First Experiences at The Crescent

Location: The Crescent Hotel; Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Date: December 28-30, 2005

  

The Crescent Hotel is older and, in my opinion, darker and more atmospheric than the Stanley.  Built before the turn of the twentieth century and resting atop Crescent Mountain, the Crescent was originally an expensive resort, inspired by the “healing” Ozark spring water.  It later became a school, a maniac-owned cancer hospital, and, ultimately, a hotel.

The building’s past is dark, with most of the supernatural activity originating from the hotel’s cancer hospital days, when a madman “doctor” named Norman Baker killed and experimented on countless patients who came to Arkansas’ Ozark region from all over the country, counting on his miracle cures.  He never cured anyone…  But he did have a knack for sawing people’s heads open, applying spring water to their exposed brain, and then incinerating their remains.

We stayed in room 419, a room that was once occupied by an old woman named Theodora—one of Baker’s patients— who supposedly still haunts the room. 

After checking in, we went on two ghost tours with trained psychics who are also experts on the Crescent’s past and present state.  Hayley and I also walked the hotel grounds thoroughly, filming several hours of video and taking numerous pictures.  Several photographs taken in the garden revealed very defined orbs.

The most unexplainable activity, however, occurred within the walls of our haunted room.  Theodora, we felt, tried to communicate with us in several ways.

The room’s air conditioner turned on and off, going to the “high heat” setting and refused to be turned off by human hands.  This could possibly be explained in some other way, but the machine did turn off when we asked it to, and this happened several times.

One night, after coming in from snapping pictures, Hayley heard someone speak her name while she was in the bathroom.  I didn’t say her name.  Neither did mom or dad; they were already in bed.

Perhaps the most mysterious event occurred after one of the ghost tours.  We entered our room and found several pillows stacked up like a tower on one of the beds.  None of us had stacked the pillows and it was not a proper time for a maid to enter the room.  And even if a human did stack the pillows, that doesn’t explain what happened next: during our conversation as to how the pillows got in this seemingly unexplainable tower, the tower fell.  The pillows did not just topple over.  Several of them went into the air.

And, to add one more mystery to our experience in the Crescent Hotel, Hayley’s dowsing rods disappeared right before we left.

Maybe Theodora didn’t like them?

Mitch.