Crescent Hotel

Arkansas · USA · Hotel

Markedsføres som «Amerikas mest hjemsøkte hotell» — en gang falsk kreftklinikk under bedrageren Norman Baker.

The Crescent Hotel at Eureka Springs, Arkansas opened in 1886 as a luxury resort for wealthy travellers. Between 1908 and 1924 it served mainly as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women — a girls' school — and operated as a hotel only during the summer months. Michael, an Irish stonemason, fell to his death while the hotel was being built. Room 218 is his, and it is the room guests ask for.

The darker history came later. In 1937 the building was bought by Norman G. Baker, a charismatic but fraudulent figure with no medical training whatever, who had already been driven out of his home state of Iowa. He opened it as the Baker Cancer Clinic and told patients he could cure them without surgery. He could not. One of his treatments consisted of drilling holes in patients' skulls and injecting a mixture of spring water, corn silk, carbolic acid and ground watermelon seeds. People sold everything they had to come here, and they died in these rooms. Baker was convicted of mail fraud in 1940 and served four years in prison.

An archaeological excavation has since uncovered hundreds of bottles of Baker's secret formula and jars of surgical specimens taken from patients; in 2019 workmen digging on the grounds found more bottles of his preparations buried on the site. Part of the macabre atmosphere is a morgue from Baker's time, with an autopsy table and a cold chamber for bodies.

Over the past 25 years the Crescent has gained a reputation as the most haunted hotel in America, featured in seventeen national and international paranormal television programmes. The accounts include ghostly nurses pushing gurneys, apparitions of former patients, a businessman in the lobby, a man pushing a woman down a flight of stairs, a schoolgirl going from a window, strange lights drifting through the corridors and footsteps echoing in empty rooms. In 2005 the hotel featured on Ghost Hunters, where the team claimed to see what they described as a full-bodied apparition on their thermal camera.

In 1997 Marty and Elise Roenigk bought the Crescent for 1.3 million dollars and led a six-year restoration. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. The hotel is open, welcomes both ordinary guests and ghost hunters, and hides none of it.

Sources: Wikipedia, crescent-hotel.com, Smithsonian Magazine, usghostadventures.com, Atlas Obscura

FAQ

Hvor ligger Crescent Hotel?

Crescent Hotel ligger i Arkansas, USA.

Opplysningene bygger på lokal folketro og vitneskildringer.

Image: Wikimedia Commons