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Releases on Americas Most Haunted Hotel – Crescent Hotel | Eureka Springs , Arkansas

America’s Most Haunted Hotel: Ghost Stories

September 18, 2017
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Every October here in Eureka Springs, a historic village of 2,000 in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA Today-haunted26x-largethe 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa becomes the epicenter of heightened paranormal activity.  Even though encounters with hotel “guests who check out but never leave” are experienced the year-round in this mountaintop spa resort, experiences not easily explained in this Historic Hotel of America seem to increase exponentially during the weeks just prior to Halloween.

Empirical experiences disclosed to the hotel’s nightly ghost tour guides might tend to legitimize The Crescent’s claim of being “America’s Most Haunted Hotel”.  Here are six of those recently reported experiences in the guide’s own words:

o   “Of late, some people on my ghost tours are getting touched, poked, and pinched.  Nothing harsh, mind you, just gentle touches and nudges.  One of the most extraordinary recent happenings took place when one tour was being seated in the morgue (a leftover from when the hotel was purchased and utilized as an alleged cancer-curing hospital by a charlatan named Norman Baker in the late 1930s).  We heard a loud squeaking sound and the large, heavy, sliding door behind the seating area moved several inches ‘on its own’ on the rusty track from which it was suspended.  We all practically jumped out of our skins!  We all wondered which ghost in the morgue did that!”

o    “A three-year-old girl who came on the tour with her family started saying, ‘Bye-bye, baby.  Bye-bye, baby’ and waving goodbye in one certain direction as we exited the morgue.  No one could see to whom she was speaking.  She had been silent the entire tour until that point and then she kept looking directly at one ‘empty’ point in the room saying ‘Bye-bye, baby.’ over and over again.  Her father, the one carrying her, was impressed since he already believed in ghosts.”

o    “Apparently some girls in the morgue during one of my recent tours asked the EMF 442b0ee4afc877c2f630c55ed542b041meter (electromagnetic field reader used by many as a ‘ghost meter’) if Michael (an Irish stonemason who fell to his death during hotel construction) was listening.  The meter responded in the affirmative.  Their next question involved whether Michael preferred brunettes, blondes, or gingers.  At the mention of ginger hair, the EMF reader went crazy-fast.  So, in the minds of those witnesses, it is official that Michael, said to be a well-known ladies’ man even in his ghostly state, likes redheads the best!”

o   “My sister-in-law stayed at The Crescent about a year ago and the Jacuzzi and tub water kept turning itself on and off even after getting out of the tub.  It happened about three times, coincidentally each and every time she would post ‘This better not happen again on her Facebook page.  The timing of it was almost comical.  She called the bellman and asked him about it and he said it doesn’t usually happen in her room but has happened in several other rooms.  She joked that The Crescent must be an ‘equal ghost room visitation opportunity’ hotel since you never know where things will happen when a spirit’s energy starts moving around.”

o    “Recently, I got a rather unexpected reaction from a couple on my tour.  It was during my explanation of Norman Baker’s suite, the one he used while operating his hospital.  I mentioned that he had two giant St. Bernard dogs for protection.  The lady next to me snapped her head in my direction with wide and startled eyes.  She then looked at her husband pointedly as if in silent communication.  I smiled and stopped and asked if she had a question.  She said that they stayed in that room the night before and that they kept hearing scratching noises in the stairwell outside the door all night.  They kept telling themselves that it was nothing, nothing.  But, when she heard about those huge dogs she said that she was afraid to stay in their same room again that evening.  I assured her that nothing bad has ever happened to any of our hotel guests, only that they sometimes hear or see odd things.”

o    “ “One night, right after our tours had ended, a young woman who had been on one of my tours came running out of the bathroom telling me, ‘I just went in the bathroom and as soon as the door shut behind me I proclaimed out loud that I didn’t believe any of this!  And immediately after I had said that water started pouring out of the ceiling!  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough!’  I investigated to find the sprinkler head and the floor were both wet but had no flowing water.  Maintenance could not explain how or why it happened.  Needless to say, she had turned from cynic to ghost believer in the space of just a few short moments.”

“October is a wonderful and crazy month for The Crescent,” said Bill Ott, the hotel’s PACmay-236director of communications.  “People love the dual reason for a visit at this time:  awesome fall color and a chance to have a close encounter with one or more of our previous guests who have ‘crossed over’.”

“Interest around the world in our paranormality seems to grow during October.  Numerous international and national radio and television stations call or come by the hotel for an October interview.  For that same reason, many of the nationally-released television network programs like ‘Ghost Hunters’ seem to replay their Crescent episodes more often during the tenth month of the year,” Ott concluded.

This may be why the thousands of guests who step inside the 129-year-old five-story limestone structure during the 30 days leading up to Halloween will inevitably inquire at check-in, “Is the Crescent really haunted?”  Desk clerks reply with, “Please let us know when you check out.”

For more information on the paranormal aspect of the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa, go to americasmosthauntedhotel.com.

September 18, 2017

Unexplained Happenings at America’s MOST HAUNTED Hotel

September 18, 2017
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(EUREKA SPRINGS, AR) –  When Marty and Elise Roenigk purchased the Crescent Hotel in 1997 they inherited a confused association with the paranormal and what seemed to be a hundred years’ worth of ghost stories. At that time, before Ghost Hunters, many hotel owners might have hesitated to publicize the fact that their establishment was haunted, but the Roegniks were interested and decided to take a different approach.  That path was to restore the hotel as a destination spa resort but also pursue what many had claimed; that the Crescent Hotel was America’s Most Haunted Hotel.  A key part of that early pursuit included Mr. Roenigk pursuing and hiring two certified mediums, Ken Fugate and Carroll Heath, to “read” the building. Their findings, plus the startling number of repeated sightings that had been recorded over the decades, became the basis of what has become The Crescent Hotel Ghost Tour. It is only now that one of the most compelling discoveries on that initial reading has become clear.

Jack Moyer, Hotel General Manager for the Roenigk Era recounted “I clearly remember Carroll Heath stating that he had discovered a portal to the other side for those who are on the same frequency.”  Moyer, at the time a skeptic laughed “I remember asking myself what we were thinking trying to explore this unexplained world,  but now I recognize how many people truly connect to the spirits here at the Crescent.”  Fast forward eighteen years and enter the coincidence that resurfaced the original portal discovery.  It started with dialogue involving Moyer and current day ghost tour manager Keith Scales. “Keith came to me to share a concern about a phenomenon that had been re-occurring on his nightly tours.  That phenomenon included multiple guests whom had grown faint, with a few passing out briefly at the same tour stop and he didn’t have a reasonable explanation.  It was then that Scales described the exact location of the portal identified nearly a decade early by Heath.  “What made it one of those chilling moments came next as both Keith and I realized that that portal was directly over the Morgue and just a couple of floors up.”

Now in its 17th year, the ghost tour at the Crescent Hotel continues to increase in popularity, and evidence in the form of personal experiences, orb and other anomalous photography keeps coming in – often on the tours themselves. Now, The Legend Continues as another phenomenon that occurs with uncanny frequency and that seems to rise from the notorious Norman Baker’s morgue as every couple of weeks or so outside the “annex” entrance (identified by Carroll Heath as a Portal), has guests suddenly turn pale and sliding down the wall in a faint. Though the loss of consciousness does not last long and recovery is immediate, the hotel’s supernatural connection to the paranormal remains.

Keith Scales, Ghost Tour Manager explained, “here at the Crescent Hotel we are super-cautious about accepting events as “supernatural.” We believe that 95% of reported paranormal phenomena can be explained by normal means. But there is always a residue, maybe 5% of experiences, that defies explanation. We don’t know why some people have a tendency to faint at this particular place – we only know they do, that this is a place where activity of various kinds has been reported over decades, and that the people who drop out of this world for a few moments tend to be those with psychic abilities of their own.  The curious fact is that this event has never been known to occur anywhere else on the tour except at this location – directly above the morgue.

 

Portals to other realities, located in the Crescent Hotel? Who can confirm, or deny, the possibility?  It is an unexplained happening at America’s Most Haunted Hotel.

 

September 18, 2017

AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED RESORT HOTEL?; SOME WOULD SAY, “YES”

September 18, 2017
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(EUREKA SPRINGS, AR) – If there was a National Trust for Haunted Places, some say that the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, located here atop Crescent Mountain, should be on the national register.  Here are just a few reasons why:

  • Jack Moyer, hotel general manager, was having Sunday Brunch in the hotel’s Crystal Dining Room with his wife Misty when another employee joined their table and handed them a recent “ghost sighting” photograph taken by a hotel guest. Hotel employees for the most part are used to seeing photos of orbs, shadows or other sometimes unclear unexplainables but when Jack handed this particular photo to Misty she turned white.  Still ashen, she struggled to whisper, “It’s her… the woman I saw.”

The photograph, taken in one of the hotel’s new luxury suites, was of a hotel guest modeling a new outfit she had purchased from a downtown Eureka Springs’ boutique.  In fact the series of photos had her modeling several different outfits.  As she would step out of the bathroom and strike a pose her husband would snap a photo.  In each you could see the corner of the bed, the Jacuzzi tub and the 32” television that was turned off.  The particular photo that caused the reaction from Ms. Moyer showed on the screen of the television set the reflection of a young woman in Victorian attire.  The same woman Ms. Moyer claims she awoke to see at the foot of her bed early one morning in that same room when she and her husband had stayed there several months earlier.

(continued)

 

PAGE TWO OF TWO

“America’s Most Haunted….”

 

 

  • Steve Garrison, a cook for the hotel’s Crystal Dining Room restaurant for the past fourteen years recounts, “I’ve lived here (Eureka Springs) all my life and I have never been one to believe this stuff.” That all changed two different mornings in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Morning 1:  Garrison was “slicing and dicing” vegetables when he looked up and saw a little boy with “pop bottle” glasses, dressed in very old-looking clothes such as knickers, who was skipping around the kitchen.  Morning 2:  When opening that same kitchen early one morning he flipped on the lights only to see “some or all of the pots and pans come flying off their hooks.”  He was quick to add, “I don’t drink on the job.  In fact, I don’t drink… period.

  • A former gift shop employee vividly remembers a late night “customer” she encountered, “One slow evening, I was leaning gently against the display case, kind of looking downward, but not really at anything when I looked up. There in the store’s doorway into the hotel lobby stood a man, looking out of place in time.  He was dressed in a long, black cutaway coat with a tall shirt collar and ascot-like cravat, top hat and his face was adorned with mutton-chop sideburns.   His trousers were gray striped but as I continued to gaze down his image ended around the middle of the lower leg.  It didn’t go all the way to the floor.  His image was there.  It was very complete and lifelike, not at all wavy or wispy.

I blinked and said, ‘Whoa!?!’ and in that instance he disappeared.  I sped into the lobby toward the Crystal Dining Room then back toward the Governor’s Suite but he was absolutely gone.  I never saw him again.”

It is stories like these that adequately intrigued the producers of the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Ghost Hunters” program to spend nearly a week in the hotel this summer to investigate, film, and discover stories of their own.  Although those individuals involved in the production of the Crescent Hotel episode have taken a pledge of secrecy until the show airs sometimes this fall, all indications are that the show will reveal even more titillating tales of the plethora of precocious poltergeists that have been checking in but never leaving this Historic Hotel of America since 1886.

September 18, 2017

Celebrity Ghost Discovered In “America’s Most Haunted Hotel”

September 18, 2017
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(EUREKA SPRINGS, ARKANSAS) — Spirits from various places and various eras make up the “guest register” of those “guests who checked out but never left” what many consider America’s most haunted hotel”, the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa.  This five-story mountaintop spa resort each year seems to discover yet another one of those famous “guests” by name.  This year it was dancing legend of the early to mid-twentieth century, Irene Castle.

“We were thrilled to find out that Ms. Castle still visits the hotel as she did during her final years here as a resident of Eureka Springs (AR),” stated Bill Ott, marketing director of this Historic Hotel of America, “and it was only as we linked casual references of a young girl describing a paranormal encounter were we able to piece together that her encounter was with someone who once frequented our property.”

Irene Castle and her husband Vernon were the best-known ballroom dancers of the early twentieth century.  They operated ballroom dancing clubs and would travel the country charging as much as a thousand dollars an hour for lessons.  She appeared in a Broadway show and several movies.  Her popularization of social dancing with her husband was portrayed in a movie starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire entitled “The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle”.

“It was after the death of her fourth husband when Irene moved to Eureka Springs in 1959 to be near her son from her third marriage,” Ott explained.  “She bought a house on a small parcel of land just blocks from the Crescent, a place she called Destiny Farm.  She died in 1969 while living here in Eureka.”

Ott said that locals have told him that it was her love of the social life in her later years that brought her to the Crescent on numerous occasions.  It is said of Irene that even in her sixties that she was still a “trim, a lovely and fashionable lady with nothing to do but embrace the social scene of Eureka Springs” for which the Crescent was the epicenter.

“It was a family that vacations annually at the Crescent who were part of the encounter where links to Irene came to the fore,” Ott said.  “This story, which was recounted on a recent episode of the Biography’s Channel My Ghost Story, takes place when the mother was giving her daughter a bath in their room and the young girl began talking as if she was having a conversation with someone.

“The young girl said there was a princess standing right behind her mother but the mother saw no one.  The mother thought it was unusual because her daughter was using such words as pirouette, ballerina, tango, princess, castle, and bob.

“It wasn’t until the girl’s father read about Irene Castle’s connection to the Crescent on our hotel blog that he was able to the puzzle pieces of that encounter together.  He writes, ‘the strange words my daughter had said that we had made note of began to make sense.  The princess was someone in a costume.  That princess did not live in a castle; she was Castle.  Bob was a hairstyle popularized by Ms. Castle.  Those dancing terms were words commonly used by a professional dancer.  It was clear, my daughter had been talking to Irene Castle.’”

Ms. Castle is only one of many paranormal guests who have been named at the Crescent.  “Two of the better-known nom de spirits are Michael, the Irish stonemason who fell to his death during construction of the hotel in the footprint of Room 218; and Theodora, the cancer patient who fumbles for her key outside Room 419,” Ott noted.

Whether named or nameless the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa has become a haven for those wanting to encounter the shadow, the whisper, the tingling touch of someone, something who stealthily walks the halls of the hotel proper.  Nightly ghost tours have been selling out for years.  In fact, hotel management now encourages guests and visitors to purchase ghost tour tickets in advance to ensure their opportunity to walk with these Ozark specters on the night they desire.

“October sees the interest grow exponentially in the paranormal aspect of our hotel,” Ott concluded,  “however the frenzied interest is year-round.  It has escalated so much that later this fall we will be introducing ‘Midnight In The Morgue: A Portrait of Norman Baker’.  This exciting new, multi-media theatrical presentation will give our guests and visitors a chance to ‘meet the man’ who purchased the Crescent and operated the hotel in the late ‘30s as a cancer-curing hospital.”

For more information, one may go to americasmosthauntedhotel.com.

END

September 18, 2017

GM’s mother reports haunted experience

August 2, 2017
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GM’s MOTHER REPORTS MYSTERIOUSLY VIBRATING BED IN HER ROOM AT “AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED HOTEL”

 

 There is a member of Historic Hotels of America that is considered by many to be “America’s Most Haunted Hotel”.  The 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa is a mountaintop spa resort located here that credits the largest portion of its business to weddings and spa travel but just happens to have -it is said- “guests who check out but never leave”.  Regular guests to the hotel annually report numerous accounts of the paranormal.  Special guests do too.

“Several months ago my mom came down with three ladies for a ‘girlfriends’ getaway’ to Eureka Springs for spa treatments and to run over to Crystal Bridges (Museum of American Art) in nearby Bentonville,” explained Jack Moyer, vice president, and general manager of the Crescent.  “I always like putting Mom up in a room that we have just refurbished or remodeled for two reasons… one, she’s my mom and I want to give her a room that is special; and two, I can use her to test it out and give me the unvarnished assessment of our changes.  Read More…

August 2, 2017

Crescent Hotel Morgue Re-opens for business

September 18, 2016
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(EUREKA SPRINGS, AR) — Throughout the decades, members of Historic Hotels of America have celebrated re-openings of such hotel facilities as their restaurant, lounge, spa, etc., but only one HHA member has ever made plans to re-open their “morgue”.  Now, just in time for Halloween, the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa, located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, will celebrate the re-opening of its “morgue” throughout the month of October.

            “Our morgue is one of those historic infamies that has made us famous in the world of the paranormal and those interested in that world,” said Bill Ott, the hotel’s director of marketing and communications.  “It wasn’t part of the original business plan of the Eureka Springs Improvement Company who built this mountaintop spa resort more than 125 years ago, it just turned out that way.”

            The history of the Crescent includes years when it was something other than a hotel.  For example, from 1908 to 1934 the hotel -in the non-summer months- was used as The Crescent College & Conservatory for Young Women.  The depression caused the college and the hotel to close its doors but in 1934.  However, thanks to “the man from Muscatine”, the Crescent re-swung her doors open to much fanfare in 1937.

In July of 1937, an established nemesis of the American Medical Association, Norman Baker of Muscatine Iowa, began his boldest undertaking of his greedy, imaginative career: The Baker Cancer Curing Hospital, “Where Sick Folks Get Well”, located in a familiar five-story limestone structure that sat high in The Ozark Mountains above a community known the world over for its miraculous stories of healing.  No longer did guests come to this building for vacation lodging.  Instead, for the next three years, it would be patients who would come to this one-time resort for a “promised” cure from their debilitating cancer only to find pain, suffering, loss of life savings, and often loss of life.  These were the unkept promises of a charlatan in saint’s clothing.

“It is the sad years and sad tales of the Baker Hospital that are the genesis of the Crescent Hotel’s morgue,” Ott explained.  “It was in the morgue where Baker used his large walk-in cooler to store cadavers and body parts, and his autopsy table more for studying the cancers removed from patients in an effort to discover ‘what went wrong’ when a patient died hoping to stumble upon a cure.  Both of these gruesome artifacts remain intact as do the stories -and some would say the patients- that surround them.”

From the time of Baker’s arrest in late 1939 on charges of mail fraud followed by his conviction in January 1940, the Crescent’s morgue would sit dormant being used only for some storage by the parade of hotel owners and operators from 1946 to 1997.  A Crescent Hotel renaissance began 1997 when Marty and Elise Roenigk purchased the property.  They invested the time, love and dollars to return “The Grand Ol’ Lady of The Ozarks” to her nineteenth century grandeur.

“Prior to the Roenigks’ purchase, hotel owners would often hear reports of paranormal activity but put the kibosh on the public repeating of these stories thinking it would hurt occupancy.  The Roenigks took the attitude that if ghosts were a part of the history of this historic hotel, why shouldn’t those stories be told,” Ott noted, “and the Crescent Hotel Ghost Tours were born.”

“The ghost tours, which have grown exponentially over the past 16 years thanks to exposure on national television programs and in national publications, have always included the morgue,” continued Jack Moyer, hotel’s general manager since 1997, “but until recently that space has had a dual purpose: maintenance area by day, eerie morgue by night.  But now, maintenance has been removed and the morgue readied for thrilling new discoveries by curious ghost tour patrons.”

The enhancement of the focal point of “America’s most haunted hotel” includes placards and photos -dramatically illuminated- telling the Baker story; inclusion of a wheelchair from the Baker Hospital as well as other medical artifacts from that era; the addition of a micro-theatre; and easier access to the walk-in cooler, autopsy table and the locker made famous by The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) in a Syfy Network “Ghost Hunters” feature episode.  For it was in front of the “2” emblazoned locker that TAPS captured a full-bodied apparition on their thermal imaging camera, something they called “the holy grail of ghost hunting”.

“With the grand re-opening of our ‘morgue’,” Moyer concluded, “our guests and ghost tour patrons will have a brand-new experience in a grand ol’ Historic Hotel of America.”

For more information regarding the morgue and other paranormal facts surrounding the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, one should go to americasmosthauntedhotel.com.

September 18, 2016

ESP Weekend 2016

November 12, 2015
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SOLD OUT-Eureka Springs Paranormal Weekends442b0ee4afc877c2f630c55ed542b041

January 8th-10th & 15th-17th.

We apologize but due to popular demand this event is now Sold Out.  Crescent ghost tours for the general public will still be open during these weekends.

ESP weekend at the 1886 Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas has grown to become one of the largest ghost hunts in the United States – so popular that we have added a second weekend to accommodate americas most haunted hoteldemand while offering our loyal friends and newcomers a choice of dates for their hands-on, independent, nocturnal investigations.

ESP Weekends feature an expertly guided behind the scenes quest for evidence in the famed Crescent Hotel, and also an investigation our of sister hotel, the 1905 Basin Park -which will be fully closed off and empty but for event participants.

This is a weekend of serious investigation of “the most haunted hotel in America” on a IMG_1383-editedhilltop overlooking beautiful Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and the majestic Basin park Hotel, “the people’s Hotel” just steps from the famous healing spring.  The spaces known to be the most active at the Crescent Hotel will be open for investigation from midnight to dawn.  On Saturday nights, the ghost hunts will be orchestrated and led by Crescent hotel resident investigator, best selling author of seven books about the supernatural and founder of ARPAST, the awesome Larry Flaxman!

Activities include:

  • Crescent Ghost tours – highly recommended before conducting your own investigation – hear the stories of recurrent sightings, identify active locations, learn the fascinating history of the 1886 Crescent Hotel.
  • Spirits of the Basin Tour – hear about the spirited people who made Eureka Springs what it is today, the spirits that are said to linger in the halls and ballrooms, and the sample the contraband  that was available during the “Chicago years”, when the Basin Park Hotel was a notorious – and very popular – speakeasy!
  • ESP testing – expanded in 2016 to include more and longer tests, more hours. Come check out your own psi potential!
  • The Psychomanteum – an ancient Greek form of deprivation chamber, where the spirits of the dead were contacted.
  • Not Really a Door – a one-hour, two-actress, supernatural-comedy-murder-mystery-thriller, commissioned by the Crescent Hotel for our guests.
  • Flickering Tales – a collection of authentic Ozark stories of witches, monsters and of course ghosts, told by our trained team of storytellers in the shadowy barefoot ballroom at the Basin Park Hotel.
  • Psychics Salon – our resident mediums will be on hand throughout the events, to divine your future through a variety of means!

Snacks and beverages available in the small hours at both hotels.

Shuttles available certain hours

Discounted rate for  ESP participants Mon-Thur Jan 11-14 at both hotels

2016 ESP Packages–Sold Out

Friday & Saturday 2 Night Packages ($439.00) Include :

  • 2 Night Stay on the BEST Available Room (based on availability)
  • Nightly Reception
  • Spirits of the Basin Tour (offered F, Sat, & Sun)
  • Saturday Night Ghost Tour & Hunt with Larry Flaxman
  • “Active Space” pass to Rooms 218, 419, 3500 and THE MORGUE.  (NOTE 101?)
  • $30 per day Food Credit
  • ESP Weekend t-shirts (2)
  • Team review of evidence gathered.
  • 2 for 1 tickets to hotel attractions (i.e. Not really a door, Flickering Tales)

———————————————————————————————————-

Saturday 1 Night Package  (1/9 or 1/16) $269.00 Include:

  • Premium Guest Room
  • Ghost Tour
  • “Active Space” pass
  • ESP Weekend t-shirts
  • Saturday Night Ghost Tour & Hunt with Larry Flaxman
  • Team review of evidence gathered.
  • 2 for 1 tickets to hotel attractions (i.e. Not really a Door, Flickering Tales)

 

 

November 12, 2015

Crescent featured on National TV Show

November 12, 2015
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The Crescent Hotel is featured once again on a National TV Show… “The Haunting of Harry Lennix”, that was filmed at the hotel this past May, debuted on November 6th 2015. In case you missed it, you can see the full episode by clicking here.

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November 12, 2015

Unexplained Happenings At America’s Most Haunted Hotel

October 22, 2015
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When Marty and Elise Roenigk purchased the Crescent Hotel in 1997, they inherited a confused association with the paranormal and what seemed to be a hundred years worth of ghost stories. At that time, years before the TAPS Team of the popular SyFy Network’s Ghost Hunters program paid a visit to this Historic Hotel of America, many hotel owners might have hesitated to publicize the fact that their establishment was haunted, but the Roegniks were interested and decided to take a different approach.

That path was to restore the hotel as a destination spa resort but also purs442b0ee4afc877c2f630c55ed542b041ue what many had claimed: the 1886 Crescent Hotel was America’s Most Haunted Hotel. A key part of that early pursuit included Mr. Roenigk pursuing and hiring two certified mediums, Ken Fugate and Carroll Heath, both of San Francisco CA natives, to “read” the building. Their findings, plus the startling number of repeated sightings that had been recorded over the decades, became the basis of what has become the nightly Crescent Hotel Ghost Tour. It is only now, however, that one of the most compelling discoveries from that initial reading has become ever so clear.

Jack Moyer, hotel general manager for the Roenigk Era, recounted, “I clearly remember Carroll Heath stating that he had discovered a portal to ‘the other side’ for those who are on the same ‘frequency’.” Moyer, a skeptic at the time, laughed and continued, “I remember asking myself ‘what were we thinking’ trying to explore this unexplained world. But after more than a decade of working around the paranormal, I now assuredly recognize how many people truly connect to the spirits here at the Crescent. And there is a new and specific reason why.”

Moyer’s reason is the fact that after 18 years he has been confronted with the realm of a chilling coincidence that caused the original portal discovery to resurface. It started with dialogue involving Moyer and current hotel ghost tour manager Keith Scales.americas most haunted hotel

“Keith came to me to share a concern about a phenomenon that had been reoccurring on his nightly tours,” Moyer explained. “That phenomenon included multiple guests who had grown faint, with a few passing out briefly, at the same tour stop with no reasonable explanation. Then Scales described the location and it was the area that had been indentified as a portal more than a decade ago by Heath.”

“Scales then took me to the place and pinpointed the portal phenomenon as happening just outside the hotel’s ‘annex’ entrance, exactly where Heath had identified the location of his portal years ago,” Moyer disclosed.

This phenomenon has guests suddenly turning pale, falling against and then sliding down the wall in a faint. Although the loss of consciousness does not last very long and complete recovery is immediate, it tends to further substantiate the hotel’s legendary supernatural connection to the paranormal.

Moyer went on to say, “What made that moment most chilling was when Keith and I realized that this portal was directly above the ‘morgue’ located in the bottom level of the hotel.”

Now in its seventeenth year, the ghost tour of the 1886 Crescent Hotel continues to increase in popularity. Paranormal evidence in the form of personal experiences, orb sightings and other anomalous photography keeps coming in, oftentimes on the tours themselves lending credence to the ghostly legend.

“That legend continues to grow as yet another phenomenon is recognized, one that occurs crescent hotel morguewith uncanny frequency about every couple of weeks or so,” Scales added. “What makes it legendary is that seems to rise up in a vertical plane from the notorious Norman Baker’s morgue.” (It should be noted that Norman Baker from Muscatine IA purchased the hotel in 1937 and operated it as a “cancer curing” hospital until late 1939 when he was arrested for mail fraud.)

Scales was quick to point out the Crescent Hotel is super-cautious about accepting events as supernatural. He stated that 95 percent of reported paranormal phenomena can be explained by normal means but there is always a residue, maybe five percent of experiences, that defy explanation, “We don’t know why some people have a tendency to faint at this particular place, we only know that they do at the place where activity of various kinds has been reported over decades.   ”

Both Moyer and Scales agree that the most curious fact is that this event has never been known to occur anywhere else on the tour except at this one, specific location, a location that sits directly above the infamous morgue.

“Whether there are portals to other realities here at the 1886 Crescent Hotel or not, no one can say, confirm, nor deny,” Moyer concluded. “It’s all part of the mysterious, unexplained happenings of America’s Most Haunted Hotel.”

Other paranormal encounters and photographed images may be found at AmericasMostHauntedHotel.com.

October 22, 2015

A Tale of Two Hotels

September 5, 2015
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Eureka Springs boasts many historic hotels, two of which dominate the city skyamericas most haunted hotelline: the famous 1886 Crescent, “the most haunted hotel in America”; and the 1905 Basin Park, built just steps from the magic healing spring around which Eureka Springs exploded into being. Both hotels offer tours of the premises.

The Crescent offers one of the best-attended ghost tours in the United States. You will start on the top floor and wind down to the notorious Norman Baker’s morgue. On the way, experienced guides in period costume relate events from the hotel’s strange and colorful history, and tell the stories that have come down to us over decades of ghostly sightings and experiences. Few people visit Eureka Springs without taking the ghost tour at the atmospheric Crescent Hotel!

The Spirits of the Basin tour is one of newest attractions in Eureka Springs, and rapidly Spirits of the Basin Tourbecoming another “must-do” activity while in town.  Guests explore the tallest building in Eureka Springs – “eight stories high and every floor a ground floor” according to Ripley’s Believe it or Not – from the primal underground cave to the specially-built safety deck on the roof, while knowledgeable storytellers evoke the years gone by.

What do we mean by “Spirits?” Firstly, this is a tour about people – the rich parade of fascinating individuals who lived and worked (and perhaps also linger) at “the people’s hotel, the beating heart and soul of Eureka Springs.”  Secondly, spirits of the basin tourwhile nowhere can compare with the Crescent for tales of the supernatural, the Basin Park has its own stories of ghostly Spirits. And since the Basin Park functioned as a popular speakeasy during the “Chicago years” of the 1940s and ‘50s, “Spirits” also refers to contraband liquor… The tour concludes with a complimentary shot of Arkansas rye whisky for interested guests.

Come to Eureka Springs and take both tours. Meet the ghosts who have lingered for decades in the halls of the majestic Crescent Hotel, and delve into the past at the Basin Park to hear the stories of the folks who made Eureka Springs what it is today!

We recommend you book your tours in advance through www.reserveeureka.com.

PS: look for weekly articles about the tours, containing interesting tidbits of information you will not hear from the guides on our Facebook pages!

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September 5, 2015

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