The following is a collection of paranormal accounts from
the tour guides of the 1886 Crescent Hotel of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, known
as the most haunted hotel in America. Printed by permission.
Every
night of the year, dozens of different people wind their way down the hallways
and open, serpentine staircases of the five-story 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, “America’s Most Haunted Hotel.” Final destination: the hotel’s “morgue.” They
just know they are strolling amidst what some would say are hundreds of spirits
who still frequent this Historic Hotel of America located here atop Crescent
Mountain. Each tour patron is eager to see something, feel something, smell
something that they would categorize as a ghostlike experience enabling them to
share that close encounter with their world. However, several of those
strolling along those same paranormal pathways have been there before, every
night of the year. These are the stalwart souls known as the Crescent Hotel Ghost Tour guides.
“From
smelling mysterious pipe tobacco to seeing an orb entering a boy’s skull, our
(ghost tour) guides are exposed nightly to the hotel’s ‘guests who check out
but never leave’,” said Keith Scales, director of the hotel’s ghost tour
department. “With that said, each has not only a unique ‘nom de guide’ but
a special supernatural experience of their own to tell. It is their raison
d’être for being a tour guide in this world-famous haunted hotel.”
Aunt
Reba had always admired the Crescent since moving to Eureka Springs and had her
first unexplainable happening while exploring the hotel as a tourist. The smell
of cherry pipe tobacco got her attention when she reached the second floor. She
did not find out until two years later during her training to be a guide that
her earlier encounter with that tobacco essence had probably emanated from one
of the Crescent’s more illustrious spirits, the hotel’s in-house doctor circa
late nineteenth century. Dr. John Freemont Ellis, whose office was in what is
now Room 212, was known for being a heavy pipe smoker of cherry tobacco.
Since
then she says that she has detected “that charming aroma” occasionally, both
while alone and while leading a ghost tour. The most bizarre sensing, she
explained, came during a recent tour of 24 people, “We all simultaneously
experienced that olfactory sensation for well over a minute. And let it be
understood that our entire hotel is a ‘no smoking’ property and has been for
years.”
Duchess
Debra, who gives tours and performs in a two-person paranormal play, Not Really
A Door, at the hotel on Friday and Saturday nights, was on stage with her
co-star during a recent performance. One scene in the play has the two actors
delivering the line “Ghost!” simultaneously. At that exact point in time, four
books used as props on a shelf went flying out toward the audience “as if
someone -or something- had tossed them like a Frisbee”. The books hit no one;
however, the unpredictable, unexplainable occurrence got everyone’s attention.
Sweet
Lady Sandra had one woman excitedly announce during a tour that she “clearly
saw” and “emphatically heard” a man with a buzz-cut hairstyle say the words,
“What about my treatment?” Two others on that same tour said they saw in their
peripheral vision a blurred figure of a man go by in that same vicinity at that
same moment.
Miss
Katherine was standing at the very bottom of the hotel’s open staircase with
her tour group pausing before they entered the zigzagging trail to the morgue. While
all were standing still, Katherine experienced a chill causing her to “grow
goose bumps” and then momentarily she found it hard to breathe. The two ladies
standing next to her turned pale and quickly asked, “Did anyone feel that? It’s
the little girl. She is here. I can feel her!” They were referring to the story
of the little girl that reportedly fell to her death from the fourth floor
railing sometime during the early years of hotel operations. Where she
supposedly landed was the exact spot where the tour group was standing during
the literal chilling experience.
To
add to this story, one man said, “Oh, my. Look at this photo!”, a photo he had
just taken prior to the ladies’ verbal declaration. He passed his camera around
and clearly everyone could see a foggy mist in the shape of a little girl
standing right next to the three women. Unfortunately he did not submit the
image to the hotel’s paranormal website AmericasMostHauntedHotel.com
as he said he would and as many do when they capture an apparition on a digital
device.
Major
Tom had a man and wife on a recent tour that had differing attitudes about the
plausibility of the paranormal. She believed in the phenomena; he did not. The
husband said nothing during the entire tour, giving off negative body language
throughout. This was about to change.
As
part of the tours’ conclusion in the morgue the lights are turned off. Guests,
standing next to the autopsy table and the walk-in cooler that once stored
cadavers and body parts during the cancer “curing” hospital days of the
building, are encouraged to take digital photos to see if they could catch the
image of an orb, the “energy essence of a ghost”. While Major Tom’s back was
turned, a frightful scream was heard and all witnessed the skeptic running out
of the morgue. The lights were quickly turned back on and the ashen gentleman
was invited back into the room whereupon he meekly confessed he had seen an orb
with his naked eye as it flew between his face and his camera. Result: the
non-believer had become a believer and his wife had a great story to tell
friends and family once they got back home.
Willow
also had a strange morgue experience. Each guide carries an EMF
(electromagnetic field) meter during the tour to detect any electrical
emissions that might be given out by a nearby spirit. Reacting to one lady
saying she sensed that this one certain spot on the morgue’s floor was energy
filled, Willow laid her meter down on that spot. As the entire tour witnessed,
the meter went crazy beeping and flashing. To follow up, Willow asked, “If
there is indeed a spirit in this room, please make the meter slow down.” It
slowed down immediately. After moments of heartbeat-like pulses, the spirit was
asked to speed the meter back up; it did for a few more moments then went
dormant.
But
perhaps the most macabre morgue story happened during one of Marshal John Law’s
spooky sojourns through the hotel. At the very end of the tour, after the
lights come up in the morgue, the guide usually asks if anyone would like to
enter the morgue’s infamous walk-in cooler and have the door shut behind them
leaving them in total darkness. Only two brave souls stepped up, a mother with a
video camera and her 12-year-old son with a look of cautious zeal on his face. They
stepped into the space that had housed hundreds of dead bodies and innumerable
severed body parts during the hotel’s hospital days and the door was closed
behind them. After about thirty seconds the door was opened and the boy,
looking ill, staggered out from the cooler with his mother saying, “Please,
move. My son is getting sick.”
The lad plopped into one of the two chairs always kept
near the entrance of the morgue for just such occurrences since ever so often
someone will feel faint or ill from their time spent in a room where time had
ended for so many during the three years a charlatan killed rather than cured
unsuspecting cancer patients. Once the mother was assured her son was okay and
with the whole tour group watching, she announced, “You have to see this!” At
which time she played the video she had captured in the closed, darkened
cooler.
The
video showed an occasional glint of colored light coming from a dot high over
her son’s head illuminating his face just enough for brief recognition. One
such dot did not fade like the others but began swinging back and forth. As
this light did begin to fade, a larger, brighter, white light, “as bright as a
camera flash”, appeared and continued to glow just above her son’s head. It
slowly descended and disappeared as if it were entering his head only to
suddenly reappear seemingly escaping from the boy’s skull just a nanosecond
before the door opened allowing the boy to make his quick and queasy exit.
“Something
as bizarre as these stories does not happen every night on every tour,” Scales
concluded, “but sometimes they do happen. It is this unknown factor and these
documented accounts that have made the ghost tours here in our mountaintop spa
resort so popular. That is why believers and non-believers alike can enjoy and
co-exist on our tours. Some come to find proof, some come to debunk, but all
come to have fun. And that’s what the Crescent Hotel ghost tours are all
about.”
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| Crescent Hotel Morgue |
1886 Crescent Hotel
Becomes More “Intriguing” On Halloween Night
Sean-Paul
and Juliane Fay, the headliners of Intrigue Theater, will return for the third
consecutive year to this 1886 Crescent Hotel’s Crystal Ballroom on Friday, Oct.
31. The two-hour performance begins at 10 p.m. with seating at 9:30 p.m.
The performance opens with illusionist Sean-Paul opening his
antiquarian doctor’s bag and sharing some of the newest mysteries from Intrigue
Theater, followed by medium Juliane Fay, who will call upon the energies of the
spirits said to be residing in the hotel during a séance. Randomly
selected members of the audience will be invited to the stage and a seat at the
séance table to assist in reaching back to and communicating with “those who
have crossed over.”
Past
performances have been sold out so those interested in attending should reserve
tickets early. It is an adjunct to the numerous Crescent Hotel ghost tours
that will be conducted day and night on Halloween. Tickets for both the
ghost tours and the Halloween Intrigue performance may be purchased online at ReserveEureka.com
and IntrigueTheater.com,
respectively.
The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, at 75 Prospect Avenue on Eureka Springs’ Historic Loop, is a proud member of Historic Hotels of America.
Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is the author of "Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History," "Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana" and "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana" and co-author of "Magic's in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets." She also writes Louisiana romances under Cherie Claire, including "A Cajun Dream" and "The Letter." Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.
The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, at 75 Prospect Avenue on Eureka Springs’ Historic Loop, is a proud member of Historic Hotels of America.
Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is the author of "Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History," "Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana" and "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana" and co-author of "Magic's in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets." She also writes Louisiana romances under Cherie Claire, including "A Cajun Dream" and "The Letter." Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.
