The Cresent Hotel was built in 1886 and has served many purposes over its time. Located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, its been a luxury resort, conservatory for young women, a junior college, but the most famous is when it was purchased by a new owner in 1937, Norman G. Baker. Baker was a millionaire inventor who decided to pose as a doctor, even though he had no medical training and turned the hotel into a hospital. He claimed to have the cure for cancer and treated thousands of patients desperate to be healed with his injections. The injections were a mix of common substances including corn silk, watermelon seeds, clover, water, and carbolic acid. He made hundreds of thousands of dollars even though some of his patients died. Eventually he was found out and run out of town, was under several lawsuits and portrayed as a ruthless quack. He served some time in prison and later died in September 1958. Although reports say that his spirit returned to the Cresent Hotel along with otherworldly company. It is said to have as least eight ghosts, ranging from a five-year-old girl to a bearded man wearing Victorian clothing.
An Irish stone worker plunged to his death in what is now room 218. This room proves to be the most spiritually active room in the hotel and has attracted television film crews for decades because of the quantity and quality of the ghost sightings reported. Guests have witnessed hands coming out of the bathroom mirror, cries of a falling man in the ceiling, the door opening then slamming shut, unable to be opened again. Many employees have encountered playful spirits in Victorian dress. One year they found the decorated Christmas tree and presents had been moved from end of the room to the other. Yet another time, a waitress looked into the huge mirror between the doors from the dining room to the kitchen and saw a man and woman in Victorian garb facing each other as in a wedding. The groom turned and made eye contact with the waitress and then the couple faded away. The waitress quit her position shortly after this incident.
The fake Dr. Baker has been seen in the hotel. A nurse pushing a gurney residing in the old morgue area is known to squeak and rattle down the halls of the hotel. A hotel maintenance man witnessed all the washers and dryers mysteriously turn on in the middle of the night. Room 419 has been known to keep an old cancer patient known as Theodora.
Steve Garrison, the cook at the hotel says that one morning, while slicing and dicing vegetables, he looked up and saw a little boy with “pop-bottle” glasses, dressed in old-fashioned clothing and knickers, skipping around the kitchen. Another morning, Garrison flipped on the lights to begin the day’s preparations when some or all of the pots and pans came flying off their hooks.
The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa offers exciting ghost tours that have often produced some very spectacular tales. The guides themselves have many countless paranormal stories from their time at the hotel, too! One couple went to bed with only a sheet on top of them and then waking up with a heavy comforter on them, as if someone tucked them in at night. Others have witness someone taking them to a room, the wrong room, only to disappear in front of them.
Eureka Springs offers year-round haunted tours, chilling shows, ghost stories, and thrilling events. The secluded mountain city comes to life with séances and zombies every Halloween.