March 9, 2016 • 26 mins
Eureka Springs, Arkansas is home to a beautiful Victorian hotel with a long and winding history. A colorful part of that history involves a man who claimed that doctors couldn't be trusted, and that he had the cure for cancer.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Start building
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Build it beautiful. Hey everybody, Holly and I are doing
some appearances this month, which is March. Both of us
will be appearing at C two E two in Chicago
(00:21):
at four pm on March nine. We will be doing
a live show followed by Q and A, and then
Holly will be at Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Experience
doing two shows with guest host Brian Young. One of
them is at seven pm on Friday March and the
other is at three pm on Saturday March. All the
(00:42):
times I just said our local time. You can get
more information more about holly schedule because she is doing
a lot of other appearances at Salt Lake Comic Con.
At salt Lake Comic Con dot com and C two
E two that's the letter C, the number two, the
letter E the number two dot com. One more time
salt Lake Comic com dot com and C to E
(01:04):
two dot com. We hope to see you there. Welcome
to stuff you missed in History Class from works dot com.
Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry, I'm
Trey Pevie Wilson. Uh, and today's topic is a request
(01:27):
by our listener, Jordan's. We're talking about a hotel with
a fascinating history and allegedly some lingering spirits who never
checked out. Uh. And what's really kind of interesting is
that this is a hotel that has had many identities
in its hundred and thirty two years since it first opened,
but the most colorful phase involved some quackery and incredibly
misleading medical claims on the part of a particular gentleman.
(01:50):
So we're talking about the Crescent Hotel and Norman Baker,
and we're just going to jump right into kind of
talking about how the hotel got made, and then we'll
talk about Norman Baker and then uh, we'll also talk
a little bit about the ghosts that are allegedly there,
So it'll be a little early springtime ghost story to
start at the beginning. In eighteen eighty two, the Eureka
(02:11):
Springs Improvement Company was founded in who guessed it, Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
Carpetbagger and former Arkansas Governor Powell Clayton founded the company
which was focused on bringing the railroad to the town
and also on developing some infrastructure, housing attractions that would
serve people once they arrived by the railroad. So from
eighteen eighty two to eighteen eighty four there was construction
(02:34):
going on at just a break neck pace, and the
town was actually a popular destination for travelers before all
that development, though, and even before it was even officially
founded as a city in eighteen seventy nine, and all
that tourism was due to the fact that the springs
for which the town was named were believed to have
curative properties. The magical healing reputation was started when a
(02:57):
doctor allegedly cured his son's blind this with spring water
there in eighteen fifty six, and throughout the Civil War
and after it, more and more stories emerged from people
who claimed to be cured or know someone who had
been cured by the water from these springs. In eighteen
eighty four, construction started on the Crescent Hotel, and it
was part of the larger effort by the Eureka Springs
(03:19):
Improvement Company. It was also in collaboration with the Frisco
Train Company. The site for the resort was chosen at
the top of West Mountain above Eureka Springs proper, and
it was on twenty seven acres that overlooked the valley.
In eighteen eighty five, while the hotel was still being built,
an Irish stonemason is said to have lost his balance
(03:41):
and fallen several floors into the second floor area, and
he died there. In hotel lore, this mason is named Michael.
I was not able to verify the accuracy of this tale,
one way or the other. I spent a lot of
time combing through the Arkansas Free Public Records Directory online,
and without a last name attached to it, just the
name Michael, Eureka Springs in the year of death really
(04:02):
did not churn up anything that corroborated this, one way
or the other. Despite this reported death, work continued on
a hotel, and the Crescent opened its doors for business
the following year on six. At this point it was
a sumptuous, well appointed Victorian resort, and it was intended
to cater to the wealthy with every possible luxury. The
(04:24):
hotel had cost an exorbitant two dollars to build. That
is a massive amount of money for the time, even
though today that would buy you a lovely house in
a medium neighborhood in many cities. Uh there was a
galla ball and a banquet serve to launch the hotel's
life as part of this big opening, and it was
lauded as the utmost in luxury in all of the
(04:46):
newspaper coverage. Guests were offered all manner of amenities to enjoy,
including a spa. Of course, the spring waters were still
a big part of the draw. There was croquet, a
walk in beautiful gardens could be taken at any time.
There was a stable of a hundred horses from which
guests could choose a ride. There was an in house
orchestra that they retained there at the resort that played regularly.
(05:08):
There were picnics and open coach rides for guests who
wanted to relax outdoors. To the great delight of Powell
Clayton and his business investors, the venture really succeeded in
drawing a wealthy clientele. People traveled from all around the
country to enjoy these dazzling parties and to take dips
in the healing waters in The train lines directly into
(05:31):
Eureka Springs were completed, and that made accommodations at the
luxury resort even more accessible for the people who could
afford to stay there. In eighteen ninety six, William Jennings
Bryan delivered one of the orations for which he was
famous at the Crescent Hotel. This was the year when
he made his famous Cross of Gold speech and was
the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, so this really was a
(05:53):
pretty high profile appearance. The hotel was expanded in nine
hundred and running water was at it throughout the facility,
and additional quarters were built for servants and staff as
sort of an annex. But even then the hotel's popularity
was starting to wane. People had realized that the rumors
of the waters seemingly magical powers were not really substantiated,
(06:14):
and the hotel's bookings were starting to drop off. And
as the prosperity of the Crescent Hotel was on this
downward trajectory, Powell Clayton decided to leave behind his venture,
and in nineteen o two he left Eureka Springs behind
and he started a new job as the U. S
Ambassador to Mexico. There were connections that he had made
(06:34):
through his position as head of that company that kind
of gave him the end to that position, and from
the time of Clayton's departure, the hotel really just slowly
fell into disrepair. In a new business plan was launched
to try to fill the empty rooms of the hotel
and to bring in more money. The hotel opened up
as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women. In
(06:57):
the summer, it was still the Crescent Hotel and was
open for his guests, but for the rest of the
year it was a ladies educational institution. The hope was
that the same families who were drawn to Eureka Springs
as a vacation locale would also be happy to send
their daughters there for school, and this kind of worked
for a while, actually for a pretty decent amount of time,
(07:18):
but by the nineteen twenties, remember this was launched in
nineteen o eight, so more than a decade, but by
the nineteen twenties, the income from enrollment was not really
keeping up. It wasn't enough to make up for the
lack of guests that they had, and in nineteen twenty
four the Crescent Hotel closed as both a hotel and
as a woman's college. There was a brief gasp of
(07:39):
life again in nineteen thirty when the Crescent reopened again,
this time as a junior college. But once again it
couldn't sustain itself as an educational facility, and the school
closed just six years later. And we're about to get to, uh,
what's considered the most colorful and kind of seedy part
of the Crescent Hotels history. But before we do, gonna
(08:00):
pause and have a word from one of our sponsors.
Before we talk more about the Crescent Hotel, we'll have
to talk about its next owner, who was Norman Baker.
Norman was born on November two in Muscotine, Iowa, and
(08:24):
his parents, John and Francis Baker had ten children. Norman
was the youngest. I also saw it listed once as
nine children, but a large herd of children, uh, And
he was the youngest. And the Bakers were pretty industrious
people before becoming a wife and mother. Francis did a
good bit of writing, and John owned and ran a
manufacturing company, and he had more than a hundred patents
(08:47):
to his name. But Norman was different from his parents.
He would turn out to have drive of his own,
but it manifested in very different ways. He dropped out
of school after a sophomore year, and then spent several
years drifting around picking machinist work here and there. Then
he found inspiration in a Vaudeville act, Believing he could
(09:08):
put together a similar and lucrative act to the one
that he had seen. The inspired him, Norman started his
own traveling act that featured various actresses in the role
of Madame Pearl Tangley, who was a mind reader and
a mystic. And he toured the mind reading show for
a full decade, including making one of the Madame Pearl
tangles his wife briefly before having that marriage annulled before
(09:29):
he wrapped that particular project, just because I know that
mentioning Vaudeville will probably bring in emails from people saying, hey,
you should do a podcast on the history of Vaudeville.
They're already two in the archive. Yeah. So, once he
was done with this entertainment enterprise, Baker went back home
to his hometown in Iowa and turned his hand to
other business ventures. He ran a correspondence school that taught
(09:52):
art lessons and mail order business, and he invented a
device called the air calliophone. This calliophone was an organ
that ran on air pressure and it could carry it
sound really incredible distances. He patented this device in nineteen fourteen,
and he opened a factory to produce them. In nineteen sixteen,
after almost another ten years of running his various small businesses,
(10:14):
Norman Baker decided to get into radio and he started
his own radio station with the call letters Katie NT
that stood for No the Naked Truth, and he used
his broadcast to talk about the issues of small town life,
some of it things like agriculture and and sort of
basic need to know type things, but also to comment
and participate in larger issues, such as the presidential race,
(10:38):
in which he was a very vocal supporter of Republican
candidate Herbert Hoover. Baker would also broadcast attacks on anyone
who criticized him or any of his work, and he
seemed to really have a grind against Catholicism because he
would attack the Catholic religion on the regular. Katie NT
became something of a branding juggernaut. Baker produced a magazine
(11:00):
called The Naked Press that served as a supplement to
his on air editorials. He opened a gas station and
a restaurant under the Katie nt name, and while he
was broadcasting from what you might think of as a
local station, he wound up with incredible reach. Allegedly he
could be heard at times as far away as Hawaii.
Baker had been so devoted to the Hoover campaign that
(11:21):
once the election was over and Hoover had won, Norman
was invited to meet the President. And this connection would
later pay off with yet another business venture, as Hoover
supported Baker in his launch of the Midwest Free Press
in December of nine. As this publishing empire began to expand,
Baker also started to be really vocal about another group doctors,
(11:42):
claiming that he knew better than they did, so much
so that he claimed he could cure cancer. This is
like just the thing that quack doctors always seemed to
jump to. So, I mean, never mind that he had
zero medical training. Baker opened up his own curative because Scility,
which was the Baker Institute, which had a hundred beds uh,
(12:03):
a whole lot of staff with really dubious certifications, and
the promise of curing cancer. Hospital slogan was cancer is
Curable and to prove his claims that he had the
cure that the medical establishment did not. And here is
a brief warning that things are about to get a
little dicey if you're squeamish. Although I believe it to
(12:24):
have been a theatrical thing and not an actual thing. Uh.
Baker staged a festival, drawing a massive crowd of thousands. Estimates,
depending on what you read, put the number of attendees
everywhere from between seventeen thousand and thirty thousand, so in
some ways this was a call back to his days
running the Madam Pearl Tangley Show. There were entertainers and testimonials,
(12:46):
and then Baker went on stage to extol the virtues
of his miracle elisir. It was magic in a bottle,
according to him, and just the contents of one bottle
could cure twenty five people according to his pitch. And
the grand finale to all of this, with these many
thousands of onlookers, was kind of a grizzly spectacle. A
(13:07):
farmer named Mandis Johnson, who was sixty eight, was brought
on stage his head bandage. Mandis, according to Baker, had
cancer in his head, and Baker and his surgeon assistant
removed the man's bandages and then according to witnesses, peeled
back a portion of the man's scalp and a part
of his skull to show the cancer riddled brain beneath.
(13:29):
Baker made a big show of quote treating the cancer
with a powder form of his elixir, and then the skull,
fragment and the skin were replaced. Johnson's skull was rebandaged,
and then the farmer, seeming to be a okay and
totally fine after this treatment, shook Baker's hand and left cured,
according to Norman Baker. Unsurprisingly, this demonstration drew a lot
(13:50):
of attention. So did Baker's continued broadcasts from Katie and
t which had taken on a more and more anti
medical establishment tone. This included denouncing vaccinations. The American Medical Association,
concerned that he was disseminating dangerous information and telling people
not to see doctors, went to the Federal Radio Commission
with its concerns. In nineteen thirty one, Baker lost his
(14:13):
broadcast license, and Baker sued the American Medical Association for
libel in ninety two, claiming that the organization has had
ruined his hospital business because people stopped checking in for
the cure. Once he no longer had his free radio advertising,
but Baker lost that case. His cancer cure had been
found to be nothing more than clover, watermelon seed, corn, silk,
(14:36):
and water. This didn't stop him, though. He built a
new radio station in Mexico, which started broadcasting in nineteen
thirty three. But he really wasn't willing to give up
his place in the sun back in Iowa. He returned
back to his home state to run for the United
States Senate in nineteen thirty six. He had already lost
a run at being governor, and he lost the Senate
(14:57):
race as well. He was arrested briefly for practicing medicine
without a license, but it appears that he only spent
one night in jail. After an Archao newsreel rand that
discredited the Baker Institute, Norman with a with paying patients
really slowing down to a trickle at best, shut down
his hospital and in Norman also paid to have his
(15:18):
biography written, and this, like so much of his other enterprises,
was pure theater. The introduction to that biography reads, quote,
this is an inspiration book for young and old, a
fact story of how a man fought his enemies, how
he faced gunman dynamiters and enemy doctors. How he fought
the medical racket, the radio trust, the aluminum Trust, and others.
(15:41):
He did it for you. There has never been a
book prepared so carefully. This makes it the most important
book ever written. Read the life story of Norman Baker,
the greatest one man battle ever fought. He continued to
spread his distrust of traditional medicine, Catholic Jews, science, and
basically anything that contradicted him by his Mexican radio station. Seven.
(16:04):
He was convicted for shipping gramophone recordings out of the
country to broadcast them in Mexico, which was in violation
of the Federal Communications Act of four but this ruling
was later overturned in appeals court. And this brings us
to the point in the timeline where Norman Baker's story
meets up with the Crescent Hotel. So, after his legal battle,
(16:26):
and presumably in search of a new enterprise suitable to
his goals and personality, he made his way to Eureka Springs, Arkansas,
and he bought the Crescent Hotel. Baker renovated the Rundown buildings,
painting them his favorite colors lavender and purple throughout, and
he reopened it as the Baker Cancer Hospital. We're going
(16:46):
to talk about the crescent and incarnation and Norman Baker
and the claims that it's now haunted. But first we're
going to take another brief break from the history to
have a word from our sponsor. Just as he had
been doing in Iowa, Baker promised patients he could free
(17:08):
them of disease. Once he was in Eureka Springs. It's
estimated that Norman Baker was making half a million dollars
a year from the hospital. Desperate patients, hoping that his
claims were true, would often hand over their life savings
to receive the Baker cure, which often involved lots of
poking with needles and prodding, occasionally subverbal treatments, but no
(17:29):
real medical treatment. By this time, Baker, who was still
a showman, was still was appearing in crisp white suits
with lavender and purple ties and shirts, and he had
also become really paranoid. His office at the new hospital
in Eureka Springs was walled with bulletproof glass, and he
kept guns within reach at all times while he was there.
(17:51):
As part of his advertising campaign for the facility, Baker
started mailing out pamphlets in literature extolling the virtues again
of the treatments that patients could receive in his care.
I believe their tagline was where sick people Get Well.
And despite all of his other seed doings that we've
talked about up to this point, this was the thing
(18:12):
that really got him into trouble. Postal inspectors spotted his
mailings and believed them to be fraudulent, and in nineteen
forty Norman Baker was arrested for mail fraud. The hospital
at the once Grand Crescent Hotel shut down. Baker was
found guilty, and he spent March nineteen forty one to
July nineteen forty four at the Federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
(18:35):
He had defrauded patients in Eureka Springs of as much
as four million dollars. Unlike some of the other quacks
that have come up on a podcast, none of his
patients died as a direct result of his treatments, but
they were missing out on actual medical care, which you know,
could have made it so that they've died faster than
if they would if they had gotten actual treatment. Yeah,
(18:57):
we we don't know if any of those desperate people
could have put ventially even you know, had improved health
and lived for a long time because they weren't seeing doctors. Uh.
Two years after his release, Baker attempted to reopen his
hospital in Musketine, Iowa, but he never managed to do so,
and he ended up living his last twelve years on
a yacht in Florida. He died on September eighth of
(19:19):
nineteen fifty eight of cirrhosis of the liver, and he
was actually buried back in Musketine at the Greenwood Cemetery
next to his sister. The hotels that abandoned for six
years after Baker closed the operation down, and then in
nineteen forty six it was purchased by a group of
businessmen from Chicago A Byfield, John our Constantine, Dwight O. Nicholas,
(19:40):
and Herbert eat Shutter, and they intended to restore it
back to being a hotel. They did get it up
and running, even offering a special tour package which included
travel from Chicago to the resort, a six day stay
and meals, all for the low price of sixty two
dollars and fifty cents. The business did really pretty well
under their stewardship for two decades, but in nineteen sixty seven,
(20:03):
a bellman burning boxes in the lobby fireplace started a
fire that completely consumed the fifth floor and partially destroyed
the fourth floor. For the next thirty years, the Crescent
would pass from owner to owner, restoration project, a restoration project.
At one point it was bought by two married couples,
the Vegans and the Quarries, who reopened it and gave
(20:25):
a cat named Morris the title of hotel manager. But
they eventually sold the hotel, which was then owned by
several banks and businesses until finally in seven, Marty and
Elise Romic bought the Crescent and restored it over the
course of five years. To be quote the grand Lady
of the os Arps. They've owned it ever since, and
then they've turned it into a vibrant vacation destination once again.
(20:48):
So now we're going to talk about the ghosts that
allegedly hang out there at the Crescent, because for years
the Crescent Hotel has held this reputation of being one
of the most haunted hotels in the United States. Eat
So we're gonna talk about a few of the ghosts
who are alleged to wander the halls. You remember the
story of Michael the Mason from the beginning of the
(21:08):
Crescent Hotel's construction, where he fell is allegedly wear Room
to eighteen now exists, and it's long been rumored to
be a hotbed of paranormal activity. The people who claim
to have been visited by Michael while staying in the
room report doors opening and closing, pounding on the walls,
even hands coming out of the bathroom mirror, which is
(21:29):
pretty freaky. Yeah. Uh, There's a nurse that allegedly appears
on the third floor pushing a gurney with a deceased
cancer patient on it. Of course, that also comes with
the creepy sound of squeaking wheels. Some lorera lovers like
to believe that even Norman Baker himself has come back
to the Crescent Hotel and the afterlife, appearing in his
(21:50):
signature white suit with a purple shirt and tie. And
there's even a ghost that some claim introduces herself as
Theodora and tells whoever she's speaking with that she's receiving
cancer treatment, usually right before she kind of vanishes before
their eyes. There's another who has been dubbed Dr Ellis,
who is a man that wears a stovepipe hat and
sometimes gives people advice. There are so so many more
(22:12):
ghosts that are rumored to appear at the Crescent, and
they come from all points of the hotel's history. Because
it's had such a tumultuous history of shifting ownership and identities,
the history of the hotel is pretty fertile soil in
which to grow ghost stories. It's got all the best
options for spirit characters. There are rich victorians, there are
college kids, they're ailing patients who have been duped by
(22:34):
this flim flam man. Yeah, so it's uh, you know,
I think I've said before the podcast, I'm not a
ghost believer myself, but it seems like if you're into
that sort of thing, this is a super fun and
very beautiful place to go kind of play in that
sort of arena if you wanted to do so. And today,
the town of Eureka Springs in its entirety is on
(22:56):
the National Register of Historic Places, with approximately two thous
and historic buildings included that have been restored and are
carefully maintained. You can get ghost tours of the Crescent Hotel.
They're available for anyone who wants to visit with the
spirits that are rumored to haunt its halls. Uh. And
it does look like an absolutely lovely town. I would
love to go visit at some point, So it's now
(23:16):
on my list. It was not before I did this
episode because I didn't know about it, But now I
think maybe we go to Eureka Springs. You're not that
far from well from where you are. It's not that
far from where I am. It's really far. I like,
how now that you live in Boston everything feels really fun.
It really does. Whenever whenever we get invitations to go somewhere,
(23:38):
I'm like, this flight is two hours longer than it
would have been from Atlanta. Yes, So thank you listener
Jordan for suggesting this episode. It was one that ended
up being really fun. When I first thought, oh, I'll
look into the haunted hotel thing, and then the Norman
Baker angle was so sort of fertile and fascinating that
it ended up being lovely. I have listener mail and
(23:59):
it's late. Oh yeah, let's hear it. So Valentine's Day
has come and gone. I don't know how people feel
about it, but we can feel yeah either way. I
think I've said before like for me, it was always
a family holiday. It doesn't come with the baggage of
of like you know, UM expectations in a relationship sort
(24:21):
of way. So it's never been a troubling or problem
problematic day for me. Um And I like Red and
Pink a lot, so I'm cool with it. Plus peeps, Hello,
But we got to really really fun pieces of mail
that I wanted to thank our listeners for. One is
from our listener Melanie. Um. It is a gorgeous little
card that she made and it says, in these dark ages,
(24:42):
you bring us light, Happy Valentine's Day, thank you for
sharing joy and knowledge. And it is this beautiful um
image of a an anatomically correct human heart but rendered
in medieval stained glass style and I love it. It
is gorgeous, So thank you Melanie. It delighted me on
so many levels. And the second one is from our
(25:03):
listener Jackie, and it is a little card that has
a quote from Leslie Nope on the front and then
inside this happy Gallantine's a day you beautiful starfish. Hello, ladies,
I'm just writing to wish you both a lovely Gallantine's
Day and to thank you for a great podcast. I
often listen to you while I'm working. I'm a mail carrier.
It gets immensely boring walking the same streets every day,
(25:24):
and your show is helping me stay sane and learning
a bit in the process and making my way through
your archive, and each episode is just great. Maybe one
day you will do an episode on female postal workers,
but for now, keep the good work and happy Galantine's Day.
I love this. It was so sweet and it didn't
make me think about female postal workers. My postal worker
is a lady and she's awesome. I love her. So
(25:45):
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(26:06):
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(26:27):
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Build it beautiful. Hey everybody, Holly and I are doing
some appearances this month, which is March. Both of us
will be appearing at C two E two in Chicago
(00:21):
at four pm on March nine. We will be doing
a live show followed by Q and A, and then
Holly will be at Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Experience
doing two shows with guest host Brian Young. One of
them is at seven pm on Friday March and the
other is at three pm on Saturday March. All the
(00:42):
times I just said our local time. You can get
more information more about holly schedule because she is doing
a lot of other appearances at Salt Lake Comic Con.
At salt Lake Comic Con dot com and C two
E two that's the letter C, the number two, the
letter E the number two dot com. One more time
salt Lake Comic com dot com and C to E
(01:04):
two dot com. We hope to see you there. Welcome
to stuff you missed in History Class from works dot com.
Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry, I'm
Trey Pevie Wilson. Uh, and today's topic is a request
(01:27):
by our listener, Jordan's. We're talking about a hotel with
a fascinating history and allegedly some lingering spirits who never
checked out. Uh. And what's really kind of interesting is
that this is a hotel that has had many identities
in its hundred and thirty two years since it first opened,
but the most colorful phase involved some quackery and incredibly
misleading medical claims on the part of a particular gentleman.
(01:50):
So we're talking about the Crescent Hotel and Norman Baker,
and we're just going to jump right into kind of
talking about how the hotel got made, and then we'll
talk about Norman Baker and then uh, we'll also talk
a little bit about the ghosts that are allegedly there,
So it'll be a little early springtime ghost story to
start at the beginning. In eighteen eighty two, the Eureka
(02:11):
Springs Improvement Company was founded in who guessed it, Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
Carpetbagger and former Arkansas Governor Powell Clayton founded the company
which was focused on bringing the railroad to the town
and also on developing some infrastructure, housing attractions that would
serve people once they arrived by the railroad. So from
eighteen eighty two to eighteen eighty four there was construction
(02:34):
going on at just a break neck pace, and the
town was actually a popular destination for travelers before all
that development, though, and even before it was even officially
founded as a city in eighteen seventy nine, and all
that tourism was due to the fact that the springs
for which the town was named were believed to have
curative properties. The magical healing reputation was started when a
(02:57):
doctor allegedly cured his son's blind this with spring water
there in eighteen fifty six, and throughout the Civil War
and after it, more and more stories emerged from people
who claimed to be cured or know someone who had
been cured by the water from these springs. In eighteen
eighty four, construction started on the Crescent Hotel, and it
was part of the larger effort by the Eureka Springs
(03:19):
Improvement Company. It was also in collaboration with the Frisco
Train Company. The site for the resort was chosen at
the top of West Mountain above Eureka Springs proper, and
it was on twenty seven acres that overlooked the valley.
In eighteen eighty five, while the hotel was still being built,
an Irish stonemason is said to have lost his balance
(03:41):
and fallen several floors into the second floor area, and
he died there. In hotel lore, this mason is named Michael.
I was not able to verify the accuracy of this tale,
one way or the other. I spent a lot of
time combing through the Arkansas Free Public Records Directory online,
and without a last name attached to it, just the
name Michael, Eureka Springs in the year of death really
(04:02):
did not churn up anything that corroborated this, one way
or the other. Despite this reported death, work continued on
a hotel, and the Crescent opened its doors for business
the following year on six. At this point it was
a sumptuous, well appointed Victorian resort, and it was intended
to cater to the wealthy with every possible luxury. The
(04:24):
hotel had cost an exorbitant two dollars to build. That
is a massive amount of money for the time, even
though today that would buy you a lovely house in
a medium neighborhood in many cities. Uh there was a
galla ball and a banquet serve to launch the hotel's
life as part of this big opening, and it was
lauded as the utmost in luxury in all of the
(04:46):
newspaper coverage. Guests were offered all manner of amenities to enjoy,
including a spa. Of course, the spring waters were still
a big part of the draw. There was croquet, a
walk in beautiful gardens could be taken at any time.
There was a stable of a hundred horses from which
guests could choose a ride. There was an in house
orchestra that they retained there at the resort that played regularly.
(05:08):
There were picnics and open coach rides for guests who
wanted to relax outdoors. To the great delight of Powell
Clayton and his business investors, the venture really succeeded in
drawing a wealthy clientele. People traveled from all around the
country to enjoy these dazzling parties and to take dips
in the healing waters in The train lines directly into
(05:31):
Eureka Springs were completed, and that made accommodations at the
luxury resort even more accessible for the people who could
afford to stay there. In eighteen ninety six, William Jennings
Bryan delivered one of the orations for which he was
famous at the Crescent Hotel. This was the year when
he made his famous Cross of Gold speech and was
the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, so this really was a
(05:53):
pretty high profile appearance. The hotel was expanded in nine
hundred and running water was at it throughout the facility,
and additional quarters were built for servants and staff as
sort of an annex. But even then the hotel's popularity
was starting to wane. People had realized that the rumors
of the waters seemingly magical powers were not really substantiated,
(06:14):
and the hotel's bookings were starting to drop off. And
as the prosperity of the Crescent Hotel was on this
downward trajectory, Powell Clayton decided to leave behind his venture,
and in nineteen o two he left Eureka Springs behind
and he started a new job as the U. S
Ambassador to Mexico. There were connections that he had made
(06:34):
through his position as head of that company that kind
of gave him the end to that position, and from
the time of Clayton's departure, the hotel really just slowly
fell into disrepair. In a new business plan was launched
to try to fill the empty rooms of the hotel
and to bring in more money. The hotel opened up
as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women. In
(06:57):
the summer, it was still the Crescent Hotel and was
open for his guests, but for the rest of the
year it was a ladies educational institution. The hope was
that the same families who were drawn to Eureka Springs
as a vacation locale would also be happy to send
their daughters there for school, and this kind of worked
for a while, actually for a pretty decent amount of time,
(07:18):
but by the nineteen twenties, remember this was launched in
nineteen o eight, so more than a decade, but by
the nineteen twenties, the income from enrollment was not really
keeping up. It wasn't enough to make up for the
lack of guests that they had, and in nineteen twenty
four the Crescent Hotel closed as both a hotel and
as a woman's college. There was a brief gasp of
(07:39):
life again in nineteen thirty when the Crescent reopened again,
this time as a junior college. But once again it
couldn't sustain itself as an educational facility, and the school
closed just six years later. And we're about to get to, uh,
what's considered the most colorful and kind of seedy part
of the Crescent Hotels history. But before we do, gonna
(08:00):
pause and have a word from one of our sponsors.
Before we talk more about the Crescent Hotel, we'll have
to talk about its next owner, who was Norman Baker.
Norman was born on November two in Muscotine, Iowa, and
(08:24):
his parents, John and Francis Baker had ten children. Norman
was the youngest. I also saw it listed once as
nine children, but a large herd of children, uh, And
he was the youngest. And the Bakers were pretty industrious
people before becoming a wife and mother. Francis did a
good bit of writing, and John owned and ran a
manufacturing company, and he had more than a hundred patents
(08:47):
to his name. But Norman was different from his parents.
He would turn out to have drive of his own,
but it manifested in very different ways. He dropped out
of school after a sophomore year, and then spent several
years drifting around picking machinist work here and there. Then
he found inspiration in a Vaudeville act, Believing he could
(09:08):
put together a similar and lucrative act to the one
that he had seen. The inspired him, Norman started his
own traveling act that featured various actresses in the role
of Madame Pearl Tangley, who was a mind reader and
a mystic. And he toured the mind reading show for
a full decade, including making one of the Madame Pearl
tangles his wife briefly before having that marriage annulled before
(09:29):
he wrapped that particular project, just because I know that
mentioning Vaudeville will probably bring in emails from people saying, hey,
you should do a podcast on the history of Vaudeville.
They're already two in the archive. Yeah. So, once he
was done with this entertainment enterprise, Baker went back home
to his hometown in Iowa and turned his hand to
other business ventures. He ran a correspondence school that taught
(09:52):
art lessons and mail order business, and he invented a
device called the air calliophone. This calliophone was an organ
that ran on air pressure and it could carry it
sound really incredible distances. He patented this device in nineteen fourteen,
and he opened a factory to produce them. In nineteen sixteen,
after almost another ten years of running his various small businesses,
(10:14):
Norman Baker decided to get into radio and he started
his own radio station with the call letters Katie NT
that stood for No the Naked Truth, and he used
his broadcast to talk about the issues of small town life,
some of it things like agriculture and and sort of
basic need to know type things, but also to comment
and participate in larger issues, such as the presidential race,
(10:38):
in which he was a very vocal supporter of Republican
candidate Herbert Hoover. Baker would also broadcast attacks on anyone
who criticized him or any of his work, and he
seemed to really have a grind against Catholicism because he
would attack the Catholic religion on the regular. Katie NT
became something of a branding juggernaut. Baker produced a magazine
(11:00):
called The Naked Press that served as a supplement to
his on air editorials. He opened a gas station and
a restaurant under the Katie nt name, and while he
was broadcasting from what you might think of as a
local station, he wound up with incredible reach. Allegedly he
could be heard at times as far away as Hawaii.
Baker had been so devoted to the Hoover campaign that
(11:21):
once the election was over and Hoover had won, Norman
was invited to meet the President. And this connection would
later pay off with yet another business venture, as Hoover
supported Baker in his launch of the Midwest Free Press
in December of nine. As this publishing empire began to expand,
Baker also started to be really vocal about another group doctors,
(11:42):
claiming that he knew better than they did, so much
so that he claimed he could cure cancer. This is
like just the thing that quack doctors always seemed to
jump to. So, I mean, never mind that he had
zero medical training. Baker opened up his own curative because Scility,
which was the Baker Institute, which had a hundred beds uh,
(12:03):
a whole lot of staff with really dubious certifications, and
the promise of curing cancer. Hospital slogan was cancer is
Curable and to prove his claims that he had the
cure that the medical establishment did not. And here is
a brief warning that things are about to get a
little dicey if you're squeamish. Although I believe it to
(12:24):
have been a theatrical thing and not an actual thing. Uh.
Baker staged a festival, drawing a massive crowd of thousands. Estimates,
depending on what you read, put the number of attendees
everywhere from between seventeen thousand and thirty thousand, so in
some ways this was a call back to his days
running the Madam Pearl Tangley Show. There were entertainers and testimonials,
(12:46):
and then Baker went on stage to extol the virtues
of his miracle elisir. It was magic in a bottle,
according to him, and just the contents of one bottle
could cure twenty five people according to his pitch. And
the grand finale to all of this, with these many
thousands of onlookers, was kind of a grizzly spectacle. A
(13:07):
farmer named Mandis Johnson, who was sixty eight, was brought
on stage his head bandage. Mandis, according to Baker, had
cancer in his head, and Baker and his surgeon assistant
removed the man's bandages and then according to witnesses, peeled
back a portion of the man's scalp and a part
of his skull to show the cancer riddled brain beneath.
(13:29):
Baker made a big show of quote treating the cancer
with a powder form of his elixir, and then the skull,
fragment and the skin were replaced. Johnson's skull was rebandaged,
and then the farmer, seeming to be a okay and
totally fine after this treatment, shook Baker's hand and left cured,
according to Norman Baker. Unsurprisingly, this demonstration drew a lot
(13:50):
of attention. So did Baker's continued broadcasts from Katie and
t which had taken on a more and more anti
medical establishment tone. This included denouncing vaccinations. The American Medical Association,
concerned that he was disseminating dangerous information and telling people
not to see doctors, went to the Federal Radio Commission
with its concerns. In nineteen thirty one, Baker lost his
(14:13):
broadcast license, and Baker sued the American Medical Association for
libel in ninety two, claiming that the organization has had
ruined his hospital business because people stopped checking in for
the cure. Once he no longer had his free radio advertising,
but Baker lost that case. His cancer cure had been
found to be nothing more than clover, watermelon seed, corn, silk,
(14:36):
and water. This didn't stop him, though. He built a
new radio station in Mexico, which started broadcasting in nineteen
thirty three. But he really wasn't willing to give up
his place in the sun back in Iowa. He returned
back to his home state to run for the United
States Senate in nineteen thirty six. He had already lost
a run at being governor, and he lost the Senate
(14:57):
race as well. He was arrested briefly for practicing medicine
without a license, but it appears that he only spent
one night in jail. After an Archao newsreel rand that
discredited the Baker Institute, Norman with a with paying patients
really slowing down to a trickle at best, shut down
his hospital and in Norman also paid to have his
(15:18):
biography written, and this, like so much of his other enterprises,
was pure theater. The introduction to that biography reads, quote,
this is an inspiration book for young and old, a
fact story of how a man fought his enemies, how
he faced gunman dynamiters and enemy doctors. How he fought
the medical racket, the radio trust, the aluminum Trust, and others.
(15:41):
He did it for you. There has never been a
book prepared so carefully. This makes it the most important
book ever written. Read the life story of Norman Baker,
the greatest one man battle ever fought. He continued to
spread his distrust of traditional medicine, Catholic Jews, science, and
basically anything that contradicted him by his Mexican radio station. Seven.
(16:04):
He was convicted for shipping gramophone recordings out of the
country to broadcast them in Mexico, which was in violation
of the Federal Communications Act of four but this ruling
was later overturned in appeals court. And this brings us
to the point in the timeline where Norman Baker's story
meets up with the Crescent Hotel. So, after his legal battle,
(16:26):
and presumably in search of a new enterprise suitable to
his goals and personality, he made his way to Eureka Springs, Arkansas,
and he bought the Crescent Hotel. Baker renovated the Rundown buildings,
painting them his favorite colors lavender and purple throughout, and
he reopened it as the Baker Cancer Hospital. We're going
(16:46):
to talk about the crescent and incarnation and Norman Baker
and the claims that it's now haunted. But first we're
going to take another brief break from the history to
have a word from our sponsor. Just as he had
been doing in Iowa, Baker promised patients he could free
(17:08):
them of disease. Once he was in Eureka Springs. It's
estimated that Norman Baker was making half a million dollars
a year from the hospital. Desperate patients, hoping that his
claims were true, would often hand over their life savings
to receive the Baker cure, which often involved lots of
poking with needles and prodding, occasionally subverbal treatments, but no
(17:29):
real medical treatment. By this time, Baker, who was still
a showman, was still was appearing in crisp white suits
with lavender and purple ties and shirts, and he had
also become really paranoid. His office at the new hospital
in Eureka Springs was walled with bulletproof glass, and he
kept guns within reach at all times while he was there.
(17:51):
As part of his advertising campaign for the facility, Baker
started mailing out pamphlets in literature extolling the virtues again
of the treatments that patients could receive in his care.
I believe their tagline was where sick people Get Well.
And despite all of his other seed doings that we've
talked about up to this point, this was the thing
(18:12):
that really got him into trouble. Postal inspectors spotted his
mailings and believed them to be fraudulent, and in nineteen
forty Norman Baker was arrested for mail fraud. The hospital
at the once Grand Crescent Hotel shut down. Baker was
found guilty, and he spent March nineteen forty one to
July nineteen forty four at the Federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
(18:35):
He had defrauded patients in Eureka Springs of as much
as four million dollars. Unlike some of the other quacks
that have come up on a podcast, none of his
patients died as a direct result of his treatments, but
they were missing out on actual medical care, which you know,
could have made it so that they've died faster than
if they would if they had gotten actual treatment. Yeah,
(18:57):
we we don't know if any of those desperate people
could have put ventially even you know, had improved health
and lived for a long time because they weren't seeing doctors. Uh.
Two years after his release, Baker attempted to reopen his
hospital in Musketine, Iowa, but he never managed to do so,
and he ended up living his last twelve years on
a yacht in Florida. He died on September eighth of
(19:19):
nineteen fifty eight of cirrhosis of the liver, and he
was actually buried back in Musketine at the Greenwood Cemetery
next to his sister. The hotels that abandoned for six
years after Baker closed the operation down, and then in
nineteen forty six it was purchased by a group of
businessmen from Chicago A Byfield, John our Constantine, Dwight O. Nicholas,
(19:40):
and Herbert eat Shutter, and they intended to restore it
back to being a hotel. They did get it up
and running, even offering a special tour package which included
travel from Chicago to the resort, a six day stay
and meals, all for the low price of sixty two
dollars and fifty cents. The business did really pretty well
under their stewardship for two decades, but in nineteen sixty seven,
(20:03):
a bellman burning boxes in the lobby fireplace started a
fire that completely consumed the fifth floor and partially destroyed
the fourth floor. For the next thirty years, the Crescent
would pass from owner to owner, restoration project, a restoration project.
At one point it was bought by two married couples,
the Vegans and the Quarries, who reopened it and gave
(20:25):
a cat named Morris the title of hotel manager. But
they eventually sold the hotel, which was then owned by
several banks and businesses until finally in seven, Marty and
Elise Romic bought the Crescent and restored it over the
course of five years. To be quote the grand Lady
of the os Arps. They've owned it ever since, and
then they've turned it into a vibrant vacation destination once again.
(20:48):
So now we're going to talk about the ghosts that
allegedly hang out there at the Crescent, because for years
the Crescent Hotel has held this reputation of being one
of the most haunted hotels in the United States. Eat
So we're gonna talk about a few of the ghosts
who are alleged to wander the halls. You remember the
story of Michael the Mason from the beginning of the
(21:08):
Crescent Hotel's construction, where he fell is allegedly wear Room
to eighteen now exists, and it's long been rumored to
be a hotbed of paranormal activity. The people who claim
to have been visited by Michael while staying in the
room report doors opening and closing, pounding on the walls,
even hands coming out of the bathroom mirror, which is
(21:29):
pretty freaky. Yeah. Uh, There's a nurse that allegedly appears
on the third floor pushing a gurney with a deceased
cancer patient on it. Of course, that also comes with
the creepy sound of squeaking wheels. Some lorera lovers like
to believe that even Norman Baker himself has come back
to the Crescent Hotel and the afterlife, appearing in his
(21:50):
signature white suit with a purple shirt and tie. And
there's even a ghost that some claim introduces herself as
Theodora and tells whoever she's speaking with that she's receiving
cancer treatment, usually right before she kind of vanishes before
their eyes. There's another who has been dubbed Dr Ellis,
who is a man that wears a stovepipe hat and
sometimes gives people advice. There are so so many more
(22:12):
ghosts that are rumored to appear at the Crescent, and
they come from all points of the hotel's history. Because
it's had such a tumultuous history of shifting ownership and identities,
the history of the hotel is pretty fertile soil in
which to grow ghost stories. It's got all the best
options for spirit characters. There are rich victorians, there are
college kids, they're ailing patients who have been duped by
(22:34):
this flim flam man. Yeah, so it's uh, you know,
I think I've said before the podcast, I'm not a
ghost believer myself, but it seems like if you're into
that sort of thing, this is a super fun and
very beautiful place to go kind of play in that
sort of arena if you wanted to do so. And today,
the town of Eureka Springs in its entirety is on
(22:56):
the National Register of Historic Places, with approximately two thous
and historic buildings included that have been restored and are
carefully maintained. You can get ghost tours of the Crescent Hotel.
They're available for anyone who wants to visit with the
spirits that are rumored to haunt its halls. Uh. And
it does look like an absolutely lovely town. I would
love to go visit at some point, So it's now
(23:16):
on my list. It was not before I did this
episode because I didn't know about it, But now I
think maybe we go to Eureka Springs. You're not that
far from well from where you are. It's not that
far from where I am. It's really far. I like,
how now that you live in Boston everything feels really fun.
It really does. Whenever whenever we get invitations to go somewhere,
(23:38):
I'm like, this flight is two hours longer than it
would have been from Atlanta. Yes, So thank you listener
Jordan for suggesting this episode. It was one that ended
up being really fun. When I first thought, oh, I'll
look into the haunted hotel thing, and then the Norman
Baker angle was so sort of fertile and fascinating that
it ended up being lovely. I have listener mail and
(23:59):
it's late. Oh yeah, let's hear it. So Valentine's Day
has come and gone. I don't know how people feel
about it, but we can feel yeah either way. I
think I've said before like for me, it was always
a family holiday. It doesn't come with the baggage of
of like you know, UM expectations in a relationship sort
(24:21):
of way. So it's never been a troubling or problem
problematic day for me. Um And I like Red and
Pink a lot, so I'm cool with it. Plus peeps, Hello,
But we got to really really fun pieces of mail
that I wanted to thank our listeners for. One is
from our listener Melanie. Um. It is a gorgeous little
card that she made and it says, in these dark ages,
(24:42):
you bring us light, Happy Valentine's Day, thank you for
sharing joy and knowledge. And it is this beautiful um
image of a an anatomically correct human heart but rendered
in medieval stained glass style and I love it. It
is gorgeous, So thank you Melanie. It delighted me on
so many levels. And the second one is from our
(25:03):
listener Jackie, and it is a little card that has
a quote from Leslie Nope on the front and then
inside this happy Gallantine's a day you beautiful starfish. Hello, ladies,
I'm just writing to wish you both a lovely Gallantine's
Day and to thank you for a great podcast. I
often listen to you while I'm working. I'm a mail carrier.
It gets immensely boring walking the same streets every day,
(25:24):
and your show is helping me stay sane and learning
a bit in the process and making my way through
your archive, and each episode is just great. Maybe one
day you will do an episode on female postal workers,
but for now, keep the good work and happy Galantine's Day.
I love this. It was so sweet and it didn't
make me think about female postal workers. My postal worker
is a lady and she's awesome. I love her. So
(25:45):
if you would like to write to us, you can
do so uh at History podcast at Houston Works dot com.
We're also at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History.
We are on Pinterests as missed in History. We're on
tumbler as miss in History run. It's basically missed in
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social media's. If you would like to visit our parents
(26:06):
site and do a little research, you can do that.
That's how star works dot com. Or you can visit
us at missed in History dot com for an archive
of every episode of the show There's ever been, Like
Jackie is working her way through and they are all there.
I know. On iTunes it doesn't keep more than the
last three hundred, but if you come to our site,
they are all still there and available for listening. Uh.
You will also find show notes for all of the
(26:27):
episodes that Tracy and I have worked on, as well
as other occasional goodies. And you can absolutely come and
visit us in It's the history dot com and How's
the works dot com for lare on this and thousands
of other topics. How to works dot com
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