Workers allegedly died building this Las Vegas pyramid, but the darkest legend involves a blonde woman who appears on the 12th floor

The Luxor rises from the Las Vegas Strip like a monument built for another world. Its black pyramid, enormous atrium and beam of light have made it one of the city's most recognizable landmarks. But beneath the spectacle is a darker history, one that begins with fatalities during construction and has since grown into a collection of ghost stories.

The most enduring legend centres on a mysterious blonde woman reportedly seen inside the pyramid, particularly around the upper floors. Some guests have described waking with a sensation of pressure around their throats, while others claim to have seen a female apparition near their beds.

There is no scientific evidence that the Luxor is haunted, and many of the stories surrounding the property remain folklore. But unlike some of Las Vegas' purely fictional ghost tales, the story begins with something that is documented: workers did die during the construction of the resort.

A pyramid built at remarkable speed

The Luxor was constructed in the early 1990s and opened in October 1993. At the time, it was an extraordinary engineering and construction project: a 30-story pyramid-shaped resort costing about $375 million, with a vast interior atrium and more than 2,500 rooms.

Thousands of workers were involved in the project. And official Nevada records establish that fatalities occurred at the construction site.

During a 1993 Nevada legislative hearing, a state safety official was asked about fatalities at the Luxor construction site. She acknowledged that there had been “unfortunate fatalities” and said the contractors had responded by increasing safety staffing at the project.

The claim that the deaths were hidden

One of the darker versions of the Luxor story says that construction deaths were concealed from the public to avoid damaging the resort's reputation.

That allegation is repeated by paranormal and ghost-tour sources, including Vegas Ghosts, which claims several workers died and that their deaths were concealed.

The number of workers said to have died also varies considerably among later accounts. Las Vegas Advisor has repeatedly cited a figure of three construction workers, while other paranormal websites give different numbers.

Then came the ghosts in the tunnels

When the Luxor opened, its interior was unlike almost any other casino. Among its original attractions was a miniature Nile River, with boats carrying visitors around the casino and toward the resort's distinctive diagonal elevators, known as inclinators. The attraction was eventually transformed into the Nile River Adventure before disappearing during later changes to the property.

That old attraction became central to the hotel's ghost mythology. According to a long-circulating account documented by Las Vegas Advisor, riders reported seeing apparitions said to belong to workers who had died during construction while the boats passed through dark sections of the attraction. The official explanation for the attraction's removal was remodeling, while the ghost explanation remained an unofficial story.

The blonde woman on the upper floors

Then there is Luxor's most unsettling legend: the blonde apparition. Paranormal accounts place her around the 12th floor and describe guests waking in their rooms feeling as though someone was pressing around their throat or attempting to choke them. Vegas Ghosts says the figure is reputed to have a particularly aggressive relationship with guests and staff.

One reason the blonde ghost story has become so persistent is that it has sometimes been connected to the real killing of 16-year-old Sara Gruber, who was strangled at the Luxor in 1997. The case was reported by Las Vegas newspapers at the time and has subsequently been incorporated into paranormal accounts of the hotel.