The Crescent Hotel, located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas was founded in 1866 and is considered the most haunted hotel in America. Normal people spend a summer vacation at the beach, McKenzie and I (Ian) had the pleasure of spending 2 nights there as a vacation earlier this week. Our first night was spent in the hotel proper, and the second night was in what felt a lot more like an Airbnb next door (booked through the hotel as one of the properties).

Our rooms, 224 and 226 are in a hallway that the ghost tour indicates is frequented by Breckie, the ghost of a 4 year old that died of appendicitis in 1918. The tour guide said Breckie is known to kick a ball around with kids of guests from time to time, so maybe he heard me mention I was going to watch a FIFA match and wanted to see what football/soccer was like nowadays (nevermind that the first FIFA cup was 12 held years after his death). After the ghost tour when we returned to our rooms, the door to 226 was ajar.

Luckily none of our belongings had been molested. We attributed this to old hardware and someone leaning on the door during our ghost tour or the one that immediately followed ours. When going to bed that night I made certain that the night-latch lock fully clicked into place and I even pulled on the door to make sure it was latched, then after connecting the door chain I went to bed. The next morning within 5 minutes of being awake I heard a distinct click come from the door, turned to look at it and watched it open slightly.

You can feel the old bones of the hotel as you walk on the floors, they’re very uneven and instill a bit of vertigo in some. The hallways feel like they’re out of the shining and the door jambs are not square. The hotel has quite a bit of character, which is to be expected from a hotel, turned miracle cancer curing hospital run by a fake doctor, turned hotel again, half burned down then repaired.

You read that right, in 1937 Norman Baker a man of many cons purchased the hotel and turned part of it into a hospital which he claimed through the mystical healing properties of the nearby springs he was able to cure anyone of their cancer. Unfortunately Bakers patients would die of a mysterious illness shortly after they were cured.

The history behind the hotel is super fascinating, the ghost stories fun, and I didn’t know it but apparently staying at an old 1800s/early 1900s style hotel was a secret bucket list item of mine. I would maybe recommend against keeping anything of value in your rooms unattended since evidently there’s a lockpicking ghost wandering the halls, and I’m sure there’s no shortage of things to draw inspiration from if you’re a writer looking for a place to get away to.

See McKenzie’s post for more about what to see and do around Eureka Springs!