showing that the town’s fascination with spirit manifestations had become public entertainment and a subject of lively debate.

1891: Spiritualist Gatherings Continued

The March 19, 1891, paper included a piece headed “Local Spiritualism,” with the subheading “Private Seances Under the Sighing Pines.” Its presence in the newspaper shows that local interest in messages from the dead endured well beyond the first Comstock boom.

Taken together, these newspaper pages establish a history of public séances and Spiritualist reporting spanning at least 1867 to 1891. Whatever a reader believes about hauntings, Virginia City’s fascination with the spirit world is not a modern marketing invention.

The Silver Queen Hotel: Room 11 and the Sounds We Recorded

The Silver Queen Hotel, built in 1876, is one of Virginia City’s best-known haunted properties. Its most famous story concerns Rosie, a woman said in local tradition to have died in Room 11. Visitors and staff have reported footsteps, voices, and apparitions around the room and staircase. The details of Rosie’s story are part of the hotel’s haunting tradition rather than a fully established nineteenth-century case history.

During our 2024 Silver Queen investigation, my team recorded extended sessions inside the hotel. Several moments are worth revisiting in the original footage:

• 01:36:40–01:36:44 — While reviewing sound, both I and Lillian Alquist remarked that it sounded like a woman’s voice.
• 01:39:39–01:40:29 — After asking questions, I described what I thought I heard on playback, first “heaven” and then the phrase “Damn that hurt.” Lillian repeated the latter words during our review. Those are our interpretations of the recorded sounds, not a confirmed transcription of an unseen speaker.
• 01:47:29; 01:48:35; and 01:48:42 — The transcript marks three scream-like sounds during the recorded sequence. Immediately afterward, Lillian described “three screams of horror” at 01:48:52–01:49:02.

An EVP—electronic voice phenomenon—is the term investigators use for an apparent voice found in an audio recording. What matters about these sessions is that viewers can revisit the sound, the questions, and our reactions rather than rely on a claim separated from its original context.

Watch LiveSciFi’s Silver Queen investigation.

Gold Hill: Investigating a Cabin Beside the Yellow Jacket Mine

Gold Hill is part of the same Comstock landscape, immediately south of Virginia City. At the Miner’s Cabin near the Yellow Jacket headframe, our 2025 investigation brought the region’s mining history into direct contact with modern eyewitness testimony.

The cabin is described by Travel Nevada as an old miners’ checkpoint near the headframe. Just outside is the legacy of the 1869 mine fire.

Our original footage preserves these investigation moments:

• 01:02:34–01:03:23 — Lillian Alquist describes a crawling sensation and what she perceives as dark, spider-like movement along the walls and ceiling. This is her firsthand impression during the walkthrough.
• 01:03:40–01:03:47 — I explain that we are beginning with a ghost-box walkthrough before conducting EVP sessions.
• 01:06:02–01:06:19 — During the device session, I repeat “Spider” while the team discusses a sound they are attempting to interpret. The original audio should accompany any excerpt rather than representing the word as independently established.
• 01:22:39 — A participant reports hearing screaming.
• 01:27:58–01:28:05 — We discuss an apparent sound occurring during a conversation about a figure the witnesses had described as a watcher.

These timecodes matter because they show what people said, when they said it, and how the group responded. They also allow readers to compare this investigation with the Silver Queen material rather than accepting a condensed retelling.

Watch LiveSciFi’s Gold Hill Miner’s Cabin investigation.

A separate 2025 investigation at Crown Point recorded a striking response from a participant after a difficult encounter. At 01:22:22–01:24:25, the camera preserves a period of visible distress and prayer; at 01:22:38–01:22:44, the person says “I command you to release me” and “Get out of my head, get out of my mind, get off of my body.” That footage records a real, intense human experience. What produced it remains an open question, and the sequence should be viewed with its preceding conversation intact.

The Washoe Club: An Extraordinary Conversation Captured in 2014

The Washoe Club is another Virginia City landmark associated with longstanding haunting stories. In December 2014, I filmed an investigation involving paranormal researchers Mark and Debby Constantino. The original footage contains a conversation that has stayed with me.

At 01:43:05–01:43:25, Debby asks whether continuing to investigate could put them in danger and whether anything they contact could follow them to their home or workplace. Her questions are unusually direct: “Do you guys follow us everywhere” and “Do you follow us to work.”

Then at 01:43:58–01:44:08, she says, “It’s like I almost feel like we’re in too deep,” followed in the exchange by “In over our heads.”

At 01:45:14–01:45:26, investigators review a sound they interpret as “You can’t back out.” The recording documents their interpretation at the time; the words should be heard against the original audio rather than treated as an independently verified statement from a spirit.

I return to that footage because it preserves the language, atmosphere, and immediate reactions of a real investigation. It remains part of our Comstock archive and one of the experiences that led me to look more closely at the town’s history. The later deaths associated with the Constantino case are a separate human tragedy and are not explained by this recording.

Archive reference: LiveSciFi’s December 2014 Washoe Club/Constantino recording. The timestamps above are source-footage times, not jump points within a shortened public episode.

Mackay Mansion: From the Silver Kings to Modern Eyewitnesses

At Mackay Mansion, the historic Gould & Curry mining offices, grand rooms, staircase, and vault survive from the early Comstock period. The mansion’s ghost stories include a shadowy male figure, a Victorian woman, and accounts involving children in the upper rooms.

During our 2026 recorded visit, longtime mansion guide Dawn gave a firsthand account of hearing footsteps following her up the staircase after hours. She reached a carpeted landing, stopped, and said the footsteps continued behind her. In the interview she recalled saying: “Stop, I just wanna go home.” The account appears at approximately 01:08:43–01:09:24 in the original footage.

It is the specificity of stories like Dawn’s—and the people willing to describe them on camera—that keeps me returning to Virginia City.

LiveSciFi will investigate Mackay Mansion live on Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 9 PM Pacific. Watch the upcoming investigation here.

Watch the Mackay Mansion Live Ghost Hunt →

So Is Virginia City America’s Most Haunted Town?

Vivint has given Virginia City the top spot in a national ranking. Its methodology measures reported hauntings, paranormal-related places, and public interest. The ranking alone can’t establish what any one person encountered in an upstairs room or heard on a recorder.

The deeper story is why this small town continues to attract so many accounts. Virginia City has a documented history of mining disasters and fire, an extraordinary archive of nineteenth-century Spiritualist activity, historic buildings that people still enter today, and modern investigation footage preserving what witnesses say they experienced.

I’ve spent years inside these places, and I keep coming back because there is still more to examine: more original newspapers to locate, more witnesses to interview, and more recordings to compare with their source footage. Virginia City has earned its reputation as a place where history and ghost stories meet. The new 2026 ranking is a headline. The investigation is the story that continues.

Sources and Original Recordings

2026 ranking: Vivint, Spookiest Cities Report 2026; New York Post, October 13, 2026.

Historical sources: Nevada State Historic Preservation Office, Great Fire of 1875; Yellow Jacket fire marker; Gold Hill Daily News, April 1869, contemporary account; Daily Territorial Enterprise, November 17, 1867, May 16, 1878, September 11, 1887, September 13, 1887, and March 19, 1891.

Investigation sources: LiveSciFi Silver Queen 2024 source transcript; Gold Hill Miner’s Cabin 2025 source transcript; December 2014 Washoe Club source subtitle file; Mackay Mansion 2026 source subtitle file. Archive timecodes refer to the full source transcripts, which may not match timestamps in edited YouTube episodes. Recorded EVP interpretations and witness experiences are attributed to participants, not asserted as independently verified paranormal causes.