The Crescent Hotel

Summary

Morbid Podcast Summary: Episode 689 – The Crescent Hotel

Release Date: July 14, 2025

In Episode 689 of Morbid, titled "The Crescent Hotel," hosts Elena and Ash delve into the eerie history and haunting tales of one of America’s most infamous hotels. Nestled in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the Crescent Hotel stands as a monument to opulence, tragedy, and supernatural phenomena. This detailed exploration uncovers the hotel's transformation over the decades, the dark chapter involving Norman Baker, and the lingering spirits that continue to draw curious visitors from around the world.

1. Introduction to the Crescent Hotel

Elena and Ash kick off the episode with their enthusiasm for the Crescent Hotel, highlighting its reputation as a hotspot for ghost enthusiasts. Elena shares her personal connection through TikTok interactions with the hotel's staff, expressing excitement about visiting the famed establishment:
"I have been following the Crescent Hotel on TikTok forever. Like, since I got on TikTok, and they followed me back..." [03:34]

2. Historical Background

The hosts provide a comprehensive background of the Crescent Hotel's origins. Constructed in 1884 under the vision of Governor Powell Clayton, the hotel was designed to serve as a wellness retreat, capitalizing on the healing properties attributed to the natural springs of Eureka Springs. Architect Isaac S. Taylor crafted the building in a Romanesque Revival style, characterized by round arches, brick and stone towers, and asymmetrical designs that contribute to its majestic appearance:
"Architect Isaac S. Taylor built the hotel in a Romanesque revival style... It sits on top of Crescent Mountain, and it's really, like, towers over the area..." [11:00]

3. Conversion to a Women’s College and the Onset of Hauntings

By 1908, financial strains led to the hotel's transformation into the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Ladies, a pioneering women's college offering courses still relevant today. This period also marks the beginning of reported supernatural activities. Tragedies during construction, including the death of Mason Michael—a worker believed to haunt room 218—set the stage for the hotel's ghostly legends:
"Legend has it he specifically haunts room 218. And he really favors the ladies." [19:16]

4. Norman Baker and the Dark Chapter

A significant portion of the episode focuses on Norman Baker, a charismatic but deceitful figure who seized the Crescent Hotel in 1938. Promising a revolutionary cancer cure through his concoction "Formula 5," Baker turned the hotel into a makeshift hospital. His fraudulent practices led to numerous deaths, hidden in the hotel's basement morgue:
"He claimed he could cure cancer with the power of a determined mind and something called Formula 5." [28:30]
"A lot of people died under his quote-unquote care. At least 42 people were picked up by the mortuary..." [43:58]

Baker's unscrupulous methods and eventual arrest for mail fraud add a deeply unsettling layer to the hotel's history:
"So he ended up being sentenced to four years in jail and got a four thousand dollar fine this time." [47:07]

5. Recent Discoveries and Intensified Hauntings

In 2019, grounds manager Susan Benson unearthed over 500 jars containing human tissue and alcohol in the hotel's grounds, corroborating the grim history of Baker’s operations:
"So pulling out that jar loosened up the earth around it, and within an hour, she had pulled out a hundred more jars filled with weird ass just like that." [50:37]

These findings have intensified paranormal activities within the hotel, particularly in areas formerly used as the hospital:
"After the jars were found, they got buried in the back. Sharon told a reporter in 2024 there’s a woman seen at the end of the bed wearing a white nightgown, probably from the 30s..." [55:07]

6. Ghost Stories and Apparitions

The Crescent Hotel is rife with ghostly apparitions, each with their own haunting tale:

• Norman Baker's Ghost: Described as an unfriendly presence, Baker's spirit is often seen in purple attire, reminiscent of his obsession with the color purple during his life:
  "People have seen him dressed in one of either his purple suits or a purple tie." [56:20]

• Theodora: A benevolent spirit residing in room 419, known for tidying up guests' belongings:
  "She usually stays in room 419... If you leave anything scattered around your room, you're gonna come back to have everything neatly folded in one spot." [57:05]

• Morris the Cat: A beloved feline spirit who roamed the hotel for 21 years, affectionately known as the general manager until his death in 1994:
  "Morris the cat... was referred to as the general manager and lived in luxury within the hotel." [58:23]

Guests report a variety of paranormal experiences, from tapping on doors and sudden temperature drops to sightings of apparitions and mysterious sounds:
"People waking up in the night and hearing wheels squeaking past their room... They see a nurse wheeling a gurney down a hall." [45:07]
"Dana felt the bed shift and saw a shadow person at the foot of her bed while her daughter was still sleeping beside her." [61:12]

7. The Hotel Today and Its Popularity

Today, the Crescent Hotel is not only a place of luxury accommodation but also a premier destination for ghost tours, attracting over 35,000 visitors annually. Its storied past and haunted reputation make it a magnet for both history enthusiasts and paranormal investigators:
"In 2005, Ghost Hunters called the Crescent Hotel the holy grail of ghost hunting." [63:30]

The hotel maintains its legacy with ongoing ghost tours, preserving the eerie allure that has captivated generations:
"If you want to book a stay, you can head over to crescent-hotel.com/stay or give a call to 855-725-5720 and tell them Morbid sent you." [63:44]

8. Conclusion: Legacy of the Crescent Hotel

Elena and Ash conclude the episode by reflecting on the deep scars left by Norman Baker's fraudulent practices and the enduring spirits that inhabit the Crescent Hotel. The blend of historical grandeur, tragic history, and supernatural lore cements the hotel’s place in true crime and paranormal narratives:
"Norman was wrong, and with that, we leave you... We hope you keep listening and keep it weird." [64:23]

---

Notable Quotes:

• Elena: "I have been following the Crescent Hotel on TikTok forever..." [03:34]

• Ash: "It is said to be one of America's most haunted hotels." [09:05]

• Ash: "He claimed he could cure cancer with the power of a determined mind and something called Formula 5." [28:30]

• Elena: "That is the most ominous shit I've ever heard." [56:17]

This episode of Morbid masterfully intertwines historical facts with spine-chilling anecdotes, offering listeners a comprehensive and engaging exploration of the Crescent Hotel’s haunted legacy. Whether you're a seasoned ghost hunter or a true crime aficionado, Episode 689 provides a captivating journey into one of America's most storied and spectral locales.

Transcript

[Elena]

Hey weirdos. Alayna here. If you're looking to kick back and relax with Morbid, Wondery is the way to go. It's like having a cozy seat in our haunted mansion. No ads, just you and early access to new episodes. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

[Ash]

You're listening to a morbid network podcast. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities and new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive changes in your mood, your habits, and ultimately, your overall well being. Audible has an incredible selection of over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts and Audible originals all in one easy app. Find the genres you love and discover new ones, explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time. Right now I am listening to the Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendricks and I just cannot get enough of it. I never want to pause it. I'm literally like loading the dishwasher, listening to it on the treadmill, listening to it constantly. It's so awesome. I love being able to listen anytime, anywhere I want to. And there's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30 day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.com Morbid Summer is in full swing. Whether you're traveling, taking kids to summer camp or heading to the pool, we are all looking for ways to stay healthy and save money this summer. With GOTRx, you can save up to 80% on prescriptions for you and your family pets too. Check gotrx before every single trip to the pharmacy for big savings on both brand and generic medications. GoodRx is free and it's easy to use. Just search for your prescription on the website or the app, compare prices and get a free coupon to show your pharmacist. Use Gutrx to save at over 70,000 local pharmacies nationwide, including Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Publix, Kroger and many more. And now you can enroll in GoodRx rewards and earn points every time that you use a coupon at the pharmacy. Remember, GoodRx is not insurance, but it works whether you have insurance or not and it could even beat your insurance co pay price. Today I saved $5 on a prescription for my grandpa because I pulled up the Goodrx app and I said look at this. So you could save, too. Save at the pharmacy this summer with GoodRx. Go to goodrx.commorbid that's goodrx.commorbid.

[Elena]

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.

[Ash]

I'm Ash.

[Elena]

And this right here, it's morbid.

[Ash]

It is.

[Elena]

It is morbid. Facts, Facts and figures.

[Ash]

So I don't know about that.

[Elena]

Oh, no.

[Ash]

That transported me back to math class and I started twitching.

[Elena]

Oh, man, I'm sorry I made you twitch.

[Ash]

Thanks.

[Elena]

I apologize. She's literally twitching. I wish you could see her eye is twitching. She's just losing it. So we have a spooky episode today, which I'm very excited about, because it's this. And we'll get into it. Obviously, Ash is going to tell us the story, but I will this. It's the Crescent Hotel in Arkansas. In Arkansas. And what about Boston and then Southern Arkansas? I think I was trying to do both accidentally. Or I was trying to do Southern. And Boston.

[Ash]

Boston is who you are.

[Elena]

It's just in my soul. But what's funny about this is I have been following the Crescent Hotel on TikTok forever. Like, since the. Since I got on TikTok, and they followed me back and they were like, oh, we always listen to Morbid. Like, the staff is like, holy shit, you gotta come. And I was like, oh, my God, I love this. I love that this hotel and us are friends. And when you brought it up, I was like, holy shit. Like, we gotta go there now.

[Ash]

Oh, I'm finna go there.

[Elena]

Yeah. So I think we're gonna try. We're gonna figure out when we can, but we gotta go. We must. We gotta go.

[Ash]

It looks so. And just wait until you hear and.

[Elena]

Honestly shout out to the staff of the Crescent Hotel, because you guys are hilarious on TikTok and I love you.

[Ash]

It's true. I started following them.

[Elena]

Yeah, see? And they'll love it. And speaking of recommendations for who to follow on TikTok, you should follow the Crescent Hotel. And we're always giving you, like, recommendations, you know, like, we were talking about, you know, Richard Chismar's book, Widow's Point.

[Ash]

The other day, talked about Grady Hendrix. Talking about Grady Hendrix.

[Elena]

We're always telling you, like, hey, this is what I'm doing. And they're all genuine because if I like something, I want you guys to like it, too. And there's one that just came about that we would like to throw your way that I think is a really, really good one.

[Ash]

Yes, I agree.

[Elena]

So this begins so this is a podcast. It's a podcast that was created by a family member of a true crime case, a very close family member of a true crime case. So I'm gonna give you a quick little background of the case, and then we're gonna show you a quick little short trailer for their new podcast. And I really think you should give it a listen.

[Ash]

Definitely.

[Elena]

So the case comes from July 9, 1993, when Stephanie Wasolishin died from a gunshot wound to her neck. They. She had two daughters, and her daughter Nikki is a fierce advocate for her mother's case now, which has unbelievably gone cold for over 30 years. Years.

[Ash]

Yeah, I think it's 32 years now.

[Elena]

And when you hear the.

[Ash]

The details of this case, the 911.

[Elena]

Call alone, which you will hear part of it during this trailer. It's. And it's not like graphics, so don't worry. This trailer. But when you hear the details of this case, it's unbelievable that it has gone cold. It's wild. I totally get why Nikki is like, let's get this fucking open again. We're going to be covering this case on an episode of Morbid, but we really want you to take a look at Nikki's new podcast because she has launched a podcast about her mother's case. So she has, I think, a few episodes out by the time this comes out.

[Ash]

There's a few, like, little mini bonus episodes right now. But the first episode is premiering on.

[Elena]

July 9th, and it's gonna premiere on July 9th at 8pm and there's a very special reason why it's going to premiere at that specific time on that specific day, because that is the last time she and her mother said good night, which is heartbreaking. Literally shatters my heart into a million different pieces. I can't even, like, the. The ball in my throat is just like, ugh. Yeah. But honestly, in this podcast, you're going to get a firsthand perspective from Stephanie's daughter, which, like, you can't. You can't get a closer perspective than that. Nikki's a badass. I fully believe that she's going to get this case solved. I think. And I think with everyone's help and with everyone's ears on the case and people spreading the information and getting it looked at again. That's what this is all about. These things go cold, and it's because no one's willing to look at them again. So make noise. Exactly. Make some noise. Put your ear to it. Just listen and spread it. Here's a quick trailer for her podcast, Poppy Killed Mommy.

[Ash]

91 1, what's your emergency? My mother's death was ruled a homicide. The man who called 91 1, he admitted he might have killed her.

[Elena]

I don't know who. You don't know who shot her? I might have. She might have shot herself.

[Ash]

But the county attorney said there wasn't enough evidence. No trial, no charges, no justice. I'm Nikki. I'm the daughter of a murdered woman, and I'm done staying quiet. Join me for the launch of Poppy Killed Mommy, a true crime podcast premiering July 9, because if the system won't fight for her, I will.

[Elena]

So, yeah, just that the trailer alone, chilling. Yeah. She's done an amazing job with it. I know that she's been working on it with Sarah Turney as well, with help. We love Sarah. Couldn't have a better person helping you with this. And yeah, we highly recommend you can follow Nikki on TikTok. We'll share her handle and stuff in our show notes so that you guys can follow along because she's always updating. So. Yeah, definitely.

[Ash]

And then look out for our coverage on the case after she does a couple episodes.

[Elena]

And thank you to Nikki for trusting us with the trailer and to do an episode.

[Ash]

Yeah, we appreciate that a lot.

[Elena]

Yeah. And when this goes wide, check out our socials because we'll share, you know, Nikki's key art, a link to the episode. Her episode episode. So we'll. We'll send you that way. Yes. But without further ado, let's talk about.

[Ash]

The Crescent Hotel, man.

[Elena]

Yeah, let's go.

[Ash]

This is a crazy ass place.

[Elena]

It is.

[Ash]

Let me just tell you that it is. I've said this many, many a time. It is said to be one of America's most haunted hotels. I think it's America's most haunted hotel.

[Elena]

I think this one stands on business facts. I really do think it does. Because I. I really do think it does is what I just said. Why does that sound so wrong? I really do think it does. I don't know why that sounded weird.

[Ash]

Like it's the do and does. But yeah, that's a normative cry. Yeah.

[Elena]

But I noticed it when I went like through their TikToks that they were like, you know, most haunted hotel in America, blah. And I was like, I'll be the judge of that.

[Ash]

And then you said, but then I.

[Elena]

Started seeing things they were talking about and they were going through the history a little bit and all that good stuff and talking about different and people Were coming out with their different experiences. And I was like, yeah, I think.

[Ash]

They write the history is bonkers dot com.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

There. I did actually end up getting a lot of information from a documentary that was just released. I want to say last year. Came out two years ago. 2023. I'm still in 2024 in my mind.

[Elena]

You know, aren't we all?

[Ash]

But it's Tales from the Crescent Hotel. It's on prime. I think I rented it for like four bucks. I might buy it because I want to watch it again. It's a really cool.

[Elena]

I want to watch.

[Ash]

I recommend it. Another recommendation. Hey, but yeah, so I got a lot of information from there. I got a lot of information from their hotel's website. Their hotel's website has almost everything you need to know. And then just like some local news outlets. But this hotel is in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which hundreds and hundreds of years ago was discovered by native Americans. And in Eureka Springs, there are more than 60 natural occurring springs within the city limits.

[Elena]

Damn.

[Ash]

Which is just bonkers.

[Elena]

Eureka.

[Ash]

Maybe that's why they named it that. And for all those hundreds of years, people believed that these springs had healing properties. Like the water. If you drank it, if you put it on a wound, if you. You sniffed it, you'd be healed.

[Elena]

Stand next to it, good things would happen. Hell yeah.

[Ash]

So word started spreading once English settlers started coming over here. And soon everybody was trying to get out to Eureka to be near these springs. Get a drink of them, the whole nine. Now Powell Clayton, one of the earliest governors, I think the ninth governor of Arkansas. Obviously he knew all the legends. Cuz he was living out there.

[Elena]

Hell yeah.

[Ash]

And he knew about the springs, their healing properties. So he and his associates formed the Eureka Improvement Company. And they really decided they were going to start building up the town. They had railroads built to bring it more people in and really got the downtown area together. They built up different shops, really nice buildings. He was hoping especially that wealthy people.

[Elena]

Wealthy people. He was hoping that.

[Ash]

He was hoping especially wealthy people would see all the work going into the area. Obviously he knew that they had extra money to spend. And that's kind of where he got the idea to get a wellness retreat up and running. Wellness retreats were kind of like just starting to become a bigger thing.

[Elena]

The cool hip thing. Yeah.

[Ash]

And obviously wealthy elite people were all about them. So he was like, okay, well that's the perfect place for them to spend their money.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So his idea was put into motion and the hotel started being built in 1884. Architect Isaac S. Taylor built the hotel in a Romanesque revival style, which I think you would love.

[Elena]

Oh, yeah.

[Ash]

I started kind of looking into the characteristics of that, and I said, elena, Elena, Elena, Elena.

[Elena]

I was like, can I live in that?

[Ash]

Yeah. Picture, like, lots of just, like for you guys. Elena's already picturing it. Lots of round arches, brick and stone towers. And then I saw this. Asymmetrical designs. That's your middle name.

[Elena]

Let's go.

[Ash]

Whenever I try to make anything symmetrical in this room, she's like, no. Asymmetrical. Doesn't need to be balanced.

[Elena]

I don't like, always balancing.

[Ash]

But the building sits on top of Crescent Mountain, and it's really, like, towers over the area, which makes it somehow look even more majestic.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

From all the angles and everything. And of course, leads to beautiful views from essentially every room on the property.

[Elena]

Which is pretty badass.

[Ash]

It is badass. It was, and still is to this day, stunning. By the time the hotel was complete in 1886, it cost, in today's money, $10 million.

[Elena]

Damn.

[Ash]

But because it cost that much, it offered some of the finest luxuries at that time. Electricity. Oh, Edison. Light bulbs were everywhere. Oh, I love an essence. I do, too. It had steam heat, elevators, running water. Get the out of here. And not just regular schmegular running water. It was the water from the healing springs being pumped into the hotel.

[Elena]

Oh, so you're getting fancy water.

[Ash]

So, of course, that was only bringing in more tourists because they said, heal me.

[Elena]

Yeah, heal me. Let's go.

[Ash]

Let's go. So the grand grand opening. The grand opening grand opening was held on May 20, 1886, and most people had actually been personally invited to come stay.

[Elena]

I was.

[Ash]

It wasn't just like anybody could go stay. Elena, in a past life, was invited. I guess I wasn't. But there was people from all over the country that rode the train into Eureka Springs. When they got to the train station, there they were met with a band that was like, let's go party.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And then.

[Elena]

Yes.

[Ash]

And then they were transported up the mountain to the hotel. The Daily Times Echo reported that day. With the opening of the grandiose Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs enters a new and exciting era. Notables from afar are arriving in our fair city, and soon many others will follow. The Crescent Springs, built by Eureka Springs Improvement Company and the Frisco railroad, is America's most luxurious resort hotel. Featuring large, airy rooms and comfortably furnished, the Crescent offers the visiting vacationer an opulence unmatched in convenience and service. They continued. Tonight's opening ball will find in attendance many leaders in business and society, including me.

[Elena]

Including. That sounds badass.

[Ash]

Sounds opulent as fuck.

[Elena]

That sounds so opulent.

[Ash]

I love the word opulent.

[Elena]

Not only does it, like, bring forth images that are very pleasant, has a great mouth feel.

[Ash]

Great mouth feel opulent.

[Elena]

Opulent. It's that like, op, op.

[Ash]

And then you lent at the end.

[Elena]

I really like it.

[Ash]

I'm obsessed with it. I really like it.

[Elena]

This place kind of looks like the Stanley.

[Ash]

It does sort of look like it's.

[Elena]

Got those vibes to it.

[Ash]

I've been to the Stanley. It's fucking freaky.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But there was a big welcome party in the grand ballroom, which now is the Crystal dining room. And the governor himself interviewed a lot of notable guest speakers who were like political people at the time. Things went beautifully for years and years, but by 1908, they were having some money problems. It's a big place. It had a lot of accommodations that it was offering. So obviously it cost a lot to run and people weren't coming out as often, and especially the winter months were pretty dead.

[Elena]

That makes sense.

[Ash]

So to bring in some extra money and keep things up and running, it was decided that during the winter months, the hotel would be run as a women's college, like during that off season. And then in the summer months, it would go back to being open to the public. So they invited the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Ladies to stay there. I have something embarrassing to admit to you people. I found out that I was paying for a subscription that I completely forgot about, and I was still getting charged for it every single month. The only reason that I was actually able to find it and take action was because I have Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. And on top of all of that, Rocket Money will even try to negotiate to lower your bills for you. The app automatically scans your bills to find opportunities to save and then goes to work to get you the better deals. They will even talk to customer service so that you don't have to that I should marry Rocket Money for that. Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscript subscriptions, with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. I love Rocket Money. You'll love Rocket Money. We'll all love Rocket Money. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with rocket money. Go to Rocketmoney.commorbid today. That's Rocketmoney.commorbidrocketmoney.commorbid this is an ad by BetterHelp. Workplace stress is now one of the top causes of declining mental health. With 61% of the global workforce experiencing higher than normal levels of stre to battle stress. Most of us can't just wave goodbye to work, obviously, but we can start with, you know, small steps and focus on wellness. Sitting in the sun daily has been really good for me. Just going for a daily walk after work before work. Even if you can do both, that's awesome. It makes you feel better. A holiday is great, but it's not a long term solution to your stress. Don't forget that therapy can help you navigate whatever challenges the workday or any day might bring. I am obsessed with therapy. I've been in therapy for a long, long, long, long time. And I find it super beneficial. And I think a lot of people do. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Unwind from work with BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com morbid that's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com now, apparently the program that they were, you know, offering for these women was very ahead of its time because remember, this is 1908.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Women were not being taught like the same as men were back then. Yeah, but at the Crescent they were. Some of the courses that women took there in 1908 are still being taught in curriculums today.

[Elena]

Holy.

[Ash]

Which is actually.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

But that also seems to be when the first reports of haunting started. Which actually does make sense because during the original construction there was already tragedy and a few more followed throughout the college years. So one of the masons working on the building, like when it was originally built, was believed to be an Irish man named Michael. And apparently while he was constructing his little section of the hotel, he fell to his death. Oh yeah.

[Elena]

Oh, I knew I, I had a feeling something like that was gonna happen.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Legend has it he specifically haunts room 218. And he really favors the ladies.

[Elena]

Oh yeah.

[Ash]

He's a hunk of honka burning love.

[Elena]

Oh, look at this.

[Ash]

So imagine how happy he was when this building became an all girls school.

[Elena]

He's like, hell yeah.

[Ash]

He said, I am living again. It's great people, but especially Women who have stayed in room 218, which is the most requested room, by the way.

[Elena]

I get it.

[Ash]

I don't think I would request this.

[Elena]

I would.

[Ash]

Don't speak too soon. They say that they get tapped on the shoulder.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Or that the shower curtain has been pulled back while they're showering in the room completely alone.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Not cool.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Not cool, Michael.

[Elena]

There's something called consent, Michael.

[Ash]

There sure is.

[Elena]

I would be pissed.

[Ash]

I would put them up, but the Dukes would come up with me.

[Elena]

Oh, no. Because I'm in a zone in the shower, so, like, don't fuck it up.

[Ash]

Yeah. Also, people have said in this specific room, there's been reports of an apparition of hands coming out of the mirror in the bathroom.

[Elena]

Okay, Michael.

[Ash]

Like, fudge that.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

People also have reported hearing a man scream in this room or around this room. And if you're in this room, people say they've seen Michael's ghost, like, basically fall through the ceiling and then just completely dissipate.

[Elena]

Okay, I want that. Yeah.

[Ash]

I want to go to there. I'm not gonna shower there.

[Elena]

I'll. I'll hold my hand on the shower curtain.

[Ash]

I'm not gonna make you in that room.

[Elena]

No. You would give me a glass door instead of a shower curtain, maybe.

[Ash]

There you go. But so, yeah, that's wild.

[Elena]

Damn. The falling through into the room and then disappearing is shaking me to my core.

[Ash]

And hearing a man scream, I feel like haunts are usually like, a shrill woman scream.

[Elena]

Yeah. You know, like an angry bride or something.

[Ash]

Yeah. A man screaming.

[Elena]

Yeah. That's a whole different. That's.

[Ash]

I can't even picture that. It's like.

[Elena]

Wow, you nailed that.

[Ash]

Scary.

[Elena]

I thought there was a man in here screaming.

[Ash]

Maybe there was. Well, people doing ghost tours know what the famous rooms are and the ghosts that go along with each one of them. So they try to catch a glimpse of these ghosts if they can, which is exactly what we're gonna do. Hell, yeah. On one ghost tour, a woman knew about Michael, and she really wanted to make contact with him. So she and her group went into room 218, and they started playing Irish folk music, you know, just to get him, because why not get him in his happy place? They also poured shots of Irish whiskey, and everybody in the room suddenly saw one of the dresser drawers slowly being pulled open as they were, like, prompting him with questions. Holy. And they tried to see if they could recreate it, explain it away. They, like, jumped up and down. They were, like, banging the sides of the dresser. And it didn't happen again.

[Elena]

Ooh. Yeah.

[Ash]

Weird.

[Elena]

That's spooky.

[Ash]

It is. Now, in the early 1900s, the college was being run by President Richard Breckenridge, who was a teacher there for many years before he became president. And his wife was also a teacher there. She taught French and hygiene. And hygiene. French and hygiene.

[Elena]

All right. I don't know.

[Ash]

She knew a lot about a lot.

[Elena]

Yeah. Touch the bottom of your feet.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Always. You know, people don't do that. I left.

[Ash]

I wondered why you specifically said that.

[Elena]

Yeah, I'm, you know, that's who I am. Some people don't think. Like, they just are. Like, I'm in the shower, there's water.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

I heard this discussion somewhere and I can't remember where, but I was like, you don't wash the bottom of your.

[Ash]

Like, what?

[Elena]

Like, that's wild.

[Ash]

Do you wash the bottom of your feet?

[Elena]

Yeah, of course he does.

[Ash]

You wash yours, obviously. Of course I do wash mine.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

You.

[Elena]

No.

[Ash]

There's a lot you need to do, actually. Beach Gem gives a really good.

[Elena]

Does she? Yeah. Beach Gem. Dr. Beach Jam.

[Ash]

If you think the bottom of your feet is bad, it's gonna get explicit in here real quick.

[Elena]

Oh, no.

[Ash]

Some people don't wash their bum holes.

[Elena]

Don't.

[Ash]

Said. I saw a video and she was saying you need to explain to, like, your kids that they have to watch their bum hole.

[Elena]

That's wild.

[Ash]

I like how you're whispering that. It's a weird thing.

[Elena]

Like, this is so.

[Ash]

This is a naughty word. So random.

[Elena]

But it is so random.

[Ash]

How could you not wash your bum hole?

[Elena]

You should wash your whole body in the shower, everybody. Thick lather. It feels great, too.

[Ash]

If you do a pre scrub with like an exfoliant, like maybe.

[Elena]

Oh, it changes your life.

[Ash]

Once, twice a week. And then you follow that up with your scrub.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

You're going to feel like a brand new bitch.

[Elena]

And then make sure you moisturize afterwards and you're going to feel great.

[Ash]

I remember.

[Elena]

Thank you.

[Ash]

When I was little, like, knowing that I had to wash my feet. Because if you don't wash your feet and then dry them properly, like in between your toes, you can get gangrene.

[Elena]

Ooh.

[Ash]

Or like something.

[Elena]

Well, it's just yucky. Yeah.

[Ash]

So wash your feet.

[Elena]

So, yeah, wash your feet. That's. She was teaching hygiene.

[Ash]

That's what Mary People.

[Elena]

Wash the bottom of your feet.

[Ash]

Mary Original. She said, wash your feet, Wash your bum hole.

[Elena]

So then she also whisper.

[Ash]

She did. Oh, she didn't. Even say bubble. She said you're behind.

[Elena]

She said you're, you're your end parts.

[Ash]

Yes, that's what she said.

[Elena]

What?

[Ash]

Well, anyway, they had a four year old son, Clifton, who they taught good things like that.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And everybody called him Brekkie because their last name was Breckenridge.

[Elena]

That's cute.

[Ash]

But unfortunately, Brekkie passed away at the hotel after complications with appendicitis.

[Elena]

No Brekkie.

[Ash]

It's so sad. But ever since then, and even to this day, people say that they see a little boy, especially in the hallway on the second floo. And they always see him playing with a ball.

[Elena]

Oh my goodness.

[Ash]

And hotel guests who have children, their kids will come to them and be like, I played with this little boy and he says he lives here, but like he was dressed so differently. And they'll ask their kids to explain what he was dressed like. And he's dressed like a Victorian child.

[Elena]

Oh my goodness.

[Ash]

And that's when you return your child.

[Elena]

Return your child.

[Ash]

Return to sender.

[Elena]

Oh man, I would. That would, that would be something that.

[Ash]

Would fuck me up. That really would. I'm so sad.

[Elena]

I hate it.

[Ash]

There's also the ghost of Dr. John Fremont Ellis who served as the in house doctor during the very early hotel days. People staying in room 212 will smell cherry scented tobacco. Which sounds nice, huh? I like it.

[Elena]

All right. Yeah, you can take that. My grandfather smoked a pipe.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Like a tobacco pipe.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And it was always a comforting smell when I was little. Definitely cherry is an interesting.

[Ash]

Yeah, well, room 212 used to be his office where he was known to smoke his pipe a lot. So there's. People also see him kind of like out and about in the hotel and they say if you see a man in a top hat and very nicely dressed, chances are it's probably Dr. John Fremont Ellis.

[Elena]

He sounds like a handsome guy.

[Ash]

He kind of does.

[Elena]

If you see him, don't hit on him. He's a ghost.

[Ash]

Kind of sounds like a zaddy. Hey, ghost should get hit on.

[Elena]

He should feel good about himself too. Yeah, you know what, I take it back. He's a ghost.

[Ash]

So it's very likely, obviously even with just those few spirits, that the girls at Crescent Conservatory had experiences of their own. One of the hotel workers who was featured in the documentary, she actually said that girls would send postcards to their family asking their family to send their Ouija boards to school so that they could try to figure out like who they had seen or who they were talking to.

[Elena]

Hell, yeah, girls. Yeah.

[Ash]

And that's down back in the early 1900s.

[Elena]

Yeah. That's just girls being girls, you know?

[Ash]

And again, like I already said it at the top, but definitely go watch the documentary because they feature a ton of photos throughout from back then. Like, there's tons of photos of when it was a woman's college and like just the old timey girls. Yeah, it's like crazy.

[Elena]

I love that.

[Ash]

It's so cool.

[Elena]

Oh, I can't. We're going here.

[Ash]

Yeah, we're going.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

I never thought I would go to Arkansas.

[Elena]

I know.

[Ash]

I never really had a reason to.

[Elena]

Go to Arkansas, I don't think.

[Ash]

But apparently Eureka Springs is cool as fuck.

[Elena]

Yeah, let's go.

[Ash]

Their town motto is like, where. Where misfits go to fit.

[Elena]

Oh, I love it.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Eureka Spray.

[Ash]

Like we're even. Misfits fit. It's something like that.

[Elena]

Oh, see, this makes sense. I love it this way because the staff of that hotel sounds like a bunch of awesome peeps and. Yeah, I was trying to think of.

[Ash]

A Peeps and specters. Spectrals.

[Elena]

Yeah, peeps and ghouls. Ghouls. There you go. Yeah.

[Ash]

Well, unfortunately, sorry to bring this down a notch. By 1934, pretty well into the Great Depression, people obviously didn't have a ton of money to spend and they definitely weren't sending their daughters to college anymore. Woman educated. We don't have the money for that.

[Elena]

No.

[Ash]

So the college closed down and the Crescent kind of stayed in limbo for the next three years. But in 1938, a very wealthy man with a very checkered past decided that he was going to buy the hotel and turn it into a hospital specifically for cancer patients who he said he could cure without surgery, radium, or X ray, which were all what cancer was treated with at the time.

[Elena]

Yeah. And as we know, in 2025, he didn't.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

So this. This is probably not going to end well.

[Ash]

But he said he could cure cancer with the power of a determined mind and something called Formula 5.

[Elena]

He would have been an excellent grifter on social media.

[Ash]

Yeah. He essentially was the OG grifter y the Aug, if you will.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But more on Formula 5 and all that in a minute. Yeah. Let's get into who this guy was and where the he came from.

[Elena]

The is this guy.

[Ash]

This guy is Norman Baker. He was born in Muscatine, Iowa, but by all accounts, he was a really smart kid. He had really big aspirations from the time he was little. Little. Even from the time he was really young, he Had a great mind for engineering, which made sense because his father was an inventor. Actually, I guess his father had something like126.6 patents throughout his lifetime for just different inventions.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And his father also owned a machine shop. So Norman would go in and learn about all the different machines, how they worked, all the ins and outs. And the older he got, he would go into factories to show them how to improve their production. He'd be like, redesign this layout, move this over here, put this here, and everything will work better.

[Elena]

A lot of promise.

[Ash]

And it did. And, like, he was just this kid who would walk in like that up.

[Elena]

Damn.

[Ash]

But the one driving force in his life was that he did not want to end up poor. So in his late teens, while he was still kind of figuring out his path in life, how he was going to make all this money and what he really wanted to do, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

[Elena]

Oh, damn.

[Ash]

The doctors actually didn't expect him to live long at all. They thought maybe he had a very limited amount of time, like possibly years, maybe even not.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

But somehow he defied the odds and he survived. And during the time he was sick, he was reading a lot of books about how your mindset can cure you of an ailment if you, you know, just think positively.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And really, really work your mind on getting better.

[Elena]

Yeah. That's all it takes.

[Ash]

That's it.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Modern medicine. Who's that?

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So when his condition improved, he accredited the improvement to that and only that. A positive, determined mindset. So now he had shown himself that he could avoid death with just the power of his mind. And he knew that he could make money the same way. And there is no denying that he did, in fact, make a lot of money. The first of that money came when he came up with his own vaudeville act. After watching a performance and kind of becoming fixated on it, he learned how to hypnotize people and do all kinds of different magic tricks. And he actually spent the next 10 years doing that with a troupe of people who banded together and just went around the country doing this vaudeville act. No matter who the performer was, he always had a woman who was like a quote unquote, mind reader. And she always went by the name Pearl Tangley.

[Elena]

Pearl Tangley.

[Ash]

Pearl Tangley.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

And he himself went with the name Charles Welch.

[Elena]

Charles Welch.

[Ash]

Ten years doing that.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

He briefly married one of them, but they ended up annulling the marriage a short time later.

[Elena]

One of the pearls.

[Ash]

One of the pearls. And he just moved on to the Next pearl. Yeah, he was actually making a decent amount of money, but obviously he wanted more. And that's when he started working on his invention called the calliophone. It was an instrument that was kind of like an organ. It ran on compressed air, but you could like, ride around with it, like on the back of a bicycle or something.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

So it became really popular at fairs and circuses because you could kind of like drive it around and the air would make it make different sounds.

[Elena]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I feel like I've seen this kind of vibe.

[Ash]

Yeah. We'll post a picture of it because it's hard to describe, but once you see it, you can kind of get an idea of what it was.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So he came up with that using the com. Like that specific calliophone using compressed air. Previously, they had used steam, and it didn't make a lot of sense. A lot.

[Elena]

Yeah, you know, that could happen.

[Ash]

So he ended up making a ton of money on that because it was really in demand for those kind of performances. But then by the end of his vaudeville days, radio broadcasting really started to take off, and he wanted in on that. He saw a lot of money in that future. Kind of like what we're doing right now. Radio broadcast.

[Elena]

Radio broadcast.

[Ash]

It's a little different, though. But he thought it was going to be a lucrative business. But the problem he faced was that you needed to get back then certain equipment from the government if you wanted to start your own radio station.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

So he went to these different people and was like, hey, government, can I have approval? And the government said no, which is tough.

[Elena]

It. That it can happen.

[Ash]

It's tough when the government says no.

[Elena]

When the government just is like, no.

[Ash]

No, you can't have that.

[Elena]

No.

[Ash]

I think they didn't love his ideas.

[Elena]

Yeah. They said, not cool.

[Ash]

But he said, y'.

[Elena]

All.

[Ash]

And he figured out how to make the equipment on his own.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

Like, he made his own radio broadcasting.

[Elena]

Equipment because you asked for forgiveness, not permission.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

You know.

[Ash]

What does feeling safe at home really mean to you? For a long time, I thought it was good enough just to have, you know, good locks and maybe an alarm that would work, make a lot of noise if somebody actually broke in. Something like that. But after people close to me were broken into, I realized that true security takes more. It takes a system that works to prevent that break in, that violation of your space from happening even in the first place. And that is why I trust Simplisafe to protect my home and my family. It's about security that is Proactive, not just reactive. I'm obsessed with Simplisafe. I've been a customer for years at this point and I just love knowing that when I'm at home and I, you know, maybe I hear something weird, I can check in on my cameras. I have a panic button. And I love that when I'm away from home, I can open up that app, check in on everything, no matter how many miles away that I am from my home. Over 4 million Americans trust SimpliSafe. It was ranked number one in customer service by Newsweek and USA Today. And guys, monitoring plans start at around $1 per day. There's a 60 day money back guarantee. You're going to be in love with SimpliSafe just like I am. Visit simplisafe.comborbid to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's SimpliSafe.com morbid. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

[C]

Okay, let's take a poll. How weird does it feel to be called someone's fiance right? The first time you hear it, you do like a double take. Your heart kind of flutters and before you know it, you go from let's just enjoy this moment to we're planning a fall wedding. That's where Zola comes in. Zola has everything you need to plan your wedding in one place and have fun along the way. From free planning tools like a budget tracker, super necessary and website to a venue and vendor discovery tool that matches you with your dream team. Everything on Zola is designed to make your wedding journey as easy as possible. And with invites that can be completely customized and a wedding registry packed with gifts you actually want, Zola takes you from Save our date to thanks so much without breaking a sweat. From getting engaged to getting married, Zola has everything you need to plan your wedding in one place. Start [e-mail] that's Z O L a Z. Happy wedding.

[Ash]

Not only did he create his own equipment, but he also literally just built his own radio tower on some random hillside in Muscatine, Iowa. Jesus, there's pictures of it. You gotta look it up. He named his controversial radio, controversial radio station ktnt, which was short for Know the naked truth. We all know who this kind of guy is. In the beginning, he was mostly talking about like small town issues going on within Muscatine and you know, he's going after other radio stations. But then he started talking and ranting like it was just him on this Radio station. He would rant for hours, and he started ranting about, you know, more broadly, like, different political and social issues, like vaccines, bovine TB testing, obviously, and the upcoming 1928 election where he was backing Hoover.

[Elena]

Here we go.

[Ash]

He actually even ended up meeting Hoover, and they, like, kind of brought out.

[Elena]

Whoa.

[Ash]

Yeah, it's wild.

[Elena]

Damn. This guy.

[Ash]

Yeah. He also, like, ran for Senate at one point. He lost, thankfully.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But eventually he started denouncing real medical doctors.

[Elena]

That's where you, you know, you fall out of line there.

[Ash]

Yeah. And he also denounced the American Medical Association.

[Elena]

Oof. Yeah.

[Ash]

And that was when he heard that a man in Kansas City had come up with his own cure for cancer. Now, this was, like, the very first time that he had heard about this.

[Elena]

Oh, boy.

[Ash]

So he himself said he would sponsor essentially five patients to go to Kansas City and try this miracle cure. He would pay for all of their. Whatever the cure cost, because, of course, the cure costs money. And whatever expenses they would inquire, incur while traveling down there, he'd cover all of it.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Just to kind of see what happened, he gathered them all up, he sent them all down there, and they all got the cure, and it did not cure them, unfortunately. Every single person within that study passed.

[Elena]

Away after not being cured at all.

[Ash]

But this didn't faze him.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

Instead, he started publishing his own paper, claiming the cure as his own and this, like, crazy medical advancement in science and medicine.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Okay, I see what you mean with the grifter.

[Ash]

Yeah. And it didn't stop there. In 1930, he just said, you know what? I'm gonna open up my own hospital because I have this miracle cure.

[Elena]

I'm super qualified to do that. Yeah, let's go.

[Ash]

Even though I don't have a medical license. So. Yeah. He opened the Baker Institute using the paper in his radio station. He had a paper at this point, too, and a radio station to promote it. And again, he didn't have a license to practice medicine or any kind of medical experience at all. But in big letters on the side of this Baker Institute, he advertised cancer is curable in, like, huge letters.

[Elena]

Wow. Wow.

[Ash]

The conditions within his hospital were terrible.

[Elena]

Of course they were.

[Ash]

The documentary really goes into it. But it was not a hospital so much as just an old building with too many patients and too little resources.

[Elena]

Just leaving them to.

[Ash]

Yeah, like, they were washing themselves with bedpans. Nothing was sterilized properly. It was overcrowded. There also weren't real doctors that worked there.

[Elena]

That's the thing. And you're going thinking that this is this miracle cure. Yeah.

[Ash]

And of course, like, I can't imagine being diagnosed with cancer, you would do. Especially back then when we didn't have a lot of information on cancer, you would do anything to be cured, of course. And this guy is saying he has the cure. You're gonna go there.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But instead of hiring actual doctors, he hired people with what were called eclectic degrees, which. This is when you go to two terms of medical school. And in some states, they allow you, with this degree, to diagnose, write prescriptions and death certificates.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

But certainly not treat cancer patients.

[Elena]

Yeah. That's a whole different level, I would say.

[Ash]

But this is who he was bringing into the hospital.

[Elena]

Damn.

[Ash]

So the whole time he's, you know, sitting there claiming to cure cancer at the Baker Institute, he was also going against the American Medical association on his broadcast and in his paper. So they were getting rightfully pissed.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And eventually things escalated to the point where the American Medical association went to the Federal Radio Commission and was like, you need to shut this down. He's sitting there saying he has this miracle cure to cancer.

[Elena]

Doing this nonsense like this is illegal.

[Ash]

He can't be doing this. So Baker's radio station did shut down in 1930, and that's when the American Medical association started going after the hospital, quote, unquote.

[Elena]

Hospital, quote, unquote.

[Ash]

So now he was going to be facing charges of practicing without a medical license. So he shut down the hospital and ran away to Mexico for, like, a couple years.

[Elena]

Holy shit. Yeah, he went full send.

[Ash]

He went full send. He spent this time in Mexico, and he figured out how to make a radio station there as well.

[Elena]

Of course he did.

[Ash]

Which was also broadcasted, like, throughout the world. Somehow you must have a brain. That's the thing.

[Elena]

Because he.

[Ash]

You can't argue. He's a very smart.

[Elena]

Yeah, that's what's upsetting. He could have done great things if he actually did great things.

[Ash]

He could have.

[Elena]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ash]

But he. So he builds a radio station there. People are listening all over the world, and he's still claiming that he knows this cure. People are writing him from all over the world.

[Elena]

Sure.

[Ash]

Wanting to know what it is, how do they get it?

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But he's facing these charges in the US So he's kind of stuck where he is. So things in Mexico were getting kind of bad at this point. They were facing civil war. So he came back and really had no choice but to go clear things up in Muscatine if he wanted to to start over somewhere else. So he. This whole big trial happened. The judge ordered him to pay $1,000 fine and spend one day in jail, and he was free to go.

[Elena]

Are you kidding me? Yeah.

[Ash]

Which also he had been charging people for this cure, like, absurd amounts of money.

[Elena]

He's completely ripping people off.

[Ash]

He's not only is he completely ripping people off, $1,000 was nothing to him. Yeah, like that was easy.

[Elena]

He could easily do that.

[Ash]

So that is how he ended up picking up and moving to Eureka Springs, where he purchased the then in limbo Crescent. Eureka Springs actually seemed happy to have him. They knew he was a wealthy man. They knew he was going to bring money back into the town, so they kind of took everything that they heard about him with a grain of salt.

[Elena]

Oh, don't do that. Yeah.

[Ash]

And Arkansas, at least back then, was one of those states that allowed people to practice with an eclectic degree. So this was perfect for Norman.

[Elena]

Oh, yeah, he loved this.

[Ash]

So he moved into the hotel. He renovated the entire place. I think it took him like six months. And he moved all of his patients for muscatine into the hotel that was now, you know, renovated. And he started advertising to cancer patients in Eureka Springs, saying he could help them with no surgery, no X rays, no radium. Now, instead, like I mentioned earlier, he had this miracle cure that he called Formula five.

[Elena]

Yes.

[Ash]

So this formula five was a mixture of glycerin, watermelon seeds, corn silk, carbolic acid, and spring water. Now, from the local springs, he would have patients and staff. I won't even say medical staff, because they were just staff. Inject this mixture into their bodies up to seven times a day.

[Elena]

What the fuck?

[Ash]

And he specifically recommended that it be injected into their chest.

[Elena]

What?

[Ash]

He also. There was no balance. Like, there was no certain amount of carbolic acid or watermelon seeds. Everything varied from tincture, whatever your vibe was that day. And carbolic acid is incredibly dangerous.

[Elena]

Oh, my God. It's insane.

[Ash]

Yeah, it's wild. And having them injected into their chests.

[Elena]

And up to seven times a day.

[Ash]

Seven times a day. And then on top of that, because there weren't any actual medical doctors working here, and because he didn't really believe in prescription pain Medica medication. There was no pain medication. So these people are going through cancer. Like, you see photos of some of these people with, like, sure, massive growths on their body who should be being treated in an actual medical facility. And they believe that they are, but they're not at all. They're just injecting whatever this is poison.

[Elena]

Basically.

[Ash]

Poison into their system.

[Elena]

Holy shit.

[Ash]

And other than quote, unquote, formula 5 patients were given a list of mental exercises to go through to keep their mind fighting.

[Elena]

Yeah. Because that's the important. Yeah.

[Ash]

Because you just have to be positive.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So needless to say, a lot of people died under his quote, unquote care. At least 42 people were picked up by the mortuary, but there were countless more whose deaths went undocumented.

[Elena]

Holy. Yeah.

[Ash]

And he dark. He really didn't keep any medical records.

[Elena]

Of course he didn't.

[Ash]

Any that he did were destroyed in a fire.

[Elena]

Oh, convenient.

[Ash]

Yes. Small fire. And there were also people that he said were cured who just got sent home, but obviously were not cured.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And there was also people like, they would come in and think they had cancer. There were people who didn't even have an actual cancer diagnosis that he would diagnose with cancer and then treat, start.

[Elena]

Injecting them with this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Holy. Yeah.

[Ash]

So when people.

[Elena]

Diabolical.

[Ash]

He is diabolical. When people died at the hotel or at this time the hospital, they were taken down to the basement where there used to be a kitchen. And he turned it into a morgue and used the walk in freezer to store the dead bodies of these people.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

So now when people go on ghost tours of that specific area because the morgue is still like, sort of intact. Like you can go down there.

[Elena]

That's awesome.

[Ash]

It's wild. They will feel everything from lightheadedness, a tightness in their chest, to feelings of just like fear and dread.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

People see crazy in this area. People staying overnight usually hear the sounds of wheels squeaking around. Around midnight or later they say gurney's. And that's because this was usually when bodies were taken down to the morgue.

[Elena]

It makes sense. He was trying to hide it.

[Ash]

He was trying to hide it. Exactly.

[Elena]

Like sneaking him past.

[Ash]

So people will wake up in the night and hear wheels squeaking past their room. And it's the sound of gurneys, dead.

[Elena]

Bodies being carried down to the morgue.

[Ash]

And people have even claimed to see a nurse wheeling a gurney down a hall.

[Elena]

Holy.

[Ash]

And think like, oh, no. Like a medical emergency happened.

[Elena]

Very, like Silent Hill.

[Ash]

And then they'll ask and someone will be like, oh, no. Like, there was no medical emergency, luckily, but you saw a ghost.

[Elena]

Like, you saw an early 1900s nurse wheeling a gurney down the wall.

[Ash]

Is that nuts?

[Elena]

That's so scary.

[Ash]

So he did a lot of damage. Yeah, but he was. He only ended up running the Crescent Hotel as his hospital for about six months before the mayor at the time got fed up with what was going on for him. And he basically set up a takedown. He's like this guy Norman kind of started going into, like, different political circles.

[Elena]

Yeah, it sounds like it.

[Ash]

Because again, like, even back when he was in Muscatine, he wanted to run for, like, senate and all this stuff. He stepped on the toes of the mayor and was basically being like, oh, you don't need the mayor, you have me. Like, he said that. He also at one point said the town wasn't big enough for both of them. So he's like, oh, my God. Pissing off the wrong people.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So Claude Fuller, the mayor of eureka Springs, in 1930, he had a brother who worked at the post office. And basically they found out and sort of set up Norman. He was writing all these letters to prospective of quote unquote patients or really clients promising to cure their ailments for a fee. So they were able to get him on mail fraud. Oh, because you can't make. You can't like send out all these letters promising to cure someone's cancer for a price.

[Elena]

I love when they can get somebody on that smaller charge just to get them in. Yeah, yeah.

[Ash]

Technically, I don't, like, I don't think they'd probably be able to get them on this.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Because they set up a kind of scheme. But it worked out.

[Elena]

But it worked then.

[Ash]

So on September 1, 1939, he was arrested by the FBI because mail fraud is a federal crime.

[Elena]

Yeah, sure is.

[Ash]

So he ended up being sentenced to four years in jail and got a four thousand dollar fine this time. I think he spent a little more than three years in jail this time.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

And he ended up going to Leavenworth Prison. And when he got out of prison, he retired in Florida, where he spent the rest of his life on a yacht that he bought.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Until he died in 1958 of cirrhosis of the liver.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

But many people wonder if it was actually liver cancer.

[Elena]

Oh, yeah.

[Ash]

Yeah. Now, strangely, someone lays purple flowers at his grave every single year.

[Elena]

What?

[Ash]

On his anniversary. And I forgot to mention, in life, he was obsessed with the color purple, to the point where he drove a purple car.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

He wore at least a purple tie, but sometimes a full purple suit.

[Elena]

Interesting.

[Ash]

He wrote in a purple pen. And when he renovated the hotel, almost everything was painted purple. You can actually still to this day, on the side of the chimneys of the hotel, see that they were painted purple.

[Elena]

Shut up.

[Ash]

Like the purple Paint.

[Elena]

Oh, that's so cool.

[Ash]

Like, the paint has worn away, but underneath is the. The purple.

[Elena]

It's the original purple that you put. Oh, my God. That's creepy.

[Ash]

And nobody knows who this is. That leaves the purple flowers.

[Elena]

Yeah. Who are you?

[Ash]

I don't know, but I want to.

[Elena]

Why do you do that?

[Ash]

Why do you do that? So now Fast forward to 2019. Susan Benson, the grounds manager and head gardener at the hotel at that time was just overseeing some landscaping on the background. She's an incredible landscaper. She's won, like, countless awards for just.

[Elena]

Her work, just keeping grounds.

[Ash]

Just keeping grounds, like planting, like, these beautiful gardens and everything.

[Elena]

Yeah, it's gorgeous. When you look at it. Like, look at pictures of it.

[Ash]

It's stunning. Escape to a bygone age of mystery, danger, and romance as you immerse yourself into the world of June's Journey, a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. Join June as she unravels the truth behind her sister's mysterious death. And use your observation skills to find hidden clues and uncover dark secrets. You can even explore stunning hidden object scenes from New York parlors to Parisian sidewalks. As each new chapter reveals captivating mysteries. Can you unmask the truth? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. So she had somebody kind of, like, pushing dirt back in an area in the back of the hotel, and they were just, like, using some kind of landscaping vehicle. So as that person was finishing up and driving away, she was kind of looking in the area just to see what got done that day. And she said something shiny in the dirt caught her eye. So she got down closer, and she was like, oh, it's like a jar. Like, what the is this? So she pulled it out, and when she did, she saw that it was a jar, like a small jar filled with a clear fluid and some kind of tissue. Oh, like not Kleenex tissue.

[Elena]

Like. Like tissue tissue. Like bodily tissue.

[Ash]

So pulling out that jar loosened up the earth around it, and within an hour, she had pulled out a hundred more jars filled with weird ass just like that.

[Elena]

What?

[Ash]

So they called the police, and that led to an archaeologist coming out to the property, where they discovered more than 500 bottles like this. And also an old bone saw that they believe Norman Baker used to cut tumors and God knows what else. What else off of these people?

[Elena]

My God.

[Ash]

Meanwhile, he claimed not to do any surgeries. No knives, no nothing. Oh, he was absolutely doing some crazy. Wow.

[Elena]

That must have been astounding.

[Ash]

Yeah. And eventually Archaeologists determined that at least some of the bottles contained alcohol and human tissue. Holy shit. So preserving these.

[Elena]

Yeah. In. Oh, my God. I can't imagine finding those.

[Ash]

Yeah. There was various tumors found that had been cut off of patients. Susan even found a man's scrotum in one jar.

[Elena]

Holy.

[Ash]

Yep. And she ended up leaving the hotel. Like, she. And she said she was like, I loved this job. I was going to retire here. But this haunted her.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

She started having awful dreams where hands would come up through her mattress and cover her mouth and grab at her, like, pulling her down into her bed. And she said she never knows when she's going to have them, but she has them every single week, at least. It could be, like, two times a week or four times a week.

[Elena]

Week.

[Ash]

And she said she's worried somehow that she upset spirits by moving them from their final rest.

[Elena]

Oh, no, I hope that's not it.

[Ash]

I hope she had no idea when she was. She was trying to do the right thing. And they got all buried in, like, a better place.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Like, she was just trying to help.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But it really messed her up. Holy. So, and this is the thing. Apparently, when Norman was still operating out of the hotel, even though he claimed that he was curing cancer with no surgery, no removal of these tumors or whatever, he would display these jars in the lobby as proof that he was curing people. And he also featured them in some of his publications. So you can go and look back and see that there was at least, like, drawings of jars like this in his publications. Oh. And then people from, like, word of mouth who had been to the hotel back then or the hospital saw these jars featured in the lobby.

[Elena]

What the.

[Ash]

And then something happened. When? After he got arrested or before maybe he knew he was getting arrested. They got buried in the back. Holy.

[Elena]

Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.

[Ash]

And it's actually not very far off to think that he might have been doing experiments on people to make this cure work.

[Elena]

Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised by that.

[Ash]

I wouldn't be surprised either. Apparently, there was a restricted area in the hotel where the more sick patients were sent. And Sharon Clemens Teppen told a reporter in 2024. She's a worker at the hotel. She said he boarded up the windows, made it even more soundproof, put steel doors with a lock from the outside. Outside. And he designated this as his pain asylum. They could scream and yell and do whatever they wanted to do, but that way they didn't disturb anybody else.

[Elena]

His pain asylum.

[Ash]

Pain asylum.

[Elena]

First of all, awesome. Band name. Band name.

[Ash]

Great band name.

[Elena]

I call it Pain Asylum is an amazing name.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Scariest thing I have ever heard in my life. And just gave me full chills all the way into the core of my very being thinking about the fact that he was just locking away the people that are in the most pain so they don't disturb the rest of the hospital. Finding anything that belonged to this man would be like life changing. Like, it literally would be like, holy. Like I have touched something cursed that has been touched by a diamond.

[Ash]

Cursed.

[Elena]

Like finding those jars, you'd be like, he. He did that.

[Ash]

That's the thing. And I think that was. Why is so messed up by that. Like, it just like, can't. Can't get over that. How do you get over that? Yeah, that area today, that pain asylum. What was the pain asylum back then is the honeymoon suite today. And people who stay there report seeing some pretty disturbing. Sharon told that same reporter, there's a woman who's sometimes seen standing at the end of the bed. She's wearing a white nightgown, probably from the 30s, we think, and is probably one of those cancer victims because she appears not to have a jaw or a chin. And she doesn't do anything or say anything to hurt anyone. She's just there in the middle of the night, you wake up and she's there standing at the end of the bed.

[Elena]

That is horrifying.

[Ash]

Can you fucking imagine the fact that.

[Elena]

The pain asylum is the honeymoon suite now? Like, you have to marry Cenobite for that to make sense.

[Ash]

You do. Like, you sure do.

[Elena]

That's wild.

[Ash]

Yeah. To be like, I hate it.

[Elena]

We're going to. We're going to stay in the paint as.

[Ash]

Yeah, I don't know about that. And also knowing now that I know that I'm not going anywhere near there.

[Elena]

That's a lot.

[Ash]

That specific room.

[Elena]

Do I want to see it? Yeah.

[Ash]

Like low key. Yeah. But I don't think I could stop staying there. No, not in that room, that's for sure. Now, obviously, the darkest entity of all at the hotel is. Say it with me. Norman Baker.

[Elena]

Oh, absolutely.

[Ash]

So one of the servers and ghost tour guides at the hotel, Aaron Davison, told ABC7 back in 2024, he seems to be the apparition that is the most unfriendly, you might say. And you do not want to provoke him. We know that much. He has been provoked in the past, and it wasn't good.

[Elena]

Please do tell.

[Ash]

That's the most ominous shit I've ever heard.

[Elena]

What the fuck do you mean it wasn't good?

[Ash]

I think we have to go there to find out.

[Elena]

We have to go to there.

[Ash]

But people know Norman when they see his ghost because he's still dressed in one of either his purple suits or a purple tie. And a lot of times people will say that, especially after the jars were found, a lot of people started seeing him in the lobby. But the manager of the nighttime ghost tours, Deborah the Duchess, said there was an uptick in the activity in the morgue after those jars were found. There were more cold spots than usual. And for the first time, a dark figure was seen in the morgue that hadn't been seen previously. After the jars, it popped off.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

One of the nicer and I would say more helpful ghosts, though, is Theodora.

[Elena]

Oh, yeah.

[Ash]

And she usually stays in room 419. People think that she's possibly one of Norman Baker's patients or maybe a nurse that was running the hospital. But more often, I saw a patient, she really likes things neat and tidy. If you leave anything scattered around your room, you're gonna come back to have everything neatly folded in one spot.

[Elena]

Okay, I like that.

[Ash]

One couple was arguing in that room, and they were, like, unpacking as they did it and just kind of left everywhere. And they came back to their suitcases packed, standing by the door. So they stayed in a different room because they were like, I think we upset that spirit.

[Elena]

She's like, you know what?

[Ash]

Don't argue in my room.

[Elena]

You're fucking up my vibe. So why don't you guys go figure this out in a different room?

[Ash]

Yeah. She said, get out of here.

[Elena]

We don't argue in here.

[Ash]

No, we don't.

[Elena]

Good for her.

[Ash]

There's also been people who stayed overnight in the room, and they will go to sleep with scattered change on the dresser, and then they wake up to find it neatly stacked and organized. Well, a lot of people upset that.

[Elena]

I would do that.

[Ash]

And people see her outside of room 419, and it looks like she's fumbling with a set of keys. So if you see that, that's Theodora. 419 is the second most requested room. Now, the final ghost that I saw mentioned, and I have to say I think it would probably be my favorite ghost of all, is Morris the Cat.

[Elena]

Morris the cat.

[Ash]

In 1973, Morris walked his ass into that hotel one day, and he never left.

[Elena]

Good for him.

[Ash]

And for the next 21 years, he chilled there in the lobby, and they all referred to him as the general manager.

[Elena]

I Imagine you're a cat.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And you are just living outside.

[Ash]

Yep.

[Elena]

And then you come across this fucking opulent, opulent hotel, and you're like, I'm gonna. You know, what do I have to lose here?

[Ash]

I'm gonna take up.

[Elena]

I'm gonna take a risk. Yeah. And I'm gonna walk in here and I'm gonna see if they tell me to walk my ass back out or not.

[Ash]

And they don't.

[Elena]

You walk in there and that entire staff goes. Goes, what's up, Morris?

[Ash]

What's up, Morris? You want to be a G? What's up?

[Elena]

You want a job? And he's like, yeah, Yeah, I do. And for 21 years, you get to live in the life of luxury.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

What a. Like, talk about the jackpot.

[Ash]

Obsessed. Like, absolutely obsessed.

[Elena]

That's amazing.

[Ash]

He also had his own special cat door to come and go as he pleased. And when he passed away in 94. 1994.

[Elena]

Damn.

[Ash]

More than 3, 300 people attended Morris's funeral.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

He is buried on the property on the east lawn. You can go visit him.

[Elena]

Oh. And leave stuff for him.

[Ash]

You can. And there's a photo of him in the lobby with a poem that says, in memory of Morris, the resident cat at the Crescent Hotel. He filled his position, his position exceedingly well. The general manager title he wore was printed right there on his own office door. He acted as a greeter and sometimes as guide. Whatever his duties, he did them with pride. He chose his own hours and set his own pace. The guests were impressed with his manners and grace. Upstairs and down, he kept everything nice. They might have had ghosts, but they never had mice. Iconic.

[Elena]

I'm obsessed with this hotel and the people that run it.

[Ash]

Yeah, I know.

[Elena]

Quite honest. Like, this is amazing.

[Ash]

They're great. And people on tour say they have felt a cat brush up against their leg, but look down and there's been nothing there.

[Elena]

Oh, I love it.

[Ash]

Yeah. And now the Crescent Hotel usually has one or more resident cats. They've had tons of cats live with them and stay throughout the years, and they're all mentioned on their site. I think I mentioned all the ghosts. But to give a few more experiences or happenings before we go, the night manager, Stephen Cary, told a reporter that he gets calls from rooms with no one in them.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

He said, I send my security in. They check and make sure there's no one in there, of course. And then I'll send my bellman up to replace the phone. And then within an hour later, I'll get a call from that same room that there's no one in.

[Elena]

Oh, scary. That's scary.

[Ash]

Another woman who stays at the hotel all the time. She was actually featured in the documentary. Her name's Dana. She said that she was sharing a bed with her daughter, just sleeping one night. And she felt the bed shift in the middle of the night. So she assumed that her daughter was like getting up or something.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But then she saw someone standing at the foot of her bed and looked over and her daughter was still sleeping beside her. And then she looked back and that shadow person at the end of the bed was still there.

[Elena]

Yeah, that would me up.

[Ash]

Yeah, I'd probably die. Dana didn't. She's a brave ass woman who went back on another visit.

[Elena]

Dana.

[Ash]

Yeah. And this time they've stayed a few times, I think. So this time they got upgraded to the penthouse suite.

[Elena]

Hell yeah. Dana. Should I said snaps for that? Hell yeah.

[Ash]

She and her daughter Courtney were like just hanging out in their suite. And Courtney all of a sudden saw like lights flash. And then both of them heard footsteps coming down the stairs. And she said one like they were like with a big group of people. And one of the people had a bottle of Tylenol with them. They heard the footsteps stop in a pill bottle shake. Almost like somebody was like, what is this? What? And then they felt a sudden shift in temperature. It got freezing. So they were like both terrified. But they took. They went around and took a bunch of photos. In Courtney's photo, like in at least one of them, there are dozens and dozens of orbs.

[Elena]

I was showing me that. That was a crazy one.

[Ash]

It's nuts. It's in the documentary. So go watch it. And then in Dana's photo, you can see a whole fucking woman in a Victorian style dress just sitting straight up in a chair, handed in the lap. Yeah, just like clear as day, full body. It's one of the scariest things I've ever seen.

[Elena]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ash]

There's also a portal on the third floor. Yeah, of course.

[Elena]

Yeah, there is. Yeah. Yep.

[Ash]

The hotel, it's in an area where the hotel connects to a section built when it was a hospital. So that tells you everything you need to know. And a lot of people on tours will faint in this area. Oh, some have like completely passed out for a minute.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

And people get super pale and feel drained or like panicked in that area.

[Elena]

I hate that feeling.

[Ash]

Even before they know what that specific area is.

[Elena]

Wow. Yeah. Energy, man. The energy can hit you like a ton of bricks.

[Ash]

It can. It's happened to us. I got mostly everything that I saw, but I'm sure there's more. Go check out that documentary. Go to their website. In 2005, Ghost Hunters aired their investigation.

[Elena]

I love ghost hunters.

[Ash]

And they called the Crescent Hotel the holy grail of ghost hunting.

[Elena]

Holy.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

I mean, that should tell you. Yeah.

[Ash]

And after that, they got like a whole influx of people who go now. Now more than 35, 000 people go there a year to ghost town front.

[Elena]

Damn. Yeah. Holy. Go Crescent.

[Ash]

So if you want to book a stay, you can head over to crescent-hotel.com stay or you can give a call to 855-725-5720 and tell them morbid sent you. No, literally tell them. Literally tell them I'm trying to get in that penthouse.

[Elena]

I know, right?

[Ash]

I want to go so badly.

[Elena]

We have to go.

[Ash]

I'm so excited.

[Elena]

We gotta go. We gotta make this a trip now. We do. We gotta meet these people. We gotta see this hotel. We gotta meet these ghosts.

[Ash]

We're gonna figure it out.

[Elena]

Yeah. We're gonna do it.

[Ash]

Norman Baker's such a dick.

[Elena]

Yeah. What a dick. Yeah. Truly. Yeah.

[Ash]

You imagine just being like, oh, I can cure cancer with watermelon seeds and.

[Elena]

Carbolic acid that I put into your chest. Like, are you okay with a syringe? Yeah, like, what the.

[Ash]

I think I said carbolic. It's not that carbon. No, carbolic. I was right.

[Elena]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ash]

Yeah, you said it right. Yeah, I said it right.

[Elena]

You had me second guess.

[Ash]

Let me not second guess myself.

[Elena]

Don't second guess yourself. No, you were right.

[Ash]

I was right. Norman was wrong.

[Elena]

Norman was wrong.

[Ash]

And with that, we leave you.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And we hope you keep listening and.

[Elena]

We hope you keep it weird, but.

[Ash]

Not so weird that you claim to have a cure for cancer that is like five ingredients and that you're telling people to inject in their chest because that's just super fun up. But do keep it so weird that you're a cool ass ghost cat and.

[Elena]

That you go listen to Nikki's new podcast, poppy killed mommy.

[Ash]

Go listen to Poppy killed mommy and go book a stay at the Crescent Hotel and tell a Morbid sent you hell yeah. Goodbye. None of this was an ad.

[Elena]

It was really not an ad at all.

[Ash]

It wasn't none.

[Elena]

Sam.

[Ash]

If you like morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.

[D]

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, events that have shaped who we are as a country and that continue to define the American experience. American Scandal tells marquee stories about American politics, like the break in at the Watergate Hotel, an event that led to the downfall of a president and raised questions about the future of American democracy. We go behind the scenes looking at devastating financial crimes, like the fraud committed at Enron and Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. And we tell stories of complicated public figures like Edward Snowden and Monica Lewinsky, people who found themselves thrust into the spotlight and who spurred debates about the future of the country. Follow American Scandal Wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery Applause.