Ghost experiences revealed by 1886 Crescent Hotel tour guides

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.”

             Want more stories? Click here. For ghost tours of the 1886 Crescent Hotel, click here.

 

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.

Gold and ghosts to be found in Dahlonega, Georgia

            I love a good ghost story so imagine my joy upon learning that Dahlonega, Georgia, has more than it’s fair share.

            We’re talking way more.           

            The town dates back to the Cherokees, who settled in northern Georgia’s rolling hills, mountains and peaceful streams and lakes. When gold was discovered in 1828, however, the area exploded with early American settlers who pushed the Native Americans west. With its newfound prosperity to early European-American settlers, Dahlonega became the site of a courthouse and some rip-roaring saloons and hotels.

            Even though 80 percent of the Georgia gold remains inside those mountains, the gold Dahlonega residents now find is tourism. The town is only one and a half hours from Atlanta and boasts numerous bed and breakfasts, mountain cabins and upscale hotels. It’s one of Georgia’s hot spots to get married, the area’s wineries are taking off and it’s an outdoors paradise, with great hiking and biking through the mountains and tubing and canoeing on the Chestatee and Etowah rivers.

            It’s also very haunted.

            Some say it’s because there’s gold still in those hills, some of the purest in the world, along with quartz, stones that attract paranormal activity.

            When I visited I picked up “Dahlonega Haunts: Ghostly Adventures in a GeorgiaMountain Town” by Amy Blackmarr, a collection of more than two dozen haunted sites. The book’s required reading for those ghost haunting in Dahlonega. Blackmarr discusses spirits lingering in places such as the Lumpkin County Courthouse in the center of town, the Crisson Gold Mine, the Holly Theater, several restaurants and stores (like the Picnic Cafe, shown) and the historic Mount Hope Cemetery.

            There are tours to show you the paranormal hotspots, such as Dahlonega Ghost Walk - Historic Hauntings Tour and Haunted Dahlonega: Spirits, Legends & Lore, the latter conducted by the Friends of the Dahlonega Gold Museum Historic Site (which is located within the haunted courthouse).

Lumpkin County Courthouse

            Some of the stories you’ll hear are the Civil War soldiers playing cards in Mount Hope Cemetery, a ghostly little girl in a long white dress who plays in rooms in the Historic District and ghosts who rattle dishes and pans in restaurants on the Public Square.  

             Here’s a story the tourism folks gave me: “A visitor to The Crimson Moon Café once left their young daughter in an upstairs room for a few minutes, only to come back and find her playing hide and seek. ‘With whom?’ asked the parent. ‘Don’t you see that little girl in the white dress over there?’ answered the daughter.”

             The Dahlonega Ghost Walk - Historic Hauntings Tour visits 14 locations by tour guide and founder Jeremy Sharp, weaving through streets, back alleys, historic buildings and the historically significant cemetery. Sharp has studied Dahlonega’s history and has also worked with paranormal researchers to document sightings.

             The Friends of the Dahlonega Gold Museum Historic Site, a not-for-profit organization, is also conducting fun, interactive tours with a new narrative being written by local author Trisha Slay, who is working on a paranormal mystery novel. “Haunted Dahlonega: Spirits, Legends & Lore” explains why Dahlonega is such a hotbed of activity, includes Cherokee folktales and explores local mysteries and benevolent hauntings. 

             Both tours are suitable for adults and children.

             Need more ghost fodder? How about in your accommodations? Try the elegant Park Place Hotel or the Hall House Hotel that dates back to 1881 and is the second oldest building on Dahlonega's historic square.

            

Information:

Dahlonega Ghost Walk - Historic Hauntings Tour

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, August through November

Tickets are adults $10, children $5, available at The Attic Upstairs, 19 East Main St. Call 706-482-8795 or email dahlonegawalkingtours@gmail.com.

Tour is approximately 1.3 miles long on paved, designated walkways, with the exception of Mount Hope Cemetery, and ends in front of the Visitors Center, 13 South Park St.

Haunted Dahlonega: Spirits, Legends & Lore, conducted by the Friends of the Dahlonega Gold Museum Historic Site

7 p.m. Saturdays on Sept. 6, 13 and 20; Oct. 4, 11 and 25; Nov. 1

Tickets $10, benefit the Dahlonega Gold Museum Historic Site and are available at the Dahlonega Gold Museum. Visit www.facebook.com/FODGM or call 706-864-2257. 

For a self-guided tour, visit http://dahlonega.org/tours-a-scenic-drives-2/ghost-tours. For tourism information on Dahlonega, visit www.dahlonega.org.

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.

Can you see the face in the Pickens County Courthouse window?

     "The face in the courthouse window in Carrollton, Alabama, the finest or one of the finest ghost stories in the state."
      —Kathryn Tucker Windham

     Genealogist Donna R. Causey discusses the ghost story of Henry Wells, an African American suspected of burning down the Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton in 1876. It's one of the most unusual ghost stories you will ever hear, involving a lynch mob, a garett window and a bizarre strike of lightning.
      Click here for Causey's story, "The Face in the Window in Pickens County, Alabama — Can You See It?" which also includes a video by storyteller and author Kathryn Tucker Windham.

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.

Geospirits offers interactive map of paranormal sites

            Louisiana Spirits has a new interactive map that lets viewers search for paranormal sites throughout the United States, including all over the Deep South!

            You’ll find everything from haunted hotels and bed and breakfasts to cemeteries, battlefields and historic buildings. Some are suspected to be haunted, some have research to back them up and some contain “some sort of unknown phenomena,” claim organizers.            

            Want to add your site? Submit your location by email to Louisiana Spirits.
            Note: The icon at right gives the URL as GeoSpirits.com but when we clicked on the link it came to http://www.laspirits.com/geospirits, for what it’s worth.


Haunted Deep South is written by travel writer Cheré Coen, author of Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana by The History Press. She writes the Viola Valentine paranormal mystery series under the pen name of Cherie Claire.

Who haunts the Opelousas Museum?

Opelousas Museum and Interpretive Center

            Living history roams the Opelousas Museum and Interpretive Center, walking among the Clifton Chenier zydeco records, Civil War relics and around the barbershop chair where Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame got his last haircut. There are specters who refuse to leave the 1935 building, whose incarnations included the Sibille’s Funeral Home, a church and the Opelousas Library.

            Director Delores Guillory had no idea of the building’s history when she first started working at the Opelousas Museum. Her first clue came when she was alone in the building, sitting at her desk inside the office.

            “The front door opened and it closed,” Guillory said. “I looked over and nobody came. I looked at the door and there was no one.”

            Guillory even went so far as to check the outside porch and sidewalk and both were empty. When her supervisor returned, she recalled the story. To her surprise, the supervisor laughed.

            “That’s when she told me about it once being a funeral home,” Guillory said.

            Other events followed, including hearing startling noises like something falling from the wall. Once a loud noise emanated from the Civil War room and Guillory smelled cigarettes after investigating.

            Another time she was sitting in the hallway when the back door opened and closed. At first she chalked it up to the security guard who liked to tease her about the ghosts, but when she called him up on the phone, he was the park.

            “I said okay, that was our ghost again.”

The Civil War Room

            Others have experienced sightings as well. One employee spotted something white and whispy moving across her line of sight by the Civil War Room.

            “All of sudden something went across cold cold and she smelled perfume,” Guillory explained. “We told her about the ghosts. The next day she quit.”

            A worker performing community service at the museum halted at the mannequin in the Mardi Gras display, a man bedecked in a long mink and velvet robe. The elaborate robe was created for Nolan Simmons, who reigned as King Orme XLVIII in the 1994 Carnival season in Opelousas. Today, it adorns the mannequin inside a glass case, with a mirror behind so visitors can view all sides.

            “She said I have to get out of here,” Guillory related of the woman’s experience at the mannequin. “She said there’s a bad vibe in here.”

            Some people halt at the front door, feeling the paranormal vibe and refusing to set foot inside, Guillory said.

            Louisiana Spirits paranormal investigators spent an evening in the museum and heard unusual sounds they couldn’t account for, but they did debunk the mystery of the moving dolls in the display cases. The dolls were not laying flat within the cases so footsteps in the hall caused the cabinets to shake and move, said Jennifer Broussard of Louisiana Spirits. Investigator Charles Gardner managed to get one doll to turn completely as he walked in the hallway, he said.

This story was an excerpt from "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana" by Cheré Coen, published by The History Press.

Ghost in the Grevemberg parlor

    The Grevemberg House in Franklin, Louisiana, was built in 1851 by town lawyer Henry Wilson. He later sold the home to Mrs. Frances Wyckoff Grevemberg, who had lost her husband, Gabriel Grevemberg, in the 1856 hurricane that devastated Last Island or Isle Derniere off the coast of Louisiana. Mrs. Grevemberg and her children lived in the house for many years, then different owners purchased the home until the City of Franklin took over the property in 1948.

            Today, the Greek Revival house is a museum operated by the St. Mary Landmarks Society. Most of the furnishings are not original to the house, but are appropriate period antiques. However, the cypress floors and the downstairs black marble mantles are original.

            The Grevemberg House Museum offers Civil War memorabilia, an iron casket, an extensive toy and doll collection and a large statue of Justice saved from the demolition of the old Franklin courthouse.

            Ghosts have not been reported here, but a psychic visited the museum and claimed an older woman was standing near the center table in the front room, the one housing the Steinway Grand Square piano beneath the portrait of handsome Charles Alexander Grevemberg, who built Albania Plantation in nearby Jeanerette, Louisiana. The psychic claimed the woman found the room nicely furnished, but the pieces were not where they were supposed to be. She hovered by the table and then walked toward the fireplace.

Haunted Deep South is written by travel writer Cheré Coen, author of Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana by The History Press. She writes the Viola Valentine paranormal mystery series under the pen name of Cherie Claire.

Who remains at Loyd Hall Plantation?

            I’ve heard that Loyd Hall Plantation near Alexandria was haunted but never got the full story until I spent the night. The main house was full the night we visited so I shared the old kitchen out back — newly renovated, of course, and accented with antiques — with a friend who had not known it was haunted. Needless to say, she taped on my door several times in the night because she was scared someone less alive than I would visit.

            The story goes that William Loyd built the impressive home around 1820, after he was cast out of the Lloyd family in England, the ones associated with Lloyds of London. Hence only one l in his name, which he changed upon arrival in America.

            The black sheep of the Lloyd family didn’t do so bad for himself in central Louisiana, creating a plantation of tobacco, corn, indigo and sugarcane on hundreds of acres. Stories claim he was a bit eccentric, however, and the local natives weren’t too fond of him, which explains the spent arrowheads in the kitchen doors.

An upstairs suite.

            Another story claims he worked both sides of the Civil War and was hanged from an oak tree in the front of his house for treason.

            Today, the home is listed on the National Historic Register and serves as a bed and breakfast with guests enjoying a full breakfast in the main house with walls of windows overlooking the property. In addition to two elegant suites on the second floor (hint, this is where to stay if you want to see ghosts), there are numerous “cottages” in the rear, including the old commissary and kitchen, where we stayed (without incident).

            William Loyd haunts the home, some people think, and favors the front porch. A Union soldier killed on the third floor still hangs around as well. And there are more, as Miss Beaulah Davis explained to us in the morning when we were enjoying our breakfast. Guests have reported things moving on their own, pressure on furniture when no one was there and unusual sounds.

The third floor schoolhouse.

            According to Louisiana Spirits paranormal investigators, “Mr. Loyd's relative, Inez Loyd, jumped to her death from the third story attic. The suicide was said to have taken place due to Inez being stood up by her fiancé. The third floor was also said to have been home to a small schoolhouse on one side and the room of the teacher on the other. It was this teacher that was said to have been in a relationship with a Union soldier who chose to stay behind after the troops left. He was often seen on the front porch, serenading the teacher with a violin. It is at his point that the history is unclear. Some sources say that the soldier was then shot by the teacher's sister, while others say it was an angry neighbor that committed the murder. Needles to say, the soldier was, in fact, shot on the third floor and buried under the house. Years later, his remains were exhumed and moved to an undisclosed location.”

            We visited the third floor and witnessed a large stain near the window, said to have been the blood stain of the fallen soldier.

            Loyd Hall is located at 292 Loyd Bridge Road in Cheneyville. For information, call (318) 776-5641 or visit http://www.loydhall.com.

Haunted Deep South is written by travel writer Cheré Coen, author of Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana by The History Press. She writes the Viola Valentine paranormal mystery series under the pen name of Cherie Claire.