Las Vegas has always sold itself on ghosts. Usually, it’s the kind that haunt blackjack tables and strip clubs, not the kind that whisper through empty hotel hallways. But this October, the city’s oldest hotel is blurring that line, offering one brave guest $5,000 to spend a weekend chasing the paranormal through its history-stained walls.

The El Cortez Hotel & Casino opened in 1941 on Fremont Street, back when Vegas was still run by mobsters and men with too much cash and too few rules. It’s one of the last remaining reminders of that era, the kind of place where time and cigarette smoke seem permanently trapped in the carpet. Ghost stories have followed it for decades—phantom footsteps, cold spots, even claims that the basement holds the ashes of old employees who had no one to claim th

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