228: The Crescent Hotel

So Matt, today, when Ashley got home, she asked me if I had seen the dog bowl. And I said, no, I never knew he could. Mm. Okay. Good evening, everybody. And welcome to the graveyard. Thank you for joining us tonight. My name is Adam and my name's Matt now. We'll have a tombstone or settle into your casket and get comfortable because this is graveyard tales. Oh, right. Everybody here we are again. Matt, how you doing tonight, brother? Man, I am doing great. Excellent. Excellent. So, uh, I don't know if you all can see it. If you're watching the video, I got my, I'm wearing my new hardy shirt and I don't know how many hardy fans we got out there. If you're a hardy fan, holler at me. Let me know. We went and saw him this last Saturday in Irving, man. I was going to say I prefer Carl's Jr. It's the same thing and both of them suck. But speaking of which, you can actually buy a shirt that says hardy sucks. He sells those shirts. They almost got one of them. Um, but we went and saw him when he was in Irving here last weekend and man, that was a fantastic show. So I had to represent on our show wearing the, the hardy logo here. So yeah, I had to point that out. Um, go over to podbelly.com and you can find a list of shows on podbelly that we are happy to be associated with and I guarantee you, you're going to find something on that list of shows that you will like and they've got different, like tutorials and tips and tricks and stuff on starting a podcast. So if you're interesting in jabbering into a mic, like Matt and I do, then they've got some tips for you and some tricks on how to start it and how to, you know, find the best audio quality and stuff like that. So podbelly.com. Uh, we also want to thank tonight sponsors, Lomi and Raycon. And we will talk about both of them coming up through the episode. And while you're on the internet doing your stuff, give us a rate and review. If you would not mind, um, the, the reviews are not for our ego, though it does help. We, we like seeing them. Um, the main thing is with the reviews on it, when people are searching for a paranormal show, if we have a bunch of five star reviews on there with people saying, ah, yeah, that's cool show or all those guys, they look dumb, but they've got a cool show, something like that. Uh, then they look like it. Yeah, they, they definitely a face for radio. So, uh, but if you do that, then it helps people find our show and it just will allow more people to be brought into the graveyard. All right, Adam, let's take a minute and talk about one of tonight's sponsors, Lomi by Pila. Now you've heard Adam and I talk about Lomi before and we both absolutely adore this product. Oh, yeah. It is, it is incredible. Um, Adam and I both, uh, we have a lot of plants. Oh, we both like the garden and, and Lomi makes getting soil to put in your plants or put in your yard so much easier by taking your food scraps and turning it into dirt that you can use in a matter of hours. It is absolutely incredible. Yeah. I, I can't get over how well it works. I'm honestly, I was skeptical at, at the beginning. I was like, well, how, how can this little machine make dirt out of my food? Yeah. And it has exceeded expectations. Yeah. So, I mean, you, you've got the, you, you've got your Lomi. Um, you've got your, your, your scrap bin and you, you dump your, you know, leftover lettuce. You know, you can throw your cucumber peeling's in there, you know, banana peels, all that stuff in there and you set it up and you can add this little enzymatic tablet and in about anywhere from what, four to 16 hours. Yep. You can have soil that can go on your plants. You can pitch out in your yard, but what you don't have is stinky, smelly, old food, ridden trash. Oh, yeah. You've, you've cut down on the waste that you produce and you've actually turned it into something useful. I mean, it's a, it's a win-win either way you look at it. Yeah. And that, that's true. I mean, I have lowered the amount of garbage that I throw away every week because of the loamy and I used to have a bin outside the classic composting bin that you would go throw stuff in. You got to turn it and you got to wait forever. If you even get dirt out of it half the time, mine just molded and I didn't get dirt out of it. And it's just, it's amazing because I, this year have put all of my loamy dirt that I saved up over the winter, I had buckets of it and I went out and dumped it in my garden and tilled it in. And so it added those nutrients back into the soil. Cause like Matt said, you can do a quick one and have just dirt or you can do the long version with that enzymatic tablet and it adds the nutrients and the microbes into the soil. So it's like a, a multivitamin for your garden. Yeah. And with most composting bins, you can't put anything but vegetables in there. You have to just put vegetables. Lomi, you can put dairy products, don't pour a glass of milk in there. That's just silly, but you can put like cheese and you can put meat scraps in there. I mean, you can take your whole plate from dinner and scrape anything you've got left in it, minus the bones and it will turn it into dirt. So my garbage doesn't stink anymore. I throw away at least half the amount that I did before. And I'm being very eco conscious because I'm putting this back into the environment and growing plants with it. So if you want to experience loamy, like Adam and I have, trust me, you will fall in love, make a positive environmental, environmental impact, or just make clean up after dinner that much easier, head to loamy.com slash grave. It's L-O-M-I dot com slash G-R-A-V-E and use our promo code grave. G-R-A-V-E to get $50 off your loamy. That's right. Take $50 off when you head to loamy.com. L-O-M-I dot com slash G-R-A-V-E and use our promo code grave at checkout. Food waste is gross. Let loamy save you a trip out to the garbage can. So Matt, that's all I've got for housekeeping because I think this is going to be a cool show. So why don't you tell us? What are we talking about tonight, brother? So tonight Adam and I are looking at a haunted hotel that, honestly, I'm surprised we haven't done this already, but this place is really, really active. And it's extremely well known in the paranormal community. We're going to talk about the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Yep. And this, I mean, the building is old. It's amazing looking. It's it's had some unique history. Oh, yeah. All the things that you would need to have a have a little bit of a haunted energy floating around. It's got it. You know, I guess the only thing it doesn't have is like the when we talk about places where people were tortured and murdered. I don't have that. But the history that it does have is quite fascinating. And so Adam's going to get into that. And we're going to talk some about the experiences that visitors and staff members and even the owners have had at the Crescent Hotel. So Adam, tell us about some of this interesting history. All right. So first, as we always say, go check our sources down in the bottom of the show notes. You can find where we found the information. You can follow along or continue. If there's some stuff that Matt and I were talking about, we we left a little bit out just because it was so filled with it. If we didn't, Matt was going to have a two hour spot just himself and then I'd have an hour and so. So so we cut a little bit out. But if you want to continue, go check our sources down in the bottom of the show notes. Now, where is it? Well, like we said, it's in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, but it's at 75 Prospect Avenue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the original property opened in 1886 and it's now a member of the historic hotels of America and it has been since 2000. So for 23 years now, man, it's crazy that 2000 was 23 years ago. But anyway, 23 years now, it's been a member of the historic hotels of America. So this actually comes some a lot of this information I've got comes from that historic hotels, documents that they have kept on the hotels. It's known as the quote grand lady, the grand old lady of the Ozarks. And when Matt first said that, he said, the grand old lady of the Ozarks, I said, how do you know my grandmother? But he meant this hotel. Yeah. Now, the history of the Crescent Hotel is the story of Eureka Springs, they say, because they both exist because of the local water. There's more than 60 springs, which bubbled up, quote, healing water in and around Eureka's downtown area. And they were visited by thousands of tourists in the late 19th century. Well, a former governor of Arkansas and United States Senator named Clayton Powell was among those who traveled to the city at the time. As his political career matured, he got involved in the local railroad business, which I mean, most people did. We wouldn't have an America if it wasn't for the railroad business. That's right. That's right. Everybody had to get into it somehow. And we wouldn't have any place to talk about if it wasn't for the railroad business. So thankfully, there was a railroad business. But in order to make the endeavor incredibly profitable, men like Powell sought to establish a mixture of commercial and recreational traffic. So as such, it became common to sponsor the creation of hotels that would incentivize passenger travel along their tracks. Now, when Powell discovered Eureka Springs mineral water, he determined to make the city a leading holiday. So partnering with a friend named Richard Kearns, the two men sponsor the creation of the Eureka Springs railroad, which operated as a branch of the St. Louis San Francisco Railway. Then in 1884, they commissioned architect Isaac S. Taylor to build this crazy luxurious hotel on top of this cliff that overlooked the heart of Eureka Springs. So Powell and Kearns, it says they save no expense. They spent about $294,000 to construct the building. And if you think about the time, holy cow, that was a lot of money. Oh, yeah. Now it proved to be a massive endeavor. So Irish stone masons carved and assembled 18 inch thick blocks of limestone from a white river quarry, just 10 miles from the construction site. So these artisans were brought over to the United States by Powell's Eureka Springs Improvement Company for, I mean, just the sole purpose of building this hotel. So he found these Irish stone masons and he brought them over here and said, you're, you're coming over and you're going to build this hotel for me. And they, I mean, I've been to the white river. I don't know if you have met, but I've been to the white river there, trout fishing. And so that's a cool area. And that's where they got these 18 inch thick blocks of limestone that they made the hotel out of, which, I mean, it makes it sturdy. So it's still standing today, but it gives it a really cool look. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a, it's a crazy cool looking place. We were talking about that just before we, we went live. It's, I mean, it, it, not only does it look like an old Victorian hotel. That's what you'd expect. I mean, it's huge, but it's so just ornate and I mean, it's got all the little, hell, I don't, I wish I knew what those were called. You know, where you had the little, you've got the little spires that come up and you've got the little fence thing that goes around it. Everybody, I'm showing my ignorance here, but, you know, it just, it's got that appeal. You just look at it and you're like, man, yeah, this is, this place is really great. Yep. It's inviting and it, it kind of, it takes you back to another time. It, it almost makes you feel like you're stepping back into time when you see it and, and walk through those gates. I know. And we haven't even talked about the elevator that serves as a time machine. No, you know, you can get. We got to get to that. I mean, so don't push, don't push floor 1942. Yeah. Right. So following nearly two years of construction, the Crescent Hotel named after the mountaintop where it sat was finally complete. So on May 20th, 1886, the doors opened and there was a grand gala that was held in what is now called the crystal dining room. Yeah. Now, I think it's cool, Matt, because there's been other hotels that we've talked about that when they did these grand openings back in like the 1800s and early 1900s, they had these big, like galas, I guess is the best term for it because that's what it was. But I can't think of any other way to describe it, where just so many people came in and they danced and ate and had had this big gathering just because they opened this hotel. I mean, it's so cool. I don't know that I've ever been a part of a gala. I don't know. I if I think I would remember it if I had been. Well, it sounds like something I would enjoy. Look at me. You think they're going to let me into one of those? Even if I got an invite, the guards would turn me away at the door and I'm like, no, I'm not on the list. I know the owner and it's like reading through. He sees my name and scratches it out and goes, no, you're not on the list. You're not on the list. Not anymore. You know, there's a dress code, buddy. I know I'm dressed. Thought that was a thing. The dress code is that no shirt, no shoes, no surface. I got my private bits covered. That's the important part, right? There's no nips showing. I can go in. Now, seizing upon the ever growing popularity of Eureka Springs and their, quote, healing waters, the hotel was purchased by the Frisco Railway company in 1905. So it's company officers hope to serve their customers with the hotel while they cultivated ridership from places throughout the Midwest. Yet when the railroad saw a continuous decline in occupancy in the off season, a group of concerned residents encouraged it to lease the structure as a dormitory. So in 1908, the Crescent College and Conservatory for young women opened for quote, fine young ladies. It pretty quickly became one of the most exclusive boarding academies in Arkansas and they say it was training the minds of countless women who passed through its doors. That almost doesn't sound like a good thing. In the way they put it. I know it probably wasn't a good thing, but it was, it was a different culture than well, well, to do women. Um, you know, not only did they, they didn't have to do anything particular. They weren't expected to do anything. And to, to be a fluent member of society, you had to carry yourself a certain way. And so these young ladies had to learn how to do that. I can remember my grandmother and great grandmother telling me about how not only did their mothers do it, but also like at their church and their, uh, their teachers and stuff, they were taught to sit a certain way. And they stood a certain way and you've got to walk this way if you're a lady and all that. And I like it because my grandmother was like, yeah, screw that. Yeah. Just kind of did her own thing, but, um, it is interesting that at that time it was. So the, the training, the minds of is a good way to put it because that's what they were doing. I wished though that they had said educating kids, you know, educating young women. That would have been a much better thing to do than training, but I mean, that's just me and rain washing young women since 1905. Basically. Yeah. That's what it sounds like. Well, due to tough economic times brought on by the Great Depression, the college closed completely in 1934. So the hotel resumed operating, but only during the summer months. Well, then in 1937, a Charlton who allowed himself to be called doctor, purchased the Crescent Hotel and converted it to, quote, Baker's cancer curing hospital. Baker nationally advertised a strict regimen of fresh air, healthy food and exercises a basic basis for his cancer treatments. So it kind of had this air of like being mystic, like having this, this mystic air to it, but it was accompanied with the treatment of like the use of an elixir and the elixir mainly consisted of just alcohol and watermelon, though. So yeah, you just, you get them drunk and it tastes good. They, they tend to feel a little bit better or forget about their, their illnesses. But, you know, when you, when you hear fresh air, healthy food and exercise, that all sounds good. And, you know, none of that is bad. You know, I mean, it's good for everyone, not just, you know, folks that have cancer. Um, but so on the front end, this place looked very inviting. And with the idea that maybe you could become cured of this disease, even better. Sure. Yep. Well, let's look at this, this feller a little deeper here because this is, uh, yeah, he's he's something else. Yeah. Hey, he's, he's a character. So Norman Glenwood Baker, he was the 10th and last child of John and Francis Baker of Muscatine, Iowa, and he was, he was born on November 27th, 1882. His father reportedly held 126 patents and operated Baker manufacturing company in Muscatine, Muscatine. If you're from Iowa, you'll yell at me. I'm, I'm expecting that. Um, now his mother prior to her marriage had written extensively. So Baker left high school after a sophomore year and his early adult years were spent working as a tramp mechanic. Whatever that is. Um, after witnessing a vaudeville magician act, he organized his own traveling troop that starred a mind reader called Madam Pearl Tangly. Now Baker reportedly married one of his Madam Pearl Tangly actresses. So you're already seeing what's happening here. Um, but the marriage ended in an annulment. So he had this like traveling troop of people and they would go around performing in different cities and states. Well, he had a mind reader that was named Madam Pearl Tangly. Well, apparently, I mean, it was a lot easier to do this in the 1800s because yeah, we didn't have advertisements and stuff like we do now. You could just have a different Madam Pearl Tangly every third show or something. So he had several actresses that played this mind reader lady. Yeah. And he married one of them, but didn't worry about them. Now after touring for 10 years and with successive women performing, performing as Madam Tangly, Baker returned to, uh, Muscatine in 1914, where he patented the air caliophone, a portable organ run by air pressure that could be heard for a quarter of a mile. Geez, man. I, when you really need it loud. Yeah. Well, I just feel bad for everyone around him while he was testing that before he patented it, you know, you hear organ music and you're like, where is that coming from? And you realize it's a fricking quarter of the mile, a quarter of a mile down the road. Now, in addition, he ran a correspondence art school and a mail order business. So mail order business makes me think of mail order brides. I don't think that's what he was doing. No, I don't think so. Now, when Norman G. Baker opened his quote, Baker's Cancer Curing Hospital at the Crescent Hotel in 1937, he was already widely regarded as a medical hack. Baker had originally risen to prominence as a local radio host in his hometown of Muscatine. Um, in 1925, he got the Chamber of Commerce to sponsor his radio station, K T N T, which should foreknow the naked truth. Although originally licensed at 500 Watts, the station's power was often closer to 10,000. So it made him, you know, be able to be heard all across the United States. So he got a lot bigger than they originally planned. How in the heck did he pull that off to go from 500 to 10,000 Watts? I think it was he got licensed for the 500, but I think the station messed up and was pushing much power. Yeah, at 10,000 rather than only 500. So what would have been a local, like a college radio station, 500 Watts, you hear it within the town, it actually made it almost all the way across the United States. His whole thing was focusing on rural and small town issues. He spent his days advocating populist causes that denounced the supposed greed of America's largest corporations and financial institutions. And he probably would have lived out his days as a well respected, wealthy man had he not abandoned the station for his career in medicine. Well, in 1929, Baker had become aware of a special cancer sanitarium operated by Dr. Charles Ozias. Now Ozias supposedly cured his patients using a tonic that relied on a concoction of glycerin, carbolic acid and alcohol. He then mixed the formula with watermelon seeds, brown corn, silk and clover leaves. So curious to know if the cure worked Baker asked for five volunteers to try the treatment. So while all the patients died within a year, Baker covered up the results and argued that respected treatments like radiology were of little use. Instead, the homeopathic formula he advertised was the salvation for those suffering from cancer. So you can you see where this is going. I mean, yeah, I don't have to go any further in the notes. I'm going to, but I don't have to for you to understand this dude is a piece. Yeah. Five people died from cancer because he was giving him this junk medicine. But he covered it up and said it cured him. So you see where we're heading. Mm hmm. Well, I think some of y'all are probably reading into the end of this episode already. Well, a year later, he had acquired the patent to Dr. Ozias's quote, cure and open the Baker Institute to serve as the headquarters for his operation. Using his radio station, Baker advertised a tonic water throughout Iowa. He had attracted scores of patients and amassed a personal fortune worth several hundred thousand dollars. So at the time, that was a ton of money. Now, eventually, Norman G. Baker attracted the unwanted fury of Morris Fishbine and the American Medical Association. So Fishbine published a thorough attack on Baker's unfounded medical expertise in the Journal of the American Medical Association, accusing the radio host of fraud and deception. Baker was livid and he launched his own diatribe in retribution. So he specifically filed a defamation lawsuit against the American Medical Association, hoping that it would cease its assault. He even conducted an open air surgery in front of a large crowd where he pretended to use his tonic to heal a man with an inoperable brain tumor. Nevertheless, I mean, that's good acting if if he did that and didn't get caught or call the sham or something. How do you pull that off? OK, so it's all it's all a big scam. You got it. OK. But if if somebody is sitting there in the audience watching, hoping to see Baker heal this guy with an inoperable brain tumor and he's using this. What is he actually doing that that doesn't kill this guy? You know, whether he's got a brain tumor or not, or that actually convinces this crowd that he's done something to cure this guy. Well, that's the thing. How do you convince the crowd in such a short time? Because if it's an inoperable tumor, you're not operating on him. You're giving him tonic or something like that and then saying, oh, well, I mean, a week or two later, he was cured. Yeah, we weren't doing this live for everybody because you'd have to follow him around for a week, but trust me, he lived. Yeah, he's OK. Yeah, I don't understand how any of that was pulled off, but he's OK because there wasn't anything wrong with him to begin with. Right. Right. Now, nevertheless, this says that Baker's reputation took a severe beating, especially as an ever increasing number of patients testified to the ineffective ineffectiveness of his techniques. So he lost his lawsuit against the AMA and state officials began investigating his clinic. Baker finally snapped when the state of Iowa issued a warrant for his arrest for practicing medicine without a license. As such, he subsequently fled to Mexico, where he attempted to construct his own 100,000 watt radio free from the jurisdiction of the federal radio commission. Well, Norman Baker remains south of the border until 1937 when he ended up returning to Muscatine. He spent a single day in jail there in Iowa, and he tried to pull his life back together. This says, but he became a social pariah. So looking for new opportunities elsewhere in the United States, Baker relocated to Eureka Springs there in Arkansas. Now he eventually discovered this Crescent Hotel and realized it was for sale. And he said it looked like a, quote, castle in the air. So Baker managed to acquire enough capital to buy the building and he turned it into another medical facility that he called the Baker's Cancer Curing Hospital. So he treated people with the same tonic water that he had originally used in Iowa. Baker was back to fleecing his patients out of their life savings, it says. So according to the US Postal Inspector, he received an annual income of $500,000. That's at that time. Holy cow. That's a buttload now. And then that was insane. Oh, yeah, that was, uh, yeah, he had screw you money. Mm hmm. For sure. So apparently this whole time, his patients were routinely dying in the hospital while under his care, but federal authorities soon learned of Baker's operation and they began to quietly undermine its operations. Investigators were finally able to make an arrest after nearly a decade when Baker attempted to mail several advertisements for services, alleging that he used the mail to swindle consumers. So Baker was tried before a federal jury on seven counts of fraud. The jurors found Baker guilty sentenced him to four years at Fort Leavenworth federal prison. Meanwhile, the hospital shuttered its doors and resumed its prior identity as a vacation retreat. So Baker served his jail sentence in full despite several attempts to overturn the conviction. So he retired to Florida upon his release in 1944 and died impoverished a decade later. So a friend of Bakers actually began running the hotel shortly after his trial. And he eventually turned it over to a group of Chicago based businessmen some six years later. So it subsequently underwent a period of what they call fluid ownership over the next several decades. So it had some cycles of prosperity, some of hardship, but the Crescent Hotel hosted countless vacations, weddings and honeymoons, uh, you know, to the hundreds of people, probably thousands of people that ventured to the Ozarks. And just a quick, very short list of famous guests there, Willie Nelson, stayed at the Crescent. So I would have loved to stay there when Willie stayed there. That would have been fun. Um, Natchety Scott, mom of a day. He was renowned author, artist and civil rights activist James G. Blaine, former speaker of the house of representatives and U S senator of Maine, William Jennings, Brian secretary of state under president Woodrow Wilson and participant in the scopes trial and Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, they all stayed there. But Clinton is from Arkansas. So it makes sense that he would go there. What did you do for, you know, Willie just turned 90. Mm hmm. I figured it was a, it was a holiday in Texas. You know, yeah. Yeah. Well, um, actually on, uh, April 20th, we set out, uh, brownies and stuff for Willie Nelson. We did it the 19th, the night before, so that when he came, he had brownies at the house. He didn't show up as weird, but. Yeah, he didn't, he didn't show him. Yeah, that happened sometimes. All right, Matt. So let's face it. Coffee now is like $5 a cup without any of the fruit fruitness in it. No, that's just regular drip coffee. So it's getting a little crazy. I mean, all our bank accounts are, I mean, I don't know where it's going, but it's going out of our bank account. Right. Yeah. Everything is so expensive now. So it's crucial to get the best quality for your money and try to get a low price. And you can do that with Raycon premium audio earbuds, because like I said, they are premium odd audio at the perfect price point. So you can listen to what you want, when you want without breaking the bank. And in my opinion, they are better audio quality than most other, if not all other earbuds out there, but at a lower price point, which is pretty, I mean, that, that's crucial right now is to get a lower price point. Yeah. And with over 50,000 five star reviews, you know, you're getting a product that people love. And the reason they love it is the amazing sound quality and the affordable price. But on top of that, you get three customizable sound profiles, which, which I love, because I like to listen to podcasts. I like to listen to audio books, but I also like to listen to, you know, music. I always got to have some grateful dead going in there and everything sounds spectacular in my Raycon. Um, you've got earbud tap functions. You've got noise isolation, this cool awareness mode so that it, it doesn't completely eliminate the sound you can, when you're doing something, but you need to be aware of what's around you. It lets that sound bleed through so nobody can sneak up on you. Okay. Custom jail tips for the perfect fit. And with these, they will not come out. I mean, they will not come out. I mean, this past weekend, Amanda and I, we worked out in the garden. We were digging up flower beds. We both had our Raycons and neither one of them with all the sweat. It even rained. No problem. They stayed right where they were supposed to stay and their water and sweat resistant. So you don't have to worry about that at all. It's fantastic. Yeah. And we haven't even talked about the eight hours of playtime that you get, which, you know, you're, you're not going to be able to run these things out of battery before you're going to be able to stick them back in the cool, little charging case. So if you guys want to make a purchase that you're going to be absolutely thrilled with and know that you didn't break your bank account, go to by Raycon.com slash tails today to get 15% off your Raycon order. That's right. Go to by Raycon.com. That's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N dot com slash tails T-A-L-E-S. And you can get 15% off your Raycon order by Raycon.com slash tails. But, uh, so you see how unique the history is of this place. Um, you know, it's, it's a gorgeous building. Um, it's very old. It's got a lot of people in and out. And then you add this, this cancer hospital that was run by, uh, Norman Baker. And I don't know what kind of energy that would have left. Um, it was probably a huge mixture of energies with, with, with the proprietor, essentially being a wealthy scam artist. Um, you've got all these people putting their hope and faith into this hospital to be able to cure them of this disease. And meanwhile, they're just there, maybe enjoying some fresh air, maybe enjoying some good food, but they're not getting any better. And you've got people dying, you know, in this, in this facility. With all of that, taking into consideration, you can see that there could be some haunted activity going on, especially related to the cancer hospital. Right. And several apparitions from the hospital days are still hanging around, including Dr. Baker himself. Um, the apparition that is attributed Dr. Baker usually is seen in the hotel lobby. I said he's described as a man in a purple shirt and a white linen suit, which matches the photographs of Dr. Baker. Um, a nurse pushing a gunning, uh, residing in Dr. Baker's old morgue area is known to squeak and rattle down the halls of the hotel. Huh, that's, uh, pushing a morgue. I, man, I can't imagine. That's creepy. Um, there is a hotel maintenance man that's been witnessed. Um, and all the washers and dryers will mysteriously turn on in the middle of the night. That's more than just a power surge. Yeah. Now the laundry room is located next to Dr. Baker's old morgue, which still contains his autopsy table and walk in freezer. Wow. I mean, yeah, look, you're gonna, you're gonna have to have something available for these patients that don't make it. So, oh, he had, he had built a morgue inside the hotel. Now housekeepers at the Crescent report meeting, uh, Theodora. In room 419. Now she introduces herself as a cancer patient of Dr. Baker's and then vanishes after curdices are exchanged. You know, the, Hey, how are you? My name's Theodora. I'm one of Dr. Baker's cancer patients and then poof. She's gone. That's weird. Mm hmm. I tell you what's really weird about that is this verbal exchange that people claim to have had that that's something that's not very common. No, you get EVPs, you hear disembodied voices or you see apparitions. You usually don't have conversations with apparitions. Right. Right. Um, especially ones that actually tell you who they are and why they're there. Mm hmm. Now, Steve Garrison, who was a cook at the hotel, swears that he doesn't drink on the job. In fact, he says he doesn't drink at all. But Garrison had two strange encounters in the kitchen of the hotels, crystal dining room one morning while slicing vegetables, he looked up and saw a little boy with pop bottle glasses. So super thick, super thick. We, we always called him prescription ashtrays. Um, but he said this little kid is dressed in old fashioned clothing and knickers and he's just skipping around the kitchen. Another morning, Garrison flipped on the lights to begin the day's preparations. And almost all of the pots and pans came flying off the hooks. Not something you typically see from traditional pots and pans. No, you see that kind of behavior in normal kitchen utensils, even remote controlled pans. I mean, it wouldn't be hard to get all of them in there. I mean, you know, and honestly, it just with that, you go, yeah, this is a, this is a pretty haunted place. Um, but it goes on. Um, you know, continuing along with the stuff from, from Dr. Baker's era, uh, in February of 2019. So this is fairly recent. Yeah. A landscaper at the Crescent hotel made an amazing discovery when she unearthed a dump site filled with hundreds of bottles. Now what followed was a full on archaeological dig by the University of Arkansas. Um, an archeologist discovered bottles containing this mysterious chemical concoction and quote unquote medical specimens, believed to be a product of the years when the hotel was the cancer curing hospital. I want to know what medical specimens they found. Oh, well, let's talk about that. All right. Good deal. When the unearthing was first released to the press, there was international news coverage. I mean, this was a big deal. Um, for years, there had been rumors of unfathomable bottles once being displayed in the hotel in the area Baker used as a morgue, but never any proof. Short of a poster that Baker used to promote the hospital's alleged amazing cures. Okay. So there was at least a photograph that was used as a poster where these bottles were actually seen in the background. Mm hmm. But there were stories that Dr. Baker had all of these specimen bottles on display. Well, nobody knew just exactly what they were, what they were for, what was inside them, nothing until now. And Larry Flaxman, who's a best-selling author, speaker and paranormal researcher, has been involved with the Crescent Hotel's Paranormal Conferences since 2012 and I actually saw a video from Larry Flaxman talking about his involvement with the Crescent Hotel. And he had even visited the Crescent when he was a child on a road trip with his parents. So when they discovered these bottles, they called Flaxman and he immediately took off and headed to the hotel. So numerous samples were handed over to the Arkansas archaeological survey. At the University of Arkansas to be recorded, but after three years, no progress had been made in identifying the contents. Okay. They looked like tissue. They looked like human remains, but there was no way to be sure because we're talking about a big fraud here. Right. I mean, he could have easily hacked up pigs and cows and fish and whatever and shoved them in some weird liquid and told people that these were tumors and growths that he had removed from other patients. You know, there's no telling what he could have told people. Yeah. And like you said, it's just a hunk of pork chop or something. Right. Pork chop with fish shoved on it or something. But making that kind of assumption, it wasn't enough for Larry Flaxman. And so after three years, he began to become very frustrated. So Flaxman got permission to take several bottles in early 2022. So just last year with the hope of finding someone medically to identify what was actually in there. So Flaxman says he got tons of rejections. Nobody wanted to fool with this. Either they didn't want the notoriety. They didn't want people looking over their shoulder or they just didn't want to be involved with what this was. Um, but Flaxman had pretty much given up until he was, uh, he had made contact with, uh, Dr. Matt quick, who is a surgical pathologist at the University of Arkansas Medical Center and he specializes in tissue analysis. Actually, he, his specialty is, um, female cancer treatment. Okay. So this is what this guy does all day, every day. He examines tissues. Right. He knows what he's looking at because, I mean, he's been doing this for so long. I mean, this is what he does. But why would Dr. Quick be interested in this other than it's just kind of a neat story? Um, Dr. Quick had had a paranormal encounter at the Crescent Hotel years before. Oh, wow. So he had a connection there and to be a part of this, he was ready. So you can see all of Dr. Quick's analysis in the, in a video online. Um, and I went through and watched it. It was very interesting to me, but I have a medical background, um, to the average layperson, maybe not, um, other than when you just finally get down to, okay, what the hell was it? Um, but what Dr. Quick was able, and his team was able to discern is that these tissues were indeed human and that the samples came from pressure ulcers. More, more commonly known as bed sores. Uh, so surgical debridement or where, um, a physician will go in there and actually cut away the dead tissue in order to promote healing. When that dead tissue is there, it's not healing. So you got to get rid of that dead tissue. And you got to get it down to like fresh bleeding tissue. You got it. And so that was a very common procedure even now. But Dr. Quick explained that it did appear that during the time of Baker's cancer hospital, there was actually care that these patients received. Hmm. So you think about the, the, the patient that is most susceptible to developing pressure ulcers is the sick, feeble bed bound patient. Sure. Yeah. Which at some point, I would imagine the majority of, uh, Baker's patients, quote unquote patients were in that category. You know, they're dying from cancer. Eventually they become weak enough that they can't get out of bed. Right. And when you remain in bed for long periods of time, um, you run the risk of developing these pressure ulcers along bony promenuses, like, you know, the tailbone, your heels, the back of your head, your elbows. Okay. And it wasn't just then it's still, that's still a, uh, still a, still a true, the still a true today. But the technology that we have to, to help prevent that was nowhere near. Uh, you know, it's, it has advanced so far in the last 30 years. Right. Baker's people, they, I mean, they were in just regular beds. Um, you know, probably being kept as comfortable as possible. But still not great. Um, but it, it appears that somebody, either Baker or somebody on his staff was actually making an attempt to take care of these patients that had these bedsource. It was probably one of his people. I doubt it was him. Yeah. You know, he was probably too worried about trying to develop the, the new stuff. Then just had some of maybe his nurses or whatever that would do in the actual care of the patients. I don't know for sure. But yeah, but it's, it's just, it's amazing. It's amazing that they were able to find these samples and find a physician that was willing to do the work to find out exactly what they were, but they weren't able to identify what the liquid that they were stored in was gross. Yeah. Pretty gross. But I thought that I had to include that because that was so interesting with them finding those and then getting an answer just last year. Yeah. Oh, I love that. That's cool. So, um, stepping back just a little bit from this. Um, back in 1997, uh, Marty and Elise, uh, wrote, Roanick purchased the Crescent Hotel. Now when they purchased it, they inherited this weird association with the paranormal and what seemed to be a hundred years worth of ghost stories. Hmm. And, and this was at a time way before sci-fi would send the ghost hunters show out there before all these paranormal groups would want to come out and do these. Um, these investigations, you know, this was before all of that. So most hotel owners at that time would have rather kept this on, on the download, you know, right, you know, it's an a on the Ostegee. Um, because you don't want to scare away potential guests. The Roanicks were not that way. They decided to take a different approach. They decided to embrace the old hotel and see that it lived up to its title as the most haunted hotel in America. And a key part of that early pursuit included Mr. Roanick pursuing and hiring two certified mediums, Ken Feugate and Carol Heath. These are both, uh, San Francisco natives and they came into quote unquote, read the building. Now they're fine, they're findings, plus the startling number of repeated sightings that had been recorded over the decades, became the basis of what has become the nightly crescent hotel ghost tour. It's only now, however, that one of the most compelling discoveries from that initial reading became clear. So check this out. So Jack Moyer, who's a hotel general manager for the, uh, for the Roanick. He, he relates this story. Said, I clearly remember Carol, he stating that he had discovered a portal to the other side for those who are on the same quote unquote, frequency. Hmm. Moyer, who was a skeptic at the time, laughed and said, I remember asking myself, what were we thinking, trying to explore this unexplained world? But after more than a decade of working around the paranormal, I now had surely recognized how many people truly connect with the spirits here at the crescent. And now there is a new and specific reason why. Now Moyer's reason is the fact that after 18 years, he has been confronted with the realm of a chilling coincidence that caused the original portal discovery to resurface. So 18 years after Carol, he said that there was a portal to the other side. Um, more year, the hotel general manager was having a conversation with the ghost tour manager, Keith Scales. And Moyer says, Keith came to me to share a concern about a phenomenon that had been recurring on his nightly tours. That phenomena included multiple guests who had grown faint with a few passing out briefly at the same tour stop with no reasonable explanation. Hmm. So they get to this stop in the tour and some of the guests start to become very faint, lightheaded, even passing out momentarily. That's weird. Yeah. Now Scales described the location and it was the area that had been identified as a portal more than a decade ago by Carol Heath. So, uh, more year goes on to say Kevin Scales then took me to the place and pinpointed the portal phenomenon as happening just outside the hotel's annex entrance, exactly where Heath had identified the location of his portal years ago. Now, portal, yeah. The phenomena has guests suddenly turning pale, falling against and then sliding down the wall in a faint. And although the loss of consciousness does not last very long and complete recovery is immediate, it tends to further substantiate the hotel's legendary supernatural connection to the paranormal. Moyer went on to say what made that moment most chilling was when Keith and I realized that this portal was directly above the morgue located in the bottom level of the hotel. Remember, I said, Oh, Baker had a morgue in there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. So now now they actually have people that have this odd experience when they get to this spot that is on the floor directly above the morgue, the same spot were years earlier, Carol Heath, a well known medium, claim to have had a connection there and felt that this was a spot, a portal to the other side. Huh. So scales had no idea that that had even occurred or that he said even pointed out that specific spot. He just thought it was something weird going on during his tours. Maybe you thought it was a gas leak right there or something. Yeah. I mean, that would probably be my first thought is what what's the smell right here is there? Right. But that I try to wrap my head around that the portal and stuff. Yeah. It's got me confused. Cause like the portal, what are they saying the portal is to? Is it just to the other side or? Yeah. The, yeah, the other side, the spiritual realm. Okay. All right. Not to hell or anything else like that. Uh, not like a portal that takes you down to the morgue. Yeah. Because as you've seen, there's really nothing malevolent going on here. It's just very, very active. Right. But, um, more year and scales, both agree that this event has never been known to occur anywhere else on the tour, except at that one specific location. So it's not like he's given a tour and people are fainting all over the place. Yeah. You know, it's just in this one spot. Now on top of all of that, let's talk about some of the other spirits that hang around in the Crescent Hotel. Um, it is said that once the frame of the hotel had been constructed in the 1880s, one of the Irish stone masons plunged to his death in what now is room 218. And this room appears 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. Throughout the history of the Victorian hotel, employees have referred to this entity as Michael. A classified poltergeist due to the nature of the unexplained activity. Guests have witnessed hands coming out of the bathroom mirror. Yikes. Cries of a falling man in the ceiling. The door opening, then slamming shut, unable to be opened again. The intrigue of this activity has drawn guests specifically to request the historic accommodations of room 218 just for the chance of experiencing something. Sounds like, and that's the best spot to try, but I'm telling you what, if I'm getting out of the shower and there are hands coming out of the mirror, I'm done. No, I'm out. Yeah. Find me another room, preferably in another hotel. And I want to know why, like we've talked about, uh, I can't remember where we did it. Main episode of Patreon, something, but when we talked about mirrors being, Oh, yeah. With portals to, to another dimension. Well, there was one hotel. There was one hotel we talked about where people would see these messages written on the the steamy mirror while they were in the shower. Yeah. I can't remember which one that was. But I can't either. But there's something about that, that mirrors are just creepy when they have stuff like that happening, whether it be hands coming out of it or not. And, and maybe it's just something ingrained in us from, you know, as kids, the, the bloody merry thing and being afraid of mirrors as a kid, but, or maybe it's longer than that. And we've just, as a species known, these mirrors, there's something supernatural that happens with these mirrors and it, and it may cause weird paranormal activity. And that's why it's creepier. Yeah. But it just seems creepy. Well, you know, Adam, you and I know this because of, of, of where our interests lie. But some of our listeners may not be aware of this. But if you, if you look into places where there has been suspected occult activity, houses is what I'm specifically referring to. There is a common thread in these houses when they're investigated after the fact. And it's all the mirrors are either covered up or they're turned around backwards facing the wall. Yeah. Okay. And it's widely believed in, in the occult community that these mirrors can be utilized to either open a portal or open a communication with the spirit world. Um, you know, we've had, uh, we've had shows where we talked about people that made attempts to commune with the dead and the use of a mirror in a dark room, um, was how they did it. So you're right. I mean, mirrors do play a big role in this. Um, and so the fact that the mirrors, particularly in room two, 18 of the crescent, uh, are involved, it's not surprising. Right. Right. Um, and, and even more so if it, if we're talking about the spirit of a worker, um, who died or fell to his death from the spot that is that room. But it's, it's, it's really, really, I mean, I don't, I don't even know how to look at this exactly. It's like, you know, there's a lot of activity in one single room that's way beyond just the, well, the door creaked and the doorknob rattled. And I felt like somebody was watching me or I felt like someone sat on the bed. I mean, this is, this is a lot more than that, especially hearing screams from the ceiling and things like that. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. But, uh, let's look down at the dining room. You know, we've already talked about a couple of cases where the cook had experiences in the crystal dining room kitchen. In the dining room itself, many employees have encountered playful spirits in Victorian dress. One holiday season while the dining room was closed, the grand Christmas tree and packages underneath move from one end of the room to the other. The next morning employees found the tree and packages moved with chairs circling and facing the newly placed holiday symbol. An entire Christmas tree and the presents went from one side of the room to the other. Now, this, yeah, this sounds like to mean it would be a really good prank to pull. Mm hmm. Yeah. How you would pull this off with nobody catching you or without you just making a complete utter mess of it. Mm hmm. I don't know. I don't either. I mean, let's, let's put it this way. If it is called the grand Christmas tree, let's assume that it's not some six foot Charlie Brown tree. Yeah, pretty grand. It's, it's going to be big. It's going to be big. And, you know, just getting a tree like that set up and decorated is a challenge in and of itself. Try moving it and preserving everything that's on it and underneath it. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. You know, that's, that's incredible right there. Yep. But another time employees returned in the morning to find the dining room in perfect order except for the menus scattered throughout the room. And on another occasion, a waitress looked into the huge mirror. Here we go with the dagger mirrors again. Between the doors from the dining room and the kitchen and saw a man and woman in Victorian garb facing each other as if they were in a wedding. She said the groom turned and made eye contact with the right with the waitress and then the couple faded away. Mm hmm. Says the waitress quit shortly after this incident. Yeah. I mean, I probably wouldn't do. Yeah. That's, that's a lot. That's a lot to have to process. You know, I was like, this is where I work. This is where I come every day. And something weird is going on here. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Well, and it's like sometimes, you know, people are fine with ghost activity and experiencing it as long as it's not at their house. Or as long as it's not at their place of business, something like that. Yeah, sure. So probably a little too close to home for that person and they were like, no, I'm done. I'm out. Yeah. That, that wouldn't have been enough to run me off. It would have been neat to experience. Now, if you reach for me through the mirror, then I'm, then I'm going. But if I just see you, yeah, I'm probably okay. And see it work. That's different. Mm hmm. Then if I saw you at home. Oh, oh yeah. If I saw, if you followed me home, I'd, I'd be a little upset about that. Mm hmm. But another commonly reported paranormal activity is a man in Victorian clothing sitting at a table near the windows. And he says, I saw the most beautiful woman here last night and I am waiting for her to return. Many have recounted seeing apparitions in Victorian ball attire, dancing around the room during the wee hours of the morning while the room was closed and dark. Now that, that is something we have seen in other haunted hotels. Is this almost like you're watching a ball that happened, you know, maybe, maybe a hundred years ago. You're just kind of seeing it replay in front of your eyes. That would be so cool. Yeah. So cool. I know one of the, we talked about, talked about a little town in Missouri a few years ago and that was a common thing in, in the theater there was that they could see these people dancing and you could, you could feel them kind of moving around you. You know, very interesting. But the, the Crescent Hotel and Spa offers these ghost tours. Pretty much every night and the tours themselves have also produced some pretty spectacular tales. The guides have many, many, many stories from their time at the hotel. One such guide revealed that she had met a couple that was staying on the first floor near the governor's suite. The couple told the guide that on their second night in the building, they had slept with just a sheet covering the two of them. The husband then awoke in a deep sweat realizing that someone or something had tucked them in with a comforter. Apparently they had been tucked in on three more times that night. And another guide recounted an incident where two guests checked into room 221. Upon leaving, um, sorry, upon leaving the elevator for the second floor, they immediately encountered a man wearing an all black Victorian style outfit. They said with a smile, he asked the guests as to whether or not they required help finding their guest room. Believing that this was a hotel employee, they agreed. The man in the Victorian attire led them to room 221, unlocked the door and pushed it open. As the couple entered, the man stayed outside the door smiling and tilted his head from side to side. And one of the, one of the members of the couple realized that they had not tipped the gentleman. And when they turned around with some cash, he had disappeared. Now that was, that was weird enough, but they, they still weren't thinking ghost. So the two guests just hung out in their guest room for the rest of the day. Didn't think much about it. But when they tried to get back into room 221 later that evening, the door would not open. So the couple went down to the front desk where they asked, what, what was wrong with their key? And the staff member stated that they had somehow received the key to room 321. And the two described the man who had originally let them into room 221. And the staff member reported that no such person presently worked at the hotel. That's weird. So, I mean, the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, yeah, seems like it's pretty dull going on it. Yeah, it does. I mean, that's a lot of activity. But like I said, none of it really seems all that malevolent. It's just like people have just checked in and they're still there. Even, even some of Dr. Baker's cancer patients have seemed to have hung around, you know, maybe, you know, still waiting on their next treatment or just, you know, coping with, with life with a disease, not realizing that they're now dead from that disease. But just too many stories. Like I said, these were some of the best ones. There were more. There were a lot more. So, you know, we could probably sit here and go for another 30, 45 minutes on all the other stories, just digging and digging and digging. But this gives you a really good idea of how active the Crescent Hotel really is. But I mean, we talked about the portal to the other side. You know, that usually when we talk about a portal, it's a bad thing. You know, this is a portal to hell. There's a demon in your hotel. You know, you were running a hotel for demons here. Yeah. Okay, maybe not. What if it's just a portal for all the cool dead people, you know? What if just the nice ones come back and hang out at this hotel? What if this is like the vacation spot for the dead? You know, they're just looking to get away, you know? You get a, you know, you're working, you know, nine to five for a millennium and you're dead in job. Yeah. You got to take a break every once in a while. Go check out the Crescent. Hey, you know, it's kind of fun. No, I really don't know. But you know, that the whole idea of the portal, you know, the fact that there was, there's actually a morgue in the building. You know, there was probably a lot of people that died here during Dr. Baker's time. So, I mean, there, like I said, there's some energy there for sure. And it seems to be maybe all over the map. But it sure does seem like that if you're in Arkansas and you want to take a trip and go to a haunted hotel, this would be the place to go. And you can get rooms I went on last night and actually clicked on their website and could have booked a room for next week. Cool. Yeah. So they have available then. It's definitely available. So go check it out. And if we've got any listeners that live in and around Eureka Springs or in Arkansas, you probably know about this place. Tell us if you've got any stories from the Crescent Hotel or maybe your family or friends have stayed there and had something weird happen to them. Let us know. And the best place to do that is in our Facebook group. We call it the graveyard. We get people in there sharing personal experiences. Every day and no one is going to make fun of you. No one is going to pick on you. Call you a nut job. You know, we're all just nice folks. We want to hear these fantastic stories. You know, everybody's got a story to tell and we want to hear yours. So let us know. Then you can go and check out our website, which is graveyardpodcast.com. And you can find links to purchase graveyard, tells merchandise. Hey, that new t-shirt you need for the summer or that new thermal mug to keep your beverage cold when you're sitting by the pool with the nice skull mic logo on it or graveyard tails and red across it. That's where you can find it. And you can. They're good shirts too. Oh yeah. Yeah. Good quality stuff. I mean, all of my kids have graveyard tell stuff. I mean, yeah. They've all got hoodies and they've got t-shirts and coffee bugs. They've all got it. Okay. I got to buy Michael a new hoodie because he's grown out of yours already. They love to promote dad show. So I appreciate that. But yeah, you can find all that stuff on our website, but you can also listen to the show and you can become a patron. And you guys that have donated the show, you are what keeps us going. You keep our equipment in working order. You're the reason that we can reach out and get guests to come on the show. We can start doing live events again. Now that, you know, COVID didn't just dump on top of everybody. You know, all of the money that you guys have donated to the work that Adam and I do. Absolutely has kept us going for the last five years and it's going to keep us going for another five. So we thank you for that. Go check that out as well. Yeah, we couldn't. We couldn't keep doing it without our patrons and the support from all our listeners. I mean, Matt and I didn't think we would be still doing graveyard tales five, six years later, but you guys are the reason that we are. So thank you. And I mean, hopefully we can do it for at least five more years. That's right. Or at least until the next time. So until then, we'll save you a seat in the graveyard. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.