The story
Red Onion Saloon has a ready-made haunted-story setting: a frontier saloon, former brothel rooms, narrow stairs, and a town built around the drama of the Klondike Gold Rush. The venue’s ghost lore usually focuses on the upstairs spaces, where visitors and tour guides have reported footsteps, perfume scents, cold patches, and the sense of female figures connected to the building’s earlier life. Lydia is the name most often attached to these accounts, though this is tour tradition and reported folklore rather than confirmed history. The history matters just as much: Red Onion is part of Skagway’s preserved Gold Rush streetscape and uses tours and museum interpretation to tell the stories of the women who worked there. As an active venue, it is best experienced through official tours, saloon access, or scheduled ghost experiences.