Question of the Day - 15 October 2019

The Hotel Apache opened in 1932. It was built by P.O. Silvagni, an Italian immigrant who, though he spoke little English, was a builder in Utah, held one of the concrete contracts for Hoover Dam, and bought the vacant lot at 128 Fremont Street for $30,000, envisioning the dam workers needing a place to blow off steam on Saturday nights. It was the first Las Vegas hotel to have air-conditioning in the lobby, protected by an air curtain at the entrance. It was also the first with an electric elevator and a carpeted casino.

The building was eventually leased by Benny Binion, who ran the rooms above the Horseshoe Casino for friends and players. Binion’s was purchased by TLC Casino Enterprises, which also owns the Four Queens, in 2004 and the rooms were closed in 2008 due to the economic downturn. The building itself, however, is still owned by the Silvagni family, which has collected rent for decades.

Eighty of the original rooms reopened on July 29.

Code restrictions prevented moving walls to increase the size of the rooms, so they were refurbished and decorated to look like they did in the ’30s: hardwood floors, stained-glass windows, historic photos, antique furnishings, including old phones and radios, and queen beds only, though with the mod cons, such as flat-screen TVs and upgraded bathrooms.   

Binion's is touting it as downtown's "Historic Haunted Hotel," where unexplained and unexplainable phenomena — spirits apparently doing odd stuff like slamming doors, shuffling papers, turning on TVs, showing up in photos, making muffled thumps, even having contact with staff members, especially in the old count room on the second floor and room 400 — take place on a reportedly regular basis; the hotel rooms were featured on the Travel Channel show “Ghost Adventures” in March 2019.

And last week, Binions debuted a "show" called Seance, described in the press release as a "journey into a hidden area of the Hotel Apache, one of the oldest and most haunted hotels in Las Vegas." The showroom is a recreation of a 1932 séance. Apparently, show-goers sit around a table and hear and see where the room's hauntings originated, and encounter "chilling paranormal artifacts." Tickets are $110 (total price), you must be 21 or older to attend, and it goes on Fridays at 6 and 9 p.m. and Saturdays at 6 p.m. 

Rooms at the boutique hotel-within-a-hotel are going for $99 weekdays and $199 weekends.