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 grand old hotel.

The Crescent Hotel was built on the ridge of West Mountain between 1884 and 1886 and may have gained its first ghost when a workman fell from the roof during construction. His body landed in the second floor area where Room 218 is now located. Most believe that it’s no coincidence that this is regarded as one of the most haunted rooms in the hotel. The Crescent was designed by Isaac L. Taylor, a well-known Missouri architect.  The financing for the hotel came from a number of wealthy individuals and businessmen, including Powell Clayton, the governor of Arkansas from 1868 to 1870, and later the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. Clayton formed the Eureka Improvement Company to seek investors and to acquire land, hoping to take advantage of the "boom time" of the period. Many of the other investors included officials with the Frisco Railroad.

The construction of the hotel, and development in the area, was so important at that time thanks to the national attention that had come to Eureka Springs (and other locations in Arkansas) for the “healing waters” that bubbled from the earth nearby. During the late 1800s, people traveled from all over the country to take in the waters and to hopefully ease and cure their particular ailments. In addition, spring water was also bottled and shipped out, further enhancing the small town’s reputation.

The officials from the railroad were involved in the development plans because of the excursion train trips that had become so popular in the 1880s. The Frisco Railroad had built a spur from Seligman, Missouri, to Eureka Springs to accommodate the tourists who wanted to visit the area. It was in their best interest to also develop a luxury hotel for them to stay in. As the Crescent neared completion, liveried footmen would meet guests at the railroad depot and transport them by coach to the portico of the new hotel.

The Crescent became almost immediately popular and attracted people from all over the south. It began to flourish as a summer destination but when it was taken over in 1902 by the Frisco System Railroad, the company began running the place as a year-round resort. They leased the hotel from the Eureka Springs Improvement Company for five years. Since the hotel had been in operation for a few years and needed a facelift, one condition of the lease was that the railroad had to spend a minimum of $50,000 on new furnishings and improvements.

The hotel, along with Eureka Springs itself, flourished for the next decade but changes came when 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. They did not renew their lease after five years and the hotel was closed down in the winter once again.

In 1908, in an effort to support the hotel during the winter months, it was opened as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women and served as an exclusive academy for wealthy young 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 could not even be 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 1920s, 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.

After the 1929 season, the hotel was closed and went through a variety of owners and tenants. It served as the previously mentioned junior college for a time and was generally operated as a seasonal hotel, depending on the current owner. According to some accounts, an owner would sell the hotel to another, who would operate it for a season, and then sell it someone else. No one seemed to be able to get it on a sound financial basis.

On July 31, 1937, the doors were closed at the Crescent Hotel and the building was sold to Norman Baker, who remodeled the place. Once he purchased it, the structure underwent a strange transformation and thus began the most bizarre chapter in the history of the Crescent.

Norman Baker was born in Muscatine, Iowa, in 1882. He made his first fortune in 1903 by inventing the Tangley Air Calliope, an organ that played with air pressure instead of steam. He made millions of dollars with his invention, but Baker was a born charlatan, who was never happy without his next scheme. He considered himself something of a medical expert, although he had no formal 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" – namely doctors from the American Medical Association -- were trying to kill him.

Baker opened his first hospital in Muscatine in 1929 but ran into legal problems 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 with plans to turn the place into a hospital and "health resort" for cancer victims.

Baker’s remodeling of the hotel reportedly cost almost $50,000 and he tragically destroyed much of the original decoration that remained on the structure. On the exterior of his “cancer clinic,” the wood-turned balustrades, which had so enhanced the hotel, were removed and concrete porches were poured in their place. He painted the beams, columns and woodwork in garish shades of red, orange, black and yellow. His private office was painted purple, as was his penthouse, which had once been the governor’s suite of the hotel. Baker kept two machine-guns hanging on the wall within easy reach and there were rumors of secret passageways, entrances and exits in case any of his AMA “enemies” ever attacked. On the roof, he installed a calliope that could reportedly be heard for many miles away. The place certainly didn’t look like a hospital, but it generally gave the locals plenty to talk about.

After the remodeling was completed, Baker moved his hospital staff and 144 patients from Iowa to Arkansas. 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, but you wouldn’t know it from the brochure that he had printed and widely distributed. According to the advertising, the hospital could cure cancer and all sorts of other ailments. On the back cover was a solicitation – “isn’t this book worth a dime?” Baker planned to send out ten million of them to “save thousands from the grave.” He conducted an ongoing battle against the so-called medical establishment and implored people to “help us battle for medical freedom.”

Baker was wealthy, odd and had an egocentric nature that turned many of the local citizenry against him. Perhaps this is why the bizarre rumors got started in the late 1930s. While some of the cancer patients at the hospital succumbed to their illnesses, no reports exist to say that anyone was actually killed by Baker’s treatments. Local rumor, however, had a different story to tell. The legends say that when remodeling was being done at the hotel in later years, dozens of human skeletons were discovered hidden within the walls. These stories claimed that Baker was no harmless eccentric, but a dangerous and terrible man who experimented on both the dead and the living. One of his "miracle cures" for brain tumors was to allegedly peel open the patient’s scalp and then pour a mixture of spring water and ground watermelon seeds directly onto the brain. Dozens of the patients died and Baker was said to have hidden the bodies for weeks until they could be burned in the incinerator in the middle of night. As his publicity claimed that he could cure cancer in a matter of weeks, he had to keep the press from finding out that many of his patients died every month. It has been said that he would put the extreme and advanced cases into an "asylum," where they would die in agony. That way, no one would know that they actually died of cancer.

Those were the stories that were sometimes told about Norman Baker (some still are!), but it should be noted that no records or first-hand accounts exist to say there is any truth to these rumors. Most likely, they are simply tall tales that have been told to enhance the Crescent’s spooky reputation over the years.
Regardless, federal authorities caught up with Baker and he was charged with using the mail to defraud the public about his false medical claims. He was convicted in 1940 and sentenced to four years in Leavenworth. The hospital closed and Baker vanished into history.

The brooding old hotel stayed closed until 1946, when new investors took it over and began trying to restore the place. The hard years still showed and the hotel was described as being "seedily elegant." Since then, however, it has started to regain its lost glory and it remains an odd and historical piece of Ozark history.

It is also, according to staff members and countless visitors, a very haunted place.

A myriad of ghosts (including Dr. Baker) are believed to inhabit the old hotel. A number of rooms (including the previously mentioned Room 218) are said to have their own resident ghosts who checked in, but never checked out. Doors are opened and closed, lights turned on and off and phantom figures have been seen in the corridors. It’s possible that the era of Baker’s hospital may have left the greatest ghostly impression on the place. In July 1987, a guest claimed that she saw a nurse pushing a gurney down the hallway in the middle of the night. The nurse reached the wall and then vanished. It was later learned that a number of other people had witnessed the same vision and had seen it reenacted in just the same way. An apparition that is believed to be Baker himself has been spotted around the old recreation room, near the foot of the stairs going to the first floor. Those who have seen him say that he looks lost, first going one way and then another. Could Baker be "trapped’ in the hotel, perhaps paying for misdeeds that were committed many years ago?

So what makes the Crescent Hotel such a haunted place? Are memories from the past somehow stored here, replaying themselves over and over again on a regular basis to the fear and delight of the living? Or are the deeds of the past simply revisiting the present, reminding us that history is never really forgotten?
Whatever the reason for the strange happenings, the Crescent Hotel remains one of the South’s most haunted places and the perfect vacation spot for those with ghosts in mind -- so join us for an overnight stay with American Hauntings and discover the resident spirits for yourself!