The Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs: Norman Baker's Hospital and Room 218

The hotel's history is well documented by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, including Norman Baker's sham cancer hospital and his 1940 conviction for mail fraud. A 2019 dig on the grounds turned up bottles from his "cures."

The ghost stories are weaker. We found no record of Michael the stonemason, Theodora or the nurse with the gurney, and their backstories change from one telling to the next. The best accounts are first-hand from staff, published by KATV in 2020, which also quotes the general manager's skepticism. "America's Most Haunted Hotel" is the hotel's own slogan.

Michael, Room 218

The best-known story says an Irish stonemason named Michael fell to his death while the hotel was being built, landing where Room 218 is now. Guests say curtains move, hands appear from the bathroom mirror and men are tripped. Accounts disagree on his age and how he fell, and KATV calls it folklore. We found no record of the death.

Theodora, Room 419

Theodora is said to be seen outside Room 419 looking for her key, or folding guests' clothes. The hotel calls her a cancer patient from the Baker years; other tellings make her a member of staff. There's no record of her.

Norman Baker's hospital

From 1938 to 1940 the hotel was the Baker Hospital, where Norman Baker claimed to cure cancer. Stories from that time include a nurse pushing a gurney on the third floor. In the basement, the room the tours call the "morgue" is the center of the staff's own stories: marketing director Bill Ott told KATV that during a Ghost Hunters investigation a steel pole swung like a pendulum for about 75 minutes, and general manager Jack Moyer said the morgue is the one place he's been frightened. We found no document showing the room was used as a morgue.

Ghost Hunters

The TV series Ghost Hunters investigated in 2005. Its own recap says the team saw a figure on a thermal camera in the morgue that they couldn't explain, and recorded high readings in Rooms 2500 and 419. That's the show's own interpretation.

Other stories

The hotel also tells of Dr. John Freemont Ellis, its 19th-century house doctor, whose pipe tobacco is smelled in Room 212; a small boy bouncing a ball on the stairs; and Morris, the hotel cat, said to have been its "general manager" for 21 years. A Victorian gentleman in the bar and dancers in the dining room appear in ghost collections with no named witness.

The skeptics

Jack Moyer told KATV he didn't believe the stories when he arrived in 1997, and that staff often "work themselves up." An overnight employee of four years said they'd seen nothing.

A resort hotel

The Crescent was built in 1884-86 by the Eureka Improvement Company, led by former governor Powell Clayton, to designs by Isaac S. Taylor of St. Louis, in limestone quarried nearby. It opened on May 1, 1886, at a cost of $294,000.

College and hospital

From 1908 it was Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women, running as a hotel in summer; the college closed in 1924, reopened from 1929 to 1933, and then the building stood empty. In July 1937 Norman Baker bought it and in 1938 opened the Baker Hospital, selling fake cancer cures. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1940 and held at Leavenworth until 1944.

Hotel again

The Crescent reopened as a hotel on July 4, 1946. A fire damaged the fourth floor in 1967, and restoration followed in the 1970s and 1980s. Elise and Marty Roenigk bought it in 1997 and added a spa. In 2019 a dig on the grounds uncovered bottles from Baker's "cures." It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.