Ghosts Of Eureka Springs Hotel
by Tom Uhlenbrock
Shadowy images keep an eye on guests at the hotel which sits on top of Crescent Mountain.
Ken Fugate and Carroll Heath are mediums. They’re clairvoyants. They talk to ghosts.
Specifically, the two communicate with the spirits that roam the halls of the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa, which is billed as America’s most haunted hotel, making it a dandy place to spend a dark and stormy night.
Image: Ken Fugate and Carroll Heath - current owners of the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Fugate and Heath offer evening ghost tours of the hotel, which they prefer to say is visited rather than haunted. The hotel’s ghosts are sensitive souls, the two men explain, and those from the Victorian era are particularly spooked by what they see today.
“In their time, women didn’t even bare an ankle,” Heath said. “They see female hotel guests in shorts and are shocked.”
To understand the hotel’s ghosts, you must understand the history of the Crescent, which stands on the highest hill overlooking Eureka Springs and is affectionately referred to as the Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks.
When the Crescent opened in 1886, the local newspaper hailed it as “America’s most luxurious resort hotel.”
For the next 15 years, the hotel was a destination for the country’s carriage set. Ladies in long skirts, hats and veils and gentlemen in top hats enjoyed morning horseback rides, afternoon tea parties and evening dances with the in-house orchestra.
The Golden Age was short-lived. Because business was slow in the winter, Crescent College and Conservatory for Women opened in the hotel in 1908, but both the college and hotel closed in 1934 during the Depression.
The darkest hour came in 1937, when the hotel was purchased by Dr. Norman Baker, a flamboyant quack who dressed in lavender colors and claimed he could cure cancer with injections of a mixture that included glycerine, alcohol and a tea brewed from watermelon seeds and clover leaves. The hotel became the Baker Cancer Hospital, until the doctor’s arrest in 1939. One investigator estimated Baker defrauded cancer patients out of $4 million and hastened their death.
The Crescent went through a series of owners, and restorations, over the next several decades until its present saviors, Marty and Elise Roenigk, purchased it in 1997. The Roenigks are antique lovers and historic preservationists from Connecticut, and the Crescent became their largest project.
The Fab Five
Which brings us to the hotel’s ethereal residents, who have attracted the curious from all over the world, including shows like the Sci-Fi Channel’s Ghost Hunters, which used infrared photography to film a shadowy figure in a section of the hotel Baker used as a morgue.
The invasion of the TV crews, with their equipment, terrified the ghosts, the clairvoyants said.
Five familiar spirits are said to be living in the Crescent:
Michael was a red-haired, Irish stone mason who fell to his death when the Crescent was under construction in 1886. He landed in what today is Room 218, a popular spot for spirit seekers.
There’s also a nurse seen pushing a gurney after 11:30 p.m., when Baker removed the dead.
A gentleman in a top hat usually leaves behind the smell of his cigar.
A female student who either fell or was pushed over a railing has been seen re-creating her deadly plunge.
Whiffs of perfume means Theodora, a matronly cancer patient, is near.
Fugate and Heath speak fondly of them all.
“Michael has a wonderful sense of humor,” Heath said. In the summer, he’ll turn up the heat in Room 218 to tease its residents; in the winter, they’ll find the air conditioner on full blast. Occupants wake up to find the window and door wide open.
Like many of the other spirits, Heath said, Michael “doesn’t realize he’s out of body.” Dead, that is.
“The cancer patients came here to be cured,” Heath added. “They’re still hanging around, waiting.”
Protecting What Cannot Be Replaced
The Crescent has 72 rooms in the hotel proper and I was in 319, one of the rooms that got a recent makeover. The room was spacious, with dark wood furniture, some antique and some reproduction. There was a flat-screen TV and a large combination shower and jetted tub for two in the bathroom.
A pair of French doors opened onto a veranda with a panoramic view of the wooded valley that holds the town of Eureka Springs. Below were the gardens that surround the hotel, and the red-tiled roof of St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, which celebrates two Masses a week and attracts another sort of spiritual seeker.
Hotel spokesman Bill Ott said the busiest month is October, when the surrounding forest glows. “October usually lasts six weeks here, we still have good color into November,” he said.
Most guests like the hotel because of its rich history, Ott said. “The ghost tour is just a lagniappe, a little something extra,” he said.
The hotel is popular for weddings, and the grounds are landscaped for their parties. The hotel has a gourmet restaurant with crystal chandeliers and an extensive wine list, a cocktail lounge, an outdoor pool and the New Moon Spa. The glassed-in conservatory and gazebo have been restored to their Victorian elegance. As is the case in most century-old structures, something could always use a little updating.
“The creed we live by is, first, protect the irreplaceable,” Ott said. “We run a hotel so we can keep this building going. There’s been a couple of times when it was about to be razed, and the Roenigks don’t want that, and we don’t want to let it happen to them.”
Losing My Mind
Most of the spooky evidence from the Crescent consists of shadowy images and orbs of light in videos or photos taken by guests and ghost hunters. They can be seen at http://www.eureka-springs-ghost.com the site operated by Fugate and Heath, and at http://www.americasmosthauntedhotel.com
The mediums said my room, 319, has had its share of reported sightings.
“A woman who stayed there saw the image of a man in the bathroom mirror and screamed,” Heath said. “Then, she came out on the balcony about 10:30 that night and witnessed the girl falling over the railing. She took our tour and was so relieved to hear the stories. She said, ‘Thank you, I thought I was losing my mind.’”
My three nights in Room 319 went by without incident. I did hear what sounded like a shuddering at the foot of my bed, but I’m pretty sure it was the window air conditioner. And while my room was directly below Theodora’s, I couldn’t be sure that the occasional sweet smell was, in fact, her matronly perfume.
In fact, the scariest thing about my entire stay was the creaky old hotel elevator, which appeared to be original equipment and had a mind of its own.
I took the stairs. The Crescent already has one red-haired ghost.
. . .
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Meli Berlin günstige Ferienwohnung buchen on Tuesday, December 02, 2008I haven’t been to this hotel but I’m really intrigued by your story. I’m curious about the ghosts in this hotel.
I also experienced strange things in a hotel room I’m staying when I went for a business trip in Asia. The old radio in my hotel room went on at 2 a.m. So creepy...but other than that, I haven’t seen ghosts yet.
