Vegas Myths We COULDN’T Bust in 2025 (Pt 1): Casinos Use Scents to Make You Gamble, Lena’s Burned Bedsheets
Posted on: December 15, 2025, 07:21h.
Last updated on: December 15, 2025, 09:29h.
No matter how much we try, we can’t always succeed. Though we are certain that many repeated Las Vegas stories are baloney, it’s not always so easy to prove it. In fact, we ate serious crow just last month, after declaring mobster Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo escape tunnel to be a Vegas myth because no photographic evidence existed — only to be presented with that very evidence hours after our column ran!
Maybe, with your help, we can bust one or more of these elusive Vegas myths this year.
Casinos Use Scents to Make You Gamble More
In October 1991, neurologist Dr. Alan Hirsch piped two pleasant aromas into separate slot machine zones at the Las Vegas Hilton. One scent surrounded 18 machines, another 28. A third zone with 22 machines was left unscented as a control.
The results? Gamblers dropped 45.11% more money into the machines surrounded by the first scent compared to the weekends before and after. The second scent and the control zone? Flat as a comped soda.
Hirsch chalked it up to olfactory-triggered nostalgia, claiming the scent subtly shifted mood and behavior. (To this day, he refuses to describe what the successful scent smelled like after a previous study led a fragrance company to falsely claim credit and threaten legal action.)
When Hirsch’s study was peer-reviewed and published in the journal Psychology & Marketing in October 1995, he predicted that scent-based behavior modification would become as common in casinos as fake jackpot sounds.
Did it? No one can say — or will say. When discussing the fragrances they pipe through their ventilation systems, casinos talk about guest experience and brand ambiance, never behavior modification.
When we asked Hirsch directly, he said: “I cannot say that it is absolutely being done at this moment.” Yet he admitted to consulting “with multiple casinos in Las Vegas” — none of which he was willing to name.
Casinos may try to influence gambling behavior, but whether they succeed is another story. In gaming, even subtle behavioral claims trigger regulatory scrutiny — just as casinos are heavily scrutinized for payout percentages, machine placement and advertising language.
If scents were being successfully used to trigger addiction, we’d expect whistleblowers, lawsuits and red flags raised by responsible gaming advocates, consumer protection agencies and liability lawyers.
But none of this has happened. In fact, in the 30 years since Hirsch’s experiment, it was never even replicated, and the whole subject seems to have been oddly forgotten.
While we still feel the claim of olfactory manipulation lacks teeth, all we have is speculation, not the goods we require to bust a myth.
Bugsy Siegel Ordered Lena Horne’s Linens Burned
When Lena Horne headlined the Flamingo from January 9-21, 1947, she became the first Black person known to be allowed to stay on the Las Vegas Strip.
The arrangement — insisted upon by Horne as a prerequisite for her performances there — was a secret negotiated by her manager that came with restrictions.
“Horne’s visit to Las Vegas in early 1947 was spent almost in isolation,” reads “Black Entertainers in Las Vegas in the Era of Segregation 1940-1960,” a 1970 manuscript by Roosevelt Fitzgerald logged in the UNLV archives.
“Not allowed in the public areas of the hotel/casino, not wishing to frequent the dives on the westside, finding the movie theaters segregated and having to wonder which of of the other places would not discriminate against her, she spent the time she was not performing in the bungalow provided by the hotel.”
But no credible evidence exists to support the frequently repeated story that owner Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel ordered maids to burn the singer’s bedsheets every morning. Or even once.
This story — first told in “Las Vegas: Mississippi of the West or Promised Land?” a 1991 KNPR documentary from historian William Drummond — is not corroborated by FBI files, court records, Horne’s 1965 autobiography or any other primary source.
Unfortunately, Siegel left no personal letters, diaries or recorded interviews. But the following can be said…
In the thousands of pages of FBI files, wiretaps, and informant reports on Siegel, no racial slurs or explicit racist statements are attributed to him. (Many of his contemporaries, such as Mickey Cohen, used the n-word freely in wiretapped conversations.)
At the same time, no credible evidence exists suggesting that this story isn’t true, either. So, though we’re pretty certain this is a myth, until new evidence emerges either way, we are forced to reserve judgement.
Click back next Monday for the conclusion of this two-part series.
Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. Visit VegasMythsBusted.com to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.
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