The Crescent Hotel
A limestone resort hotel that opened in 1886 and in 1937 became Norman Baker's cancer hospital, a cure a federal appeals court later called "a pure hoax." Baker, who was not a physician, was convicted of mail fraud in 1940, and the hotel's ghost tour now ends in a basement room it calls the morgue.
Field Guide Entry
The hotel
Construction began in 1884, with walls of White River limestone laid without mortar by stonemasons brought from Ireland. The Crescent cost about $294,000 and opened in May 1886 with a gala at which presidential candidate James G. Blaine spoke. The Frisco Railroad leased it in 1902, and from 1908 into the early 1930s it housed Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women, running as a summer hotel between terms.
The Baker Hospital
Norman Baker bought the hotel in 1937. Before 1929, he had been a grocery merchant in Muscatine, Iowa, and by December 1937 the building was taking patients as the Baker Hospital, under the slogan "Where Sick Folks Get Well." Baker claimed he had discovered "a sure cure for cancer" in 1929, and that surgery, X-ray, and radium "would not and could not in any event cure a cancer."
According to the trial record, Injection No. 5 was glycerin, carbolic acid, and alcohol, and doctors gave it to every patient "regardless of the disease." One staff doctor testified that he injected over 300 patients in the mornings without knowing the medicine's name. The chief of staff said he "detected cancer by palpation, feeling of it and guessing," and the hospital had no microscopes.
In January 1940, after a 16-day trial in Little Rock, a federal jury convicted Baker on all 7 counts of mail fraud, and Judge T. C. Trimble sentenced him to 4 years in prison and a $4,000 fine. Upholding the conviction on November 20, 1940, the Eighth Circuit called the cure "a pure hoax" and noted that Baker "was not a physician." After his indictment, $572,000 in cash had been carried from Eureka Springs to Laredo, Texas, and on into Mexico. Baker entered Leavenworth in 1941, and the hotel stayed closed until July 4, 1946.
What is reported
The hotel calls itself "America's Most Haunted Hotel." Its stories name an Irish stonemason called Michael, said to have fallen during construction and now heard in Room 218; Theodora in Room 419, described on one of the hotel's pages as a patient and on another as a nurse; a nurse pushing a gurney; and Baker himself in a white linen suit. No construction record or death notice names a stonemason called Michael. The tour ends in a basement room it calls the morgue, which Smithsonian's writer, on the tour in 2019, judged "probably a pantry."
The building's 2015 National Register nomination says the supernatural reports were "first reported" after a 1972 sale, more than 30 years after the hospital closed.
In February 2019, a landscaper's backhoe hit a dump of more than 400 bottles from 1938 to 1940 on the grounds, and Mike Evans of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, who excavated them, said they "perfectly match with the posters and photographs of Baker's bottles at that time." More than 20 held what appeared to be tissue in alcohol. No written finding on the tissue has been published.
Who owns it now
Marty and Elise Roenigk bought the hotel on February 28, 1997. Elise Roenigk died on July 19, 2026, and ownership passed to a trust she set up, with general manager Jack Moyer still running the hotel.
Visiting Information
Rooms 218 and 419 are sold by name on the hotel's website, alongside a category of signature haunted rooms. Whether a booking guarantees the room number is worth confirming with the hotel at 855-725-5720. Guests must be 18 or older to rent a room.
The ghost tour runs nightly, starts on the 4th floor, and was $29.50 for adults in October 2026. A longer expanded tour and a midnight investigation that takes in the morgue cost more and carry higher age limits. The dining rooms and the Governor's Bar are open to the public without a room booking.
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