Tag Archives: Crescent Hotel

Confessions to Ghost Tour Guides of The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa

As Southern Living Magazine recently boasted, “The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa is Known to Have Ghostly Guests”.  Many of these ghostly guests have become well-known thanks to nearly 20 nationally and internationally syndicated paranormal television programs that have produced and broadcast episodes on “America’s Most Haunted Hotel”.   However, here are a few new tales, as told to the hotel’s ghost tour guides; stories that even the paranormally savvy might not know but will enjoy, nonetheless.

 

Paranormal Report 1: Last week I met a couple that was staying here at the Crescent on the first floor near the Governor’s Suite. They said the first night of their multi-night stay nothing happened; explaining that they had heard that you need to be in the hotel at least a couple of nights before anything strange happens. They said on their second night, when they were going to bed, they folded the blanket and comforter back onto the foot of the bed and just slept with only the sheet covering them.  The husband awoke in the middle of the night sweating, turned on the bedside lamp, and woke up his wife in dismay. The blanket and comforter were not only pulled up over them but someone or something had tightly tucked them in.  He said that happened three times that same night.  Whoever or whatever was in the room,  he said, wanted them tucked in and tucked in tightly.  After that, during the rest of their stay, they would discover upon awakening or returning to their room that things would had been moved around in the room from where they were before going to sleep or departing from the room.  They said that items moved were just small insignificant things but enough to let them know someone or something was or had been there. They concluded by stating that they really enjoyed their stay and that they would indeed be returning to the Crescent.

Paranormal Report 2: Room 419 is the room said to still be inhabited by the spirit of Theodora, a prim and proper woman.  She is believed to have been a live-in member of Norman Baker’s “Cancer Curable Hospital” staff during the late 1930s and Room 419 was her room.  Records show that Room 419 is the Crescent Hotel’s second most requested room because of Theodora’s rumored “housekeeping service”, tidying up after guests who stay in that room but only if she enjoys their company.  I have been told by guests staying in Room 419 that they conduct experiments in that room, purposely leaving messes in hopes that Theodora will make her presence known by folding their clothes, organizing their closet and/or attractively arranging personal items that had been scattered around the room.  All told me that, evidently, Theodora must not have given them the ghostly nod of approval.  Then, just recently, a couple told me they had purposefully scattered their loose change around the room on tabletops, nightstand, etc., shortly before leaving for dinner downstairs in the Crystal Dining Room.  Upon their return, they were overjoyed to find their coins neatly reorganized in stacks of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies and all placed together atop their dresser.  No one knows how Theodora determines whom she favors but this couple, it appears, had managed to make a good impression which they said was “quite cents-able”!

Paranormal Report 3:  Guests who revisited our hotel recently and retook the ghost tour took delight in recounting a story that had happened to them at the Crescent some 10 years earlier.  They said that they had arrived around two o’clock one spring afternoon for an early check-in.  They got their one key to Room 221 and proceeded to take the elevator to the second floor.  When the elevator door opened, standing there, seemingly waiting for them, was a man in an all-black Victorian-style outfit.    The man asked if he could show the couple to their room.  Thinking he was a hotel employee; they told the man they were in Room 221 and handed him their key.  Upon arriving at Room 221, the helpful man unlocked the door and pushed it open. The man remained just outside the doorway, smiling and tilting his head side to side repeatedly.  The guest quietly turned to her husband and suggested that perhaps the man wanted a tip.  In the nanosecond that it took the husband to turn to hand the man a tip, the man had disappeared, nowhere to be seen down the long hallway.  Puzzled, but not concerned, the couple relaxed in their room until they left for their scheduled evening ghost tour.  Following the tour, they returned to their room only to discover that their key would not unlock their door.  They went down to the front desk where the clerk apologized that, by mistake, he had given them the key to Room 321 at check-in.  The couple explained that the key worked for the employee who let them into their room, describing the helpful man and his attire.  The front desk clerk informed them that they had no employee who fit that description and no employees wear that kind of attire.  The couple never saw that “helpful man” again.

Bill Ott, the hotel’s director of marketing and communications, said, “Guest experiences such as these are quite varied and numerous, and guests seem thrilled to share them with hotel employees.  What makes them believable, unbeknownst to them, is that many of their individual experiences are often identical to a story that was shared two weeks, two months, two years ago by someone they never knew who stayed in the same room or visited the same locale in the hotel.

“And oh, and by the way, the most requested ‘active’ room in the hotel is Room 218, Michael the Irish stonemason’s room.  He is said to have died in the footprint of that room into which he fell while helping build the Crescent Hotel back in 1885… but you’ll have to take our ghost tour to get the full story.”

Eureka Springs Paranormal Weekend 2020

esp weekend 2020

ESP2020:  THE VARIETIES OF MAGICAL EXPERIENCE

In Search of the Supernatural

BY NIGHT: paranormal investigations  – explore both the Crescent and Basin Park Hotels from midnight to dawn,  in the company of  veteran ghost hunters.

BY DAY:   explore your own extra-sensory perceptions! through telepathy testing, a psychomanteum –  and more!

January 3-5 or 10-12, 2020

1886 Crescent Hotel, with excursions to the Basin Park Hotel Eureka Springs, Arkansas – the “Miracle City in the Ozarks.”

CONFERENCE FEE:   $150.00 per person, per weekend

BUY TICKETS

Includes:

  • Welcome reception and keynote address
  • T-shirt
  • Ghost tour
  • Overnight ghost hunts at 1886 Crescent and 1905 Basin Park hotels
  •  Hands-on activities including telepathy assessment, remote viewing and automatic writing experiments
  • Psychomanteum
  • 24-hour Paranormal Café
  • A paranormal play
  • Supernatural storytelling
  • A visit to the recent important archeological discovery on the grounds of the Crescent hotel– and more!

Keynote speaker and presenters: Larry Flaxman, Dave Harkins and Tiffany Olsen.

_________________________________________________________________

CRESCENT HOTEL ROOM RATES for ESP2020

americas most haunted hotel

Friday/Saturday January   3, 4–$99.00 per person

(based on Double occupancy) for two night stay!

Friday/Saturday January  10, 11–$129.00 per person

(based on Double occupancy) for two night stay!

Please note: these exceptional rates are only available to conference attendees – reserve early!

MUST PURCHASE CONFERENCE TICKETS AND CALL TO BOOK ROOM NIGHTS: 877-342-9766

Purchase Tickets

 

CONFERENCE AGENDA

ESP weekend 2020

Haunted History in NWA

The hotel is home to several rumored ghosts and according to Bill Ott, Director of Marketing and Communication at the hotel, the spirits have made themselves known to guests. “The most famous ghosts we have in the hotel are Michael who hangs out in room 213, he was a stonemason that fell to his death in the footprint of that room. The other one is Theodora in room 419. If you mess up the room or she doesn’t like you, she’ll put your luggage in front of the door which makes it difficult for it to open.” Read More…

Arkansas CW Crew checks into the Crescent Hotel…

crescent hotel arkansas cw

In this edition of “Paranormal Adventures with The Crew”, we check in to the historic 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa in Eureka Springs. Touted as one of “America’s Most Haunted Hotels”, The Crescent Hotel was built in 1886. For the first 15 years, it served the carriage set and was an exclusive year-round hotel resort. Due to annual off-season hotel vacancies, the hotel was turned into the Crescent College & Conservatory for Young Women in 1908. The College closed down in 1934. Read More…

Ghostly Legend at America’s Most Haunted Hotel Enhanced in 2019

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”.

 

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

 

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 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.

 

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