Explore one of America’s most haunted places—The Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
This episode of State of the Unknown dives into chilling paranormal stories, a dark past of medical fraud, and the enduring haunted history of this infamous Victorian hospital.
From ghostly nurses to buried jars of human remains, this creepy podcast uncovers the facts behind the legends.
If you're drawn to haunted places podcasts or true tales of fear and deception—this one’s for you.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Robert (00:03):
There are places built to be beautiful and places that
become something else entirely.
Up in the Ozark Mountains, pastthe winding roads and steep
ravines, there's a buildingthat's watched over Eureka
Springs for nearly 140 years.
Stone walls, iron balconies,wide porches facing miles of
(00:29):
untouched forest.
By all accounts, It should feellike a sanctuary, but it
doesn't.
People come for the view andleave with something they can't
explain.
They see figures in thehallway, feel hands in the dark,
hear footsteps in the atticwhen no one is there.
(00:52):
One room makes guests scream.
Another has a mirror that won'thold your reflection.
Down in the basement, Beneaththe beauty, there's a morgue,
and not the kind built byarchitects.
Because the man who ran thisplace once called himself a
(01:12):
doctor.
He promised miracles, but whathe delivered was death.
And the people who came herelooking for healing, some never
left.
This is a story of fraud, fear,and unfinished business.
of a building that's changednames, changed faces, but never
(01:37):
escaped what happened inside.
They call it the most hauntedhotel in America, but behind the
ghost tours and flickeringlights, there's a history that's
even stranger than the legends.
This was no ordinary haunting.
It began with a man who playeddoctor without a license, who
(01:59):
ran a cancer hospital withoutmedicine, and who may have
filled the basement with morethan just lies.
This isn't just aboutapparitions.
It's about consequences andwhat gets left behind when the
cure is worse than the disease.
I'm your host, Robert Barber,and today we travel to the
(02:37):
Ozarks, to a grand Victorianhotel that became a death trap
in disguise, a place where hopeturned to horror, and where the
people who died looking for amiracle might still be there.
This is the story of theCrescent Hotel, and this is
(02:59):
State of the Unknown.
The town of Eureka Springs wasfounded on a promise.
The promise of water.
In the late 1800s, the AmericanSouth was clinging to the last
breath of frontier belief.
(03:19):
And in the hills of northwestArkansas, people claimed they'd
found healing springs.
Waters that could cure.
Waters that could cleanse.
Waters that could save you.
Word spread.
faster than rail lines couldever reach.
And soon, thousands were makingthe pilgrimage.
(03:42):
The sick, the desperate, thehopeful, all willing to believe.
By 1880, Eureka Springs hadexploded.
Boarding houses were packed.
Doctors, real and fake, set upshop.
And investors saw anopportunity.
(04:02):
That's when the Crescent Hotelwas born.
It was massive for its time.
Built from local limestonehauled up the mountain.
78 rooms, wide verandas, grandstaircases, and gas lighting.
Everything about it whisperedluxury.
(04:23):
It opened in 1886 with a gala.
Champagne, string quartets,ladies in silk gowns, men in top
hats and stiff collars.
They called it the Grand OldLady of the Ozarks, and for a
time, it lived up to the name.
But the spring stopped healing,or maybe the illusion just wore
(04:48):
off.
By the early 1900s, guests werefewer, the glamour faded, and
the hotel floundered.
It became a school for girls,then a junior college, and by
the 1930s, The Crescent was arelic.
Cracked stone, drafty halls,and rooms no one stayed in.
(05:12):
Until a man named Norman Bakercame to town.
With lavender suits, bigpromises, and a plan to bring
the dead back to life.
Before the Crescent Hotel wasthe most haunted in America, it
was just a crumbling building.
(05:33):
Quiet.
empty and forgotten untilNorman Baker came to town and
nothing was quiet again.
He arrived in Eureka Springs in1937, riding a wave of false
credentials, flamboyantshowmanship, and criminal charm.
(05:53):
He wasn't a doctor, not evenclose.
He had no degree, no license,just a flair for performance.
And for a while, that wasenough.
Norman Baker wasn't somebackwoods quack.
He was a former vaudevillemagician who wore lavender
(06:16):
suits, drove a purple car, anddyed his hair silver to look
more refined.
He built radio stations tobroadcast his rants.
and he styled himself as acrusader against the medical
establishment, calling realdoctors butchers and murderers.
(06:36):
He had already run one fakecancer clinic in Muscatine,
Iowa, selling a miracle curemade from water, corn silk,
watermelon seeds, and carbolicacid.
It cured nothing.
But people came anyway.
Came by the hundreds.
came by the thousands.
(06:57):
He told them what they wantedto hear.
That cancer was just a fungus.
That surgery was a lie.
And that if they trusted him,just him, he could save them.
And they did.
Because they were desperate.
(07:18):
Because real medicine hadfailed.
And because they were dying andstill believed or desperately
wanted to still believe inmiracles.
He made millions beforeauthorities shut him down, but
Baker was slippery, and beforehe could be stopped completely,
(07:38):
he vanished.
He resurfaced in the Ozarkswith a new plan, a new name, and
a very old hotel.
He bought the Crescent in 1937and rebranded it as the Baker
Cancer Hospital.
He hung a sign out front thatread, Where Sick People Get
(08:02):
Well.
And they came.
Patients from across thecountry wrote letters, scraped
savings, packed their bags, andcame to Eureka Springs hoping
for life.
They were admitted into roomswith peeling wallpaper and
rickety beds.
treated with injections thatdid nothing.
(08:23):
Fed lies between doses.
No surgeries, no radiation, noreal medicine, just pageantry
and poison.
Norman Baker wore a white coatand called himself doctor.
He gave lectures in the hotel'sgrand ballroom, railing against
(08:46):
cancer as if it were a minornuisance.
He claimed a 90% cure rate.
No one asked for proof.
And if they did, well, theydidn't get it.
People died.
Not quickly, but slowly.
And in agony.
And the records of thosedeaths?
(09:07):
Missing.
There was no oversight.
No hospital board.
No morgue in the legal sense.
Just a basement.
Dark.
cold, and lined with shells andglass jars.
Some of the patients wereburied quietly in local
cemeteries.
(09:28):
Others, well, they just werenever seen again.
Some say Baker stored theirbodies in the walls.
Others say he dumped them inthe woods.
And the truth?
The truth still hasn't beenfully uncovered.
When federal investigatorsfinally caught up to him, He was
(09:49):
arrested in 1940 for mailfraud, not murder.
He served four years, thenwalked away rich, unrepentant,
and untouched by the lives hedestroyed.
The hotel was left to rot.
The rooms stood empty.
But what Baker left behind,well, that stayed.
(10:13):
And the people who came therelooking for salvation...
Some never left at all.
The Crescent Hotel was supposedto be a place of rest.
A mountaintop sanctuary abovethe noise, the sickness, the
fear.
Instead, it became somethingelse.
(10:36):
A place where the dying camelast.
Where pain echoed in thehallways.
And where the real treatmenthappened underground.
Norman Baker called it theexamination room, but everyone
else would come to know it byanother name, the morgue.
The basement of the Crescentwas culled by design, cut into
(11:01):
the stone buried beneath theOzark soil.
It should have stored wine,maybe coal.
Instead, it held steel gurneys,surgical trays, and the bodies
of those who never made it backup the stairs.
Patients entered the hospitalwith hope.
They'd been promised life.
(11:22):
Promised that they wouldn'tsuffer.
That Baker had found the cureno one else had.
But his miracle injections werenothing more than colored
water.
And as the weeks passed, thesigns became harder to ignore.
Hair fell out.
Sores spread.
Voices weakened into whispers.
(11:44):
And the pain subsided.
Well, the pain only got worse.
The nurses, if they could becalled that, moved quietly.
They didn't comfort.
They didn't explain.
They simply wheeled the gurneyswhere they were told.
And when the pain became toomuch to hide, the patients were
(12:05):
taken downstairs.
Some were sedated.
Others were not.
But none of them ever cameback.
And what happened in thatbasement?
That's the part no one everwrote down.
There were rumors about bodiesdissected without consent, about
(12:26):
organs preserved in glass jars,about patients buried without
names.
There were whispers thatBaker's research wasn't about
healing, but about finding newways to lie, to stage
procedures, to silence those whohad questioned him.
When investigators raided thehotel in 1940, they found
(12:50):
something chilling in thatbasement.
Jars.
Dozens of them.
Labeled with patient numbers.
Filled with body partssuspended in fluid.
Baker claimed they werespecimens.
Evidence of his success.
But the labels didn't match anymedical standard.
(13:10):
And the records that could haveexplained them?
Gone.
And the worst part?
That wasn't the end.
In 2019, more than 75 yearsafter Baker's arrest, a
landscaper working near thehotel made a grisly discovery.
A cache of bottles buriedunderground, each one filled
(13:34):
with tissue, tumors, andsomething else.
Human remains, preserved,hidden, left exactly where Baker
had put them.
It wasn't just a ghost storyanymore.
The Crescent's hauntedreputation was real, and it had
teeth.
Some of those remains werereburied.
(13:57):
Others are still being studied.
But what they prove is this.
This hotel isn't hauntedbecause of rumors.
It's haunted because it shouldbe.
Death clings to its foundation,to the beds, to the walls.
to the basement where theforgotten were cut open,
(14:17):
bottled, and buried.
And if you listen in thesilence of those stone halls,
you might hear them.
If you ask the front desk atthe Crescent Hotel today whether
it's haunted, they won't denyit.
They'll hand you a brochure.
Ghost tours leave every nightat sunset.
Paranormal groups rent outrooms by the week.
(14:40):
And the hotel doesn't run fromits reputation.
It leans in because too manypeople, too many normal,
skeptical, grounded people haveseen things they can't explain.
The most active room in thehotel is room 218.
Guests report doors slamming bythemselves, footsteps pacing
(15:03):
above their heads, even thoughthey're on the top floor.
The light flickers when noone's near the switch.
And sometimes in the middle ofthe night, the bathroom door
creaks open.
Not fast, not violently, justslowly.
Like someone checking in onyou.
Room 218 is said to be hauntedby Michael, a stonemason who
(15:28):
worked on the original hotelback in 1885.
The legend says he fell fromthe roof during construction and
died on impact, right where theroom now stands.
Staff says he's mischievous.
playful, harmless.
But guests have reported wakingup pinned to their beds.
(15:49):
Others say they heard a manlaughing just behind their
headboard.
Downstairs, the vibe changes.
In the basement, where NormanBaker stored his patients and
his secrets, things feel darker,colder, more personal.
The morgue is still there.
(16:10):
the steel autopsy table, thewalk-in cooler where bodies were
kept.
Even some of Baker's originalmedical equipment is on display.
Visitors report hearing moans,feeling hands brush their necks,
seeing faces reflected inmirrors that vanish when they
turn around.
(16:30):
One ghost has been seen morethan most, the nurse.
She appears in 1930s erauniform, pushing a gurney
through the halls at night.
But there's no sound.
The wheels don't squeak.
Her shoes don't click.
She simply glides and thendisappears through a wall.
(16:53):
In one incident, a gueststaying near the basement woke
in the night to find herstanding at the foot of his bed.
He blinked and she was gone.
there's also the ghost in themirror.
A hotel staffer cleaning one ofthe old rooms in the 1990s
reported seeing a woman in along gown standing behind her in
(17:15):
the reflection, but no one wasthere.
She screamed, dropped hersupplies, and quit the next
morning.
Apparitions aren't limited toone floor.
They've been seen walking thegardens, climbing the grand
staircase, peering out ofwindows on floors that are
locked.
(17:36):
Guests in honeymoon suites havereported sudden cold spots and
voices whispering under the bed.
And then, there's the smell.
Several guests have reportedthe sudden scent of lavender
cologne, Norman Baker'ssignature.
A pungent, sweet smell thatappears out of nowhere and
(17:58):
lingers.
one paranormal team recorded avoice in the basement that
whispered, Get out.
Another captured a shadowdarting behind the morgue door,
even though the building wasempty.
And some guests don't reportanything at all until they go
home, until their photos showorbs, figures, or faces in the
(18:22):
corners, until they dream of thehotel every night for weeks.
The Crescent doesn't just trapghosts.
It takes something from theliving.
A piece of memory.
A thread of fear.
A reason to never go back.
And yet, a reason to neverforget.
(18:43):
For decades, the rumors aboutthe Crescent's basement lingered
like the smell of formaldehyde.
Norman Baker, the fake doctor,had claimed it was just an
examination room.
but people whispered that ithad once been a morgue, that he
stored specimens in jars, andthat some patients checked in
(19:06):
and vanished.
It sounded like legend, likeone of those hotel ghost stories
whispered for tourists andthrill seekers, until the Earth
gave up its secrets.
In February of 2019, Hotellandscapers were clearing brush
(19:27):
along the northern edge of theCrescent's Back lawn, an area
just beyond where the originalhospital garden had once been.
A shovel hit something hard.
Glass.
Then another.
And another.
Beneath the soil, packed inclusters like bones in a mass
grave, were dozens of vintagemedicine bottles.
(19:48):
Many were intact.
Others were cracked open.
Their contents dark and stillslightly fluid after more than
75 years underground.
Inside, tissue, bone fragments,tufts of hair, and slivers of
flesh suspended in thickpreservatives.
(20:11):
The bottles were unmistakablyfrom the Norman Baker era,
matching those shown in hisadvertisements and hospital
photographs.
Some were labeled with patientnumbers.
Others had cryptic notes.
Most were anonymous.
It wasn't just a hauntinganymore.
It was evidence.
(20:33):
The Arkansas ArchaeologicalSurvey was brought in to examine
the find.
By the time they were donecataloging, over 500 fragments
in complete bottles had beenrecovered.
Many were likely discardedmedical specimens from Baker's
treatment process, proof thathis promises were built on
(20:55):
exploitation and death.
The discovery didn't just shockhistorians.
It reignited the paranormalfire.
Not long after, the TravelChannel's Ghost Adventures team
returned to the hotel.
Led by Zach Bagans, they filmedan episode titled The Crescent
(21:16):
Hotel that aired in October2019.
Their investigation includedEMF spikes in the morgue,
unexplained whispers caught onaudio in room 218, and a segment
where a hospital curtain movedon its own during filming,
despite a controlled environmentwith no airflow.
The curtain lifted slowly.
(21:39):
folded outward as if someonewere stepping through it.
The TAPS team from GhostHunters had also visited years
earlier, conducting amulti-night investigation of the
hotel.
They reported anomalous coldspots in sealed rooms,
disembodied voices, and afull-body apparition captured in
(22:00):
thermal imaging standing at thefoot of a guest bed in room
419.
But it wasn't just the TVcrews.
Local teams were drawn in too.
The Eureka Springs ParanormalInvestigators, a local group
with long access to the hotel,began hosting midnight
investigations.
(22:21):
Private ghost hunts that allowvisitors to enter the basement
with EMF meters, dowsing rods,and motion-triggered cameras.
Guests frequently report chillsdespite warm air.
Footsteps pacing in thehallways behind them.
and the overpowering scent oflavender, Norman Baker's
(22:41):
preferred cologne.
In one investigation, a guestplaced a flashlight on an old
autopsy table.
They asked, did you come herefor treatment?
The flashlight flickered, thenturned on by itself.
Another guest, a nurse fromMissouri, felt her wrist seized
(23:02):
by something unseen as sheleaned over the old morgue
cabinet.
She described the grip as coldand clinical.
She thought someone was pullingher into the drawer.
When she turned, no one wasthere.
Hotel staff tell their ownstories.
They'll mention lights thatwon't stay off in room 419.
(23:23):
Voices calling out from behindthe walls in room 218.
And the sound of wheels.
The same steel wheels from the1930s gurneys.
rolling through the hallwaylate at night when no one is
checked into that wing.
Then there's the mirror in thebasement, a remnant from Baker's
(23:44):
old operating room.
Guests and investigators alikereport seeing someone in it, a
figure in white standing behindthem, always still, always
silent, gone the moment theyturn around.
This isn't just suggestion.
This isn't a creaky old houseplaying tricks.
There are photos, recordings,time stamps, and artifacts.
(24:09):
The Crescent Hotel isn'thaunted because people want it
to be.
It's haunted because it wasn'tsupposed to be uncovered.
Because trauma leaves animprint.
And in this case, it was buriedin the yard.
What Norman Baker left behindwasn't just suffering.
It was evidence.
(24:30):
It was proof.
And once the dirt came off, thespirits rose with it.
So, why does the Crescent Hotelseem to hum with something
unnatural?
Why do people, skeptics,believers, staff, and tourists
(24:53):
walk through its halls and feelsomething watching?
Is it truly haunted, or isthere something deeper,
stranger, and maybe evenunexplainable going on.
Let's look at the theories.
Theory number one, the residualenergy theory.
Paranormal investigators oftendescribe the crescent as a
(25:17):
residual haunting site.
That's the idea that traumaleaves a fingerprint, a kind of
emotional echo that imprintsitself on the environment.
According to this theory, whatyou experience at the crescent
isn't a conscious spirit.
It's the replay of pain, ofsuffering, of desperate patients
(25:39):
pacing their rooms, nursestending to the dying, and bodies
moved through the morgue below.
It's not interactive.
It's a recording.
And the hotel?
Just the playback device.
There's even some scientificspeculation behind it.
Some researchers point to thequartz-rich limestone beneath
(26:01):
the hotel.
Materials that may be able tostore electromagnetic energy.
It's speculative, unproven, butintriguing.
And it matches similar claimsat other famously haunted
locations built on similar rock.
The Myrtles Plantation,Gettysburg, even the Stanley
(26:23):
Hotel.
Theory 2.
Intelligent Spirits andUnfinished Business Others
believe the spirits at theCrescent Hotel aren't just
echoes.
They're conscious, present,aware.
This theory centers on the ideathat certain spirits stay
(26:44):
behind when something isunresolved.
Usually trauma, injustice, orsudden death.
At the Crescent, that list islong.
Patients who are lied to.
Bodies never buried properly.
lives ended without dignity,name, or closure.
(27:04):
If ghosts are real, this wouldbe prime territory.
And then, of course, there'sNorman Baker himself.
People claim to smell hislavender cologne, to see a man
in a white coat pacing thehalls.
Could he be lingering too?
Not out of guilt, but ego?
(27:25):
A man who couldn't let go ofhis stage?
Theory number three,psychological projection.
Now let's flip the lens becauseskeptics, and there are many,
offer a different explanationaltogether.
They say the Crescent Hotel ishaunted because it's supposed to
(27:46):
be.
It's old.
It's isolated.
It's filled with strangearchitecture, cold spots,
flickering lights.
Add in a tragic past, ghosttours every night.
and stories planted in yourbrain before you ever check in,
and you've got the perfectrecipe for psychological
suggestion.
(28:07):
The human brain is wired toseek patterns, to complete
incomplete information,especially in low light, in
unfamiliar spaces, and underemotional stress.
A creaking pipe becomesfootsteps.
A draft becomes a hand on yourneck.
A dream becomes becomes amemory.
(28:29):
This is what psychologists callpriming.
We see what we expect to see.
We feel what we fear we'llfeel.
Does that mean the crescentisn't haunted?
Not necessarily.
But it means we can't alwaystrust our senses, especially
(28:49):
when we've already been toldwhat we're supposed to
experience.
So which is it?
Echoes of trauma?
Active spirits?
Primed perception?
A hoax that became somethingmore?
Maybe it's a little of each.
Because here's the truth notheory can fully explain.
(29:10):
Thousands of people, many ofthem sober, skeptical, and
perfectly sane, have experiencedthings at the Crescent Hotel
that they cannot explain.
And whether those things areparanormal or psychological or
both, They feel real.
They leave marks.
(29:31):
They linger.
And in a place with as muchburied pain as this one, maybe
the real mystery isn't why theCrescent Hotel is haunted.
Maybe it's why it took so longfor anyone to believe it.
The Crescent Hotel stands as italways has.
(29:51):
High on a hill, stone bonesagainst the Arkansas sky.
It's beautiful.
It's quiet.
And for those who don't knowthe story, it looks like a place
that was made to heal.
But healing was never whathappened here.
In the 1930s, desperate peoplecame to this mountain to be
(30:14):
saved.
They wrote letters, packedbags, held hands with loved ones
as they walked through thefront doors of a hotel dressed
up like a hospital.
They trusted a man in a whitecoat, And in return, they were
used, abandoned, erased.
Some died slowly.
(30:34):
Some were buried quickly.
And some weren't buried at all.
Their names were lost, theirbodies bottled, and their
suffering repackaged as amiracle.
Today, the Crescent Hotel is alandmark, a spa, a wedding
(30:55):
venue.
A place where people check infor romance, relaxation, or
ghosts.
But beneath the paint and thepolished wood, the past is still
there.
In the stone.
In the silence.
In the basement that stillremembers.
Maybe that's why it's stillhaunted.
(31:15):
Not by spirits, but byunfinished stories.
By the weight of lives takentoo soon and promises that were
never kept.
And maybe if we listen closelyenough, we can still hear them
asking for the truth or just forsomeone to say their name.
(31:37):
This is State of the Unknown.
Every other week, we exploreAmerica's shadows, legends born
in basements, fields, andforgotten towns.
These are the stories we'redrawn to because they never
really let go.
And if you want to keep theconversation going, follow us on
(31:58):
Instagram and Facebook at Stateof the Unknown Podcast.
Join other listeners, shareyour stories, share your
theories, and be part of theweirdness between episodes.
If you enjoyed this episode,the best way to support the show
is to follow, leave a review,or share it with someone who
loves a good mystery.
(32:18):
It helps more than you know,and it keeps these stories
alive.
And if you ever find yourselfin Eureka Springs, ask for Room
218.
But maybe don't stay the wholenight.
There are places built to be beautiful and places that
become something else entirely.
Up in the Ozark Mountains, pastthe winding roads and steep
ravines, there's a buildingthat's watched over Eureka
Springs for nearly 140 years.
Stone walls, iron balconies,wide porches facing miles of
(00:29):
untouched forest.
By all accounts, It should feellike a sanctuary, but it
doesn't.
People come for the view andleave with something they can't
explain.
They see figures in thehallway, feel hands in the dark,
hear footsteps in the atticwhen no one is there.
(00:52):
One room makes guests scream.
Another has a mirror that won'thold your reflection.
Down in the basement, Beneaththe beauty, there's a morgue,
and not the kind built byarchitects.
Because the man who ran thisplace once called himself a
(01:12):
doctor.
He promised miracles, but whathe delivered was death.
And the people who came herelooking for healing, some never
left.
This is a story of fraud, fear,and unfinished business.
of a building that's changednames, changed faces, but never
(01:37):
escaped what happened inside.
They call it the most hauntedhotel in America, but behind the
ghost tours and flickeringlights, there's a history that's
even stranger than the legends.
This was no ordinary haunting.
It began with a man who playeddoctor without a license, who
(01:59):
ran a cancer hospital withoutmedicine, and who may have
filled the basement with morethan just lies.
This isn't just aboutapparitions.
It's about consequences andwhat gets left behind when the
cure is worse than the disease.
I'm your host, Robert Barber,and today we travel to the
(02:37):
Ozarks, to a grand Victorianhotel that became a death trap
in disguise, a place where hopeturned to horror, and where the
people who died looking for amiracle might still be there.
This is the story of theCrescent Hotel, and this is
(02:59):
State of the Unknown.
The town of Eureka Springs wasfounded on a promise.
The promise of water.
In the late 1800s, the AmericanSouth was clinging to the last
breath of frontier belief.
(03:19):
And in the hills of northwestArkansas, people claimed they'd
found healing springs.
Waters that could cure.
Waters that could cleanse.
Waters that could save you.
Word spread.
faster than rail lines couldever reach.
And soon, thousands were makingthe pilgrimage.
(03:42):
The sick, the desperate, thehopeful, all willing to believe.
By 1880, Eureka Springs hadexploded.
Boarding houses were packed.
Doctors, real and fake, set upshop.
And investors saw anopportunity.
(04:02):
That's when the Crescent Hotelwas born.
It was massive for its time.
Built from local limestonehauled up the mountain.
78 rooms, wide verandas, grandstaircases, and gas lighting.
Everything about it whisperedluxury.
(04:23):
It opened in 1886 with a gala.
Champagne, string quartets,ladies in silk gowns, men in top
hats and stiff collars.
They called it the Grand OldLady of the Ozarks, and for a
time, it lived up to the name.
But the spring stopped healing,or maybe the illusion just wore
(04:48):
off.
By the early 1900s, guests werefewer, the glamour faded, and
the hotel floundered.
It became a school for girls,then a junior college, and by
the 1930s, The Crescent was arelic.
Cracked stone, drafty halls,and rooms no one stayed in.
(05:12):
Until a man named Norman Bakercame to town.
With lavender suits, bigpromises, and a plan to bring
the dead back to life.
Before the Crescent Hotel wasthe most haunted in America, it
was just a crumbling building.
(05:33):
Quiet.
empty and forgotten untilNorman Baker came to town and
nothing was quiet again.
He arrived in Eureka Springs in1937, riding a wave of false
credentials, flamboyantshowmanship, and criminal charm.
(05:53):
He wasn't a doctor, not evenclose.
He had no degree, no license,just a flair for performance.
And for a while, that wasenough.
Norman Baker wasn't somebackwoods quack.
He was a former vaudevillemagician who wore lavender
(06:16):
suits, drove a purple car, anddyed his hair silver to look
more refined.
He built radio stations tobroadcast his rants.
and he styled himself as acrusader against the medical
establishment, calling realdoctors butchers and murderers.
(06:36):
He had already run one fakecancer clinic in Muscatine,
Iowa, selling a miracle curemade from water, corn silk,
watermelon seeds, and carbolicacid.
It cured nothing.
But people came anyway.
Came by the hundreds.
came by the thousands.
(06:57):
He told them what they wantedto hear.
That cancer was just a fungus.
That surgery was a lie.
And that if they trusted him,just him, he could save them.
And they did.
Because they were desperate.
(07:18):
Because real medicine hadfailed.
And because they were dying andstill believed or desperately
wanted to still believe inmiracles.
He made millions beforeauthorities shut him down, but
Baker was slippery, and beforehe could be stopped completely,
(07:38):
he vanished.
He resurfaced in the Ozarkswith a new plan, a new name, and
a very old hotel.
He bought the Crescent in 1937and rebranded it as the Baker
Cancer Hospital.
He hung a sign out front thatread, Where Sick People Get
(08:02):
Well.
And they came.
Patients from across thecountry wrote letters, scraped
savings, packed their bags, andcame to Eureka Springs hoping
for life.
They were admitted into roomswith peeling wallpaper and
rickety beds.
treated with injections thatdid nothing.
(08:23):
Fed lies between doses.
No surgeries, no radiation, noreal medicine, just pageantry
and poison.
Norman Baker wore a white coatand called himself doctor.
He gave lectures in the hotel'sgrand ballroom, railing against
(08:46):
cancer as if it were a minornuisance.
He claimed a 90% cure rate.
No one asked for proof.
And if they did, well, theydidn't get it.
People died.
Not quickly, but slowly.
And in agony.
And the records of thosedeaths?
(09:07):
Missing.
There was no oversight.
No hospital board.
No morgue in the legal sense.
Just a basement.
Dark.
cold, and lined with shells andglass jars.
Some of the patients wereburied quietly in local
cemeteries.
(09:28):
Others, well, they just werenever seen again.
Some say Baker stored theirbodies in the walls.
Others say he dumped them inthe woods.
And the truth?
The truth still hasn't beenfully uncovered.
When federal investigatorsfinally caught up to him, He was
(09:49):
arrested in 1940 for mailfraud, not murder.
He served four years, thenwalked away rich, unrepentant,
and untouched by the lives hedestroyed.
The hotel was left to rot.
The rooms stood empty.
But what Baker left behind,well, that stayed.
(10:13):
And the people who came therelooking for salvation...
Some never left at all.
The Crescent Hotel was supposedto be a place of rest.
A mountaintop sanctuary abovethe noise, the sickness, the
fear.
Instead, it became somethingelse.
(10:36):
A place where the dying camelast.
Where pain echoed in thehallways.
And where the real treatmenthappened underground.
Norman Baker called it theexamination room, but everyone
else would come to know it byanother name, the morgue.
The basement of the Crescentwas culled by design, cut into
(11:01):
the stone buried beneath theOzark soil.
It should have stored wine,maybe coal.
Instead, it held steel gurneys,surgical trays, and the bodies
of those who never made it backup the stairs.
Patients entered the hospitalwith hope.
They'd been promised life.
(11:22):
Promised that they wouldn'tsuffer.
That Baker had found the cureno one else had.
But his miracle injections werenothing more than colored
water.
And as the weeks passed, thesigns became harder to ignore.
Hair fell out.
Sores spread.
Voices weakened into whispers.
(11:44):
And the pain subsided.
Well, the pain only got worse.
The nurses, if they could becalled that, moved quietly.
They didn't comfort.
They didn't explain.
They simply wheeled the gurneyswhere they were told.
And when the pain became toomuch to hide, the patients were
(12:05):
taken downstairs.
Some were sedated.
Others were not.
But none of them ever cameback.
And what happened in thatbasement?
That's the part no one everwrote down.
There were rumors about bodiesdissected without consent, about
(12:26):
organs preserved in glass jars,about patients buried without
names.
There were whispers thatBaker's research wasn't about
healing, but about finding newways to lie, to stage
procedures, to silence those whohad questioned him.
When investigators raided thehotel in 1940, they found
(12:50):
something chilling in thatbasement.
Jars.
Dozens of them.
Labeled with patient numbers.
Filled with body partssuspended in fluid.
Baker claimed they werespecimens.
Evidence of his success.
But the labels didn't match anymedical standard.
(13:10):
And the records that could haveexplained them?
Gone.
And the worst part?
That wasn't the end.
In 2019, more than 75 yearsafter Baker's arrest, a
landscaper working near thehotel made a grisly discovery.
A cache of bottles buriedunderground, each one filled
(13:34):
with tissue, tumors, andsomething else.
Human remains, preserved,hidden, left exactly where Baker
had put them.
It wasn't just a ghost storyanymore.
The Crescent's hauntedreputation was real, and it had
teeth.
Some of those remains werereburied.
(13:57):
Others are still being studied.
But what they prove is this.
This hotel isn't hauntedbecause of rumors.
It's haunted because it shouldbe.
Death clings to its foundation,to the beds, to the walls.
to the basement where theforgotten were cut open,
(14:17):
bottled, and buried.
And if you listen in thesilence of those stone halls,
you might hear them.
If you ask the front desk atthe Crescent Hotel today whether
it's haunted, they won't denyit.
They'll hand you a brochure.
Ghost tours leave every nightat sunset.
Paranormal groups rent outrooms by the week.
(14:40):
And the hotel doesn't run fromits reputation.
It leans in because too manypeople, too many normal,
skeptical, grounded people haveseen things they can't explain.
The most active room in thehotel is room 218.
Guests report doors slamming bythemselves, footsteps pacing
(15:03):
above their heads, even thoughthey're on the top floor.
The light flickers when noone's near the switch.
And sometimes in the middle ofthe night, the bathroom door
creaks open.
Not fast, not violently, justslowly.
Like someone checking in onyou.
Room 218 is said to be hauntedby Michael, a stonemason who
(15:28):
worked on the original hotelback in 1885.
The legend says he fell fromthe roof during construction and
died on impact, right where theroom now stands.
Staff says he's mischievous.
playful, harmless.
But guests have reported wakingup pinned to their beds.
(15:49):
Others say they heard a manlaughing just behind their
headboard.
Downstairs, the vibe changes.
In the basement, where NormanBaker stored his patients and
his secrets, things feel darker,colder, more personal.
The morgue is still there.
(16:10):
the steel autopsy table, thewalk-in cooler where bodies were
kept.
Even some of Baker's originalmedical equipment is on display.
Visitors report hearing moans,feeling hands brush their necks,
seeing faces reflected inmirrors that vanish when they
turn around.
(16:30):
One ghost has been seen morethan most, the nurse.
She appears in 1930s erauniform, pushing a gurney
through the halls at night.
But there's no sound.
The wheels don't squeak.
Her shoes don't click.
She simply glides and thendisappears through a wall.
(16:53):
In one incident, a gueststaying near the basement woke
in the night to find herstanding at the foot of his bed.
He blinked and she was gone.
there's also the ghost in themirror.
A hotel staffer cleaning one ofthe old rooms in the 1990s
reported seeing a woman in along gown standing behind her in
(17:15):
the reflection, but no one wasthere.
She screamed, dropped hersupplies, and quit the next
morning.
Apparitions aren't limited toone floor.
They've been seen walking thegardens, climbing the grand
staircase, peering out ofwindows on floors that are
locked.
(17:36):
Guests in honeymoon suites havereported sudden cold spots and
voices whispering under the bed.
And then, there's the smell.
Several guests have reportedthe sudden scent of lavender
cologne, Norman Baker'ssignature.
A pungent, sweet smell thatappears out of nowhere and
(17:58):
lingers.
one paranormal team recorded avoice in the basement that
whispered, Get out.
Another captured a shadowdarting behind the morgue door,
even though the building wasempty.
And some guests don't reportanything at all until they go
home, until their photos showorbs, figures, or faces in the
(18:22):
corners, until they dream of thehotel every night for weeks.
The Crescent doesn't just trapghosts.
It takes something from theliving.
A piece of memory.
A thread of fear.
A reason to never go back.
And yet, a reason to neverforget.
(18:43):
For decades, the rumors aboutthe Crescent's basement lingered
like the smell of formaldehyde.
Norman Baker, the fake doctor,had claimed it was just an
examination room.
but people whispered that ithad once been a morgue, that he
stored specimens in jars, andthat some patients checked in
(19:06):
and vanished.
It sounded like legend, likeone of those hotel ghost stories
whispered for tourists andthrill seekers, until the Earth
gave up its secrets.
In February of 2019, Hotellandscapers were clearing brush
(19:27):
along the northern edge of theCrescent's Back lawn, an area
just beyond where the originalhospital garden had once been.
A shovel hit something hard.
Glass.
Then another.
And another.
Beneath the soil, packed inclusters like bones in a mass
grave, were dozens of vintagemedicine bottles.
(19:48):
Many were intact.
Others were cracked open.
Their contents dark and stillslightly fluid after more than
75 years underground.
Inside, tissue, bone fragments,tufts of hair, and slivers of
flesh suspended in thickpreservatives.
(20:11):
The bottles were unmistakablyfrom the Norman Baker era,
matching those shown in hisadvertisements and hospital
photographs.
Some were labeled with patientnumbers.
Others had cryptic notes.
Most were anonymous.
It wasn't just a hauntinganymore.
It was evidence.
(20:33):
The Arkansas ArchaeologicalSurvey was brought in to examine
the find.
By the time they were donecataloging, over 500 fragments
in complete bottles had beenrecovered.
Many were likely discardedmedical specimens from Baker's
treatment process, proof thathis promises were built on
(20:55):
exploitation and death.
The discovery didn't just shockhistorians.
It reignited the paranormalfire.
Not long after, the TravelChannel's Ghost Adventures team
returned to the hotel.
Led by Zach Bagans, they filmedan episode titled The Crescent
(21:16):
Hotel that aired in October2019.
Their investigation includedEMF spikes in the morgue,
unexplained whispers caught onaudio in room 218, and a segment
where a hospital curtain movedon its own during filming,
despite a controlled environmentwith no airflow.
The curtain lifted slowly.
(21:39):
folded outward as if someonewere stepping through it.
The TAPS team from GhostHunters had also visited years
earlier, conducting amulti-night investigation of the
hotel.
They reported anomalous coldspots in sealed rooms,
disembodied voices, and afull-body apparition captured in
(22:00):
thermal imaging standing at thefoot of a guest bed in room
419.
But it wasn't just the TVcrews.
Local teams were drawn in too.
The Eureka Springs ParanormalInvestigators, a local group
with long access to the hotel,began hosting midnight
investigations.
(22:21):
Private ghost hunts that allowvisitors to enter the basement
with EMF meters, dowsing rods,and motion-triggered cameras.
Guests frequently report chillsdespite warm air.
Footsteps pacing in thehallways behind them.
and the overpowering scent oflavender, Norman Baker's
(22:41):
preferred cologne.
In one investigation, a guestplaced a flashlight on an old
autopsy table.
They asked, did you come herefor treatment?
The flashlight flickered, thenturned on by itself.
Another guest, a nurse fromMissouri, felt her wrist seized
(23:02):
by something unseen as sheleaned over the old morgue
cabinet.
She described the grip as coldand clinical.
She thought someone was pullingher into the drawer.
When she turned, no one wasthere.
Hotel staff tell their ownstories.
They'll mention lights thatwon't stay off in room 419.
(23:23):
Voices calling out from behindthe walls in room 218.
And the sound of wheels.
The same steel wheels from the1930s gurneys.
rolling through the hallwaylate at night when no one is
checked into that wing.
Then there's the mirror in thebasement, a remnant from Baker's
(23:44):
old operating room.
Guests and investigators alikereport seeing someone in it, a
figure in white standing behindthem, always still, always
silent, gone the moment theyturn around.
This isn't just suggestion.
This isn't a creaky old houseplaying tricks.
There are photos, recordings,time stamps, and artifacts.
(24:09):
The Crescent Hotel isn'thaunted because people want it
to be.
It's haunted because it wasn'tsupposed to be uncovered.
Because trauma leaves animprint.
And in this case, it was buriedin the yard.
What Norman Baker left behindwasn't just suffering.
It was evidence.
(24:30):
It was proof.
And once the dirt came off, thespirits rose with it.
So, why does the Crescent Hotelseem to hum with something
unnatural?
Why do people, skeptics,believers, staff, and tourists
(24:53):
walk through its halls and feelsomething watching?
Is it truly haunted, or isthere something deeper,
stranger, and maybe evenunexplainable going on.
Let's look at the theories.
Theory number one, the residualenergy theory.
Paranormal investigators oftendescribe the crescent as a
(25:17):
residual haunting site.
That's the idea that traumaleaves a fingerprint, a kind of
emotional echo that imprintsitself on the environment.
According to this theory, whatyou experience at the crescent
isn't a conscious spirit.
It's the replay of pain, ofsuffering, of desperate patients
(25:39):
pacing their rooms, nursestending to the dying, and bodies
moved through the morgue below.
It's not interactive.
It's a recording.
And the hotel?
Just the playback device.
There's even some scientificspeculation behind it.
Some researchers point to thequartz-rich limestone beneath
(26:01):
the hotel.
Materials that may be able tostore electromagnetic energy.
It's speculative, unproven, butintriguing.
And it matches similar claimsat other famously haunted
locations built on similar rock.
The Myrtles Plantation,Gettysburg, even the Stanley
(26:23):
Hotel.
Theory 2.
Intelligent Spirits andUnfinished Business Others
believe the spirits at theCrescent Hotel aren't just
echoes.
They're conscious, present,aware.
This theory centers on the ideathat certain spirits stay
(26:44):
behind when something isunresolved.
Usually trauma, injustice, orsudden death.
At the Crescent, that list islong.
Patients who are lied to.
Bodies never buried properly.
lives ended without dignity,name, or closure.
(27:04):
If ghosts are real, this wouldbe prime territory.
And then, of course, there'sNorman Baker himself.
People claim to smell hislavender cologne, to see a man
in a white coat pacing thehalls.
Could he be lingering too?
Not out of guilt, but ego?
(27:25):
A man who couldn't let go ofhis stage?
Theory number three,psychological projection.
Now let's flip the lens becauseskeptics, and there are many,
offer a different explanationaltogether.
They say the Crescent Hotel ishaunted because it's supposed to
(27:46):
be.
It's old.
It's isolated.
It's filled with strangearchitecture, cold spots,
flickering lights.
Add in a tragic past, ghosttours every night.
and stories planted in yourbrain before you ever check in,
and you've got the perfectrecipe for psychological
suggestion.
(28:07):
The human brain is wired toseek patterns, to complete
incomplete information,especially in low light, in
unfamiliar spaces, and underemotional stress.
A creaking pipe becomesfootsteps.
A draft becomes a hand on yourneck.
A dream becomes becomes amemory.
(28:29):
This is what psychologists callpriming.
We see what we expect to see.
We feel what we fear we'llfeel.
Does that mean the crescentisn't haunted?
Not necessarily.
But it means we can't alwaystrust our senses, especially
(28:49):
when we've already been toldwhat we're supposed to
experience.
So which is it?
Echoes of trauma?
Active spirits?
Primed perception?
A hoax that became somethingmore?
Maybe it's a little of each.
Because here's the truth notheory can fully explain.
(29:10):
Thousands of people, many ofthem sober, skeptical, and
perfectly sane, have experiencedthings at the Crescent Hotel
that they cannot explain.
And whether those things areparanormal or psychological or
both, They feel real.
They leave marks.
(29:31):
They linger.
And in a place with as muchburied pain as this one, maybe
the real mystery isn't why theCrescent Hotel is haunted.
Maybe it's why it took so longfor anyone to believe it.
The Crescent Hotel stands as italways has.
(29:51):
High on a hill, stone bonesagainst the Arkansas sky.
It's beautiful.
It's quiet.
And for those who don't knowthe story, it looks like a place
that was made to heal.
But healing was never whathappened here.
In the 1930s, desperate peoplecame to this mountain to be
(30:14):
saved.
They wrote letters, packedbags, held hands with loved ones
as they walked through thefront doors of a hotel dressed
up like a hospital.
They trusted a man in a whitecoat, And in return, they were
used, abandoned, erased.
Some died slowly.
(30:34):
Some were buried quickly.
And some weren't buried at all.
Their names were lost, theirbodies bottled, and their
suffering repackaged as amiracle.
Today, the Crescent Hotel is alandmark, a spa, a wedding
(30:55):
venue.
A place where people check infor romance, relaxation, or
ghosts.
But beneath the paint and thepolished wood, the past is still
there.
In the stone.
In the silence.
In the basement that stillremembers.
Maybe that's why it's stillhaunted.
(31:15):
Not by spirits, but byunfinished stories.
By the weight of lives takentoo soon and promises that were
never kept.
And maybe if we listen closelyenough, we can still hear them
asking for the truth or just forsomeone to say their name.
(31:37):
This is State of the Unknown.
Every other week, we exploreAmerica's shadows, legends born
in basements, fields, andforgotten towns.
These are the stories we'redrawn to because they never
really let go.
And if you want to keep theconversation going, follow us on
(31:58):
Instagram and Facebook at Stateof the Unknown Podcast.
Join other listeners, shareyour stories, share your
theories, and be part of theweirdness between episodes.
If you enjoyed this episode,the best way to support the show
is to follow, leave a review,or share it with someone who
loves a good mystery.
(32:18):
It helps more than you know,and it keeps these stories
alive.
And if you ever find yourselfin Eureka Springs, ask for Room
218.
But maybe don't stay the wholenight.
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