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Category Archives: Featured Ghost Story

Bizarre Discovery at a Eureka Springs (AR) Mountaintop Spa Resort Reads Like a Chilling Novel

April 15, 2019

 

CHAPTER ONE

On February 5, 2019, while working to extend a parking pad at the north end of the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa’s 15 acres of mountaintop property, a chance discovery was made by the hotel’s landscape gardener, Susan Benson.  There in that first scoop of dirt were a couple strange, medical-looking bottles.  Knowing part of the hotel’s history that it was once a “cancer curing hospital” in the late 1930s, Benson called the hotel’s ghost tour manager, Keith Scales.  Upon his arrival, Scales realized the bottles he was looking at were identical to those that appeared on an advertising poster of the late Norman Baker, the charlatan who operated the hospital.

crescent hotel dig findings

Careful hand-digging uncovered a few more -even more dynamic- bottles, one of which contained “something” floating in a nearly clear liquid.  Again, from what was on the faux-doctor’s poster, it was perceived to be what looked like a cancerous tumor that Baker used as a “look what i can do” advertisement for his magical, medicinal albeit false claim of curing cancer.  The hotel’s general manager was called.

That call led to a “stop order” on any future digging until archeologists from the nearby University of Arkansas-Fayetteville could offer their advice.  That advice included calling the local police (who called the state crime lab) and the local fire department (who called in a hazmat crew).  Each gave their okay on moving forward on “the dig”.  Fast forward two months….

 

CHAPTER TWO

On April 9, 2019, team members of the Arkansas Archeology Survey (AAS), part of the University of Arkansas system, arrived from the nearby Fayetteville campus, to begin their meticulous study.  They began to carefully peel back layers of dirt and rock.  Cutting root clusters as needed, the “find” was slowly uncovered.

With each descending layer of soil, the find became more and more miraculous.  AAS team members and hotel management got very excited for the the lost dump site for a notorious, infamous charlatan, Norman Baker, who turned the resort hotel into a cancer hospital in the late 1930s, had surprisingly been found.

Baker treated hundreds of people, patients who were grasping at straws trying to be cured of their deadly disease, but no cure ever occurred.  He did however extract literally millions of dollars from his endeavor; money scammed from the families and trusting patients of the Cancer Curable Baker Hospital with many of the patients dyeing at hands of Baker.

All the folklore, all the hair-raising stories, all the rumors were now proving to be true with each and every bottle, medical specimen jar, gruesome surgical tool, etc. as they arose from their 80-year-old grave.  Physical remnants of Baker’s Cancer Curable Hospital could now be seen, studied and displayed.  The discovery echoed throughout the United States thanks to such news outlets as Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, CNN, and Newsweek, to name just a few.

“What surprised us the most,” said Jack V. Moyer, general manager and vice president of operations of the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, “were several calls from eyewitnesses who remember the ‘Baker years’ and some of whom actually saw these same bottles in the area of the building that Baker used as his morgue and autopsy room.  Both of those rooms, which are now a key component of our nightly ghost tours, were stripped bare of artifacts before the current owners came on board in 1997.

“We had been told those artifacts had been taken to the dump.  We thought that meant the county’s solid waste dump but low and behold they had been dumped on hotel property.”

Moyer explained that these bottles would become part of a special display in the morgue, adding to the macabre ambience of the ghost tour, and that the bottle burial site itself will be encased and available for viewing on special tours.  The planned date for this shocking debut is set for June 1.

“What we wait for now is how this find and the resurrection of these bottles has spiked our paranormal activity,” Moyer concluded.  “Already paranormal experts and ghost hunters are waiting to return to ‘America’s Most Haunted Hotel’ to see at what higher level there must be following this bizarre bottle exhumation.”

CHAPTER THREE awaits.

 

Read more  on the 400 glass bottles that have been unearthed in the backyard of the Crescent Hotel.

April 15, 2019

Halloween Seance

September 1, 2018
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At America’s Most Haunted Hotel…

On Halloween, the stars of Eureka Springs’ Intrigue Theater, Sean-Paul and Juliana Fay, will be returning to the Crescent Hotel’s Crystal Ballroom for a seance show. This year they will astound their  patrons as they witness a seance in an effort to reach some who have “crossed over.” Limited seating!

Click Here for Details

 

September 1, 2018

ESP Weekend 2019

September 1, 2018
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Eureka Springs Paranormal Weekend

January 4, 5, 6 & 11, 12, 13

Book Tickets & Package below.

Eureka Springs Paranormal (ESP) weekend at the 1886 Crescent Hotel has evolved over seven years.  What began as an opportunity for paranormal investigation groups to explore the active areas at night for one weekend in January, has grown to a two-weekend, two-hotel investigation  – and not only of ghosts.

The phrase Extra Sensory Perception refers to the mysterious powers that some people (and maybe all people) possess, that seem to defy the laws of space, time and even logic.

You will have many opportunities to explore your own psychic abilities at ESP19, our interactive weekends – opportunities to share your experiences, feelings, questions, realizations with other companions on the quest.  And at night we will be attempting to communicate with those who linger in this hotel long after their bodies are dead and buried.

This Year’s Headline Investigators

2019 Agenda

Buy Your Conference Pass

 

  

September 1, 2018

“America’s Most Haunted Hotel” Gains International Attention

August 3, 2018
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“America’s Most Haunted Hotel”, the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, is suddenly moving to “world’s most haunted hotel” status thanks to the soon-to-air episode of the Global Photo Association Tokyo, Inc. (GPAUS) program for Fuji Television Network in Japan.  The program, “What Is This Mystery” was shot on location at the hotel in May of this year and captured some unexplainable moments.

The founder of Paranormal Inc., Rich Newman of Memphis TN, who has been investigating the paranormal for more than ten years, appears on the program.  He shared these experiences with hotel management, “I don’t know if the television crew spoke to you after our night monitoring Theodora’s room (Room 419), but we had quite an exciting night!  While monitoring our subject sleeping in that room, several lamps turned themselves on and off.  First it was a floor lamp in the couch/TV area.  Then it was the nightstand lamp right beside the bed.  While we were marveling over the bedside lamp switching on and off, the closet door in the room opened all by itself!  What’s better, this all happened on camera!”

The Fuji Tv show makes the sixteenth paranormal program produced featuring the Crescent Hotel in the last dozen years.  The most recent is an episode of the Travel Channel’s “Most Terrifying Places in America” which recently debuted.

Some of the most haunting Crescent stories to emerge in 2018 are those recounted the hotel’s ghost tour guides.  Here are a few:

> At the conclusion of one of our nightly tours, two ladies -sisters- stopped me to ask a question.  The blonde-haired lady asked me why I didn’t introduce the gentleman who was sitting in the rocking chair during my opening remarks in the hotel’s history room where we start each of our tours.  I looked at her and told her there was no one sitting in the rocking chair.  Her sister laughed and said, “That’s what I told her!”  The blonde sister went on to say that he was wearing a three-piece brown suit and a rounded hat, and that he smiled, laughed and rocked all during my opening comments.

> One night in the morgue (which is located in the hotel’s basement, used as such by Norman Baker during the time he operated a ‘cancer curing’ hospital in the Crescent during the late 1930s), I had just brought my tour in and they were beginning to sit in the front area.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man high-stepping into the autopsy room.  He wore a dark suit and top hat.  I excused myself and went into the room, looked around and even opened the meat locker (where Baker stored cadavers and body parts), but there was no one there.  However, I saw him as plain as day.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I had goose bumps.

> While supervising one of my tours, I was standing against the wall across from the SkyBar located on the hotel’s fourth floor when, to my left, I saw an orange-striped tabby cat at the end of the hall.  I walked down to that area, looked left and right but there was no cat.  I just knew it was Morris, the hotel’s orange-striped tabby cat for 21 years from 1973 to 1994 and is buried -complete with headstone- in the hotel’s East Lawn garden, was paying us another visit!  (Note: a cat-like entity is often “felt” in the hotel’s lobby rubbing up against a guest’s leg or jumping into a guest’s lap right below the Morris’ memorial poem and photo.)

> One night this summer, I had a full ghost tour of 24 people seated in the entranceway of the morgue.   As I stood up to make my presentation, I heard distinct footsteps in the autopsy room which was just down the short hallway from us.  It sounded like someone was pacing back and forth.  I had an eerie feeling that it might be a ghost and that I was the only one who was hearing the footsteps.  A few seconds later as I was presenting the story of Norman Baker, I noticed that no one on the tour was listening to me; they seemed distracted.  So, I paused and asked the group, “Do you hear footsteps?”  They all nodded in unison.

While the Crescent’s ghost tour guides capture many stories, guests are also encouraged to submit experiential stories and photos on the “America’s Most Haunted Hotel” Facebook page.  Many of these photos include orbs that paranormal theorists contend contain the energy of one or more ghosts or entities.  Here is one such account:

>I captured a lot of different orbs on my phone’s camera but I had one orb, seen by my naked eye, basically like kind of attack me.  It came from across the room down in the morgue and zig-zagged at me then flew behind me.  It made me feel very uncomfortable, plus I got super cold.  A few seconds later, it appeared again, coming from behind me, traveling back across the room straight at me.  However, this second time, it stopped and was just like hovering in front of me as if it were checking me out, eventually disappearing.  What they say about the morgue being (paranormally) active is true indeed.

“The best thing about our mountaintop spa resort is that it is a Historic Hotel of America best known for weddings, romance travel, and a family gathering place,” explained Bill Ott, the hotel’s director of communications. “And, oh by the way, the 1886 Crescent Hotel is also said to have ghosts or what we like to call, ‘guests who check out but never leave’.  Our haunted persona is just another avenue for creating lifetime memories.”

 

 

August 3, 2018

Adding Thrills – Guest ONLY

June 18, 2018
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The Crescent Hotel has made staying at the hotel just that much more THRILLING.  Included in the Resort Pass and FOR GUESTS ONLY is a late night program of Spine Chilling Tales around the fire and Late Night Horror Movies in the Crystal Dining Room.

See Details

https://crescent-hotel.com/arkansas_resort_activities.shtml

June 18, 2018

My camera kept going off

August 2, 2017
1 Reply

Debbie Baxter was in Room 419 on a ghost tour in July. Her camera kept going off and taking pictures sporadically until the battery drained out. Here is one of the photos taken by her camera of interesting reflections or light anomalies on the face of the painting of Theodora.

August 2, 2017

I leaned my shoulder into the wall, I heard “Mike”

May 27, 2017
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My fiancée and I were there for the weekend  and actually stayed in 419.  We had no experiences in the room, however, on the 9:30pm ghost tour, it was a different story.  

We were on the tour and had just made it down to the 2nd floor and were walking up to Michael’s room as the tour guide had just started telling his story.  I was one of the last to meet to party so I leaned up against the wall close to the door and as soon as I leaned my shoulder into the wall, I heard “Mike” said out loud.  It was said one time and in a male voice.   I asked my fiancée if she had heard anything or said anything as she was close to me.   She had neither heard or said anything.   No one else in the group knew who I was or my name, so they would have no reason to call out to me.    I got goose bumps and started sweating and just felt “weird” right after it happened.   We were talking about it coming home and the same feelings hit all over again.

 

Thank you for the great visit, Mike A. 

May 27, 2017

October Ghost Special

October 1, 2016
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Only during the month of October can you stay at 2 Haunted Hotels…

Paranormal Pair Package for a Limited Time!

1 Night Stay at the Crescent and 2 tickets to the Ghost Tour 1 Night Stay at the Basin Park Hotel and 2 tickets to the Spirits of the Basin Tour

$259 plus tax.  Valid Sunday-Friday. (No Saturday)

Call To Book: 877-342-9766

October 1, 2016

October Ghost Tours

September 9, 2016
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Due to the inexhaustible demand for ghost tours in October, Crescent Hotel management is suspending late night theatre performances for the month, and replacing them with special, slightly abbreviated Late, Late ghost tours: “all the stories, none of the stairs.”
 
The tours will begin in the 4th floor Faculty Lounge, where audiences will hear the classic stories handed down over generations at the “most haunted hotel in America.”  The tour will then proceed to locations where the storytelling will not interrupt guests who are trying to sleep, including the lobby, the outdoor firepit and of course, the Morgue.
 
The October Special Late, Late Ghost Tours will be offered at 10:00, 10:30 and 11:00 pm on Friday and Saturday nights,  starting September 30th.   The one-hour, two actress supernatural comedy-murder-mystery-thriller, Not Really a Door and Flickering Tales, the program of authentic Ozark tales told around the outdoor fireplace, will be resumed in November.  Flickering Tales will also be offered Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays during October. 
 
Advance reservations (advisable, the tours sell out fast) for all events may be made at www.reserveeureka.com  For group rates call 479-253-9766
September 9, 2016

A Must See Video!

October 2, 2015
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We recently came upon a video from a couple who had recently stayed in room 318 at the Crescent Hotel and captured something we just couldn’t believe.  Please note, the hotel does not have central heat/air but instead has ac window units which are located at the opposite end of this room.  Whether this was a hoax or not, you be the judge!

WATCH VIDEO-CLICK HERE

October 2, 2015

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