I Visited Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum — Here’s What Happened

I visited Zak Bagans’ The Haunted Museum in Las Vegas, NV, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Also, full disclosure: when it comes to ghosts, evil spirits and things that might be standing behind me in a dark room, I'm a pretty big "p-word."

Maybe that's part of the reason I created DiedInHouse.com.

So take my Haunted Museum review with that in mind.

I wasn't in Las Vegas specifically for the museum. I was staying at The Venetian while attending a conference and decided that if the guy behind DiedInHouse.com was in Vegas, it would be almost irresponsible not to visit one of the most famous collections of haunted and true-crime artifacts in the country.

So I grabbed an Uber and headed to 600 E Charleston Boulevard.

The experience started before I even walked through the door

Coming from the Venetian and the bright, polished Las Vegas Strip, the surroundings immediately felt different to me.

This wasn't the modern, glitzy Vegas where I had been staying. To someone unfamiliar with Las Vegas, it felt almost like I had entered the transition between the polished Strip and the older downtown/Fremont Street side of the city.

I have no reason to say the neighborhood was unsafe. It simply felt older and less polished to me, and because I didn't know the area, that put me slightly on edge before I ever reached the museum.

In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best mental preparation for what I was about to do.

I walked up to the historic Wengert Mansion and was greeted by a big, bouncer-looking guy at the entrance.

He couldn't have been cooler.

And naturally, one of the first things I asked him about was the Bela Lugosi mirror.

The Bela Lugosi mirror

The mirror was one of the artifacts I specifically wanted to see.

The museum has promoted the mirror as one of the allegedly cursed objects in its collection and associates it with actor Bela Lugosi, the Hollywood icon forever identified with his portrayal of Count Dracula. Stories surrounding the mirror claim that people have experienced unusual phenomena after looking into it.

But the story behind the mirror is even darker than I realized.

The mirror later became associated with Frank Saletri, a Los Angeles attorney, B-movie producer, writer and horror-film enthusiast. Saletri was found murdered inside the master bedroom of his home at 6216 Primrose Avenue in Los Angeles on July 12, 1982. He had been bound and shot in the back of the head in what contemporary accounts described as an execution-style killing. His murder remains unsolved. (Skeptical Inquirer)

According to the story presented around the artifact, the mirror was in the bedroom when Saletri was murdered. Saletri's niece, Cindy Lee, later brought the mirror to Zak Bagans and said she believed it may have absorbed negative energy connected to her uncle's death. That story became a major part of the mirror's paranormal reputation. (Skeptical Inquirer)

There is one important wrinkle, though.

The mirror's actual connection to Bela Lugosi is disputed.

Independent researcher Kenny Biddle looked into the history and found that the Los Angeles house where Saletri was murdered was not among Lugosi's documented residences. His investigation also found that an earlier house owned by Saletri at 6764 Wedgewood Place was the property Saletri himself reportedly claimed had once belonged to Lugosi. Members of Lugosi's family also could not confirm the mirror or the claims that the actor practiced scrying or occult rituals with it. (Skeptical Inquirer)

So while the museum and popular accounts refer to it as the Bela Lugosi mirror, the strongest documented part of its history may actually be its connection to Frank Saletri and the unsolved murder at 6216 Primrose Avenue.

That alone is creepy enough for me.

I asked the guy at the entrance if he had ever stared into it.

He had.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask whether anything happened afterward.

Maybe that was for the best.

Then I walked inside

The reception area immediately set the tone.

It was small, darkly lit and filled with creepy dolls, oddities and artifacts. This is where I paid, waited for my tour to begin and started looking around.

There was already enough stuff in the waiting area to keep me interested.

And here is one practical recommendation that has absolutely nothing to do with ghosts:

Use the bathroom before the tour starts.

Bathrooms are available, and I recommend taking advantage of them because this isn't a 20-minute haunted-house attraction. The museum currently describes its regular tour as approximately two hours, and depending on the experience, you can spend quite a while inside. (The Haunted Museum)

Eventually our group was called.

We left through one part of the building, walked outside and entered again through another exterior door.

I don't remember the exact order of everything we saw, and honestly, there is so much packed into this place that I don't know how anyone could.

Calling this place simply a "house" doesn't seem quite right.

Haunted mansion sounds better.

And that's actually what it is historically: the museum occupies the historic Wengert Mansion, built in 1938.

More than 30 rooms of increasingly creepy stuff

Once you're inside, the museum becomes a maze of hallways, rooms, exhibits and unexpected turns.

The official museum describes the experience as more than 30 themed rooms, along with winding hallways and secret passages. (The Haunted Museum)

Some of its best-known exhibits include:

• The Dybbuk Box

• The Devil's Rocking Chair, associated with Ed and Lorraine Warren's "Devil Made Me Do It" case

• Peggy the Doll

• Dr. Jack Kevorkian's Volkswagen van

• The Demon House exhibit, which incorporates material from the Gary, Indiana property investigated by Bagans

• A reconstructed Bobby Mackey's Music World exhibit

• True-crime and serial-killer artifacts

• The mansion's basement and its stories of alleged occult activity

The museum's official website confirms these among its featured exhibits, although claims that particular objects are cursed, haunted or responsible for supernatural events remain paranormal claims rather than established facts. (The Haunted Museum)

Each room was extremely well done.

If I had to describe the entire place with one word, it would simply be:

Creepy.

Not cheesy haunted-house creepy, either.

The real historical objects are what got me.

You can tell a lot of work went into creating the atmosphere around them.

My only complaint was that I wanted more time.

There were rooms where I could have easily spent another 10 or 15 minutes looking at everything, reading and trying to absorb what I was seeing. But I understand why that isn't always possible. This is a popular attraction, and the museum has to keep groups moving through the building.

The museum says its regular tour groups are limited to 12 guests, which also explains something funny I noticed during my visit. (The Haunted Museum)

For much of the tour, I thought there weren't that many people inside.

I basically saw only my little group.

Then, at one point, our group came together with several other groups in what felt to me like it may originally have been a large living-room area.

Suddenly I realized:

There were people all over this mansion.

The layout had simply kept us separated.

And then my imagination started getting the best of me

This is where my previously disclosed "p-word" status becomes important.

There was so much to see in every room that I kept lingering after the rest of my group started moving on. I wanted one more look at an artifact, one more chance to read something, or just another few seconds to take everything in.

At one point, I suddenly realized I was the last person in the group.

That's when my imagination took over.

I started thinking, What if someone — or something — is behind me?

Probably just my imagination. After all, I had already spent a good part of the tour surrounded by supposedly haunted objects, serial-killer artifacts and stories about paranormal activity. My brain had plenty of material to work with.

But many parts of the museum are dark enough that you can't see very far behind you, and once that thought entered my head, I couldn't exactly turn it off.

Suddenly I wasn't quite as interested in being the guy lingering at the back of the group.

It definitely creeped me out.

But honestly, it also made the experience even better.

That's part of what The Haunted Museum does so well. The atmosphere starts working on you. Even if you walk in skeptical, there are moments when the darkness, the history of the objects around you and your own imagination combine to make you wonder what's standing just outside your line of sight.

Was anything actually behind me?

Probably not.

But I wasn't hanging around by myself to find out.

The serial-killer collection was hard to forget

There are far too many objects inside The Haunted Museum for me to remember them all, but several things stayed with me.

The serial-killer and true-crime artifacts were among them.

Objects connected to Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy were particularly memorable to me.

There's something fundamentally different about seeing an object associated with a real person and a real crime versus watching a documentary about that person on television.

The glass display case creates physical distance.

It doesn't necessarily create psychological distance.

You're looking at something that actually existed in that person's world.

For someone who spends a lot of time researching the histories of properties associated with crimes and deaths, that hit differently than I expected.

Jack Kevorkian's paintings may have bothered me more than the van

Then there was Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

The Volkswagen van is obviously the attention-grabber.

Kevorkian became internationally known for assisting terminally ill people who wanted to end their lives. He said he participated in more than 130 assisted deaths, although, contrary to some internet claims, those deaths did not all occur inside this van.

The van is nevertheless a real artifact connected to that controversial history.

But what I remember just as clearly were Kevorkian's paintings.

Those fascinated me.

They were also horrifying.

Looking at them felt, at least to me, like getting an uncomfortable glimpse into the mind of the man who painted them.

I found myself studying them longer than I expected.

That's something The Haunted Museum does exceptionally well. Even if you remove every claim about ghosts or paranormal energy, you're still surrounded by artifacts with extraordinary, and sometimes deeply disturbing histories.

You don't have to believe in ghosts to be affected by that.

The basement was another story

Then there was the basement.

The museum says that dark rituals took place in the mansion's basement during the 1970s and attributes that history to accounts from former owners. It incorporates the basement into some of its paranormal experiences. (The Haunted Museum)

I can't independently tell you what happened down there decades ago.

I can tell you this:

It was creepy as hell.

Knowing the stories beforehand certainly didn't help.

And remember, I'm already the guy who had started worrying about what might be walking behind him.

Then I finally saw the mirror

Eventually I encountered the Bela Lugosi mirror I had asked about when I arrived.

I had been curious about it before the tour.

After spending hours walking through dark rooms filled with stories about supposedly haunted objects, I probably wasn't in the ideal psychological condition to stand around contemplating a "cursed" mirror.

And now I also knew why the mirror's story had become so disturbing.

Whether or not Bela Lugosi ever actually owned or used it, the mirror's reported connection to Frank Saletri's unsolved 1982 murder gave it a real-world history that was unsettling enough without any paranormal explanation.

I committed myself and gave it a good 10-15 second stare.

Did anything paranormal happen to me at the mirror?

No.

At least nothing I can prove.

But something strange did happen later, or, more accurately, I experienced something that felt strange to me.

And there is an important difference between those statements.

That night at the Venetian

That evening I went back to my room at the Venetian.

It was my last night in Las Vegas.

For whatever reason, the room felt different to me that night.

Heavy is probably the best word I can use.

I had this persistent feeling that I wasn't entirely alone.

Nothing appeared.

Nothing attacked me.

There wasn't a ghost standing at the foot of my bed.

I simply felt uncomfortable and had the strange sensation that something was there with me.

Could that have been because I had just spent hours walking through a dark museum listening to stories about ghosts, serial killers, cursed objects and demonic activity?

Absolutely.

In fact, that is probably an extremely reasonable explanation.

But I hadn't experienced that feeling during the rest of my stay.

So yes, lying alone in my hotel room that night, I started wondering whether staring at creepy artifacts inside a supposedly haunted mansion had been one of my better ideas.

And because apparently researching this stuff for a living wasn't enough, I ended up asking ChatGPT about ways people use to mentally or spiritually "cleanse" themselves after visiting places they believe contain negative energy.

I'm not saying I brought something back to the Venetian.

I'm saying I wasn't interested in finding out.

Fortunately, it was my last night in Vegas.

Apparently I wasn't the only person worried about bringing something home

Near the end of my visit, there was what I remember as a crystal-like throne or chair associated with cleansing visitors of negative energy they may feel they picked up during the tour.

Whether a person believes that works is obviously a matter of personal belief.

At that point, I wasn't turning down anything. Yep, I sat in the chair for what felt like a minute, the entire time thinking, Am I being filmed? Because I feel ridiculous. But here I was, doing anything I could to make sure I wasn't possessed.

After spending hours inside the place, if somebody had offered to spray me with holy water in the parking lot, I probably would have said, "Go ahead and get my back too."

Would I visit Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum again?

Absolutely.

I had a blast.

I talked about the museum with my Uber driver practically the entire ride back to the Venetian.

And after thinking about everything I saw, my biggest takeaway is that there is simply too much inside this museum to absorb in one visit.

I would go again.

I would especially like to visit during the Halloween season.

The museum was well designed, entertaining, creepy and genuinely interesting.

And here's the important part:

You don't have to believe in ghosts to enjoy it.

If you believe in spirits, paranormal activity, cursed objects or negative energy, you'll obviously have an additional reason to be interested.

If you don't believe in any of that, you're still walking through a historic 1938 Las Vegas mansion containing an enormous collection of unusual artifacts, true-crime memorabilia and objects connected to some fascinating and disturbing chapters of American history.

Either way, you'll probably remember it.

So if you're visiting Las Vegas and trying to decide what to do with your money, here's my recommendation:

You can feed another stack of money into a one-armed bandit, or you can spend it on an experience you may never forget.

I'll take the haunted mansion.

Just don't put me in the back of the group.