Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Short Suck #43: Crescent Hotel Horrors: From Healing Springs to... Hauntings?

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Once hailed as a luxurious spa retreat in the Ozarks, the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs would earn a far darker reputation - one of fraud, tragedy... and restless spirits. From its days as a supposed healing haven to a hospital of horrors run by a quack doctor, the Crescent has been called America’s most haunted hotel. Step inside its haunted halls, if you DARE....on this historical and paranormal October episode. For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to another edition of Time Suck Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins, and today I will be sharing the story of the Crescent Hotel Horrors, from Healing Springs to Hauntings. Being that it's October, I've decided to do some horror-related short sucks this month, topics that you might find on the Scared to Death podcast instead of here on Time Suck. And if you listen to Scare to Death, you may recall that we did tell the story of the Crescent Hotel way back in early 2020, episode 35, Crescent Hotel Horrors. I remember thinking then that there was enough real world, documented horror that took place

at this hotel and enough strange shit that occurred in the hotel's town of Eureka Springs that we could also do an episode of time suck about it, at least a short one. So here we are. If you're a connoisseur of haunted places, it's likely even if you don't listen to Scare to death that you've already heard of the Crescent Hotel. The stories of supposed sidings are many. And the backstory to the alleged ghosts is intense. opened in the little town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in 1886, when the Berg had almost 4,000 people living in it, almost twice as many as today, the once fabulous Crescent Hotel didn't initially look like it would ever become known primarily for darkness, decay, and spectral figures lurking in its halls.

Quite the opposite. The magnificent structure, with its high ceiling, chandeliers, and modern for the time miracles like electricity and hot and cold running water, was intended to be a place where people could relax in splendor, where they might dine in the hotel's restaurant after a long day of horseback riding, walking on carefully manicured paths, or playing croquette in the gardens. Maybe if these people were travelers seeking some kind of medical miracle, as they often were, they might often spend some of their time taking a dip or a refreshing bath in Eureka's eponymous springs, famous waters that supposedly held healing powers.

Indeed, it was these healing waters that set off a tourism boom to the newly founded city in the 1880s, an explosion in visitors, some of whom would stay in hotels like the Crescent, others who might simply erect shacks near the water, and hope that whatever ailment they had come with would be gone by the time they left. But instead of the face of the town's wellness industry, the Crescent Hotel became something else entirely. After a stint as a school for girls, and another is a hospital run by a conniving fraud.

Many have wondered if the history of the Crescent Hotel has left more than just physical reminders of the past. They wonder, does something roam the halls of the once stately property? And if they venture inside, will they encounter it? Words and ideas can change the world. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. I have a dream. I'll plead not guilty right now. Your only chance is to leave with us.

Let's start, as we often do here, with some history. Have you ever been to Arkansas? Tucked between Missouri, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee, Arkansas is America's 25th state, entered into the Union on June 15, 1836. And, of course, people have lived in the land now known as Arkansas for long before that. The hills and valleys of northwestern Arkansas, the focus of our episode today, are the ancestral lands of the historic O'Connell. Osage Nation. And bands of Delaware and Shawnee peoples have also lived in the area. The Kwa-pa people, part of the Osage Nation, were called to Arkansas, meaning South Wind People, and Algonquian, a family of about 30 languages spoken by various Native American tribes.

Some sources say that Native American legends tell of a great healing spring in the Eureka Springs area. We don't know how long people have dipped their bodies into its supposedly healing waters, but perhaps for hundreds, if not a thousand or more years. And maybe it has made some people feel better. Probably has. We know now that mineral springs and hot springs, they can't actually cure an illness. You're not going to suddenly no longer have, you know,

lung cancer or AIDS after soaking in a spring, unfortunately, but regular soaking can provide a variety of health benefits, including muscle pain relief, skin condition improvement like eczema and psoriasis, reduce stress, potentially boosted circulation, things like that. And the minerals in some springs, such as magnesium and sulfur, combined with the heat and buoyancy, can support the body's natural healing processes and promote overall wellness. So it doesn't cure, but does help. And if you've ever soaked in a mountain spring, you know that it just feels good. Back to Arkansas's history of settlement.

The very first Europeans in Arkansas were Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and the men under his employ. When he led an expedition into the territory way back in 1541, after finding nothing he considered of exceptional value and encountering native resistance the entire way he and his men returned to the mississippi river where de soto fell ill and died in may of 1542 while his men proceeded to mexico de soto was followed by french explorers jacques marquette and louis jolier over a century later in sixteen seventy three opening up a century and a half of french exploration and commerce but early european uh but early european uh but early European colonization of the area, pretty spotty, mostly accidental. The French were focusing

on the better-known and better mapped regions of portions of present-day Texas and Louisiana. By the end of the 17th century, French missionaries began to follow in these explorers' footsteps, congregating around the Arkansas Post, a place established near Lake Diamond in 1686, a military outpost. A few missionaries actually stayed in Arkansas, and the ones who did were often killed by the indigenous Kuopah and another group, the Corolla. For much of the first half of the 1700s, the Arkansas Post, the first European settlement in Arkansas that have been built about 35 miles up river from the strategically significant confluence of the Arkansas River with the Mississippi River will be taken down and reestablished

depending on where missionaries or traders found it advantageous to have a base. In 1721, Scotsman John Law and his company of the west, a joint stock company, acquired control of the colony of Louisiana, then stretching over the entire Mississippi River Valley via a charter granted by the King of France, Louis XIth. The charter required the company to recruit colonists and to grant land individuals for the establishment of concessions or plantations, and John Law himself received one of the largest concessions,

located on the Arkansas River. By the end of the 1720s, 47 habitants resided there, so didn't exactly explode in population. A storekeeper, a surgeon, an apothecary, or apothecary, excuse me, a military garrison led by commandant, plus a handful of indentured servants, and six African-American slaves. However, a law would go bankrupt. Most of the people who would come with him had to pivot and become hunters and traders

if they wanted to remain in the area. Throughout the 18th century, the vast majority of the European population of Arkansas, a very small population of just a few hundred people, was engaged in hunting or the fur and skin trade as trading post managers hired hands and hunters. The French and the Kwa'pah hunted and traded for bear oil, tallow, buffalo meat, skins, you know all the stuff you find in the grocery store today, ship them down the river to New Orleans.

It's produced an interesting cultural mixing because in addition to the French from France, French Canadians, started coming down as well, finding it much easier to make living, driven by hunting and fur trading in the abundant Ozarks, then farming in the much colder climate and short growing seasons in Canada. In the last two decades of the 18th century, a few farming families, more French from the Illinois country,

plus Anglo-Americans and German presidents mixed, arrived. Them and some military officers stationed at Arkansas Post were the main European inhabitants, and the officers were considered to be the center of the area's very tiny upper class, as they were well-educated. Arkansas, along with all of the Louisiana territory,

passed into Spanish hands in November of 1762, but the Spanish wouldn't influence the culture or settlement of Arkansas very much. It was largely ignored. That Arkansas post, founded by the French, became a small Spanish outposts now, and was moved upriver to a more defensible location, served as a hub for the area's fur traders,

who were still mostly French, and provided supplies for travelers and housed a very small military contingent. The Louisiana Territory would switch hands a couple more times, first when it returned to French control in 1800, in exchange for a kingdom in Italy. France would then sell the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. famously in 1803

for the paltry sum of $15 million, or approximately one or two houses in the Hampton today. Obviously, $50 million went a lot further back then than it does now, but this was still a steel of a deal. For the most part, however, for those living on the ground, life was defined not by which Europeans or Americans were in charge, but by remote hunting, fishing, and trading. Very, very rural, pretty quiet life. Three French families managed to make it big in agriculture, one of which built the first flour mill in Arkansas, and five German Protestant families also became quite prosperous, but by and large, the state remained extremely rural and undeveloped. Historian Morris Arnold believes that, quote,

there were never more than eight or ten real farmers at any one time near the Arkansas Post in the colonial period. So, yeah, again, very rural. Moving along now to the beginning of the 19th century and some of the first decades of American independence, the first order of business for the newly founded U.S., which had been repressed for decades by Great Britain, was, you know, to repress someone else. The way of the world for most of the world's history. The U.S. government was able to strong arm the Osage into cede northern Arkansas in an 1825 treaty.

After that, the land was open to white settlers, but Eureka Springs, where our story takes place today, remained sparsely populated until after the Civil War. And when it did see an influx of visitors, it was supposedly mostly because of one man, Dr. Alva Jackson. Jackson's story doesn't have a lot of physical evidence behind it, but has been reprinted in enough articles on the area that it is definitely. worth including probably happened. Alva Jackson born on July 26, 1806, down in Georgia, would be credited with finding Eureka Springs major spring, basin spring. At least he was the one who found it for us white folk. And in 1856, claimed that the waters from that spring had cured his eye ailments.

Not sure what kind of eye ailments he had. Guessing he had glaucoma, maybe some sight problems, you know, some vision problems. Eye ailments is a fucking weird way to describe. that though. It sounds super gross to me. Like his eyeballs were just covered in warts. This is his alien eyes or like blood and pus, just constantly seeping out of his

fucking nasty eyeballs. May I never, may none of us ever suffer from those kinds of eye ailments. According to some sources, Jackson had established a hospital in a local cave during the Civil War in the area called Dr. Jackson's Cave Hospital and he'd used the waters from

Basin Springs to treat his patients there, claiming he'd learned his techniques from Native Americans. Dr. Jackson's Cave Hospital That sounds like a fucking comedy sketch I know it was a very different time But I'm not sure I would feel good About going to a fucking cave hospital Even back in the 1860s

I feel like a cave hospital Is where you go to be treated for things That no one suffers from anymore Like you go there to get your rickets Or your scurvy cleared up You know maybe you got some plague You got stricken with a little bit of leprosy You need to take a trip to the cave hospital

See the cave doctor may we never suffer from eye ailments and may we never be taken to be treated in cave hospitals where we will definitely die after the war Jackson marketed the spring waters as Dr. Jackson's eye water that is a weird fucking product if that was on the shelf today

I don't know that that would be a real hot seller getting old Dr. Jackson's eye water the hell was going on with people's eyes back then a lot of eye ailments Jackson did not of course come up with the notion of magical water that can cure your fucking eyeballs or whatever else ails you.

His eye water was just another iteration of something called healing waters, a health idea that existed long before him, and one we still have around today. Today, places with supposedly healing waters are typically marketed as spas. And spas have actually been around for a bit. There were spas in colonial America,

but they didn't really become very popular until the mid-19th century, when nationwide prosperity outside of the civil warriors filled many with the desire to travel. A growing interest in the healing art, and faith cures. Some would say phony miracle cures or quackery. I would be one of those people.

Coupled with increasingly affordable railway fares caused people, especially the well-to-do, to flock to natural settings like the Ozark Mountains Springfield Plateau. Get some healing waters. This geologic layer contains large areas of limestone and dolomite. Soluble limestone made mostly of calcium carbonate and dolostone made mostly above the mineral dolomite

are sedimentary rocks that dissolve in water containing dissolved carbon dioxide and that leads directly to a landscape characterized by caves, sinkholes, other unique geological features like springs. Rain passes through the ground, you know, the porous ground in areas like this, continues down to a level called the zone of saturation. The zone is a place where water completely fills every opening in and around rock and soil, similar to how, you know, water fills the empty spaces in like a bowl full of marbles. you know you know how you fill up bowls of marbles all the time that's a that's a pretty good analogy right uh the upper surface of this zone is called the water table below are aquifers bodies of saturated rock through which water passes easily uh springs conform on hillsides where a water table an aquifer or a water filled underground passageway runs into the slope of the land uh gravity causes the water to flow out and down the hillside uh one really cool thing about these springs

is that they generally produce fresh water throughout uh all this uh that is to typically pretty perfect for drinking without needing to be, you know, like a boiled or treated. Hence the names of water brands today like Poland Springs, right? This association still holds. Spring water is good, healthy water. And it actually generally is especially good because a lot of springs have a high mineral content the result of the water dissolving through the rock that I mentioned as it, you know, passes through. For instance, limestone dissolves into calcium carbonate while dolomite dissolves into calcium magnesium carbonate.

minerals can color and flavor the water or in the case of sulfur make it really fucking stink some minerals create carbon dioxide bubbles making the water naturally fizzy which is pretty cool and all of this looked to a population that was still more superstitious

than we are today like you know magic natural magic coupled with the fact that relaxing in a hot spring can make you feel pretty damn good as can get in a massage eating some fresh food right now you got a recipe for a brand new health fed, have some juice, sit in the springs, have a nice dinner in your hotel room, or whatever,

why did I say room, restaurant, or a room, you can have room service. Indeed, mineral water promoters, people who made spa-like businesses near these springs, made fantastic sweeping claims back in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Springs were said to alleviate or cure a wide range of illnesses, including rheumatism, Qatar, and inflammation of mucus membranes, tuberculosis, hay fever. Diabetes is quite the range of things. Dispepsia is a form of indigestion. Asthma, jaundice, malaria, paralysis. Okay. Neuralgia, aka intense nerve pain, gout, cancer, dropsy. You know how we're all fucking worried about having dropsy? It's excess fluid and tissues or body cavities. And the ever vague and pretty dismissive female troubles. Got to get your female troubles solved.

Does your lady suffer from female troubles? Tell her to soak that stinky old sour puss and Eureka Springs And say goodbye to hysteria That comes from one of the old pamphlets marketing this place. It doesn't. But I feel like it could have. I imagine, you know, real ads from the time shared a similar tone. The earliest most popular health resort in America was in Saratoga Springs, New York,

beginning in the early 1800s. In Arkansas, the location of that spring-heavy spring-filled plateau, the first bath house at Hot Springs, Arkansas, built back in 1830. And soon Eureka Springs, nearly 200 miles north of Hot Springs, Arkansas, up near the Missouri border, would see the same kind of business. And why did people flock there? Instead of just having some of that sweet Dr. Jackson's eyewater sent to them, retrieved for them?

Well, because it was one thing to buy Jackson's eye cure, just like we might buy a bottle of lotion at a hotel spa or some goop product just to try it out. but if you're really serious about getting better you had to go there at least that was a prevailing thought you see for many of us humans for quite some time our experience of health for better or for worse has often been thought of

as a pilgrimage or as a journey something that will probably sound familiar to anyone who's a cruised Instagram recently seen a post about somebody's health journey or recovery journey right sometimes a journey is metaphorical sometimes just like a process getting better

not an actual physical trip but it is still common for people to take physical journeys as well like the many people who go to health spas retreats other places where they envision becoming the best version of themselves you know in other words they don't just want a product they want an experience

something that will transform them inside and out the way people have imagined pilgrimage pilgrimages to holy sites or or heading to the jungle for an ayahuasca trip as being able to purify them restore them provide them with some kind of rebirth heal them of course and soon the basin spring area would find its first true pilgrim uh this was judge levi best saunders of nearby berryville who tried jackson's spring water either for an eye disease or for skin

disease a lot of eyeball problems back then there's two stories and after he was healed either by the water or he just coincidentally got better he set up a camp in the area following saunders lead twenty more families set up camps nearby to cure what ailed them and in this way a settlement was born. Sondra Sun Buck reportedly suggested that they call the settlement Eureka after explorer Ponce de Leon, who famously exclaimed Eureka after finding the fountain of youth, even though he did not do that for sure. Didn't even look for it, didn't say that. It's actually now believed by most historians that Ponce de Leon never searched for the fountain of youth, never believed in the existence of the fountain of youth. All that fountain of youth talk began after his death, part of a smear campaign by rivals. to make him look like an idiot. Back to Arkansas, the city of Eureka Springs was formerly founded. On July 4th, 1879, when Saunders built at the first house, and more people arrived every day now to take advantage of these springs,

and then it was officially incorporated the following year. Soon similar towns across the region would pop up as Eureka's immediate fame and fast-paced prosperity, Katiya, several other communities also blessed with mineral springs. Over in Benton County, speculators in Cherokee City moved to nearby Eldorado after Cherokee City's prospects went bust after 1882. And when much El Dorado washed away during a flood, a year or two later, many of those same entrepreneurs now moved to the newly booming town of Silo Springs.

The success of these communities, whether they lived or died, generally depended on transportation back then. For instance, when Silo Springs began touting its waters and building home, hotels in the early 1880s, it was banking on the likelihood of a railroad coming through. The town's population quickly swelled, only to then drop when the railroad did not show up. But then after the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad finally did steam into town. In 1893, the population popped up again. And once again, businesses attempted to capitalize on it.

To help convince the public of a spring's health benefits, the town created a big spectacle where a water sample was analyzed and the results advertised with the claim that certain springs could cure specific ailments. This is all bullshit. These claims were reprinted in newspaper stories, advertisements, souvenir photographs, testimonials from satisfied patients, often just lies, people paid to lie,

were sent to newspapers all around the country in an effort to lure in health seekers. Rivalries developed between spring communities. For example, an 1880 letter in the Fayetteville Democrat noted that the countryside around Silo Springs was much more attractive than the other shitty springs. Not happy about Siloam Springs being singled out

as the best spring in the area to visit. In 1882 edition of the Harrison Times or in it, one writer quipped, the water in the courthouse well is either developing remarkable medicinal qualities or else there's a dead cat in it, i.e. the water in Siloam Springs stunk and was shitty.

Speaking of dead things, in 1880, the Eureka Springs baby made headlines as the discovery of a supposedly fossilized child. This hoax, though it would not be identified as a hoax until 1948, was the brainchild of Henry Johnson, a Scottsville merchant who modeled his deception after the Cardiff giant, another hoax.

That massive stone man was supposedly discovered in 1869 in Cardiff, New York, publicly acknowledged as a hoax the following year in a lawsuit that pitted its originator against showman P.T. Barnum. I believe we talked about that in the P.T. Barnum Timesick episode. Henry Johnson thought he could craft an even better hoax. And he would, actually. He hired his relative, Marcus Lafayette Kelly, a Fayetteville tombstone carver to create an 85-pound, 26-inch-long statue of a child, which was then encased in a thick coating of clay and ash. Around the time it was being carved, Thomas Campbell and J.B. Hallam of Texas arrived in Eureka Springs.

Hallam bought a piece of land near town, hired Campbell to dig a well on it. On October 1st, Campbell working alone supposedly just dug up this baby at a depth of four feet. Huh. With Eureka being a spot town, many people who lived there well, passing the time until they felt better, they were eager to see whatever this new thing was. Johnton, who established his claim by supposedly buying a share in the baby's ownership, Hallam and Campbell charged 10 cents to view the find, later raising the rate to 35 cents. And after seeing it, locals were immediately convinced of the ancient child relic, calling it proof of pre-edemic generations, predicting that it would revolutionize geology. And of course, has bring a bunch of tourism to the town so everybody in town loves it and there's more spring money being made. Others would express doubts. Most telling of all was the Arkansas Gazette, which opined of the quote, petrified Indian baby, that quote, there has never been such a thing before. Indian blood was never claimed for the Card of Giant. Nevertheless, the excitement caught on and within a year of the carving known variously as the Eureka baby or the petrified Indian baby or as a Hindu idol,

okay have been exhibited in st louis missouri galveston texas and new orleans louisiana a money-making tour launched by a new group of investors who bought out the original grifters for a reported four six hundred dollars and they all got away with it only in 1948 after all the participants were dead did t j robotham give an interview to the arkansas democrat revealing the connections between the participants robotham's brother john lived in eureka springs in eighteen eighty rented a room to harry johnson Hallam was the Robotham's brother-in-law and lived nearby. All the guys knew each other and conspired together. Campbell surely knew Johnson back in Pope County because he used Johnson business partner as a character witness

when making a sworn statement concerning his find. T.J. Robotham had revealed that Johnson and Kelly were related by marriage. Anyway, all kinds of stuff going on with these rivalries. While that was happening, others were trying to make money in Eureka through more legitimate ventures. O.D. Thornton built the first general. will store in 1879. Captain Joseph Perry, owner of numerous hotels across the U.S., built a four-story hotel called the Perry House in 1881. Although the official city population remained just under 4,000 people, thousands more came to Eureka Springs, the area, set up temporary housing, often small

wooden shacks on the hillside surrounding the 62 springs of the area. Funnily enough, the tourism boom caused some confusion because apparently few of these people knew how to pronounce the name of the state in which they were vacationing. In 1881, the Arkansas General Assembly passed Arkansas Code 14105. Whereas confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of our state, and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation should be determined for use in oral official proceedings. And whereas, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by the state historical society and the eclectic society of Little Rock, which have agreed upon the correct pronunciation,

as derived from history and the early usage of the American immigrants. Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state in the opinion of this body is that received by the French from the Native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three syllables with the final S silent, the A in each syllable with the Italian sound, and an accent on the first and last syllables.

the pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of A and man and the sounding of the terminal S is an innovation to be discouraged. Funny that they had to pass a lot how to fucking say Arkansas. Tourists weren't the only ones setting up shop in Eureka or Eureka Springs. Free during the Civil War, a number of African-American families began establishing homes in the Eureka Springs area, though they would be banned from all springs, except for spring harding, because a lot of people born into any given generation are as hateful as they are fucking dumb.

I want that sentiment to be shared in history classes going forward. Can we do that? Just taught to all students, of all ages, even preschoolers. Mr. Cummins, why were African Americans forced to use different drinking fountains? Well, Ted, because a lot of people born into any given generation are as hateful as they are fucking dumb. Anyway, due to the sudden influx of people, former Arkansas governor, Powell Clayton,

founded the Eureka Improvement Company to take advantage of new economic opportunities in the city, hoping to extend it into a retirement community for the wealthy. And one property of the improvement company would open his doors in 1886, the Crescent Hotel. Before me now properly explore this episode's actual subject, time for this week's first to two, mid-show sponsor break.

If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon, get this catalog ad free, get these episodes early, and more. Thanks for listening to those ads, and now let's check in and check out the Crescent Hotel. The construction of the Crescent Hotel would be quite the feat. Isaac L. Taylor, a well-known architect from St. Louis, was enlisted to design the hotel. Taylor was known for his expertise in creating grand, elegant structures, and the hotel a palace made from local limestone. would be exactly that work began in 1884 and included a large workforce skilled stone masons carpenters and artisans finally on may 20th 1886 the big building opened to great fanfare newspapers around the nation heralded it oh my god heralded it quote the most luxurious

resort in america and its opening day featured music dancing and banquets indeed anyone coming there would be impressed the hotel had electric lights a full three decades before electricity became commonplace in about half of America's homes. Almost nobody had electricity back in 1886. It had a hydroly elevator, something else that many visitors were experienced for the first time there. Its bathroom was featured both hot and cold running water, something that did not become standard in American homes until after World War II. It had high archways, spired roofs, turrets in an architectural style that beautifully blended Gothic and Romanesque traditions. These were sites that people from the more prosperous East Coast might have already seen,

but in the rugged Ozarks, the towering hotel with its rich hardwood, intricate moldings, crystal chandeliers seem like nothing short of a miracle. One guest wrote that it was, quote, a sanctum of elegance and comfort, unlike anything I've ever seen in the Ozarks. Surrounding the hotel were terraced gardens, meandering pathways, you know, perfectly manicured, fountains, gazebos, a covered pavilion for outdoor dine, and leisure. Unsurprisingly, all these features drew a wealthy clientele, successful businessmen, politicians, well-known celebrities who eagerly participated in the hotel curated activities

such as horseback riding, lawn tennis, croquet, as well as nightly dances. And of course, its main draw was its wellness program. Spa treatments and the healing mineral baths conducted in ornate bathhouses. It was incredible. The heyday of the Crescent was remarkable. It's Fun to imagine all the smiles and laughter and flirting that must have went down in its bars and restaurants, all the memories built inside its rooms. But then, as the Crescent entered the 20th century, things began to change. The wave of enthusiasm for the spring's healing powers ended as scientific advancement began to create, well, actually real medicine. And government regulations began to build up protections against quackery. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was designed to protect consumers from dangerous ingredients,

and false advertising, and unfortunately, for Eureka Springs in the Crescent Hotel, it included regulations regarding how mineral water specifically could be promoted. And the way the Crescent had been advertising itself was no longer legal. And instead of being viewed as a prestigious destination, it was now seen as a bunch of quackery supported by fools. Just two years after the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, in 1908, the hotel closed its doors as a resort. Fortunately, for the building's owners, the same year, it would find new life. This time is the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women, a private school that catered to the daughters of affluent families. The architecture was already in place to give the school an aura of refinement and culture.

Classrooms were set up in former guest rooms, while the ballroom was converted into a lecture hall. It was a pretty smooth transition. And also the beginning of the building's association with the paranormal. A bunch of young women on their own for the first time, equally scared and thrilled by their new independence, led to the Crescent Home. hotel's first reports of ghost sightings, such as one in the letter from 1911, when a student described an experience, writing, quote, the long corridors seemed to whisper secrets of the past, and some nights I could swear I heard the sound of footsteps when no one should be. Apparently didn't occur to this girl that what you might have been hearing was another girl sneaking out of her

fucking room. Sadly, the new school, it's not last that long. In 1924, the Crescent College closed its doors. And now the still modern and still luxurious building entered a prolonged period of neglect. The ground sat vacant, the grand halls and gardens slowly succumbing to weeds and decay, and also now some towns people claim to see lights flickering in the windows at night, to hear faint sounds emanating from the empty building. Ghosts? Or was the building now a great place to squat and or party and hookup? Probably the latter. As the hotel entered the 1930s, but we don't know, It stood as a relic of a bygone era, a time of prosperity and excitement for the natural world that few could remember as the country now slid into the hard-scrabble times of the Great Depression, and relying on the land became less of a luxury and more of a necessity. And, of course, seeing something fall from grace, from prosperity to decay, is a reminder of our own mortality as humans, and the end we will all meet someday.

And as a result, stories of hauntings at the Crescent Hotel continued to circulate around the town of Eureka Springs. and then the hotel's next owner would cement the idea that something dark was happening inside those limestone walls, because now it really would be. And before we explore, the dark chapter of the Crescent Hotel that led to paranormal infamy, time for today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors, and now who is the new, strange, and terrible owner of the former Crescent Hotel? In 1937, the hotel was purchased. by a man who would transform the luxury resort.

His name was Norman G. Baker. And in the long tradition of Eureka Springs, he was a healer, kind of. Also in the long tradition of Eureka Springs, he was a grifter, a frot. A dangerous grifter, the most dangerous the town would ever see. He was born in 1882 in Muscatine, Iowa,

got his start as a radio personality, inventor, showman, bullshitter, mostly a bullshitter, first working as a touring vaudeville performer, Baker returned to Muscatine in 1941 to market his patented air calliophone. Oh, fun, a portable calliope. For carnivals, outdoor advertisers, you know, just overall calliope enthusiasts. Would you like to hear what this thing sounds like?

Of course you would. Everybody loves the calliophone. Oh, that's nice. Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Bev, go, Bev, go. Fucking killing it. You just, you just listen to the incomparable, Bev Smitley, probably. It's Smitley. I'm just joking around. Everybody knows Bev Smithley.

bringing her calliophone talents to the Wells County, Indiana Historical Museum, Ice Cream Social, back in June of 2010 there. Anyway, Baker's bustling calliophone operation soon expanded into a mail-order business, peddling everything from overalls to coffee.

Baker even promoted an art correspondent school despite his confession that he, quote, couldn't paint to save his life. So he just, you know, he's figuring out that, you know, people will buy anything he feels like selling them, I guess. Next, observing Henry Fields' use of the radio to sell seeds in Shenandoah, Iowa,

Baker constructed his own radio station and started broadcasting in 1925. With his lineup of live music, agricultural reports, and Baker's own colorful broadcasts, KTNT, Know the Naked Truth, became a popular station

amongst rural Midwesterners, many of whom flocked to Muscatine on summer Sundays to picnic outside the KT&T studio, enjoy the carnivalesque atmosphere, and see Baker clad in his trademark white suit with a lavender tie. Dude even dressed like a grifter.

Baker gained further clout when he broadcast on behalf of Herbert Hoover's 1928 presidential campaign. Hoover, of course, would go on to be one of the worst presidents of all time. 1929, Baker's tabloid magazine, TNT, No the Truth. It's really fucking going hard on that

know the truth thing. Published a sensational story touting an unconventional cancer treatment. And it was unconventional because it definitely didn't work. Months later, will open his own cancer hospital

in Muscatine, staffed by a collection of chiropractors, naturopaths, and Diploma Mill MDs. So that's cool. You can never have enough chiropractors working at a fucking cancer hospital, right? We all know the connection between cancer and

chiropractors. Former employee later testified that Baker's a panacea or cure-all remedy was nothing more than a mixture of clover, corn, corn, silk, watermelon seeds, and water. That motherfucker making money off a given false hope to the sick and the dying and that money was good it was very good with aggressive advertising baker's hospital that sounded about as legit as that

fucking cave hospital i mentioned earlier accrued monthly revenues topping seventy five thousand dollars in nineteen thirty one over a million and a half dollars a month in today's money uh yeah yeah yeah uh although lacking any medical training baker himself began directing patients treatments and he warned the public of the dangers of vaccinations, aluminum utensils, and greedy mainstream physicians. Thank God we don't have people like that around anymore. Right! Right! Wink!

Wink! During the spring of 1931, Baker's Crusade against preventive medicine, or, yeah, preventative medicine, even helped to incite a rebellion in eastern Iowa, known as the Iowa Cow War. And that's a real thing that happened. Too much to really get into here, but also too interesting to ignore. Baker's broadcast and editorials encourage farmers to resist state veterinarian's efforts.

Evil efforts to enforce mandatory bovine tuberculosis testing. A ruse, the quack baker charged for meatpackers to acquire cheaper beef. When the standoff escalated into outbursts of actual barnyard violence, Iowa Governor Dan Turner called on the state's militia to squelch a rebellion. Fifty veterinarians, all working in pairs while being protected by armed soldiers, gave injections to 5,000 cattle per day for a week, put in an end to the spread of a disease that caused cows to have spontaneous abortions before the disease spread nationwide and fucked up all of America's beef industry.

Baker was quickly becoming a real pain in the ass for law enforcement in 1931. The Federal Radio Commission shut down his KTNT station for continually spreading dangerous misinformation. He was like an Alex Jones type dude. Then a year later, Baker went to, to federal court in Davenport to settle a libel suit he had filed against the American Medical Association for calling him a quack, a faker, and a charlatan. When the jury sided with the American Medical Association because Baker was, in fact, a quack, a faker, and a charlatan, a baker sought

redress through what else but politics. He entered the race for Iowa's governor as a ride in a candidate on the farm labor ticket, but campaigned from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he had constructed a 100,000-watt radio station to replace K-T-N-T in a nation with very little regulation when it came to quackery at the time. Ever the showman, Baker-sent campaign trucks rolling through Iowa counties with colorful banners, loudspeakers, blaring speeches, and, of course,

calliophone carnival music. Hell yeah. Nothing drums up votes like this. Despite his efforts, he only got around 5,000 votes on Election Day. The winner, Clyde Herring, received over 508,000 votes. The runner-up Dan Turner received roughly

455,000 votes. So 5,000, just a bit outside, just a bit short of what he needed. Not exactly a number that made Baker a real political upstart to be reckoned with. Despite that abysmal failure, Baker would try again, returning to Iowa in 1936 to enter Iowa's

U.S. senatorial race as a Republican where he finished fifth in the primary. All this led to more bad press. And after RKO Radio Pictures discredited, his Muscatine Hospital in a March of Time newsreel. A lot of people were fucking pissed about this guy, rightfully. So that was one of the most prominent forms of journalism at the time.

Baker shut it down and relocated to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where citizens of the now depressed resort town welcome the embattled entrepreneur as a possible economic savior. In 1937, he used the blood money he had made selling snake oil to cancer patients to purchase the Crescent Hotel. He had grand plans to turn it into the Baker Hospital. He painted the building a garish shade of purple, emblazoned signs on the exterior proclaiming it to be the cancer-curable Baker Hospital. For fuck's sake. Inside, he crowded the lobby with random official-looking medical equipment, makeshift exam rooms, and operating theaters.

And with his background in radio, he now relaunched himself as the Ozarks miracle worker, declaring, quote, come to the Ozarks and be healed. The Baker Hospital guarantees recovery without the knife without pain. Now, there'll be a lot of pain. Sadly, desperate and dying patients began arriving in droves. At the former hotel with literally zero fucking licensed doctors on staff, not one. Patients were subjected to daily injections of his miracle cure. One nurse would later say, quote,

We were not allowed to question the treatments or express concern. We were told to simply smile and keep the patient's calm even when it was clear they were suffering. So evil. This did little to reassure patients or their families in 1938. One woman wrote, my mother is getting worse, not better. Dr. Baker insists it's part of the process, but I see her suffering and I'm losing hope. Another later letter, this one to Baker, pleaded, my wife is in agony. There is no improvement, only more pain. Now here's a full letter from a patient named Luther J. Baggett, a cancer patient. He wrote this letter to his wife and three young kids back in Arizona, this poor family that had used all their

savings to send Luther to Arkansas, hoping Dr. Baker could miraculously save his life, but instead, of course, he just got grifted. He dated this letter Friday, December 9, 1938. My dear little bunch, the weather has blown off nice and has been a pretty day. Me and another old man walked to town this afternoon, but I haven't had any mail from home yet. This is an awful out-of-away place. This is an awful, yeah, out-of-way place, and mail is slow getting in and out, but I will surely get something tomorrow. I wrote to Floyd and Vera McClure at High Texas today. We'll mail this tomorrow. I have wrote you two letters already. Oh, Neda, can you send me Holtz address? I sure would like to kiss my wife, big girl, little girl, and my sunny boy. Good night.

Then he added, Saturday morning the 10th, before he sent it, have been pretty busy up to now, castor oil at 6, tonic at 7, shaved, went to breakfast, took needle treatment back to room on bed with hot pack, have just got back from a little walk in some air, yes, and had carrot juice at nine. They say that all the medicines and food used here are made from vegetables, herbs, roots, and bark. Can't tell you yet what they're going to do with my main trouble. He's talking about the cancer, of course, but they sure seem to work over your blood and system. They didn't find much to matter with me. My blood was 30 points low in my main trouble. Some people come here and they find several

ailments that they didn't know they had. Yeah, because this is all bullshit. That makes it more expensive. One man came just ahead of me with several ailments and they charged him $500 flat rate for five weeks treatment without room. Some are saving some money roaming out, but they wanted me here in the hospital. It seems that most of them has to stay as much as five weeks and some longer since the mail seemed so slow. You had better let me know soon how you think we are going to get along financially. Guess I will try to stay the three weeks. If I don't stay any longer, I have $47 now. It will take $3 more for next week, $50 for the next,

and about $30 for a ticket and a little for laundry, about $90 more for three weeks. It sure has been a long week for me, and since I haven't had a letter and wondering if some of you are bad sick, I'm going to try and write to Mammy today, and I am not sure of her address. well the last mail has come for the week and i didn't get a letter don't know what to do think and it seems there's nothing i can do about it we'll quit and get this in the mail love to all lj b uh luther would die in agony two months after he sent that letter many patients died well at the crescent nearly all of them did hundreds and hundreds if not thousands any records regarding the totality of death were either lost or destroyed baker definitely treated thousands a desperate patient with his bullshit injections. Reportedly, Baker accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars, which he kept in various safe deposits known only to him and his accomplice, a woman named Thelma Yount.

Postal inspectors will claim that the hospital cleared about $500,000 in just the first full year of operation. And to deal with all the dead bodies, and that's millions in today's dollars, and to deal with all the dead bodies of people Baker made his money off of, dead bodies that were bad for business, Baker created a makeshift morgue in the basement, where bodies were stored before being quietly,

removed from the premises in ways both legal and illegal. All this made for an atmosphere that careen between insane false optimism and the slow, relentless creep of death, a mind-bending place where nobody's judgment was treated as legitimate unless you were Dr. Baker. In 1939, a concerned and outraged reporter wrote, The Crescent Hotel has become a house of horrors, where false hope is sold at a high price, and the dying are giving nothing more than pain and empty promises. It was another article said, a place where people went to day.

die. By the close of the decade, authorities began to investigate. And in 1940, the federal government stepped in. Baker was arrested, charged with mail fraud, since he had been accepting payments via the U.S. Postal Service. That was all they could fucking get him with. Thankfully, Baker was tried and convicted of that, but he only received a four-year prison sentence. He was incarcerated in 11worth Penitentiary, approximately 25 miles northwest to Kansas City, Kansas. Upon his release, he faded into obscurity, living his remaining years off the coast of Florida in a boat formerly owned by the railroad baron J. Gould until his death of 1958 at the age of 75. Damn. Never served any real justice. Got to live on a boat and beautiful sunny warm waters, that piece of

shit. Of course, he left the Crescent Hotel abandoned again in his wake, now a maze of once stately features, dusty rooms, medical refuse, as well as what became known as the death time. a.k.a. the morgue. Some tried to rehabilitate the hotel in the decades it followed, with ownership passing from various individuals, with fleeting ambitions to restore the property, but nothing stuck. Instead, it became a reported hotbed for paranormal experiences, with one local historian claiming in 1960 that on a walk to the ballroom, he and others began to hear disembodied music being played. A group of teenagers who snuck into the property in 1967 claimed they heard a door slam upstairs, even though they had checked every

room and found the hotel to definitively be empty and many more claims much more intense claims were made i'll i'll share some here in a bit in 1997 marty and elise rennick a couple with a passion for historic preservation purchased the building they embarked on an ambitious restoration projected a or excuse me a project restoration project that aimed to return the crescent to its former glory no small task workers encountered crumbling walls extensive structural damage broken windows overgrown grounds, but they also found artifacts few people ever get to see firsthand. Fragments of original stained glass, intricate woodwork, faded wallpaper, hand-painted for the hotel's original opening. The restoration would also lead to more ghost stories. Several workers claimed that their tools

disappeared and that they heard footsteps in empty hallways, or that they felt somebody walking up behind them only to turn around and see nothing. One electrician claimed to see a thick fog in the morgue that faded into the wall as he watched. Still, the world. on the hotel continued, and the Crescent reopened its doors as a hotel at 1997 and quickly became a popular attraction, not necessarily a place of luxury anymore, but a cool old building beloved by those with an appreciation for history. The Renix embraced the hotel's haunted atmosphere, incorporating tales of apparitions, unexplained phenomena and tragic deaths into its marketing, including a story about a stone mason named Michael plummeting to his death in 1886. According to

this story, Michael was a young Irish stonemason tasked with building a portion of the hotel's imposing edifice. He was a skilled craftsman, but ultimately lost his balance while leaning over the edge of a window, trying to impress a young woman. He wanted to date. Apparently, he landed

in the spot that would one day become room 218. Perhaps based on the effectiveness of the marketing, or perhaps not, guests found themselves having inexplicable experiences in this room now. One woke up to watch the bathroom door swing open, and then swing back shut completely on its own. Definitely not alone in here, they wrote.

Room 218 quickly gained notoriety as the most haunted room in the hotel, with guests reporting flickering lights, objects moving on their own, and even being touched by unseen hands. The dining room became a hot spot for encounters as well. Staff reported hearing clinking glasses and silverware after the area had been closed for the night, or hearing the piano play on its own. Weirdly enough, the laundry also surfaced as a place of mystery. Staff would find linens folded neatly one moment, scattered around the next. One woman even reported seeing a lady in Victorian dress walk by and then disappear into thin air as she was working on some laundry. The hotel leaned into the economic opportunity, all of these

ghost sightings provided, and the hotel became a popular spot for ghost tours, led by guides dressed in period clothing. These in turn caught the attention of paranormal investigator, who descended on the property with recording devices, electromagnetic field detectors, infrared cameras, et cetera. The hotel was featured in a 2005 episode of Ghost Hunters or some team members claimed to see a full-body apparition melt into a wall.

Marty Renick, one of the owners, would die in a car crash in 2009, sadly, and Elise, his widow, remains the hotel's current owner. In 2016, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. in 2022, it won the historic hotels of America Lifetime Achievement Ward. And before I share a bit more paranormal lore, the hotel is not Eureka Springs' only interesting feature today. Based on the many lives of the hotel and, well, just how weird people seem to be comfortable being in Eureka, others have tried to launch their own, sometimes interesting ventures.

In 1964, Christian nationalist Gerald K. Smith, known for his anti-Semitic, white supremacist, far-right extremist view. News began building a religious theme park named sacred projects proposed to include a life-sized recreation of Jerusalem. That never fully developed. That was ambitious. But two of the components are major city-defining projects today, the seven-story Christ of the Ozark statue designed by Emmett Sullivan, and the nearby The Great Passion Play performed during the summer. This play is regularly performed from May through October by a cast of a hundred and seventy the actors and dozens of live animals. Thankfully, the script of the Great Passion play

has been altered from its original script which set Jesus' beatings at Herod's court and included a monologue blaming his death on the hateful, horrible Jews. Since it's been put on, it has been seen by an estimated 7.7 million people which make it the largest attended

outdoor drama in the U.S. according to the Institute of Outdoor Theater of the University of East Carolina. Other Christian-themed attractions have been added in association with the drama production including a new Holy Land tour that features a full-scale recreation of the tabernacle in the wilderness,

i.e. the portable tent where the Israelites gathered in the desert. Other attractions include a section of the Berlin Wall. Okay. And a Bible museum featuring more than 6,000 different Bibles including an original 1611 King James Bible,

which is historically, yeah, very interesting. Eureka Springs is not only made up of imaginative Christians, though. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, comfort with getting weird attracted many members of the hippie movement and lesbian separatists. Lesbians who wanted to live

completely separate of men. The accepting environment fostered a network of gay and lesbian business owners, and the town became known as a resort town for LGBTQIA plus tourism, in addition to being a popular draw for Christian fundamentalists, which is unusual mashup, but they worked it out.

Eureka Springs became the first city in Arkansas to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples back in 2014. So while the Crescent Hotel is mostly known for being as its marketing dubs it, America's most haunted hotel. I don't think that's the main takeaway here. Maybe the main takeaway is that a weirdo who started a hospital in a cave, Dr. Alva Jackson, accidentally set in motion a long tradition of establishments that straddled the line between

entertainment, spirituality, and just a place to be weird or, you know, sometimes dangerous. Sometimes it's been for economic gain or to spread misinformation like Norman Baker or the fossilized baby hoax or Gerald K. Smith's prejudice and harmful beliefs, but other times, The ones that seem to have stuck around the longest, it's been motivated by a genuine appreciation for a landscape and all its majestic, mysteriousness, and a culture of historically isolated community deep in the Arkansas Mountains,

an area known for conservatism, but with a large population of liberals as well. Getting along, what seems to unite them is a belief that keeping your mind open is one of the most interesting and fun ways to live. As exemplified by the town's yearly Halloween zombie crawl, it's nightmare in the Ozarks Film Festival, it's Mardi Gras extravaganza,

the town even hosts an annual UFO conference. Would the world be a better place if we all lived a little like to do in Eureka Springs? If we didn't drink the Kool-Aid, but instead quenched our thirst with some refreshing, mineraly spring water. Fuck yeah. Okay, now, as promised, let's share some scared-to-death-style paranormal claims

before I exit. Everything you heard so far has been, you know, pretty heavily sourced. Everything going forward is not. While I'm not sure any of it is true, I also don't know that it's not true. It might be true. And that's a fun space to play with for an October episode. Circling back to Dr. Baker's treatments, the doctor who was not a doctor,

he was able to destroy or hide most of the records of what he had done. There are rumors that he did quite a bit of experimentation when it came to his snake oil injections of his cure-all elixir of ground-up clover, corn, silk, and watermelon seeds mixed with water. He reportedly injected this mixture into some of his patient's eyeballs and into small holes he had drilled into their skulls which killed them truly some mad scientist shit

he supposedly had one wing of the building sealed off labeling it as a psychiatric ward where patients fucking crying out in pain from his treatments would be sequestered away from prying eyes so they didn't deter additional people from being conned and tortured and possibly murdered the experimented with reckless abandon

and when someone eventually died or he just straight up you know fucking killed them directly with his shit Norman then disposed to them by shoving him down a chute where the corpses piled up in the basement disposal room near the morgue. No bodies were ever taken into the morgue during the day because the clinic claimed to have a 100% success rate. Instead at night, a nurse would arrive and one by one place each dead body on a gurney, wheel it down to the morgue. She was the only one allowed to be in this portion

of the building at night. The only sound that filled the halls would be the creaking of her gurney as it rolled down the halls and the thump sound of another body hitting the slab. And today, near a century after she moved the body, some guests claim to still hear her make her walk and dump off bodies. Supposedly this typically happens starting around 11 or 1130 at night. Some claim to hear the creaking of her gurney

as it rolls down the hallway, the shuffling footsteps following it. Sometimes they even report feeling the tug of a hand on their foot as they sleep, as though the nurse has mistaken them for a dead body and is trying to drag them off to the morgue. Sometimes they say they

hear a quiet chuckle. Some guests have claimed to hear her speak to say stuff like, you're a heavy one, aren't you? Easy ghosts! And when they open their eyes from their comfort or perhaps discomfort of their hotel bed, some have claimed to actually see her.

An older, solidly built woman with gray hair and flat, dead eyes, leaning over them, wearing a little white cap, a neatly pressed uniform, and no name tag. Other guests to the hotel are reported coming back to the rooms after a night of local sight scene and fine dining, only to see apparitions, like what a

appears to be an 80-year-old woman in front of room 419, searching for her key. Do you have my key? She'll ask the guests, and then she will disappear into a wall. Other guests are reported coming back to their rooms to find the luggage they had unpacked, piled back into their open suitcase, flung in haphazardly as if something or someone is trying to tell them to get the fuck out. One time, a repairman left his tools in the basement, then he popped back down to quickly grab them before heading out for the night, and he claimed that as he descended down the stairs, all of the sudden, all of the washers and all of the dryers

came on simultaneously, rocking back and forth, flashing the lights on their displays. On another occasion in the morning, a cook Steve was slicing vegetables for that night's dinner when he said all the pots flew off their hooks and crashed to the floor, but none of them touched him. In fact, the pots and pans made a perfect circle around him.

Owner Elise Renick said she hired two mediums, Ken Fugate and Carol Heath, to read the building, and that the mediums came to believe that the Crescent Hotel contained a portal, quote, to the other side, to a dimension that holds the spirits of the dead that can be accessed by those, quote, on the same frequency as ghosts. This is what Elise said, made her decide to start offering ghost tours. And she now claims that she has seen numerous tour groups experience the unexplainable. For example, in one of the doorways, over and over, she said a few guests, nearly every group that she walked would suddenly turn pale.

Some even fell against and slid down the wall in a faint. When at least asked her hotel manager, Ken, a time manager, of course, why he thought this was happening, Ken remembered that the doorway was the specific place that the mediums had identified as this supposed portal. The doorway directly above Norman Baker's former morgue. Could those mediums be right?

Could there be portals to the world of the dead? Do certain places make it easier to access the world of the no longer living? did what Dr. Baker did to so many poor dying people turned the former Crescent Hotel into some kind of magnet for the restless dead. I don't know. I have no idea what happens to any of us when we die. But I will say after recorded nearly 400 episodes of Scare to Death when you add up the bonus episodes as well,

while I still don't claim to know what happens when we die, you know, we might just be worm food. Maybe we have a spirit or a soul that lives on in some form. I do think this life is not the end. might be the end of us existing in our current form might be the end of our personality our memories our ego might not we might move on to some other place as ourselves some other space

or at least that might be possible and it also might be possible that some of us for whatever reason do not move on but instead we get stuck for a while lost in places generally places of strong emotion places of despair confusion torment and death places like Eureka Springs former Crescent Hotel.

And that's it for this edition of TimeSuck Short Sucks. I hope you enjoyed a little bit of October escapism. A lot of interesting shit happened to that town. Maybe some paranormal stuff's happening there right now. If you did enjoy this story, check out the rest of the bad magic catalog, beefier episodes at Time Suck

every Monday at noon Pacific time. New episodes of the now long-running paranormal podcast, scared to death, Tuesdays at midnight, with two episodes of nightmare fuel, fictional horror written by myself thrown into the mix each month thanks to Sophie Evans for her initial research thanks to Logan Keith

polishing up the sound of today's episode making the nice episode thumbnail artwork please go to bad magic productions for all your bad magic needs and have yourself a great weekend Add Magic Productions I don't know.