The Crescent Hotel: America’s Most Haunted Hotel, The “Castle in the Air” (Eureka Springs, Arkansas)

[00:00:03] - [Speaker 0]
Hello, and welcome to Citegeist, the paranormal podcast that puts the ah in bibliography. Today, we're gonna be investigating the most haunted hotel in America. And, hey, I am with you. What haunted hotel doesn't claim to be the most haunted hotel? In all fairness, if you Google most haunted hotel in America, this is the first result.

[00:00:24] - [Speaker 0]
So touche. Today, we're looking at the Crescent Hotel and Spa in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This hotel has a dark and twisted history. And at one point, it was known as the castle in the air, serving as a scam hospital where countless innocent people were tortured with experimental treatments, and it has dozens of ghostly residents to back it up. But does it have the facts?

[00:00:47] - [Speaker 0]
Are these ghosts misattributed? Misnamed? Is the hotel's massively effective marketing of monstrous medical malpractices misinformation? We'll be scraping away thick layers of sensationalized blog fueled research in lavender paint to get down to the bare bones of fact. So pack your bags.

[00:01:05] - [Speaker 0]
We're headed up to the Ozarks to learn about the alleged history of the eighteen eighty six Crescent Hotel and Spa. The Crescent Hotel, perched high above the village of Eureka Springs, was built in 1886 as a luxury resort for the wealthy. Its location took advantage of the healing waters of the Ozarks natural and plentiful hot springs. It turns out the spirits may also take advantage of this prime location. The hotel was built on a ridge of high density limestone and this same limestone was used in the building's foundation and facade.

[00:01:44] - [Speaker 0]
Many paranormal investigators believe that limestone is a superconductor of paranormal and psychic energies and has the ability to trap and output them at alarming frequencies. It feels as though the Crescent Hotel was doomed to be the most haunted from the very start. And the first ghost to join the Crescent's pantheon of poltergeists did so before construction was even complete. Michael, an Irish stonemason, fell to his death in what is now Room 218. He'll shut guests out of their hotel room and refuse to open the door.

[00:02:19] - [Speaker 0]
Once guests get in the room, they awake in the night by a man screaming and falling through their ceiling. Michael being forced to relive his death night after night. Despite this early tragedy, the hotel opened to enormous fanfare. The well-to-do flocked to the area and countless Victorian parties took place in the hotel's flashy crystal ballroom. Sadly, the success of the luxury resort was short lived as not long after its opening, it became financially unsustainable and was completely abandoned.

[00:02:54] - [Speaker 0]
It found new life in nineteen o eight when it was reopened as the crescent college and conservatory for young women. This era was relatively peaceful except that in 1924, a young woman fell or was pushed from one of the top story windows. This woman has become known as the girl in the mist. Because on certain nights, if the moonlight is just right, at around 10:30 in the evening, her spirit can be seen hurled from one of the east side balconies into the garden below. As she falls, she appears to be shrouded in an ethereal mist, hence her name.

[00:03:36] - [Speaker 0]
This tragic incident caused the conservatory to close and the hotel lay abandoned once more. It would reopen briefly as a junior college and then a summer resort before being shuttered yet again. Was the building cursed? No owner could seem to keep the place open. For years, its 78 rooms lay empty, save maybe for the spirit of Michael and that of Brecky, a boy who perished in the hotel from appendicitis sometime in the early twentieth century, and doctor John Fremont Ellis who was the hotel's physician.

[00:04:10] - [Speaker 0]
His pipe smoke can still be smelled outside of Room 212 which was once his office. Eventually, the hotel was finally saved, but the same could not be said of its crystal clear reputation. In 1937, it was purchased by doctor Norman Baker and received a tacky lavender makeover as it was transformed into Baker Hospital. Baker's marketing was as good as the hotel's is today, calling the hospital the Switzerland Of America and the castle in the air. Baker placed ads and sent colorful flyers and postcards in order to lure sick, desperate people from all over the world to his sham hospital, claiming he had a cure for cancer.

[00:04:54] - [Speaker 0]
His flyers boasted where sick folks get well and they could cure cancer without operation, radium, or x-ray. It was an appealing premise and the picturesque setting and resort like photos truly sold it. Baker was smart though and would only accept patients without any close family and would force them to write and sign undated letters telling their friends of their miraculously improving health. Baker would keep up the ruse of their wellness in order to wring their bank accounts dry. Baker didn't live up to many of his promises, especially that of an operation free cure.

[00:05:32] - [Speaker 0]
No. Baker was a madman and would drill holes into his patient's skulls to administer an untested chemical known only as formula five. He cordoned off one wing of the building as the psychiatric ward which was used to sequester patients crying out for help or in agony so that their screams of anguish wouldn't be questioned by visitors and would be patients. Eventually, all of Baker's patients would succumb either to their untreated disease or to the unethical experiments being performed on them. Their bodies would be secreted away to a crematorium through secret tunnels and the letters, which the patient signed when they were admitted, would be metered out slowly to family in order to continue receiving payments for their care.

[00:06:20] - [Speaker 0]
Once this ruse could no longer be sustained, Baker would send out a final letter announcing the unfortunate and unexpected passing of their loved one and request a sum of money to take care of the funeral arrangements which Baker would pocket for himself. Slowly, word spread of the horrific happenings at Baker hospital and the authorities were alerted. There was a tense days long standoff between the FBI, local police, and Baker before he was finally jailed. After his capture, an angry mob of townspeople descended upon the hospital and tore the place apart. They destroyed records, stole furniture, and nearly burned the building down.

[00:07:02] - [Speaker 0]
And once again, the building sat empty for years. Although now it had more ghosts to join Michael and Brecky, Theodora, a former patient, is said to appear outside of Room Of 419. She's seen fumbling for her keys and asking for help, only to vanish when guests turn away. You can still visit the morgue that was used by Norman Baker and his staff, complete with an autopsy table that sits ominously in the room. There was never much activity there until a gruesome collection of bottled human remains were unearthed on the property in 2019.

[00:07:37] - [Speaker 0]
Since this discovery, the morgue has become a hotspot for paranormal activity. People are grabbed by cold unseen hands. They experience sudden chills and a tall dark shadow figure is seen watching from the damp corners of the room. At night, the sound of a rattling gurney echoes through the halls pushed by a spectral nurse still rushing to hide the bodies of the dead. And sometimes, guests say that they see Baker himself, a sharply dressed man in a purple shirt and white linen suit wandering the hotel he once ruled with a reign of terror.

[00:08:15] - [Speaker 0]
By the time the Crescent Hotel opened once more, it was no longer just a building. It was a vessel for the undead. A place layered with tragedy, suffering, and deep mythology that whether true or not is told so often it's become truth. Guests no longer come for the spectacular view of the Ozarks or the healing properties of the plentiful natural springs, but to tour the haunted halls and steal the chance to meet a ghost. In a place like this, legends aren't just told, they're felt.

[00:08:50] - [Speaker 0]
Silent halls are filled with whispers. Empty rooms feel crowded. The air is filled with the distinct smell of cherry pipe tobacco. And you never know when you might be the next to check-in as a permanent guest at Eureka Springs Crescent Hotel. There is so much to get into.

[00:09:14] - [Speaker 0]
This case has so many named ghosts and so much backstory. Some of it I had to leave out. But what I told you, not all of it is entirely accurate. And I'd even venture to say that the real story, while not as gruesome, is more interesting if anything. I won't be able to touch on all the ghosts and I left a couple out of the story.

[00:09:36] - [Speaker 0]
You'd be shocked to know that I made a concerted effort to make this episode shorter, but I have a penchant for info dumping and I have the complete lack of the ability to self edit and it still ended up being 25 pages long. I wondered why I burned out on this podcast the first time around because I was writing 25 page long research papers every week like I was in grad school again. I just love the pain. But where do we even begin with this story? I suppose the logical thing to do would be to trudge through the mire chronologically.

[00:10:10] - [Speaker 0]
The hotel website has pages and pages on the history of the building which seem really accurate at surface level since it's peppered with period photos and pictures of documents. But once I got digging into the archive, things were definitely off. Now the hotel website claims that construction on the Crescent Hotel commenced in 1884. But during my research, I came across this notice and many others. This particular one being from the 05/07/1885 issue of the Arkansas Democrat stating that the Eureka Improvement Company was receiving proposals for the building of a hotel.

[00:10:45] - [Speaker 0]
It goes on to say that it will be accepting separate proposals for masonry, carpentry, painting, and other work that would follow the plans and specifications set forth for the proposed building which could be seen at J S Taylor's office in Saint Louis. Now to me, that doesn't sound like anything was started in 1884 beyond perhaps the plans for the building. Perhaps the website just kind of misspoke and meant that planning had commenced in 1884 but not its construction. I'll let this one slide. We'll see how that goes.

[00:11:17] - [Speaker 0]
Once construction actually began, it was said that Michael, an Irish stonemason, had fallen to his death in what is now Room 221 which is one of the most active rooms in the hotel. Research into Michael was a little bit difficult because a large number of newspapers and local records for this period were destroyed in a fire and Michael wasn't a US citizen, so I couldn't really rely on social security death records or any other federal records. Since newspapers and federal records were a bust, I ended up expanding my search to look for people who were born in Ireland but died in Eureka Springs between 1884 and 1886. But I had no luck. So I decided to expand my search to all of The UK and there was one interesting hit.

[00:12:02] - [Speaker 0]
And by one interesting hit, I mean there was one hit, John Edgar. But we had a couple problems. For one, he wasn't Irish. John Edgar was born in 1858 in Palenaki, Dumfries, And Galloway, Scotland, where he lived most of his life on a farm. But interestingly, he died in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in December 1885.

[00:12:24] - [Speaker 0]
What was he doing there? I decided to dig a little bit deeper and looking into the Scottish census records, it turns out that John's profession, a mason. Could this be the infamous Michael? The dates line up. The profession lines up.

[00:12:40] - [Speaker 0]
The place of death lines up. The nationality kind of lines up. It's not a huge jump, no pun intended, for people to assume that the Mason who died at the Crescent Hotel was Irish since it was an established fact that a group of Irish Masons were hired for the job at the hotel. It's definitely plausible that there were a couple of Scots in the mix. And it probably helps or doesn't help that most Americans don't even know the difference between an Irishman and a Scot.

[00:13:07] - [Speaker 0]
Now I can't say with absolute certainty that John Edgar is our Michael since they have nothing stating what project he was working on or exactly how he died. But I'm gonna venture to say that there's a pretty good chance that our Irish Michael is actually our Scottish John. And you're probably like, but Michael, he has the name Michael. He does. But whenever Michael appears in any written source, it's always in quotation marks which indicates that that's not actually his name.

[00:13:35] - [Speaker 0]
That's a name that was given to the spirit or entity likely by a psychic medium or hotel staff. It would take me probably going to Arkansas or to Scotland to actually look at physical records to confirm whether this John Edgar is Michael, but I'm throwing his hat in the ring. This might be our guy. Despite the death of a Mason during construction, the hotel formally opened to enormous fanfare on 05/20/1886. The Daily Arkansas Gazette had a story on its grand opening and described it as a scene of gaiety complete with a fireworks display where the affluent attendees watched from the hotel's many ornate verandas.

[00:14:14] - [Speaker 0]
Naturally, as a hotel with a focus on wellness, there was an in house doctor employed by the Eureka Springs Improvement Company by the name of John Fremont Ellis. His ghost is said to haunt the hotel near his office which is now Room 212. His name was repeatedly misspelled on ghost hunting sites and probably even more upsetting in a major confidence killer was that it was also constantly misspelled on the hotel's own website. His name was most typically spelled Fremont with two e's, but in reality it had one. And doctor John Fremont Ellis or as he was referred to in historic sources, colonel John Fremont Ellis was indeed the doctor for the hotel.

[00:14:55] - [Speaker 0]
However, I'm surprised that his ghost would haunt it seeing as he had his own house just down the hill from the hotel at 44 Prospect Avenue, which if you ask me is a much cuter place to hang out. The house looks like something straight out of a storybook and it's like an adorable little cottage. In the modern era, it was run as an Airbnb and went up for sale this past year, but it also looks like its new owners are continuing to operate it as an Airbnb. I would like to think that his ghost would rather haunt this cute little house rather than the hotel, but I have trouble believing that too. Because despite being the builder of the house and it having his namesake, he didn't seem to live there for very long.

[00:15:38] - [Speaker 0]
He appears to have lived most of his life at 44 Spring Street or 43.5 Spring Street or 45 Spring Street. Yeah. It's a little confusing but federal census records have him living at the Airbnb location in 1910. But by 1920, he moved downtown to what is listed as 44 Spring Street which is now a little gift store. The next census in 1930 has him at 43.5 Spring Street which confused me at first, but looking at the street, it seems that half numbers in Eureka Springs are just upper units.

[00:16:13] - [Speaker 0]
Now 43 doesn't exist today. It's just like an alley with a stairwell. In aptly, there's a sign there for ghost tours, which I found really amusing. It turns out that doctor Ellis died after that 1930 census in 1931 and his death certificate lists his address as 45 Spring Street, which is now the Rowdy Beaver, which is just a restaurant in case you were wondering. The hotel enjoyed an incredible amount of success in its early years, but eventually the excitement died down and it struggled financially.

[00:16:47] - [Speaker 0]
Unlike the story that is told on blogs, the building did not sit abandoned before becoming a women's college, but the college ran concurrently alongside the Crescent Hotel's normal operations. When the financial trouble started, a suggestion was made to use the hotel as a boarding school to boost revenue in the off season. So the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women opened in September of nineteen o eight placing advertisements and newspapers all across the South that read, Crescent College for young women on top of the Ozarks at Eureka Springs, the famous health resort. Most picturesque town in America. Climate unsurpassed.

[00:17:25] - [Speaker 0]
$300,000 stone building, fireproof, 100 bedrooms with bath, elevator service, Ozark water on every floor, full preparatory and collegiate courses, conservatory of music, art expression, and commercial branches. Horseback riding, a feature. The school operated from September through June with the hotel fully resuming operations for summer months. The culture there seemed very positive and very bright. And to me, it's a little sad that this piece of the Crescent Hotel's history is glossed over in favor of the admittedly more interesting phase as a sham hospital.

[00:17:59] - [Speaker 0]
But the hotel operated as a school for women for over twenty years while Baker's ownership only spanned three. Though the hotel's focus and marketing is Hospital, there is a Facebook page called the Crescent College History Project that is dedicated to actively keeping this portion of the hotel's history alive, which I greatly appreciate. A man named Richard Ryan Thompson moved to Eureka Springs in nineteen o eight to teach at the college and eventually became its president in 1910. His wife, Mary Breckenridge Thompson, was also a teacher at the college where she taught French and hygiene. The two of them had a young son named Breckenridge Thompson or Brecky Thompson as he was affectionately called.

[00:18:40] - [Speaker 0]
He was described as being unusually attractive and the idol of every heart in the college. Now this name may sound familiar as he is another ghost that is seen at the hotel. He's often seen running through the halls and playing with a toy ball because unlike his descriptors would make him seem, he was four. The story goes that he died of appendicitis, which is close to the truth. And even before his death, it seems that the specter of death was after this child for quite some time.

[00:19:10] - [Speaker 0]
In 1915 when he was two, Mary put an ad in the paper offering a reward of $25 to anyone who could give her information leading to the conviction of the person responsible for poisoning her child's dog. Apparently, their dog was next to the baby when the dog picked up and ingested some poison. It was a near miss for little Brecky, but unfortunately, their dog passed away. But the specter of death did catch up to him in 1918. However, Breckenridge didn't die in the hotel.

[00:19:41] - [Speaker 0]
There actually appears to be no mention of the hotel in accounts of his death either. He was admitted for surgery at the Huntington Sanitarium on Friday, 01/18/1918 and died six days later on January 24 from complications. Despite his death, his parents continued to work at the school. The same year of Breckenridge's death, Mary had the opportunity to go to Washington DC and present her work on child welfare to both Congress and the Senate. She was instrumental in developing Crescent College's child welfare program, which was one of the first of its kind.

[00:20:13] - [Speaker 0]
And her husband, Richard, continued to serve as a president of the college until it closed in 1924. Now did the college close following the tragic death of a girl who was thrown or jumped from the top floor? No. There actually doesn't appear to be any evidence of this event in the historic record, which is also noted by other sources who have covered the hotel like the Smithsonian. What ended the college's tenure was much more banal.

[00:20:39] - [Speaker 0]
Its lease in 1924 was simply up and there was not enough support from the community or financial donors to keep the school running. The hotel, however, continued to run. Seven years later, the school was briefly revived as a junior college and it catered to younger women. It had a basketball team called the Crescent Comets, which is adorable, and a very well respected staff. And that stayed open until 1934 when it too ran out of funding.

[00:21:06] - [Speaker 0]
It was three years after this that the Crescent Hotel and Spa was bought by doctor Norman Baker. Except he wasn't a doctor at all. At the very least, he was an eccentric and at worst, he was a greed fueled con man. His story is more interesting than the ghost tours and paranormal blogs make it out to be. And yes, the sensationalized version is riveting, but the truth is stranger and it has a lot of eerie parallels parallels with some figures in the anti vaxx and mahab movement that we are seeing today.

[00:21:38] - [Speaker 0]
Baker was born into a wealthy family in Muscatine, Iowa in 1882. Before he was a quack, he held many titles including inventor, which he was successful at. He successfully invented the tangly automatic air calliope which was a mobile steam organ that was most commonly used in circuses and fairgrounds which is where he attained his next title of vaudeville performer and circus barker where he went by the name of Charles Welch. However, by 1924, the allure of the circus faded as he was drawn in by the growing world of radio, seeing it as a new way to influence the masses. And in 1925, Norman Baker set up a radio station of his own called KTNT, which stood for know the naked truth, where he used his skills he honed as a carnival barker to full effect.

[00:22:30] - [Speaker 0]
With a name like Know the Naked Truth, you can begin to imagine where this is going. Baker immediately began claiming that a cartel of broadcast officials were trying to silence and suppress him for his ideas and beliefs. Use his radio platform to attack politicians and make claims that vaccines, fluoride, and aluminum were causes of all cancer. It was fortuitous then that Baker learned of a cure for cancer by Charles Ozias despite the fact that the five test subjects who received the cure died swiftly afterward. Inspired by Ozias and his miracle cure, Baker developed his own and opened his first hospital in Muscatine, Iowa called the Baker Institute.

[00:23:14] - [Speaker 0]
Like a precursor to the modern day RFK junior, he used his radio station to spout propaganda, denouncing licensed doctors as educated fools and cutters incapable of helping patients while simultaneously plugging his own sham clinic and his own fake cures. Baker went so far as to claim that MD stood for more dough despite the fact that that was actually his own ethos and he called himself a doctor. But perhaps he didn't recognize the fake medical diploma he received from a convict in Iowa either. The Journal of the American Medical Association was quick to denounce Baker, but Baker shot back with outrageous claims that the AMA offered him a million dollars to buy his cure just so that they could keep it off the market in order to continue selling surgeries and other treatments like radiation to line their pockets, which is still a conspiracy to this day. You will hear it constantly.

[00:24:10] - [Speaker 0]
Baker went on to say that the AMA actually stood for the American Meat Cutters Association which is kind of a sick burn if you ask me. Lawsuits were flung every which way and in 1930, Baker claimed that three men had attacked his hospital and opened fire on it. However, after the police investigated, they could find no evidence and came to the conclusion that one of Baker's associates had fired all the shots and the whole situation just like his cancer cure was made up. Baker's popularity grew holding outdoor events and performing live cures on patients like a prototypical Benny Hinn. Ultimately, he would use these events to sell his products to the tens of thousands in attendance and rope them into being loyal followers.

[00:24:55] - [Speaker 0]
In 1932, he ran for governor of Iowa but received only a few 100 votes. But the amount of votes he obtained was irrelevant as it was just another way to provide him a platform to preach about his fake cancer cure and convince more people that they were being exploited by doctors and politicians. Eventually, Baker was run out of the country due to his legal struggles and he set up shop in Mexico. And here in Mexico, he founded another radio station and another hospital where the AMA and the Federal Communications Commission couldn't touch him. Over time, Baker's radio broadcast grew more and more unhinged.

[00:25:30] - [Speaker 0]
Aside from his quackery and supposed cancer cures, he would go on antisemitic and anti catholic rants and he was even said to live broadcast himself having sex with his mistress. Baker eventually returned to The US in 1936 unsuccessfully attempting to run for senate and then in 1937 served only a single day of jail time and paid a $50 fine before he was off to his new venture, buying Eureka Springs Crescent Hotel. Using the money he amassed with his scams where he made as much as $10,000 a month, he purchased the hotel and immediately began converting it into his newest sham hospital. And like a cartoon villain, he started it with a gaudy makeover. He painted a great deal of the hotel in lavender, which appeared to be his color.

[00:26:21] - [Speaker 0]
You know how old ladies, like, they have a color, like, you have the lady who wears green and my nana pretty much exclusively wore purple. Well, Baker was definitely a purple lady. Not only did he paint the entirety of the hotel purple, he famously wore a purple shirt with a lavender tie under his white linen suits and drove a custom painted orchid colored car. Despite what the stories say, Baker did not lie low. Was quite ostentatious with his displays of wealth and the American Medical Association and the federal government were well onto his scams.

[00:26:56] - [Speaker 0]
Now Baker's mass marketing campaign was extremely effective. He sent flyers in the mail and placed ads in newspapers and they're honestly quite chilling. In a curly playful font, the flyers read where sick folks get well and it looks like something straight out of a horror film and it may even be a horror film that some of us have lived. Watching loved ones seek alternative therapies that are clearly a ruse at best and a scam at worst. When my Nana's cancer came back and it was metastatic, she was desperate to find any cure or treatment and fell for similar predatory quacks that now operate online instead of through the mail or through papers.

[00:27:40] - [Speaker 0]
It was heartbreaking to explain to her that people were just trying to take advantage of her and her sickness and that they didn't care. These people were just trying to take her money knowing that they would face no consequences once she died. And I think that's the most horrific part about Baker's tenure at the Crescent Hotel. Not the things that happened there necessarily but the way in which he preyed on the desperate and the sick and the scared. I suppose there was a very small, very very small bright side though is that while he didn't have a cure for cancer, he did hold true to one of his promises, to not cut out any organs or perform any surgeries.

[00:28:20] - [Speaker 0]
And yes, I can hear you saying, but he drilled holes into patient's skulls to pour chemicals in their heads. No. That was just some more cinematic fluff added to the story, though it does have a kernel of truth. While there is no evidence that Baker drilled holes in his patients' skulls, I feel like that would have been mentioned in the court case Baker v United States and I honestly cannot see him risking soiling his purple suits. However, contemporary sources including the case notes confirmed that he did treat patients with an untested concoction ominously titled formula five.

[00:28:58] - [Speaker 0]
But it was not administered through the skull, it was injected subcutaneously. Scathing testimony says that he administered this treatment whether for a broken pelvis, a wart on the nose, dandruff, fallen arches, or cancer. So what was in this mysterious miracle formula five? Snake oil. Well, not literally.

[00:29:19] - [Speaker 0]
It was a carbolic acid, alcohol, and glycerin solution infused with ground watermelon seeds, brown corn silk, and clover leaves. This concoction was injected into patients up to seven times a day. The first half of this cure, the carbolic acid with alcohol and glycerin is an old fashioned antiseptic solution which is meant to be used topically or orally with caution at best. Definitely not subcutaneously. Regardless of its misuse, these injections likely didn't lead to the patient's deaths as most of them were terminally ill and because of this the morgue which is now a highlight of the hotel's ghost tour was very busy while the hospital was in operation.

[00:30:00] - [Speaker 0]
However, despite what blogs say, the autopsy table is not still in the room. What is commonly mistaken for an autopsy table is simply a large commercial utility counter that has a sink on it. While stories make it seem like Baker was exposed suddenly for his crimes, investigations into Baker and the hospital started almost as soon as he had opened it because he was already a known figure from his prior hospitals and radio stations. One article in the 05/19/1938 issue of the Courier News states that congressman Fuller was pushing for an investigation hospital within months of it opening with the article stating, Fuller said an inquiry should be made to ascertain the facts. Fuller said he was motivated solely by the desire to get at the truth of the claims one way or the other.

[00:30:47] - [Speaker 0]
If he, Baker, has a fake remedy and is perpetuating a fraud upon the suffering American public, I would like for it to be known and the American people are entitled to this knowledge. If he has a cure and is performing a great work, the public should also be so informed. Despite the continued pushback from the government and his age old enemies at the American Medical Association, Baker pressed back with his own propaganda machine. An article in the Halloween nineteen thirty eight issue of the Laredo Times has a full page ad for the castle in the air that reads kind of like a MAGA fundraising email. The first Baker hospital was founded by Norman Baker at Muscatine, Iowa in 1929.

[00:31:26] - [Speaker 0]
After mister Baker perfected the Baker treatments, they were thoroughly tested by licensed physicians and found to be a cure for cancer and tumor. They were then offered to the medical profession upon the condition they investigate to determine their merits as a cure, but the offer was flatly refused. In this attitude, mister Baker foresaw the suppression of the treatments and realized that he must provide a way for cancer and tumor sufferers to obtain them. As a result, he founded the hospital at Muscatine and dedicated it to the memory of his mother. Today, the Baker treatments are known throughout the world.

[00:31:59] - [Speaker 0]
Patients come from foreign countries, even 8,000 miles distant, to procure the benefit of these treatments. An international group of Baker hospitals and clinics in The United States, Mexico, and Australia now extend hope to cancer and tumor sufferers through the Baker treatments. Oh, yeah. He opened a hospital in Australia too. He was really busy.

[00:32:20] - [Speaker 0]
It goes on to say, this phenomenal success has been achieved in the face of a most vicious campaign waged against him by the American Medical Association who even now discredit the new therapeutic advancement which does not originate within their own organization. The Baker Hospital at Muscatine, Iowa is now closed but its glory will never be dimmed to the thousands who obtain hope, relief, and cure within its friendly walls. The magnificent new Baker Hospital atop the Ozarks at Eureka Springs, Arkansas is the only place in The United States where the Baker treatments can now be secured. Another article in the same issue details how Baker Hospital brought money and tourists back to the struggling town of Eureka Springs and in turn provided jobs for many citizens who apparently were tearing down their homes to save on taxes. The newspaper even says the Baker enterprises had done much for the community aside from increasing their population and booming businesses and real estate during 1937 and this year also.

[00:33:20] - [Speaker 0]
Every kiddie in the city who did not have clothing so they could go to school has been clothed free of charge by the Baker organization, and numerous other grants have been made to the city also. Now whether this is propaganda or bribery of the townspeople or both, it's largely true. Baker integrated himself into the community of Eureka Springs and participated in community events like the county fair, holding and hosting parties for free at the hospital, and hosting talks. The hospital itself even appeared to be somewhat of a tourist destination even if you weren't seeking treatment. He had so many people in his thrall and as noted in this newspaper clipping, there was a ladies day trip which included a visit to the hospital just very casually.

[00:34:04] - [Speaker 0]
And this is what made it so difficult to shut down Baker's operation. It wasn't that people didn't know what was going on. The locals knew what was going on, but they relied on the hospital to make a living even if it meant that patients had to die. Now the blogs, ghost tours, and paranormal podcasts gloss over just how influential and widespread Baker's reach was. It wasn't just local, it was global.

[00:34:30] - [Speaker 0]
Blogs don't mention his anti vax, anti science radio stations, his several hospitals in multiple countries, and certainly none of them mention this. Norman Baker plans to establish New City. Yeah. Norman Baker was so drunk with power and influence that he planned to create an entire city of tomorrow that would effectively serve as a super powered radio station to blast his messages across The United States and create a home base for his growing cult. Naturally, this new city would include another hospital and he planned to open the city in the first part of nineteen forty.

[00:35:10] - [Speaker 0]
But Baker was arrested in September 1939. For what, you may ask? Was it medical malpractice? No. Practicing without a license?

[00:35:22] - [Speaker 0]
No. Murder? Surely not. It was mail fraud. Seven counts of it.

[00:35:28] - [Speaker 0]
That's how he was done in. Ironically, Baker's making was also his undoing and his highly effective marketing campaigns is what led to his arrest. But he doesn't seem to let that get him down. He was arrested in September 1939. But while the courts were sorting things out and he was launching appeal after appeal, he was still living it up as evidenced by this clipping.

[00:35:52] - [Speaker 0]
All folks in the Ozarks are invited to attend the usual free celebration and entertainment at the Baker Hospital. There will be a large floor show and an orchestra from Memphis and dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Everything is free. The entertainment is celebrating the second anniversary of the Baker Hospital and mister Baker's birthday. Well, I for one am glad that he had one last shindig because it was all downhill from there.

[00:36:17] - [Speaker 0]
Baker's attempt at defense brought some really funny headlines including Baker denies ownership of hospital where he says in a written statement, I do not have any stock or any financial interest or hold any executive position of any kind at the Baker Hospital at Eureka Springs. I was the founder of the institution, not just the same as I founded the first Baker Hospital at Muscatine in 1929 and the next founded the branch at Brisbane, Australia and then Mexico and finally the hospital at Eureka Springs. The article then goes on to say, does not explain and highlights that while Baker denies any ownership of the hospital, his statement conveniently left out how and when he had severed connections with the institute because where was he getting his money from? Another hilarious headline was convict says he sold Baker doctor diploma, wherein a convict casually mentions that he sold Baker his fake medical diploma twelve years prior in 1928. He said that a member of Baker's staff paid him $800 for a fake diploma of graduation from the American Medical University of Kansas City.

[00:37:21] - [Speaker 0]
With these headlines, you can imagine Baker fought against his cases tooth and nail and his appeals made it all the way to the US Supreme Court before finally he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison and mandated to pay a $4,000 fine for restitutions. After his release, Norman Baker tried to return to his make America healthy against scheme in 1946, but he was quickly shut down this time by the state of Iowa. He eventually retired to Florida. No surprise there. I guess some things never change.

[00:37:51] - [Speaker 0]
And he ended up dying of cirrhosis in 1958. And now that we got the full story more or less, I wanted to share an encounter I saw on Reddit just to show how easily information is changed and manipulated through retellings and sensationalized ghost tours. This post is by a Reddit user named garbeau seventeen and it's titled chased by a ghost at the crescent hotel. I will be abbreviating a little bit and interjecting. This is an encounter my wife and I had at the crescent hotel in Eureka Springs.

[00:38:23] - [Speaker 0]
It has a long history beginning as a hotel for the wealthy to retreat and bathe in the healing Springs and then a girls school and then a cancer hospital where patients were tortured with experimental treatments while their families were fooled into believing their relatives were safe and healing from fake letters written by the doctor. You can already see how the story has been sensationalized. This couple was clearly fresh off the ghost tour and likely just repeating what they were told. They didn't know any better. Why would they expect that they're being lied to?

[00:38:53] - [Speaker 0]
As we know, there were no experimental treatments at the hospital because there was no treatment happening, let alone experiments. Unless you count the glycerin injections of formula five, which were in no way experimental. They were just a sham to make money. But I I digress. Anyways, the Redditor goes on.

[00:39:13] - [Speaker 0]
We'd gone on the ghost tour. See, I told you they were just on that goddamn ghost tour. Which was okay but you get to tour the hotel and see the old morgue where the evil doctor would dissect the dead. Again, there was no dissection. You think Baker would want to get his precious purple pantsuit soiled?

[00:39:31] - [Speaker 0]
Please. Anyways, they go on. Part of the hotel was the pain wing where he would hide the patients who were screaming behind the soundproof walls. Wife wanted to go back there of course and when we got to the hallway, there was this very stern looking lady with what may have been a clipboard. She was halfway down and blocking the wing.

[00:39:51] - [Speaker 0]
She was facing one of the guest rooms but her head snapped to our direction and looked mean AF. So we were like, cool. Let's leave. I actually started taking off before my wife and she claims that when the woman snapped her head around, the neck twisted at an unnatural angle as if it were broken. The one thing that really stuck with me though was her posture, straight as a ramrod.

[00:40:15] - [Speaker 0]
People just don't look like that anymore. I would describe her as thin, very pale, wearing a long sleeved white top tucked into a long black skirt. Hair dark and pinned up with a strict governess vibe that became furious. The fear I had was not for my life, but like I'd been caught sneaking around by a principal. Given the major get out vibes, still thinking she was an alive person, we started toward the spiral staircase and suddenly blocking my way was a short woman with brown hair that was pinned up.

[00:40:50] - [Speaker 0]
I thought, wow, that's rude. She just cut me off appearing out of nowhere and then gone as if she stepped aside. She was so close I could only see the back of her head. I truly believe that she was the same woman we had just seen down the hall because of the distinct hairstyle. It was if she teleported in front of me just as I had turned away from her and then stuttered almost like a glitch in a video game.

[00:41:12] - [Speaker 0]
We were otherwise alone in the hallway and not confusing multiple people. So we began to descend the staircase when she was suddenly again behind us stopping real fast down the stairs. These stairs were infamous for the number of deaths of people falling over or through the railings. They weren't noisy when walking normally, but they shook and creaked under her stops. Still thinking this was a real person, we moved aside so she could pass us if she insisted on rushing.

[00:41:39] - [Speaker 0]
We moved over to let her pass and she dissipated. It felt like a whoosh and then the energy was drained from her bodies and exhausted the rest of the night. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs and turning around, we realized there really wasn't actually a person with us and that's when we were like ghost, which I thought you saw that she had dissipated but then you turned around and she wasn't there. There's some inconsistencies with this story but that's that's not the point of this. They go on to say, if this was a ghost, I believe it was that of a woman named Theodora.

[00:42:12] - [Speaker 0]
She was the head nurse at the hospital who somehow died while working there. No explanation for how and she is mostly known for hanging around her room at the Top Floor but the artistic rendering of her based on witness reports look exactly like the woman we saw. She is also known for being so strict she will place guest bags at the door if they are too loud or messy. Now I'm not gonna outright deny this couple's experience. It was clear that they had an experience, but I will deny the misinformation that they were fed and provide an alternative identity to their ghost.

[00:42:45] - [Speaker 0]
The Theodora ghost is a popular but inconsistent one at the Crescent Hotel. As this person stated, no one knows how she died and depending on what story or ghost tour you go on, she's either a patient at the hospital, a nurse at the hospital, or a nurse who became a patient at the hospital. Like Michael, her name also always appears in quotations which suggests it's a name given to her by the hotel staff and not a name she actually had in life. But the description of this woman from the Redditor, I think they said it best themselves. The fear I had was not for my life but like I'd been caught sneaking around by a principal.

[00:43:26] - [Speaker 0]
I would venture to say that if this wasn't a real person, that it was a specter of a former staff member of the Crescent College or the junior school. The hotel served as a school for so many years and was such a tender part of many people's lives. I'd like to think that some of what is imprinted on the hotel is from this positive period of the building's history even if it is nothing but a memory. The eighteen eighty six Crescent Hotel and Spa has had a storied vibrant and colorful history mostly in shades of purple it seems. And sadly, while we like to imagine that a sham hospital like this could only exist in the annals of history, it mirrors a lot of what is happening today.

[00:44:09] - [Speaker 0]
Norma Baker's anti science, anti vaxx, and anti semitic propaganda and fake remedies eerily parallels the modern maha movement's manipulation, misinformation, and peddling of sham supplements, raw milk, and colloidal silver. Again, as this podcast teaches me and you, time and time again, humans do not change. No matter how far we believe we've come, yes, time progresses and technology advances, but we're not as evolved as we think we are. Like ghosts, we're doomed to relive the past over and over again. Evil and greed always finds a way and sometimes the same way.

[00:44:51] - [Speaker 0]
Now it's not the evil that lurks in the shadows of a hospital morgue, but one that lives inside of humanity's very genetic code. It's evil that preys on the sick, the desperate, and the gullible for both personal and financial gain. And once again, we've learned that the true terror is human nature. But I'm not gonna leave it on that sour note. I am gonna cleanse your palate before closing the show, and I wanted to read an email from a listener.

[00:45:19] - [Speaker 0]
If you wanna send a voice note of your own, send an encounter, an episode suggestion, or just a nice email like this one, you can do so at sitegeistpod.com. Also, give this video a thumbs up or rate us on your listening platform if you haven't already. Really, like, every little bit helps. The incomparable Jesse says of our premier episode on the Iroquois fire, I love this episode and how well you portrayed not only the events, but also how you presented your facts. Through your dulcet tones, I could feel each moment as you described the circumstances.

[00:45:52] - [Speaker 0]
My heart was left heavy and tender for the victims and their families. To say you are talented is the very least yet very best my impressed tired mind can say. Thank you for walking the earth the same time as I am. It's a blessing to know you exist. Jesse, you are truly an angel.

[00:46:10] - [Speaker 0]
Thank you for not only flattering me into, like, a puddle of mush, but you've saved the vibes of the episode because without you, we were gonna end on a rancid note. This episode marks the first of our biweekly release schedule, and I'll be back in another two weeks on January 21 with another historic haunt. Until then, trust science. Always cite your sources, and I'll see you in the stacks.