The Crescent Hotel and Spa in downtown Eureka Springs opened its doors in 1886. Upon its grand opening, the hotel established itself as a destination for the elite. Open in the spring as a resort and in the fall it transformed into a women’s college, the hotel lived in this success for many years until the many transfers of ownership. By 1937 the hotel was bought by Norman Baker, a charismatic yet fraudulent character on a mission to make money. Baker, a showman and member of traveling vaudeville acts reopened the Crescent Hotel branded as a cancer treatment facility, Baker never had any experience in the medical field. Baker’s treatment for patients consisted of injection of “Formula 5”, a concoction of alcohol and carbolic acid into the cancerous tumors of his patients. During Baker’s ownership of the Crescent, many people succumbed to their illness and passed on the premises or during the train rides back home. Since 1946 the hotel has transferred ownership a few more times, but all owners have worked towards restoring the Crescent to its former glory. With the hotel’s long existence and painful moments of history, many believe some guests never checked out of the Crescent.Â
In the Crescent Hotel’s current operations, guests can book rooms year-round, some of which are advertised as “haunted” rooms. Outside of staying in a room at the hotel, there is a restaurant and other facilities located on the property. The hotel even offers a variety of tours for hotel guests and visitors of the area to partake in. A few of the tours are walking history tours where a guide walks you through the various areas of the building and tells you historical events that happened where you are standing. After hours of these guided history tours, the hotel also offers behind-the-scenes tours where guests are given exclusive access to various areas of the hotel and are supplied with a variety of ghost-hunting tools. For my tour, we were provided with the following:
EMF Scanner: An electromagnetic field reader measures the presence and intensity of electromagnetic radiation.
REM Pod: Rather than scanning for electromagnetic fields like the EMF scanner, the radiating electromagnetic pods create their own field and respond with lights and noise to indicate when the field is disturbed. This device serves as a communication tool and a motion detector. We had two basic pods that were able to be placed in various areas as well as a REM pod disguised as a teddy bear to be welcoming to spirits of children.Â
Spirit Box: A device that projects white noise by quickly scanning through radio stations. It is believed that the spirits can speak through the static so any words or phrases that come through are from the spirits in the room communicating. We used the spirit box for the Estes method, a way of using the spirit box where only one person listens to the box through headphones and is blinded and deafened by what the other investigators in the room are doing. The subject listening calls out any words that come through to them. We had an additional spirit box device that outputs words and phrases based on electrical input.Â
Cat Toys: Little light-up balls are triggered by touch. These are placed in various areas of the room and serve as motion detection.Â
To begin our tour we were taken to the dining room. With our group of four, one person sat in a chair facing the corner to conduct the Estes method while the other three walked around the room with other various instruments. Our member facing the wall began to call out the random words she was hearing through the noise-cancelling headphones. Since the headphones were noise-cancelling our group member was speaking at an excessive volume on account of not being able to hear herself. After a few minutes had passed and a couple of words had been called out, our secondary spirit box that puts out phrases on its own sent out the words, “lower your voice”. Upon seeing this phrase we knew it was referring to our friend shouting in the corner, after reading the message we all looked towards our friend in the corner. After turning and seeing all of us staring at her my friend removed her headphones to ask if she did anything wrong. We told her no and that she should speak quieter as someone in the room has told her to lower her voice. She continued to call out the phrases heard through the static and the investigation proceeded.Â
The second location of my tour was originally the hotel’s basement and kitchen, but over time was transformed into the hotel’s morgue. I volunteered to take my turn listening to the spirit box. While I had the headphones on I heard various random words that seemed to be the voices of the radio stations, but there was one word to come through that did not sound to be a radio broadcast. With the headphones on I heard the voice of a little boy say “hello”. Upon hearing the voice I also had a physical sensation of someone being in the same space as me. This was a startling experience and from hearing the voice and not feeling alone I quickly removed my headphones, catching the attention of one of my other group members. My other group members had their attention drawn by the teddy bear REM pod. At the same time, I heard the little boy the REM pod was activated as if it was touched, I was unaware of this at the moment of taking my headphones off and my group members were unaware of the voice I had heard. A few minutes following this occurrence the spirit box died, after only being steadily used for under an hour when the battery usually lasts for multiple.Â
Despite only these two major events occurring in our three-hour tour, the experiences had at the Crescent Hotel are sure to last me a lifetime and continue to be in my mind whenever I am in a creepy situation. I am thankful to the Crescent Hotel and their acceptance of their past as they allow guests to learn and experience all things the Crescent has to offer. One cannot be sure of the existence of ghosts, but from the things I experienced that night, I have no other choice but to believe. Visit the Crescent Hotel and Spa yourself and have your own ghost experience!