Located in remote resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas stands the gothic Crescent Hotel. Called by some the "Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks, the hotel has served as many things over the years and yet strangely, each incarnation was reported to be haunted and each one also contributed to the legion of phantoms believed to walk the corridors of the building.
If there is a single place in the Ozark Mountain region that can be called "most haunted", it is this one!
The Crescent became almost immediately popular and attracted people from all over the south. It flourished for several years and from 1902 to 1907, it was taken over by the Frisco Railroad, which leased the property as a summer hotel. Not long after, people began to realize that while the local hot springs were certainly wonderful, they held no curative powers. The springs soon lost the interest of the wealthier class, who had many other pursuits in that "gilded age" and business for the town dropped off. The loss of revenue convinced the railroad to quickly abandon their attempt at running a hotel.
The next 60 years were not good ones for the Crescent. It was open year-round, but it was starting to slip into a more run-down and decrepit condition. Various attempts were made to keep the place up and running, but as time passed, Eureka Springs lost its past prominence and the hotel became a forgotten curiosity. But it did not stand empty, as history goes on to testify.
In 1908, the hotel was opened as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women and served as an exclusive academy for wealthy ladies. During the summer it still catered to the tourist crowd, but the money it made was not enough to keep the aging monolith in business. The costs of running, heating and repairing the place were so overwhelming that they were not ever offset by the staggering tuition charged to the students. The school closed in 1924 and then reopened briefly from 1930 to 1934 as a junior college.
By the 1920’s, the automobile was transforming Arkansas into a vacation state. One estimate even claimed that nearly a half million people drove to the Ozarks for vacations in 1929, a staggering number for the time. Because of this, there were a number of businesses that leased the Crescent as a summer resort after the school closed down.
However, in 1937, Norman Baker leased the hotel for another purpose altogether. These were the darkest days of the hotel and according to most, the time when the haunting really began at the Crescent Hotel. The deeds committed during this era have unquestionably had a lasting impact on the building… and perhaps on the spirits who still linger here.
When Baker took over the hotel, he had plans to turn the place into a hospital and "health resort". Baker was an Iowa-born charlatan who had made his fortune by inventing the Calliaphone, an organ played with air pressure and not steam. He had made millions of dollars by 1934 but he was never content with this. He considered himself something of a medical expert, although he had no training. He claimed to have discovered a number of "cures" for various ailments but he was sure that organized medicine was conspiring to keep these "miracle medicines" from the market. He was also sure that these same "enemies" were trying to kill him.
Baker started a hospital in Muscatine, Iowa but ran afoul of the law over his "cure" for cancer. He was convicted of practicing medicine without a license in 1936 and all of his medicines were condemned by the American Medical Association. Nevertheless, he purchased the Crescent Hotel and remodeled it, tragically tearing out the distinctive wooden handrails and balconies and painting the wonderful woodwork in garish shades of red, orange, black and yellow. He decorated his own penthouse in shades of purple. He also added a few other touches to his private rooms, hanging machine guns on the walls and installing secret escape passages that would save him should his AMA "enemies" attack.
Baker moved his cancer patients from Iowa to Arkansas and he advertised the health resort by saying that no X-rays or operations were performed to save his patients lives. The "cures" mostly consisted of drinking the natural spring water of the area and various home remedies… or so the "official stories" say. According to most reports, no one was actually killed by Baker’s medical claims, but local legend tells a different story.
The legends say that when remodeling has been done at the hotel over the years, dozens of human skeletons have been discovered secreted within the walls. It has also been said that somewhere within the place are jars of preserved body parts that were hidden so as to not scare off prospective buyers. They still have not been found to this day.
The hotel was built on the crest of West Mountain between 1884 and 1886 and may have gained its first ghost when a workmen fell from the roof during the construction. His body landed in the second floor area where Room 218 is now located. I doubt that it’s a coincidence that this room is considered to be one of the most haunted in the hotel!
