Happy Halloween a week early! Hear all about America’s most haunted hotel when Bill Ott of the 1886 Crescent in Eureka Springs, Arkansas visits TRAVEL ITCH RADIO.
Happy Halloween a week early! Hear all about America’s most haunted hotel when Bill Ott of the 1886 Crescent in Eureka Springs, Arkansas visits TRAVEL ITCH RADIO.
For decades upon decades the stories of “the Baker years” at the 1886 Crescent Hotel have been told. With no living eyewitnesses to these stories, they were mere legend. It wasn’t until earlier this year that actual proof of these stories was literally uncovered when the Arkansas Archeological Survey team carefully uncovered the secret bottle grave of the Crescent’s most infamous resident owner, Norman Baker.
Also unearthed, it seems, was additional paranormal activity further validating this historic resort, located atop the Arkansas Ozarks, as “America’s most haunted hotel”. This ghostly moniker has now been chiseled into granite… or more accurately stated: limestone, the predominate rock formations of Crescent Mountain.
Baker, a charlatan from Muscatine IA, owned the hotel in the late 1930s when he operated the structure as a cancer hospital where promises of a cure filled the hotel with suffering victims of the disease. His bottles contained a) several of his “curing” potions, despite the fact that no one was ever cured; and b) fleshy medical specimens extracted from his patients, despite the fact that Baker was not a doctor. Also found was an identifiable section of one of his promotional movies, a find that the archeologists said was like finding Baker’s business card.
“We had heard the stories. We had read the promises of Baker’s promotional material. We had even seen his poster where he proudly displayed his bottled cures and bottled tumors extricated from his patients,” explained Jack Moyer, hotel vice president and general manager, “but it wasn’t until more than 500 bottles from the northwest corner of our 15 acres were excavated during a formal archeological dig, did we actually get to see these antique bottles of macabre proof.”
Added proof of these bottles’ authenticity came during an interview with two ladies, Genevieve Bowman and Dorothy Bridgeman, who once served the hotel as waitpersons while in high school. Each, upon seeing them again, remembers the bottles as those they saw during excursions to the hotel’s basement area that was Baker’s morgue. It was in the morgue where these bottle were stored in a displayed manner.
The legend now proven has spawned such often re-experienced paranormal encounters as children being seen huddled under the morgue’s autopsy table pleading for help; the reoccurrence of a Baker patient who also served as a hospital assistant being seen in and around Room 419, better known as Theodora’s room; the early morning, loud squeaking of wheels in the third floor corridor accompanied by sightings of a nurse pushing a corpse-laden gurney down the hallway only to see it vanish into thin air; and the numerous “conversations” with former patients by way of responses via an EMF (electromagnetic field) ghost meter during paranormal investigations.
The interest in the paranormal aspect of the Crescent Hotel has drawn more than 15 national and international television production companies to visit this Historic Hotel of America and air ghostly episodes on the hotel. Two such notable programs are the Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures” and the Syfy channel’s “Ghost Hunters”. With the airing of each episode, ghost aficionados flock to Eureka Springs to see firsthand the hotel and now its bottle find. “Our numbers are growing exponentially,” Moyer added.
The best of the unearthed bottles is now back on display in the Crescent’s morgue. Both the morgue, complete with autopsy table, and a walk-in cooler where Baker stored cadavers and body parts are open for public viewing as part of the hotel’s nightly ghost tour. Even the burial site, the archeological dig locale, has been preserved and is open for viewing during the hotel’s VIP Ghost Tour.
To add to the enhanced paranormal interest during the month of October, hotel guests will also be able to take part in such extra resort offerings as “Flickering Tales”, a campfire circle where Ozark ghost stories are told under a nighttime sky; and a private paranormal panel entitled “Ghost Tour Guides: Their Inside Stories”, a forum where veteran Crescent Hotel ghost guides tell of their personal hair-raising encounters while touring the “Grand Ol’ Lady of The Ozarks”.
In the 1930s, a man claimed he had miraculous cures for cancer in Eureka Springs.” One of the people who is very prominent is Norman Baker, the guy who ran this place as a faux cancer hospital for a couple of years,” said Keith Scales, the ghost tour manager at the Crescent Hotel. Read More.
A new Ghost Adventures season will start Saturday evening with one of the most anticipated lockdowns in the reality show’s history. Zak Bagans and the crew will be seen investigating the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spain Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which made headlines for an oddity unearthing just after the crew left the property. Read More.
KOLR10NEWS reports Watch Video
As if tales of ghosts and hauntings at the famous Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs isn’t disturbing enough, a landscaper at the hotel recently discovered something pretty creepy buried on the grounds. It appears they’ve dug up old bottles filled with human body parts.
Among the many tales about the history of the hotel, is one about Norman Baker, a former owner, who they say ran the property as a cancer hospital.
Well, the discovery of the first bottle has led to a full-blown archaeological excavation.
It started when hotel groundskeepers found the first bottle 3 months ago.
“And really didn’t have any idea what was going on, until I picked up the first bottle that had a clear fluid in it, with something in it,” said Crescent Hotel landscaper Susan Benton.
So far, they’ve discovered 500 bottles that point to the stories of Norman Baker using the hotel to treat cancer patients back in the late 1930s.
Hotel ghosts tours manager, Keith Scales says he recognized the bottles from a display.
“We have this displayed in the hotel, where we do the tours, so I see this every day,” Scales said, “Some of the bottles are medicines. Some of the bottles are…medical specimens. What he claimed were tumors that he had taken out of his patients — put in alcohol or formaldehyde and kept in bottles as evidence that his cure was working.”
Although the dig area was considered a dump site, archaeologists say they can tell a lot of thought went into the disposal of these bottles.
“You have these lined walls here that they actually did do hand excavating to actually dig a pit first, said archaeologist Jared Pebworth, “So, they were thinking about how they were going to get rid of their trash instead of just coming up here to the hillside, throwing it down the hillside.”
Archaeologist Michael Evans says they also dug up 16-millimeter film.
“The films in really bad shape… but, we were able to lift a few little images from the film — and one of the images said, after.. before Baker treatment,” said Evans, “It’s a unique find, very exciting.” Archaeologists also found an old bone saw they believe Baker may have used to work on patients.
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.
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 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 dying 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 ambiance 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.
***FRIDAY JANUARY 4TH AND 11TH 2019***
3:00 p.m. CHECK-IN begins at the 1886 Crescent Hotel front desk. SIGN UP at ESP WELCOME TABLE in the Living Café in the Conservatory for:
Please feel free to explore the hotel, check out the CRESCENT COLLEGE HISTORY PROJECT exhibit (4th floor), indulge in the SKYBAR GOURMET PIZZARIA (4th floor) or CRESCENT CONFECTIONS (lobby), find souvenirs at the ESP SUPERNATURAL SUPERMARKET (Living Café) or SERENDIPITY AT THE CRESCENT art gallery (lobby) and visit the NEW MOON SPA (garden level).
The following activities and events will take place beginning at 9:00 p.m. FRIDAY
***SATURDAY JANUARY 5TH AND 12TH 2019*** The Investigation Begins!
SHUTTLE available to the BASIN PARK HOTEL (ask at front desk), but it’s only a five-minute drive if you’d rather take your own car. Parking available on the street.
Tiptoe time! You may continue exploring independently but please be considerate of sleeping guests.
The following INTERACTIVE EXPLORATIONS will take place between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. E.S.P. (Extra-Sensory Perception) manifests in many ways. Some people believe we all possess these faculties, and simply need to locate them within ourselves. Are you in touch with your psychic abilities? ESP!19 provides the opportunity for you to explore your PSI potential. SIGN UP AT THE ESP WELCOME TABLE for:
• TELEPATHY TESTING: Two-person, 15-minute sessions starting at 10:00 a.m. (Governor’s Suite, Room 101 off the lobby, Crescent Hotel)
• REMOTE VIEWING EXPERIMENTS: Time and Place to be announced
• PSYCHOMANTEUM: Open up a conduit to your own mind – – or is it the Other Side? One-person, 15-minute appointments available 2:00 p.m. Saturday, to 2:00 a.m. Sunday. (Norman Baker’s penthouse, room 502.)
• PSYCHIC SALON: three psychics, three kinds of reading. Appointments taken at the Salon. (Lobby) (Not included in your package.)
• PRIVATE SESSIONS with Certified Hypnotist MELANIE BELL: Further information and sign-up at ESP WELCOME TABLE in the Living Café. (Not included with your package.)
***SUNDAY, JANUARY 6TH AND 13TH 2019***
SHUTTLE available to the BASIN PARK HOTEL (ask at front desk), but it’s only a five-minute drive if you’d rather take your own car. Parking available on the street.
Tiptoe time! You may continue exploring independently but please be considerate of sleeping guests.
Noon CHECK-OUT
Farewells and photo-ops.
Built in 1886, the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs has become famous for its ghosts. WATCH 40/29 VIDEO
It’s the month when green forests slowly turn orange, yellow, and red, culminating with ghosts, ghouls, and all things scary.
So it’s only right that the historic 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa in Eureka Springs is being featured in October on another TV documentary as America’s most haunted hotel. Read More…
