Forget America’s most wanted. How about America’s most haunted? When it comes to hotels it’s an accolade that fits the 1886 Crescent in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was once the property of self-styled doctor Norman Baker. Aside from having the same initials as another creepy hotelier, Baker’s claim to infamy was his setting up of the Cancer Cure Hospital, which relieved the sick and bereft of millions of dollars before coming under fire from the American Medical Association in the 1930s.
“Dr” Baker, who wore a white suit with purple tie, was a stage magician and radio host before becoming the archetypal snake-oil salesman, but with horrific results. Despite being regularly denounced as a quack he continued plying his potion, using his radio station to tell his rural listeners that the AMA was sending assassins to keep the lid on his cure.
Business boomed, unfortunately attracting not only patients whom traditional medicine had failed but also those whom traditional medicine might have saved if only they had gone to a regular hospital instead. Eventually, as the body count rose, the jig was up and Baker was sentenced to jail at a trial in Little Rock, Arkansas. He didn’t go down quietly, insisting the AMA had plied the jury with “whisky and women” to get a guilty verdict.
Today one of the Crescent Hotel Spa’s most popular attractions is a ghost tour that aims to connect you with some of the residents of Bakers’ time – guests who, as the song has it, checked out but never left.
crescent-hotel.com