Caesar’s Palace is a benchmark on the Las Vegas Strip, more than 50 years old and known throughout the world by name alone. With so many years of fanciful, affluent and often surreptitious history, it’s not a far stretch to think that Caesar’s Palace is haunted. As always, there are countless skeptics, but once you hear the story, you can judge for yourself.
Ground broke on Caesar’s Palace, the brain child of motel proprietor Jay Sarno, in 1962. Motels don’t bring in nearly enough money to build such a grand structure as a 14-story hotel casino on Las Vegas Boulevard, thus he accepting $35 million in funding from the Teamsters. Sarno was very proud of his creation, choosing the Caesar’s Palace name because it was synonymous with nobility; giving it an aristocratic air. It also gave him a Roman imperial theme for the hotel that has stuck for more than 50 years running.
Unfortunately, Sarno and his fellow shareholders were overwhelmingly pressured to sell the property when the casino’s financial manager was accused of being tied in with organized crime. Caesar’s Palace was sold in 1969 for $60 million. The hotel casino changed hands several more time since then, once in 1981 when the owners attempted to get a gambling license in Atlantic City and were rejected as, once more, the hotel’s officials were accused of being associated with mafia connections. Rather than face further investigations and potential penalties, the hotel was sold again.
A marked note in Hollywood history, Edgar Bergen past away in his sleep at Caesar’s Palace on September 30, 1978. The 75 year old celebrity was most famous for his ventriloquist act (The Charlie McCarthy Show), as well as his television acting and radio performances. After an illustrious 56-year career in radio/television, Bergen announced his retirement and planned a two-week farewell show at Caesar’s Palace. Just three days into it, he died of kidney disease while sleeping in his hotel room. While it is possible that the ghost of Edgar Bergen haunts Caesar’s Palace, it is not likely and there aren’t many who believe such.
The haunting of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas is generally associated with the water faucets in the restroom at the bottom of the escalator in the Forum Casino. One cocktail waitress in particular is attributed to spreading this tale, and her conviction is hard to dismiss. She claims that many times when she was alone in the bathroom, the sensory-activated faucets would turn themselves on for no reason. As we know, sensory-activated faucets require a physical presence to be held within a certain range of the sensor in order to initiate water flow.
She also claims that putting her hands under the water would result in the faucet instantly shutting off; the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen. One might question whether the sensors are just working improperly, perhaps due to faulty installation. On the contrary, according to the graveyard shift waitress, this reverse behavior only happens when she is in the bathroom alone. No one else has reported such odd comportment in this or any other restroom at Caesar’s Palace.
There is one other fascinating story that hovers about the casino. It speaks of what is, or was, believed to be one very rewarding craps table at Caesar’s Palace, perhaps haunted by a late ancestor of Lady Luck herself. This table did something no other gambling table in the history of casinos worldwide has ever done. It paid out a profit to players (meaning it lost money for the casino) for an unfathomable 13 months straight.
Casinos are not in the business of losing money, therefore all payouts are set to give the operator a marginal house edge. The odds, over time, will ensure the casino makes money. It is certainly credible that a craps table could be unprofitable for one, two, maybe even three months in a row, but 13 months is unheard of, not to mention statistically implausible. The lucky (or unlucky) streak this table presented was bizarre enough that even casino management was forced to grant warrant to the tales of its preternatural existence, so much so that they had the table removed from the casino, taken out back behind the property and burned to ashes.