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Hey, weirdos. I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. And this right here, it's morbid.
It is. it is morbid facts facts and figures so i don't know about that oh no that transported me back to math class and i started twitching oh man i'm sorry i made you twitch thanks i apologize she's literally twitching i wish you could see her eye is twitching she's just losing it um so where we have a spooky episode today which i'm very excited about because it's um this and we'll get into it obviously ash is going to tell us the story but i will uh this it's the crescent hotel in arkansas in arkansas and you got boston and then southern arkansas i think i was trying to do both accidentally
or i was trying to do southern and boston came up boston is who you are it's just in my soul but what's funny about this is i have been following the crescent hotel and tiktok forever like since the since i got on tiktok yeah and they followed me back and they were like oh we always listen to morbid like the staff is like holy shit you gotta come and i was like oh my god i love this i love that this hotel and us are friends and when you brought it up i was like holy shit like we gotta go there now oh i'm finna go there so i think we're gonna try We're going to figure out when we can, but we got
to go. We must. We got to go.
It looks so weird. Just wait until you hear.
And honestly, shout out to the staff of the Crescent Hotel because you guys are hilarious on TikTok and I love you.
It's true. I started following them.
Yeah, see? And they'll love it.
And speaking of recommendations for who to follow on TikTok, you should follow the Crescent Hotel and we're always giving you like recommendations.
You know, like we were talking about, you know, Richard Chismar's book, Widow's Point the other day.
We talked about Grady Hendrickson's book.
Grady Hetheridge, we're always telling you like, hey, this is what I'm doing.
And they're all genuine.
Because if I like something, I want you guys to like it too.
And there's one that just came about that we would like to throw your way, but I think is a really, really good one.
Yes, I agree. So this begins, so this is a podcast. It's a podcast that was created by a family member of a true crime case, a very close family member of a true crime case.
Um, so I'm going to give you a quick little background of the case, and then we're going to show you a quick little short trailer for their new podcast. And I really think you should give it a listen.
So the case comes from July 9th, 1993, when Stephanie Wasilichan died from a gunshot wound to her neck.
She had two daughters and her daughter, Nikki, is a fierce advocate for her mother's case now, which has unbelievably gone cold for over 30 years.
I think it's 32 years now.
And when you hear the the details of this case the 911 call alone.
Which you will hear part of it during this trailer it's and it's not like graphics so don't worry this trailer but when you hear the details of this case it's unbelievable that it has gone cold it's wild.
It really is. I totally get why Nikki is like let's get this fucking open again.
We're going to be covering this case on an episode of Morbid.
But we really want you to take a look at Nikki's new podcast because she has launched a podcast about her mother's case.
So she has, I think, a few episodes out by the time this comes out.
There's a few, like, little mini bonus episodes right now.
But the first episode is premiering on July 9th.
And it's going to premiere on July 9th at 8 p .m. and there's a very special reason why it's going to premiere at that specific time on that specific day because that is the last time she and her mother said good night which is heartbreaking literally shatters my heart into a million different pieces i can't even like the the ball in my throat is just like oh no uh but honestly in this podcast you're going to get a firsthand perspective from stephanie's daughter which like you can't you can't get a closer perspective than that um Nikki's a badass I fully believe that she's going to get this case
solved I think and I think with everyone's help and with everyone's ears on the case and people spreading the information and getting it looked at again that's that's what this is all about these things go cold and it's because no one's willing to look at them again so um here's a noise exactly make some noise put your ear to it just listen and spread it uh here's a quick trailer for her podcast Poppy Killed Mommy.
9 -1 -1, what's your emergency?
My mother's death was ruled a homicide.
The man who called 9 -1 -1, he admitted he might have killed her.
I don't know who. You don't know who shot her?
I might have. She might have shot herself.
But the county attorney said there wasn't enough evidence.
No trial, no charges, no justice.
I'm Nikki. I'm the daughter of a murdered woman, and I'm done unsdained quiet.
Join me for the launch of Poppy Killed Mommy, a true crime podcast premiering July 9th, because if the system won't fight for her, I will.
So yeah, just that, the trailer alone.
Chilling. Yeah. She's done an amazing job with it.
I know that she's been working on it with Sarah Turney as well, with help.
We love Sarah. Sarah.
Couldn't have a better person helping you with this.
And yeah, we highly recommend you can follow follow Nikki on TikTok.
We'll share her handle and stuff in our show notes so that you guys can follow along because she's always updating.
So yeah, definitely.
And then look out for our coverage on the case after she does a couple episodes.
Yeah. And thanks. Thank you to Nikki for trusting us with the trailer and to do an episode.
Yeah, we appreciate that.
Yeah. And when this goes wide, check out our socials because we'll share, you know, Nikki's key art, a link to the episode her episode so we'll we'll send you that way yes but without further ado let's talk about the crescent hotel man yeah let's go this is a crazy ass place it is let me just tell you that it is i've said this many many a time it is said to be one of america's most haunted hotels i think it's america's most haunted hotel i think this one stands on business mismissness.
Facts. I really do think it does because I do I really do think it does is what I just said.
Why does that sound so wrong?
I really do think it does.
I don't know why that sounded weird. I think it's the do and does but yeah that's a that's a normal thing to say.
Yeah but I noticed it when I when like through their TikToks.
Yeah. That they were like you know most haunted hotel in America and I was like I'll be the judge of that.
And then you said yes.
I started seeing things they were talking about and they were going through the history a little little bit and all that good stuff and talking about different and people were coming out with their different experiences and I was like I think they're right the history is bonkers .com yeah there I did actually end up getting a lot of information from a documentary that was just released I want to say last year uh it came out two years ago 2023 I'm still in 2024 in my mind you know aren't we all but it's tales from the crescent hotel it's on prime I think I rented it for like four bucks I might buy
it because I want to watch it again it's a really cool documentary documentary i recommend it another recommendation hey but yeah so i got a lot of information from there i got a lot of information from their hotel's website their hotel's website has almost everything you need to know i love that and then just like some local news outlets but this hotel is in eureka springs arkansas which hundreds and hundreds of years ago was discovered by native americans and in eureka springs there are more than 60 natural occurring springs within the city limits damn which is just fucking bonkers eureka yeah
maybe that's why they named it that and for all those hundreds of years people believed that these springs had healing properties like the water if you drank it if you put it on a wound if you sniffed it you'd be healed stand next to it good things would happen hell yeah so word started spreading once english settlers started coming over here and soon everybody was trying to get out to eureka to be near these springs, get a drink of them, the whole nine.
Now, Powell Clayton, one of the earliest governors, I think the ninth governor of Arkansas, obviously he knew all the legends because he was living out there.
Hell, yeah. And he knew about the springs, their healing properties.
So he and his associates formed the Eureka Improvement Company, and they really decided they were going to start building up the town.
They had railroads built to bring more people in and really got the downtown area together.
They built up different shops, really nice buildings.
buildings. He was hoping especially that wealthy people would see all the work going into the area.
Obviously he knew that they had extra money to spend and that's kind of where he got the idea to get a wellness retreat up and running.
Wellness retreats were kind of like just starting to become a bigger thing.
The cool hip thing.
Yeah and obviously wealthy elite people were all about them.
So he was like okay well that's the perfect place for them to spend their money.
Yeah. So his idea was put into motion and the hotel started being built in 1884.
Architect Isaac S. Taylor built the hotel in a Romanesque revival style, which I think you would love.
Oh, yeah. I started kind of looking into the characteristics of that and I said, Elena, Elena, Elena, Elena.
I was like, can I live in that?
Yeah. Picture like lots of, just like for you guys, Elena's already picturing it.
Yeah. Lots of round arches, brick and stone towers.
And then I saw this asymmetrical designs.
That's your middle name.
Let's go. Whenever I try to make anything symmetrical in this room, she's like, no, asymmetrical.
Doesn't need to be balanced.
I don't like always balancing.
But the building sits on top of Crescent Mountain, and it really towers over the area, which makes it somehow look even more majestic from all the angles and everything.
And of course, leads to beautiful views from essentially every room on the property.
Which is pretty badass.
It is badass. It was and still is to this day stunning.
By the time the hotel was complete in 1886, it cost in today's money $10 million.
Damn. But because it cost that much, it offered some of the finest luxuries at that time.
Electricity. Edison light bulbs were everywhere.
Oh, shit. I love an Edison light bulb.
I do too. It had steam heat, elevators, running water.
Get the the fuck out of here.
And not just regular shmegular running water.
It was the water from the healing springs being pumped into the hotel.
Oh, so you're getting fancy water.
So of course that was only bringing in more tourists because they said, heal me.
Yeah, heal me. Let's go.
Let's fucking go. So the grand opening The grand opening.
The grand opening was held on May 20th, 1886.
And most people had actually been personally invited to come stay.
I was. It wasn't just like anybody could go stay.
Alina in a past life was was invited.
I guess I wasn't. But there was people from all over the country that rode the train into Eureka Springs.
When they got to the train station there, they were met with a band that was like, let's fucking go party.
And then, yes, and then they were transported up the mountain to the hotel.
The Daily Times Echo reported that day, with the opening of the grandiose Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs enters a new and exciting era.
Notables from afar are arriving in our fair Bear City and soon many others will follow.
The Crescent Springs, built by Eureka Springs Improvement Company and the Frisco Railroad, is America's most luxurious resort hotel.
Featuring large, airy rooms and comfortably furnished, the Crescent offers the visiting vacationer an opulence unmatched in convenience and service.
It continued, tonight's opening ball will find in attendance many leaders in business and society.
Including me. Including Elena.
No, that sounds badass.
Sounds opulent as fuck.
That sounds so opulent.
I love the word opulent.
Not only does it like bring forth images that are very pleasant.
It has a great mouth feel.
Great mouth feel. Opulent.
Opulent. It's that like op, op, and then opulent.
I love it. I really like it.
I'm obsessed with it.
I really like it. This place kind of looks like the Stanley.
It does sort of look like the Stanley.
It's got those vibes to it.
I've been to the Stanley.
It's fucking freaky.
Yeah. But there was a big welcome party in the Grand Ballroom, which now is the Crystal Dining Room, and the governor himself interviewed a lot of notable guest speakers who were, like, political people at the time.
Things went beautifully for years and years, but by 1908, they were having some money problems. It's a big place.
It had a lot of accommodations that it was offering, so obviously it cost a lot to run, and people weren't coming out as often, and especially the winter months were pretty dead.
That makes sense. So, to bring in some extra money and keep things up and running, it was decided that during the winter months, the hotel would be run as a women's college, like during that off season.
And then in the summer months, it would go back to being open to the public.
So, they invited the Crescent College and Conservatory for young ladies to stay there.
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Now, apparently the program that they were, you know, offering for these women was very ahead of its time.
Because remember, this is 1908.
Women were not being taught like like the same as men were back then.
But at the Crescent, they were.
Some of the courses that women took there in 1908 are still being taught in curriculums today.
Holy shit. Which is actually, wow.
But that also seems to be when the first reports of hauntings started, which actually does make sense because during the original construction, there was already tragedy and a few more followed throughout the college years.
So one of the Masons working on the building, like when it was originally built, was believed to be an irish man named michael and apparently while he was constructing his little section of the hotel he fell to his death oh yeah oh i knew i i had a feeling something like that was gonna happen yeah yeah legend has it he specifically haunts room 218 and he really favors the ladies oh yeah he's a hunk a hunk of burning love oh look at this so imagine how happy he was when this building became an all -girls school oh he's like hell yeah he said i am living again it's great people but especially women
who have stayed in room 218 uh which is the most requested room by the way i get it i don't think i would request this i would don't speak too soon they say that they get tapped on the shoulder okay or that the shower curtain has been pulled back while they're showering in the room completely alone okay not cool okay not cool michael there's something called consent michael there sure is i would be pissed i would put them up oh but the dukes would come right up with me oh no because i'm in a zone in the shower so like don't fuck it up yeah also people have said in this specific room there's been
reports of an apparition of hands coming out of the mirror in the bathroom okay michael like fuck that yeah um people also have reported hearing a man scream in this room or around this room and if you're in this room people say they've seen michael's ghost like basically fall through the ceiling and then just completely dissipate okay i want that yeah i want to go to there i'm not gonna shower there I'll hold my hand on the shower curtain.
I'm not going to makey in that room.
No. Give me a glass door instead of a shower curtain.
Maybe, there you go.
So, yeah, that's wild.
Damn. The falling through into the room and then disappearing is shaking me to my core.
And hearing a man scream.
Yeah. I feel like haunts are usually like a shrill woman scream.
Yeah. You know? Like an angry bride or something.
Yeah. A man screaming.
Yeah, that's a whole different.
I can't even picture that.
it's like wow you nailed that scary i thought there was a man in here screaming maybe there was well people doing ghost tours know what the famous rooms are and the ghosts that go along with each one of them so they try to catch a glimpse of these ghosts if they can which is exactly what we're gonna do hell yeah um on one ghost tour a woman knew about michael and she really wanted to make contact with him so she and her group went into room 218 and they started playing irish folk music you know just to get him because why not get him in his happy place they also poured shots of irish whiskey and everybody
in the room suddenly saw one of the dresser drawers slowly being pulled open as they were like prompting him with questions holy shit and they tried to see if they could recreate it explain it away they like jumped up and down they were like banging the sides of the dresser and it didn't happen again oh yeah weird that's spooky it is now in the early 1900s the college was being run by uh president richard breckenridge who was a teacher there for many years before he became president and his wife was also a teacher there she taught french and hygiene and hygiene french and hygiene all right i don't
know she knew a lot about a lot yeah wash the bottom of your feet yeah always you know people don't do that island i wonder why you specifically said that yeah i'm you know let's talk about it who i am some people don't think like they just are like i'm in the shower there's water no i heard this discussion somewhere and i can't remember where but i was like you don't wash the bottom of your like what like that's wild do you wash the bottom of your feet yeah of course he does You wash yours, obviously.
Of course I do. I wash mine, yeah.
No. There's a lot you need to do.
Actually, Beach Gem gives a really good.
Does she? Yeah. Beach Gem.
Dr. Beach Gem on TikTok.
Because you think the bottom of your feet is bad.
It's going to get explicit in here real quick.
Oh no. Some people don't wash their bum holes.
They don't. Beach Gem said.
Beach Gem said. Beach Gem said.
head I saw a video and she was saying you need to explain to like your kids that they have to watch their bum hole that's wild I like how you're whispering that it's a weird thing to say you're like this is so this is a naughty word it's so random but it is so random why would you not wash your bum hole you should wash your whole body in the shower everybody buddy thick lather it feels great too if you do a pre -scrub with like an exfoliant like oh it changes your life once twice a week and then you follow that up with your scrub yeah you're gonna feel like a brand new bitch yeah and then make
sure you moisturize afterwards and you're gonna feel great i remember thank you when i was little like knowing that i had to wash my feet because if you don't wash your feet and then dry them properly like in between your toes you can get gangrene how or like something well it's just yucky yeah so wash your feet so yeah wash your feet that's she was teaching hygiene that's what people wash the bottom of your feet she said wash your feet wash your bumhole so they she also whispered she did oh she didn't even say oh yeah she said you're behind she said your your your end parts yes that's what she
said she said what well anyway they had a four -year -old son clifton who they taught good things like that and everybody called him brecky because their last name is breckenridge that's cute um but unfortunately brecky passed away at the hotel after complications with appendicitis no brecky it's so sad but ever since then and even to this day people say that they see a little boy especially in the hallway on the second floor and they always see him playing with a ball oh my goodness and hotel guests who have children their kids will come to them and be like i played with this little little boy
and he says he lives here but like he was dressed so differently and they'll ask their kids to explain what he was dressed like and he's dressed like a victorian child oh my goodness and that's when you return your child return your child return to send oh man i would that would that would be something that would fuck me yeah that really would i'm so sad i hate it there's also the ghost of dr john fremont ellis who served as the in -house doctor during the very early hotel people staying in room 212 will smell cherry scented tobacco which sounds nice huh I like it all right yeah I can take that my
my grandfather smoked a pipe yeah like a tobacco pipe yeah and it was always a comforting smell when I was little definitely cherry isn't interesting yeah well room 212 used to be his office where he was known to smoke his pipe a lot so there you go people also see him kind of like out and about in the hotel and they say if you see a man in a top hat and very nicely dressed chances are it's probably dr john fremont ellis he sounds like handsome guy he kind of does if you see him don't hit on him he's a ghost kind of sounds like a zaddy hey ghost should get hit on too he should feel good about himself
too yeah you know what i take it back take it back he's a ghost so it's very likely obviously even with just those few spirits that the girls at crescent conservatory had experiences of their own one of the hotel tell workers who was featured in the documentary she actually said that girls would send postcards to their family asking their family to send their Ouija boards to school so that they could try to figure out like who they had seen or who they were talking to hell yeah girls yeah and that's like down back in the early 1900s yeah I'm that that's just girls being girls yeah you know and again like
I already said it at the top but definitely go watch the documentary because they feature a ton of photos throughout from back then like there's tons of photos of when it was a woman's college and like just the old -timey girls yeah it's like crazy i love that it's so cool oh i can't we're going here yeah we're going yeah i never thought i would go to arkansas i know i never really had a reason to go to arkansas i don't think but apparently eureka springs is cool as fuck yeah let's go their town motto is um like where where misfits go to fit oh i love it yeah yeah eureka spray like we're even misfits
fit it's something like that oh see this makes sense i love it this way because the staff of that hotel sounds like a bunch of fucking awesome peeps and yeah i was trying to think of a peeps and specters spectrals so yeah peeps and ghouls there you go yeah well unfortunately sorry to bring this down a notch by 1934 pretty well into the great depression people obviously didn't have a ton of money to spend and they definitely weren't sending their daughters to college anymore or a woman educated.
We don't have the money for that.
So the college closed down, and the Crescent kind of stayed in limbo for the next three years.
But in 1938, a very wealthy man with a very checkered past decided that he was going to buy the hotel and turn it into a hospital specifically for cancer patients who he said he could cure without surgery, radium, or x -ray.
which were all what cancer was treated with at the time.
Yeah. And as we know in 2025, he didn't.
No. So this is probably not going to end well.
Uh -uh. But he said he could cure cancer with the power of a determined mind and something called Formula 5.
He would have been an excellent grifter on social media.
Yeah. He essentially was the OG grifter.
Yeah. The OG, if you will.
Yeah. Yeah. But more on Formula 5 and all that in a minute.
Let's get into who this guy was and where the fuck he came from.
Who the fuck is this guy?
This guy is Norman Baker.
He was born in Muscatine, Iowa.
But by all accounts, he was a really smart kid.
He had really big aspirations from the time he was little, little.
Even from the time he was really young, he had a great mind for engineering, which made sense because his father was an inventor, actually.
I guess his father had something like 126 patents throughout his lifetime for just different inventions.
dimensions yeah and his father also owned a machine shop so Norman would go in and learn about all the different machines how they worked all the ins and outs and the older he got he would go into factories to show them how to improve their production he'd be like redesign this layout move this over here get this here and everything will work better he had a lot of promise and it did and like he was just this kid who would walk in like that damn but the one driving force in in his life was that he did not want to end up poor.
So in his late teens, while he was still kind of figuring out his path in life, how he was going to make all this money and what he really wanted to do, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Oh damn. The doctors actually didn't expect him to live long at all.
They thought maybe he had a very limited amount of time, like possibly years, maybe even not.
Wow. But somehow he defied the odds and he survived.
And during the time he was sick, he was reading a lot of books about how your mindset can cure you of an ailment if you, you know just think positively yeah and really really work your mind on getting better yeah that's all it takes that's it yeah modern medicine who's that yeah so when his condition improved he accredited the improvement to that and only that a positive determined mindset so now he had shown himself that he could avoid death with just the power of his mind and he knew that he could make money the same way and there is no denying that he did in fact make a lot of money the first
of that money came when he came up with his own vaudeville act after watching a performance and kind of becoming fixated on it he learned how to hypnotize people and do all kinds of different magic tricks and he actually spent the next 10 years doing that with a troop of people who banded together and just went around the country doing this vaudeville act no matter who the performer was he always had a woman uh who was like a quote -unquote mind reader and she always went by the name pearl tangley pearl tangley pearl tangley okay and he himself went with the name charles welch and he spent 10 years
doing that okay he briefly married one of them but they ended up annulling the marriage a short time later one of the pearls one of the pearls and he just moved on to the next pearl yeah uh he was actually making a decent amount of money but obviously he wanted more and that's when he started working on his invention called the the caleophone it was an instrument that was kind of like an organ it ran on compressed air but you could like ride around with it like on the back of a bicycle or something okay so it became really popular at fairs and circuses because you could kind of like drive it around
and the air would make it make different sounds yeah okay yeah i feel like i've seen this kind of vibe yeah we'll post a picture of it because it's hard to describe but once you see it you can kind of get an idea of what it was yeah so he came up with that using the like that specific calliophone using compressed air previously they had used steam and it didn't make a lot of sense they like exploded a lot yeah you know that could happen so he ended up making a shit ton of money on that because it was really in demand for those kind of performances but then by the end of his vaudeville days radio
broadcasting really started to take off and he wanted in on that he saw a lot of money in that future kind of like what we're doing right now radio broadcast radio broadcast Podcasting.
It's a little different, though.
But he thought it was going to be a lucrative business.
But the problem he faced was that you needed to get, back then, certain equipment from the government if you wanted to start your own radio station.
So he went to these different people and was like, hey, government, can I have approval?
And the government said no. Which is tough.
It can happen. It's tough when the government says no. When the government just is like, no. No, you can't have that.
No. I think they didn't love his ideas.
Yeah, they said not cool.
But he said, fuck y 'all.
And he figured out how to make the equipment on his own.
Wow. Like he made his own radio broadcasting equipment.
Because you asked for forgiveness, not permission.
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not only did he create his own equipment but he also literally just built his own radio tower on some random hillside in muscatine iowa jesus there's pictures of it you gotta look it up he named his controversial radio controversial radio station ktnt which was short for know the the naked truth we all know who this kind of guy is in the beginning he was mostly talking about like small town issues going on within muscatine and you know he's going after other radio stations but then he started talking and ranting like it was just him on this radio station he would rant for hours and he started
ranting about you know more broadly like different political and social issues like vaccines bovine TB testing obviously and the upcoming 1928 election where he was backing Hoover here we go he actually even ended up meeting Hoover and they like kind of broed out whoa yeah it's wild damn this guy yeah he also like ran for senate at one point he lost thankfully yeah but eventually he started denouncing real medical doctors um that's where you you know you fall out of line there yeah and he also denounced the American Medical Association Oof.
Yeah, and that was when he heard that a man in Kansas City had come up with his own cure for cancer.
Now, this was like the very first time that he had heard about this.
Oh, boy. So he himself said he would sponsor, essentially, five patients to go to Kansas City and try this miracle cure.
He would pay for all of their, whatever the cure cost, because, of course, the cure costs money, and whatever expenses they would incur while traveling down there, he'd cover all of it.
Okay. Just to kind of see what happened.
he gathered them all up he sent them all down there and they all got the cure and it did not cure them unfortunately every single person within that study passed away after not being cured at all but this didn't faze him oh instead he started publishing his own paper claiming the cure as his own and this like crazy medical advancement in science and medicine wow yeah Yeah.
Okay. I see what you mean with the grifter.
Yeah. And it didn't stop there.
In 1930, he just said, you know what?
I'm going to open up my own hospital because I have this miracle cure.
I'm super qualified to do that.
Yeah. Let's go. Even though I don't have a medical license.
So yeah, he opened the Baker Institute using the paper in his radio station.
He had a paper at this point too and a radio station to promote it.
And again, he didn't have a license to practice medicine or any kind of medical experience at all.
But in big letters on the side of this Baker Institute, he advertised cancer is curable in like huge letters.
Wow. Wow. The conditions within his hospital were terrible.
Of course they were.
The documentary really goes into it, but it was not a hospital so much as just an old building with too many patients and too little resources leaving them to yeah like they were washing themselves with bedpans oh nothing was sterilized properly it was overcrowded there also weren't real fucking doctors that worked there that's the thing and you're going thinking that this is this miracle cure yeah and of course like i can't imagine being diagnosed with cancer you would do especially back then when we didn't have a lot of information on cancer you would do anything to be cured of course and this guy
is saying he has the cure you're gonna go there yeah but instead of hiring actual doctors he hired people with what were called eclectic degrees which this is when you go to two terms of medical school and in some states they allow you with this degree to diagnose write prescriptions and death certificates oh but certainly not treat cancer patients yeah that's a whole different level i would say but this is who he was bringing into the hospital damn so the whole time he's you know sitting there claiming to cure cancer at the baker institute he was also going against the American Medical Association on his broadcast
and in his paper. So they were getting rightfully pissed.
Yeah. And eventually things escalated to the point where the American Medical Association went to the Federal Radio Commission and was like, you need to shut this down.
He's sitting there saying he has this miracle cure to cancer.
Yeah, spewing this nonsense.
Like, this is illegal.
He can't be doing this.
So Baker's radio station did shut down in 1930.
30 and that's when the american medical association started going after the hospital quote -unquote hospital quote -unquote so now he was going to be facing uh charges of practicing without a medical license so he shut down the hospital and ran away to mexico for like a couple years holy shit yeah he went full send he went full send he spent this time in mexico and he figured out how to make a radio station there as well of course he did which was also broadcasted like throughout the world somehow he figured out a brain that's the thing because he you can't argue he's a very smart yeah that's what's
upsetting he could have done great things if he actually did great things he could have yeah yeah but he so he builds a radio station there people are listening all over the world and he's still claiming that he knows this cure people are writing him from all over the world sure wanting to know what it is how do they get it yeah but he's facing these charges in the u .s so he's kind of stuck where he is so things in mexico were getting kind of bad at this point they were facing civil war so he came back and really had no choice but to go clear things up in muscatine if he wanted to start over somewhere else
so he this whole big trial happened the judge ordered him to pay a thousand dollar fine and spend one day in jail and he was free to go are you kidding me yeah which also he had been charging people for this cure like absurd amounts of money he's completely ripping people off he's not only is he completely ripping people off a thousand dollars was nothing to him yeah like that was you could easily do that so that is how he ended up picking up and moving to eureka springs where he purchased the then in limbo crescent hotel eureka springs actually seemed happy to have him they knew he was a wealthy
man they knew he was going to bring money back into the town so they kind of took everything that they heard about him with a grain of salt oh don't do that yeah and arkansas at least back then was one of those states that allowed people to practice with an eclectic degree.
Eek. So this was perfect for Norman.
Oh, yeah. He loved this.
So he moved into the hotel.
He renovated the entire place.
I think it took him like six months.
And he moved all of his patients from Muscatine into the hotel that was now, you know, renovated.
And he started advertising to cancer patients in Eureka Springs saying he could help them with no surgery, no x -rays, no radium.
now instead like i mentioned earlier he had this miracle cure that he called formula five yes so this formula five was a mixture of glycerin watermelon seeds corn silk carbolic acid and spring water now from the local springs he would have patients and staff i won't even say medical staff because they were just staff inject this mixture into their bodies up to seven times a day what the fuck and he specifically recommended that it be injected into their chests what he also there was no balance like there was no certain amount of carbolic acid or watermelon seeds everything varied from tincture
to tincture whatever your vibe was that day and carbolic acid is incredibly dangerous oh my god it's insane yeah it's wild and having them injected into their chests and up to seven times a day up to seven times a day and then on top of that because there weren't any actual medical doctors working here and because he didn't really believe in prescription pain medicate medication there was no pain medication so these people are going through cancer like you see photos of some of these people with like sure massive growths on their body who should be being treated in an actual medical facility and they
believe that they are but they're not at all they're just injecting whatever this is poison basically poison into their system holy shit and other than quote unquote formula five patients were given a list of mental exercises to go through to keep their mind fighting yeah because that's the important yeah um because you just have to be positive yeah so that's it needless to say a lot of people died under his quote -unquote care at least 42 people were picked up by the mortuary but there were countless more whose deaths went undocumented holy shit yeah and he dark he really didn't keep any medical
records of course he didn't any that he did were destroyed in a fire oh convenient yes small fire yeah and there were also people that he said were cured who just got sent home but obviously were not cured yeah and And there was also people, like, they would come in and think they had cancer.
There were people who didn't even have an actual cancer diagnosis that he would diagnose with cancer and then treat.
And then start injecting them with this shit?
Yeah. Holy. Yeah. He's diabolical.
He is diabolical. When people died at the hotel or at this time the hospital, they were taken down to the basement where there used to be a kitchen.
And he turned it into a morgue and used the walk -in freezer to store the dead bodies of these people.
Wow. So now when people go on ghost tours of that specific area, because the morgue is still like sort of intact, like you can go down there.
That's awesome. It's wild.
They will feel everything from lightheadedness, a tightness in their chest, to feelings of just like fear and dread.
Yeah. People see crazy shit in this area.
People staying overnight usually hear the sounds of wheels squeaking around, around midnight or later they say, gurneys.
And that's because this was usually when bodies were taken down to the morgue it makes sense he was trying to hide it he was trying to hide it exactly like sneaking him past so people will wake up in the night and hear wheels squeaking past their room and it's the sound of gurneys dead bodies being carried down to the morgue and people have even claimed to see a nurse wheeling a gurney down a hall holy shit and think like oh no like a medical emergency it's very like silent hill and then they'll ask and someone will be like oh no like there was no medical emergency luckily but you saw a ghost Like
you saw an early 1900s nurse wheeling a gurney down the wall.
Isn't that nuts? That's so scary.
So he did a lot of damage.
Yeah. But he only ended up running the Crescent Hotel as his hospital for about six months before the mayor at the time got fed up with what was going on.
For him, man. And he basically set up a takedown.
He's like, fuck this guy.
Norman kind of started going into like different political circles.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
Because again, like even back when he was in Muscatine, he wanted to run for like Senate it and all this stuff he stepped on the toes of the mayor and was basically being like oh you don't need the mayor you have me like he said that he also at one point said the town wasn't big enough for both of them so he's like oh my god pissing off the wrong people yeah so claude fuller uh the mayor of eureka springs in 1930 he had a brother who worked at the post office and basically they found out and sort of set up norman he was writing all these letters to respective quote -unquote patients or really clients
promising to cure their ailments for a fee so they were able to get him on mail fraud oh because you can't make you can't like send out all these letters promising to cure someone's cancer for a price i love when they can get somebody on that smaller charge just to get them in yeah yeah technically i don't like i don't think they'd probably be able to get him on this yeah because they set up a kind of scheme but it worked out but it worked then so on september 1st 1939 he was arrested by the fbi because mail fraud is a federal crime yeah sure is so he ended up being sentenced to four years in jail
and got a four thousand dollar fine this time i think he spent a little more than three years in jail this time wow and he ended up going to leavenworth prison and when he got out of prison he retired in florida where he spent the rest of his life on a yacht that he bought okay until he died in 1958 of cirrhosis of the liver oh but many people wonder if it was actually liver cancer oh yeah shit yeah now strangely someone lays purple flowers at his grave every single year what on his anniversary and i forgot to mention in life he was obsessed with the color purple to the point where he drove purple
car. Wow. He wore at least a purple tie but sometimes a full purple suit.
Interesting. He wrote in a purple pen and when he renovated the hotel almost everything was painted purple.
You can actually still to this day on the side of the chimneys of the hotel see that they were painted purple.
Shut up. Like the purple paint.
Oh that's so cool. Like the paint has worn away but underneath is the purple.
Is the original purple that you put.
Yes. Oh my god that's creepy.
creepy. And nobody knows who this is that leaves the purple flowers.
Yeah. Who are you? I don't know but I want to.
Wait why do you do that?
Why do you do that?
So now fast forward to 2019.
Susan Benson the grounds manager and head gardener at the hotel at that time was just overseeing some landscaping on the background.
She's an incredible landscaper.
She's won like countless awards for just her work.
Just keeping grounds.
Just keeping grounds like planting like these beautiful gardens and everything.
Yeah. It's gorgeous when you look at it.
It's like, look at pictures of it.
So she had somebody kind of like pushing dirt back in an area in the back of the hotel and they were just like using some kind of landscaping vehicle.
So as that person was finishing up and driving away she was kind of looking in the area just to see what got done that day and she said something shiny in the dirt caught her eye so she got down closer and she was like oh it's like a jar like what the fuck is this so she pulled it out and when she did she saw that it was a jar like a small jar filled with a clear fluid and some kind of tissue oh like not kleenex tissue like like tissue tissue like bodily tissue bodily tissue yeah so pulling out that jar loosened up the earth around it and within an hour she had pulled out a hundred more jars filled
with weird ass shit just like that what so they called the police and that led to an archaeologist coming out to the property where they discovered more than 500 bottles like this and also an old bone saw that they believe norman baker used to cut tumors and god knows what else what else all of these people oh my god meanwhile he claimed not to do any surgeries no knives no nothing shit he was absolutely doing some crazy shit wow yeah that must have been astounding yeah and eventually archaeologists determined that at least some of the bottles contained alcohol and human tissue holy shit so preserving
these yeah and in oh my god I can't imagine finding those yeah there There was various tumors found that had been cut off of patients.
Susan even found a man's scrotum in one jar.
Holy shit. Yep. And she ended up leaving the hotel.
And she said, she was like, I loved this job.
I was going to retire here.
But this fucking haunted her.
She started having awful dreams where hands would come up through her mattress and cover her mouth and grab at her, like pulling her down into her bed.
And she said she never knows when she's going to have them, but she has them every single week at least it could be like two times a week or four times a week and she said she's worried somehow that she upset spirits by moving them from their final resting spot oh no I hope that's not it I hope it's not anything when she was she's trying to do the right thing and they got all buried in like a better place yeah like she was just trying to yeah but it really messed her up holy shit so and this is the thing apparently when Norman was was still operating out of the hotel even though he claimed that he
was curing cancer with no surgery no removal of these tumors or whatever he would display these jars in the lobby as proof that he was curing people and he also featured them in some of his publications so you can go and look back and see that there was at least like drawings of jars like this in his publications and then people from like word of mouth who had been to the hotel back then or the hospital saw these jars featured in the lobby what the and then something happened when after he got arrested or before maybe he knew he was getting arrested they got buried in the back holy shit yeah that's
crazy yeah and it's actually not very far off to think that he might have been doing experiments on people oh yeah make this cure work yeah apparently be surprised by that i wouldn't be surprised either apparently there was a restricted area in the hotel where the more more sick patients were sent.
And Sharon Clemons -Tepin told a reporter in 2024, she's a worker at the hotel, she said he boarded up the windows, made it even more soundproof, put steel doors with a lock from the outside, and he designated this as his pain asylum.
They could scream and yell and do whatever they wanted to do, but that way they didn't disturb anybody else.
His pain asylum? Pain asylum.
First of all, awesome band name.
Band name. I call it pain asylum is an amazing name yeah scariest thing I have ever heard in my life and just gave me full chills all the way into the core of my very being thinking about the fact that he was just locking away the people that are in the most pain so they don't deserve disturb the rest of the hospital finding anything that belonged to this man would be like life -changing like it literally would be like holy shit like i have touched something cursed that has been touched by a diamond cursed like finding those jars you'd be like he he did that that's the thing and i think that's
why susan is so messed up by that like it's just like can't i can't get over that how do you get over that yeah that area today that pain asylum what was the pain asylum back then is the honeymoon suite today.
And people who stay there report seeing some pretty disturbing shit.
Sharon told that same reporter, there's a woman who's sometimes seen standing at the end of the bed.
She's wearing a white nightgown, probably from the 30s, we think, and is probably one of those cancer victims because she appears not to have a jaw or a chin.
And she doesn't do anything or say anything to hurt anyone she's just there in the middle of the night you wake up and she's there standing at the end of the bed that is horrifying can you fucking imagine the fact that the pain asylum is the honeymoon suite now like goes you have to marry a centibite for that to make sense you do like you sure do that's wild yeah to be like i hate it we're gonna to stay in the stainless oil?
Yeah I don't know about that.
That's a lot. And also knowing now that I know that I'm not going anywhere near there.
That's a lot. That specific room.
Do I want to see it?
Yeah. Like low key yeah but I don't think I could sleep there.
But I'm not staying there.
No. Not in that room that's for sure.
Now obviously the darkest entity of all at the hotel is say it with me Norman Baker.
Oh absolutely. So one of the servers and ghost tour guides at the hotel Aaron Davison told ABC7 back in 2024 he seems to to be the apparition that is the most unfriendly you might say and you do not want to provoke him we know that much he has been provoked in the past and it wasn't good well please do tell that's the most ominous shit i've ever heard what the fuck do you mean it wasn't good i think we have to go there to find out we have to go to there but people know norman when they see his ghost because he's still dressed in one of either his purple suits or a purple tie and a lot of times
people will say that especially after the jars were found a lot of people started seeing him in the lobby but the manager of the nighttime ghost tours deborah the duchess said there was an uptick in the activity in the morgue after those jars were found there were more cold spots than usual and for the first time a dark figure was seen in the morgue that hadn't been seen previously after the jars just popped off yeah one of the nicer and i would say more helpful ghosts though is theodora oh yeah and she usually stays in room 419 people think that she's possibly one of norman baker's patients um
or maybe a nurse that was running the hospital but more often i saw a patient she really likes things neat and tidy if you leave anything scattered around your room you're going to come back to have everything neatly folded in one spot okay i like that one couple was arguing in that room and they were like unpacking as they did it and just kind of left shit everywhere and they came back to their suitcases packed standing by the door so they stayed in a different room because they were like i think we upset that spirit she's like you know what don't argue in my room you're fucking up my vibe so why
don't you guys go figure this out in a different room she said get out of here we don't argue in here no we don't good for her there's also been people who stayed overnight in the room um and they will go to sleep with scattered change on the dresser and then they wake up to find it neatly stacked and organized oh a lot of people i would do that and people see her outside of room 419 and it looks like she's fumbling with a set of keys so if you see that that's theodora 419 is the second most requested room now the final ghost that i saw mentioned and i have to say i think it would probably be
my favorite ghost of all is morris the cat morris the motherfucking cat in 1973 Morris walked his ass into that hotel one day and he never left. Good for him.
And for the next 21 years, he chilled there in the lobby and they all referred to him as the general manager.
I imagine you're a cat.
Yeah. And you are just living outside.
Yep. And then you come across this fucking opulent hotel.
And you're like, I'm gonna, you know, what do I have to lose here?
I'm gonna take a residence.
I'm gonna take a risk.
Yeah. And I'm going to walk in here and I'm going to see if they tell me to walk my ass back out or not.
And they don't. You walk in there and that entire staff goes, what's up, Morris?
What's up, Morris? You want to be a GM?
You want a job? And he's like, yeah, I do.
And for 21 years, you get to live in the life of luxury.
What a fucking, like, talk about the jackpot.
Obsessed. Like, truly.
Absolutely obsessed.
That's amazing. He also had his own special cat door to come and go as he pleased.
and when he passed away in 94 1994 damn more than 300 people attended morris's funeral yeah he is buried on the property on the east lawn you can go visit him oh and leave stuff for him you can and there's a photo of him in the lobby with a poem that says in memory of morris the resident cat at the crescent hotel he filled his position his position exceedingly well the general manager title he wore was printed right there on his own office door he acted as a greeter and sometimes as guide whatever his duties he did them with pride he chose his own hours and set his own pace the guests were impressed
with his manners and grace upstairs and down he kept everything nice they might have had ghosts but they never had mice iconic i'm obsessed with this hotel and the people that run it yeah i know they're great like this is amazing they're great and people on tour say they have felt a cat brush up against against their leg but look down and there's been nothing there oh i love it yeah and now the crescent hotel usually has one or more resident cats they've had tons of cats live with them yeah stay throughout the years um and they're all mentioned on their site i think i mentioned all the ghosts
but to give a few more experiences or happenings before we go the night manager stephen carey told a reporter that he gets calls from rooms with no one in them oh he said i send my security and they check and make sure there's no one in there of course and then I'll send my bellman up to replace the phone and then within an hour later I'll get a call from that same room that there's no one in oh scary that's scary another woman who stays at the hotel all the time she was actually featured in the documentary her name's um Dana she said that she was sharing a bed with her daughter just sleeping
one night and she felt the bed shift in the middle of the night so she assumed that her daughter was like getting up or something yeah but then she saw saw someone standing at the foot of her bed and looked over and her daughter was still sleeping beside her and then she looked back and that shadow person at the end of the bed was still there yeah that would fuck me up yeah i'd probably die uh dana didn't she's a brave ass woman who went back on another visit dana yeah and this time they've stayed a few times i think so this time they got upgraded to the penthouse suite hell yeah dana should guess
it stops for that hell yeah uh she and her daughter courtney were like just hanging out in their suite and courtney all of a sudden saw like lights flash and then both of them heard footsteps coming down the stairs and she said one like they were like with a big group of people and one of the people had a bottle of tylenol with them they heard the footsteps stop in a pill bottle shake almost like somebody was like what is this what and then they felt a sudden shift in temperature it got freezing so they were like both terrified but they took they went around and took a bunch of photos in courtney's
photo what like uh in at least one of them there are dozens and dozens of orbs i was showing you that that was a crazy one it's nuts it's in the documentary so go watch it and then in dana's photo you can see a whole fucking woman in a victorian style dress just sitting straight Straight up in a chair.
Hands folded in the lap.
Yeah. Just like clear as day.
Full body. It's one of the scariest things I've ever seen.
Yeah. Yeah. There's also a portal on the third floor.
Yeah. Of course. Yeah, there is.
Yeah. The hotel, it's in an area where the hotel connects to a section built when it was a hospital.
Oh, yeah. That tells you everything you need to know.
There she is. And a lot of people on tours will faint in this area.
Oh. Some have like completely passed out for a minute.
And people get super pale and feel drained or like panicked in that area.
Oh, I hate that feeling.
Even before they know what that specific area is.
Wow. Yeah. Energy, man.
The energy can hit you like a ton of bricks.
It can. It's happened to us.
I got mostly everything that I saw, but I'm sure there's more.
Go check out that documentary.
Go to their website.
In 2005, Ghost Hunters aired their investigation.
i love ghost hunters and they called the crescent hotel the holy grail of ghost hunting holy shit yeah i mean that should tell you yeah and after that they got like a whole influx of people who go now now more than 35 000 people go there a year to ghost hunt damn yeah holy shit go crescent so if you want to book a stay you can head over to crescent -hotel .com stay or you can give a call Call to 855 -725 -5720.
And tell them Morbid sent you.
No, literally tell them Morbid sent you.
Literally tell them.
I'm trying to get in that penthouse.
I know, right? I want to go so badly.
We have to go. I'm so excited.
We gotta go. We gotta make this a trip now.
We do. We gotta meet these people.
We gotta see this hotel.
We gotta meet these ghosts.
We're going to figure it out.
We're going to do it.
Norman Baker is such a dick.
Yeah, what a dick. Truly.
Yeah. Fuck you, Norman.
Imagine just being like, oh, I can cure cancer with watermelon seeds and carbolic acid.
That I put into your chest. Like, are you okay?
With a syringe. Yeah.
What the fuck? I think I said carbolic.
It's not that. No, carbolic.
I was right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, you said it right.
Yeah, I said it right.
You had me second guessed.
Let me not second guess myself.
Don't second guess yourself.
No. You were right.
I was right. Norman was wrong.
Norman was wrong. And with that, we leave you.
Yeah. We hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that you claim to have a cure for cancer that is like five ingredients and that you're telling people to inject in their chest because that's just super fucked up.
But do keep it so weird that you're a cool ass ghost cat named Morris and that you go listen to Nikki's new podcast, Poppy Killed Mommy.
Go listen to Poppy Killed Mommy and go book a stay at the Crescent Hotel Tal and Tal and Morbid sent ya.
Hell yeah! Goodbye!
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