00:00:06
Hey weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this right here, it's morbid. It is. [Music]
00:00:26
It is. It's morbid. Facts. facts and figures. So, I don't know about that. Oh, no.
00:00:34
That that transported me back to math class and I started twitching. Oh, man. I'm sorry I made you twitch.
00:00:40
Thanks. I apolog She's literally twitching. I wish you could see. Her eye is twitching. She's She's just losing it.
00:00:46
Um, so we're we have a spooky episode today which I'm very excited about because
00:00:52
it's um this well and we'll get into it. Obviously Ash is going to tell us the story, but
00:00:57
I will. Uh, this it's the Crescent Hotel in Arkansas. In Arkansas and you got Boston and then Southern
00:01:05
Arkansas. I think I was trying to do both accidentally or I was trying to do Southern and Boston came up.
00:01:09
Boston is who you are. It's just in my soul. But what's funny about this is I have been following the
00:01:16
Crescent Hotel on Tik Tok forever. Like since the since I got on Tik Tok and they followed me back and they were
00:01:22
like, "Oh, we always listen to more." But like the staff is like, "Holy [ __ ] you got to come." And I was like, "Oh my
00:01:26
god, I love this. I love that this hotel and us are friends. And when you brought
00:01:30
it up, I was like, "Holy shit." Like, "We got to go there now." Oh, I'm going to go there.
00:01:35
So, I think we're going to try. We're going to figure out when we can. But we got to go.
00:01:39
We must. We got to go. It looks so And just wait until you hear. And honestly, shout out to the staff of
00:01:44
the Crescent Hotel because you guys are hilarious on TikTok and I love you. It's true. I started following them.
00:01:49
Yeah. See, and they'll love it. And speaking of recommendations for who to follow on Tik Tok, you should follow the
00:01:56
Crescent Hotel. And we're always giving you like recommendations, you know, like
00:02:00
we were talking about, you know, Richard Chismar's book, Widow's Point the other
00:02:04
day. Talked about Grady Hendrick. We we're always telling you like, "Hey, this is
00:02:07
what I'm doing." And they're all genuine because if I like something, I want you guys to to
00:02:12
like it, too. And there's one that just came about that we would like to throw your way,
00:02:17
but I think is a really really good one. Yes, I agree. Um, so this begins, so this is a podcast. It's a podcast that
00:02:27
was created um by a family member of a true crime case, a very close family member of a true crime case.
00:02:34
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
00:02:40
short trailer for their new podcast. And I really think you should give it a listen.
00:02:44
Definitely. So the case comes from July 9th, 1993 when Stephanie Wasalian died from a gunshot wound to her neck. They
00:02:53
she had two daughters and her daughter Nikki is a fierce advocate for her mother's case now, which has
00:03:00
unbelievably gone cold for over 30 years. Yeah, I think it's 32 years now. And when you hear the the details of this
00:03:09
case, the 911 call alone, which you will hear part of it during this trailer, um
00:03:15
it's and it's not like graphic, so don't worry. This trailer, um but when you hear the details of this case, it's
00:03:21
unbelievable that it has gone cold. It's wild. I totally get why Nikki is like, "Let's get this [ __ ] open again." Um
00:03:29
we're going to be covering this case on an episode of Morbid. Um, but we really want you to take a look at um Nikki's
00:03:37
new podcast cuz she has launched a podcast about her mother's case. So, she has, I think, a few episodes out by the
00:03:45
time this comes out. There's a few like a little mini uh bonus episodes right now, but the first
00:03:50
episode Yeah. is premiering on July 9th and it's going to premiere on July 9th at 8:00
00:03:57
p.m. And there's a very special reason why it's going to premiere at that specific time on that specific day cuz
00:04:02
that is the last time she and her mother said good night which is heartbreaking literally shatters my heart into a
00:04:11
million different pieces. I can't even like the the ball in my throat is just like
00:04:16
Yeah. Uh, but honestly in this podcast, you're going to get a firsthand perspective from Stephanie's daughter,
00:04:23
which like you can't you can't get a closer perspective than that. Um, Nikki's a badass. I fully believe that
00:04:30
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
00:04:36
people spreading the information and getting it looked at again, that's that's what this is all about. These
00:04:42
things go cold and it's because no one's willing to look at them again. So, um, make noise. Exactly. Make some noise.
00:04:49
Put your ear to it. Just listen and spread it. Uh, here's a quick trailer for her podcast, Poppy Killed Mommy.
00:04:57
911. What's your emergency? My mother's death was ruled a homicide. The man who called 911, he admitted he
00:05:04
might have killed her. I don't know who. You don't know who shot her? I might have. She might have shot
00:05:10
herself. But the county attorney said there wasn't enough evidence. No trial, no
00:05:15
charges, no justice. I'm Nikki. I'm the daughter of a murdered woman and I'm done staying quiet. Join me for the
00:05:22
launch of Poppy Killed Mommy, a true crime podcast premiering July 9th because if the system won't fight for
00:05:28
her, I will. So, yeah, just that the trailer alone chilling. Yeah, she's done an amazing
00:05:37
job with it. I know that she's um she's been working on it with Sarah Turney as well with help. We love Sarah. um
00:05:44
couldn't have a better person helping you with this. And yeah, we highly recommend. You can follow Nikki on Tik
00:05:50
Tok. Um we'll share her handle and stuff in our show notes so that you guys can follow along because she's always
00:05:57
updating. So yeah, definitely. And then look out for our coverage on the case after she does a couple
00:06:03
episodes. Yeah. And thanks thank you to Nikki for trusting us with the trailer and to do
00:06:08
an episode. Yeah, we appreciate that a lot. Yeah. And when this goes wide, uh, check
00:06:12
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
00:06:18
send you that way. Yes. But without further ado, let's talk about the Crescent Hotel, man.
00:06:25
Yeah, let's go. This is a crazy ass place. It is. Let me just tell you that. It is. I've
00:06:33
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
00:06:40
haunted hotel. I think this one stands on business. Facts. I really do think it does because I I do
00:06:46
I really do think it does is what I just said. That Why does that sound so wrong?
00:06:50
I really do think it does. I don't know why that sounded weird when it came to the do and does, but that's a that's a
00:06:57
uh but I I noticed it when I went like through their Tik Toks. Yeah. That they were like, you know, most
00:07:03
haunted hotel in America. And I was like, I'll be the judge of that. And then you said,
00:07:08
I started seeing things they were talking about. They were going through the history and all that good stuff and
00:07:13
talking about different and people were coming out with their different experiences and I was like
00:07:17
I think they're right. The history is bonkers.com there. I did actually end up getting a
00:07:22
lot of information from a documentary that was just uh released I want to say last year. Uh it came out two years ago,
00:07:28
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.
00:07:34
I think I rented it for like four bucks. I might buy it cuz I want to watch it again. It's a really cool. I recommend
00:07:40
it. Another recommendation. But yeah, so I got a lot of information from there. I got a lot of information
00:07:45
from their hotel's website. Their hotel's website has almost everything you need to know.
00:07:50
Love that. And then just like some local news outlets. Um, but this hotel is in Eureka
00:07:54
Springs, Arkansas, which hundreds and hundreds of years ago was discovered by Native Americans. And in Eureka Springs,
00:08:01
there are more than 60 natural occurring springs within the city limits. Damn. Which is just [ __ ] bonkers.
00:08:08
Eureka. Maybe that's why they named it that. And for all those hundreds of years, people
00:08:13
believed that these springs had healing properties. Like the water, if you drank
00:08:17
it, if you put it on a wound, if you sniffed it, you'd be healed. Stand next to it,
00:08:23
good things would happen. Hell yeah. So word started spreading once English settlers started coming over here. And
00:08:28
soon everybody was trying to get out to Eureka to be near these springs, get a drink of them, the whole nine. Now
00:08:34
Powell Clayton, one of the earliest governors, I think the ninth governor of Arkansas. Obviously, he knew all the
00:08:40
legends cuz he was living out there. Hell yeah. And he knew about the springs, their
00:08:43
healing properties. So he and his associates formed the Eureka Improvement Company, and they really decided they
00:08:50
were going to start building up the town. They had railroads built to bring in more people in and really got the
00:08:56
downtown area together. They built up different shops, really nice buildings. He was hoping especially that wealthy
00:09:03
people wealthy people. He was hoping that he was hoping especially wealthy people would see all the work going into
00:09:10
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
00:09:16
wellness retreat up and running. Wellness retreats were kind of like just starting to become a bigger thing. the
00:09:21
cool hip thing. Yeah. And obviously wealthy elite people were all about them. So he was like,
00:09:26
"Okay, well that's the perfect place for them to spend their money." Yeah. So his idea was put into motion um and
00:09:31
the hotel started being built in 1884. Architect Isaac S. Taylor built the hotel in a romanesque revival style,
00:09:39
which I think you would love. Oh yeah. I started kind of looking into the characteristics of that and I said,
00:09:44
"Elena, Elena, Elena, Elena." I was like, "Can I live in that?" Yeah. picture like lots of just like for
00:09:50
you guys, Elena is already picturing it. Lots of round arches, brick and stone towers, and then I saw this asymmetrical
00:09:58
designs. That's your middle name. Let's go. Whenever I try to make anything symmetrical in this room, she's like,
00:10:04
"No, asymmetrical. Doesn't need to be balanced. I don't like always balancing." But the building sits on top of Crescent
00:10:12
Mountain, and it really like towers over the area, which makes it somehow look even more majestic. Yeah,
00:10:18
from all the angles and everything and of course leads to beautiful views from essentially every room on the property,
00:10:24
which is pretty badass. It is badass. It was and still is to this day stunning. By the time the hotel
00:10:30
was complete in 1886, it cost in today's money $10 million. Damn. But because it cost that much, it
00:10:38
offered some of the finest luxuries at that time. Electricity. Edison light bulbs were everywhere.
00:10:45
Oh [ __ ] I love an animal. It had steam heat elevators running water. Get the [ __ ] out of here.
00:10:53
And not just regular schmegular running water. It was the water from the healing
00:10:57
springs being pumped into the hotel. Oh, so you're getting fancy water. So, of course, that was only bringing in
00:11:03
more tourists cuz they said, "Heal me." Yeah, heal me. Let's go. Let's [ __ ] go. So, the grand grand
00:11:09
opening the grand opening grand opening was held on May 20th, 1886. And most people had actually been
00:11:15
personally invited to come stay. I was. It wasn't just like anybody could go stay. Elena in a past life was invited.
00:11:22
I I guess I wasn't. But there was people from all over the country that rode the train into Eureka
00:11:28
Springs. When they got to the train station there, they were met with a band that was like, "Let's [ __ ] go party."
00:11:35
And then Yes. And then they were transported up the mountain to the hotel. The Daily Times Echo reported
00:11:42
that day, "With the opening of the grandiose Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs enters a new and exciting era. Notables
00:11:48
from afar are arriving in our fair city, and soon many others will follow. The Crescent Springs, built by Eureka uh
00:11:55
Springs Improvement Company, and the Frisco Railroad, is America's most luxurious resort hotel. Featuring large,
00:12:01
airy rooms and comfortably furnished, the Crescent offers the visiting vacer an opulence unmatched in convenience and
00:12:08
service." They continued, "Tonight's opening ball will find in attendance many leaders in business and society,
00:12:15
including me." Including that sounds badass. Sounds opulent as [ __ ] That sounds so opulent.
00:12:20
I love the word opulent. That's not only does it like bring forth images that are very
00:12:28
pleasant. Has a great mouth feel. Great mouth feel. Opulent. Opulent. It's that like op and
00:12:37
thenulent. I love it. I really like it. I'm obsessed with it. I really like it. This
00:12:42
place kind of looks like um the Stanley. It does sort of look like the Stanley vibes to it.
00:12:46
I've been to the Stanley. It's [ __ ] freaky. Yeah. But there was a big welcome party in the
00:12:51
Grand Ballroom, which now is the Crystal Dining Room. And the governor himself interviewed a lot of notable guest
00:12:57
speakers who were like political people at the time. Things went beautifully for
00:13:01
years and years. But by 1908, they were having some money problems. It's a big place. It had a lot of accommodations
00:13:08
that it was offering. So obviously it cost a lot to run and people weren't coming out as often and especially the
00:13:15
winter months were pretty dead. That makes sense. So to bring in some extra money and keep
00:13:20
things up and running, it was decided that during the winter months the hotel would be run as a women's college like
00:13:25
during that off season and then in the summer months it would go back to being open to the public. So they invited the
00:13:31
Crescent College and Conservatory for young ladies to stay there. M. Now, apparently the program that they were,
00:13:38
you know, offering for these women was very ahead of its time cuz remember this is 1908. Women were not being taught
00:13:45
like the same as men were back then. Yeah. But at the Crescent they were. Some of
00:13:50
the courses that women took there in 1908 are still being taught in curriculums today.
00:13:55
Holy [ __ ] which is actually wow. But that also seems to be when the first reports of hauntings started, which
00:14:03
actually does make sense because during the original construction there was already tragedy and a few more followed
00:14:08
throughout the college years. Uh so one of the masons working on the building like when it was originally built was
00:14:15
believed to be an Irish man named Michael. And apparently while he was constructing his little section of the
00:14:20
hotel, he fell to his death. Ooh. Yeah. Ooh. I knew I I had a feeling something like that was going to happen.
00:14:27
Yeah. Yeah. Legend has it he specifically haunts room 218 and he really favors the
00:14:33
ladies. Oh yeah. He's a honkah honka burn in love. Oh, look at this. So imagine how happy he was when this
00:14:39
building became an all girls school. Oh, he's like hell yeah. He said I am living again. It's great.
00:14:46
People that especially women who have stayed in room 218 uh which is the most requested room by the way.
00:14:51
I I get it. I don't think I would request this room. I would. Don't speak too soon. They say that they
00:14:57
get tapped on the shoulder. Okay. Or that the shower curtain has been pulled back while they're showering in
00:15:02
the room completely alone. Okay. Not cool. Okay. Not cool. Michael, there's something
00:15:09
called consent. Michael, there sure is. I would be pissed. I would put them up. Put them up.
00:15:15
Oh, but the dukes would come right up with me. Oh, no. Cuz I'm in a zone in the shower,
00:15:20
so like don't [ __ ] it up. Yeah. Also, people have said in this specific room, there's been reports of an apparition of
00:15:27
hands coming out of the mirror in the bathroom. Okay, Michael. Like, [ __ ] that.
00:15:32
Um, people also have reported hearing a man scream in this room or around this room.
00:15:38
And if you're in this room, people say they've seen Michael's ghost like basically fall through the ceiling and
00:15:43
then just completely dissipate. Okay, I want that. Yeah, I want to go to there. I'm not
00:15:51
going to shower there. I'll I'll I'll hold my hand on the shower curtain. I'm not going to n in that room.
00:15:56
No, you give me a glass door instead of a shower curtain. Maybe. There you go. But so yeah, that's
00:16:02
wild. Damn. The falling through into the room and then disappearing is shaking me to my core.
00:16:08
And hearing a man scream. I feel like haunts are usually like a shrill woman scream, you know,
00:16:14
and like an angry bride or something, you know? Yeah. A man screaming. Yeah, that's a
00:16:18
whole different That's I can't even picture that. It's like, "Wow, you nailed that." It's scary. I
00:16:26
thought there was a man in here screaming. Maybe there was. Well, people doing ghost tours know what the famous
00:16:33
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
00:16:38
can, which is exactly what we're going to do. Hell yeah. Um, on one ghost tour, a
00:16:42
woman knew about Michael and she really wanted to make contact with him. So, she
00:16:47
and her group went into room 218 and they started playing Irish folk music, you know, just to get him cuz why not?
00:16:53
Get him in his happy place. They also poured shots of Irish whiskey. And everybody in the room suddenly saw one
00:16:59
of the dresser drawers slowly being pulled open as they were like prompting him with questions.
00:17:04
Holy [ __ ] And they tried to see if they could recreate it, explain it away. They like
00:17:09
jumped up and down. They were like banging the sides of the dresser and it didn't happen again.
00:17:14
Ooh. Yeah. Weird. That's spooky. It is. Now, in the early 1900s, the college was being run by uh President
00:17:22
Richard Breenidge, who was a teacher there for many years before he became president. And his wife was also a
00:17:27
teacher there. She taught French and hygiene and hygiene. French and hygiene. All right.
00:17:34
I don't know. She knew a lot about a lot. Yeah. Wash the bottom of your feet. Yeah. always.
00:17:40
You know, people don't do that. I learned I wondered why you specifically said that.
00:17:44
Yeah, I'm You know, that's who I am. Some people don't think like they just are like, "I'm in the shower. There's
00:17:52
water." No, I heard this discussion somewhere and I can't remember where, but I was
00:17:56
like, "You don't wash the bottom of your like what?" Like, that's wild. Do you wash the bottom of your feet?
00:18:04
Of course. Yeah. Of course he does. You wash yours obviously. I wash mine. Yeah. You No,
00:18:10
there's a lot you need to do. Actually, Beach Gem gives a really good um Does she?
00:18:15
Yeah. Beach Gem. Dr. Beach Gem on TikTok. You think the bottom of your feet is bad?
00:18:20
It's going to get explicit in here real quick. Oh, no. Some people don't wash their bum holes.
00:18:25
Don't. Beach. Be said. said, "I saw a video and she was saying you need to explain to like your kids
00:18:35
that they have to watch their bum hole." That's wild. I like how you're whispering that.
00:18:42
It's a weird thing. It's such a like this is so a naughty word. So random, but it is so random.
00:18:49
How could you not wash your bum hole? You should wash your whole body in the shower. Everybody
00:18:56
thick lather. It feels great, too. If you do a pre-crub with like an exfoliant like maybe it changes your life once
00:19:02
twice a week and then you follow that up with your scrub, you're going to feel like a brand new [ __ ]
00:19:07
Yeah. And then make sure you moisturize afterwards and you're going to feel great.
00:19:12
I remember when I was little like knowing that I had to wash my feet because if you don't wash your feet and
00:19:18
then dry them properly like in between your toes, you can get gang green. Ooh. Or like something.
00:19:24
Well, it's just yucky. Yeah. So, wash your feet. So, yeah, wash your feet. That's a She
00:19:27
was teaching hygiene. Go wash the bottom of your feet. The original beach gem. She's like,
00:19:32
"Wash your feet. Wash your bum hole." So they She also whispered it. She did. Oh, she didn't even say but
00:19:39
hole. She said, "You're behind." She said, "You're you're your end parts." Yes, that's what she said.
00:19:44
Everybody said, "What?" Well, anyway, they had a four-year-old son, Clifton, who they taught good
00:19:49
things like that. And everybody called him Brekie, cuz their last name is Breenidge.
00:19:53
That's cute. Um, but unfortunately Breckie passed away at the hotel after complications with appendicitis.
00:20:00
No, Brekie, it's so sad. But ever since then, and even to this day, people say that they
00:20:06
see a little boy, especially in the hallway on the second floor, and they always see him playing with a ball.
00:20:11
Oh my goodness. And hotel guests who have children, their kids will come to them and be
00:20:15
like, "I played with this little boy, and he says he lives here, but like he was dressed so differently." And they'll
00:20:22
ask their kids to explain what he was dressed like. And he's dressed like a Victorian child.
00:20:26
Oh my goodness. And that's when you return your child. Return your child. Return to send.
00:20:33
Oh man, I would that would that would be something. That would [ __ ] me up. That really would.
00:20:38
I'm so sad. I hate it. There's also the ghost of Dr. John Fremont Ellis, who served as the
00:20:44
in-house doctor during the very early hotel days. People staying in room uh 212 will smell cherry scented tobacco,
00:20:51
which sounds nice. Huh. I like it. All right. I can take that. My My grandfather smoked a pipe.
00:20:57
Yeah. Like a tobacco pipe. Yeah. And uh it was always a comforting smell when I was little.
00:21:02
Definitely. So cherry is an interesting. Yeah. Well, room 212 used to be his office
00:21:07
where he was known to smoke his pipe a lot. So, it makes sense. Um, people also see him kind of like out
00:21:12
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
00:21:18
probably Dr. John uh Fremont Ellis. He sounds like a handsome guy. He kind of does.
00:21:22
If you see him, don't hit on him. He's a ghost. Kind of sounds like a zi. Hey, ghost
00:21:26
should get hit on, too. Go. He should feel good about himself, too. You know what? I take it back. You
00:21:30
know, he's a ghost. So, it's very likely obviously even with just those few spirits that the girls at
00:21:38
Crescent Conservatory had experiences of their own. One of the hotel workers who was
00:21:42
featured in the documentary, she actually said that girls would send postcards to their family asking their
00:21:48
family to send their Ouija boards to school so that they could try to figure out like who they had seen or who they
00:21:54
were talking to. Hell yeah. Girls down back in the early 1900s. Yeah, that that's just girls
00:22:02
being girls, you know? And again, like I already said it at the top, but def definitely go watch the
00:22:06
documentary because they feature a ton of photos throughout from back then. Like there's tons of photos of when it
00:22:12
was a woman's college and like just the old timey girls. It's like crazy. I love that.
00:22:18
It's so cool. Oh, I can't I We're going here. Yeah, we're going. Yeah. I never thought I would go to Arkansas.
00:22:24
I never really had a reason to go to Arkansas, I don't think. But apparently Eureka Springs is cool as
00:22:28
[ __ ] Yeah, let's go. Their town motto is um like where where misfits go to fit.
00:22:34
Oh, I love it. Eureka Springs. Like where even misfits fit. It's something like that.
00:22:38
Oh, see this makes sense. I love it. This way because the staff of that hotel sounds like a bunch of [ __ ] awesome
00:22:45
peeps and Yeah, I was trying to think of a peeps and sectors and spectrals. Yeah, peep peeps and ghouls.
00:22:52
Ghouls. There you go. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, sorry to bring this down a notch. By 1934, pretty
00:22:58
well into the Great Depression, people obviously didn't have a ton of money to spend and they definitely weren't
00:23:02
sending their daughters to college anymore. Woman educated. We don't have the money for that.
00:23:08
No. So, the college closed down and the Crescent kind of stayed in limbo for the next 3 years.
00:23:14
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
00:23:23
a hospital specifically for cancer patients. who he said he could cure without surgery, radium, or X-ray, which
00:23:32
were all what cancer was treated with at the time. Yeah. And as we know, in 2025, he
00:23:38
didn't. No. Um, so this this is probably not going to end well. Uh-uh. But he said he could cure cancer
00:23:45
with the power of a determined mind and something called Formula 5. He would have been an excellent grifter
00:23:53
on social media. Yeah, he essentially was the OG grifter, the AUG, if you will. Yeah.
00:24:00
Uh, but more on Formula 5 and all that in a minute. Let's get into who this guy was and where the [ __ ] he came from.
00:24:05
Who the [ __ ] is this guy? This guy is Norman Baker. He was born in Musketone, Iowa, but by all accounts, he
00:24:11
was a really smart kid. He had really big aspirations from the time he was little little. Um, even from the time he
00:24:17
was really young, he had a great mind for engineering, which made sense cuz his father was an inventor. Actually, I
00:24:23
guess his father had something like 126 patents throughout his lifetime for just
00:24:28
different inventions. Yeah. And his father also owned a machine shop. So Norman would go in and learn about
00:24:34
all the different machines, how they worked, all the ins and outs. And the older he got, he would go into factories
00:24:40
to show them how to improve their production. He'd be like, "Redesign this layout, move this over here, put this
00:24:46
here, and everything will work for me." He had a lot of promise. And it did. And like he was just this
00:24:51
kid who would walk in like that. Damn. But the one driving force in his life was that he did not want to end up poor.
00:24:58
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
00:25:03
and what he really wanted to do, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Oh, damn. The doctors actually didn't expect him
00:25:09
to live long at all. They thought maybe he had a very limited amount of time, like possibly years, maybe even not.
00:25:15
Wow. But somehow he defied the odds and he survived. And during the time he was sick, he was reading a lot of books
00:25:20
about how your mindset can cure you of an ailment if you, you know, just think positively.
00:25:26
Yeah. And really, really work your mind on getting better. Yeah. That's all it takes.
00:25:32
That's it. Yeah. Modern medicine. Who's that? Yeah. So when his condition improved, he
00:25:36
accredited the improvement to that and only that, a positive, determined mindset.
00:25:41
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
00:25:47
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
00:25:53
when he came up with his own vaudeville act after watching a performance and kind of becoming fixated on it. He
00:25:58
learned how to hypnotize people and do all kinds of different magic tricks. And he actually spent the next year uh 10
00:26:04
years doing that with a troop of people who banded together and just went around
00:26:09
the country doing this vaudeville act. No matter who the performer was, he always had a woman uh who was like a
00:26:14
quote unquote mind readader and she always went by the name Pearl Tangley. Pearl Tangley.
00:26:19
Pearl Tangley. Okay. And he himself went with the name Charles Welch. And he spent
00:26:25
Charles Welch. 10 years doing that. Okay. He briefly married one of them, but they
00:26:29
ended up anulling the marriage a short time later. One of the pearls. One of the pearls. And he just moved on
00:26:33
to the next pearl. uh he was actually making a decent amount of money, but obviously he wanted
00:26:38
more and that's when he started working on his invention called the Kophone. It was an instrument that was kind of
00:26:46
like an organ. It ran on compressed air, but you could like ride around with it like on the back of a bicycle or
00:26:52
something. Okay. So, it became really popular at fairs and circuses cuz you could kind of like
00:26:57
drive it around and the air would make it make different sounds. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I feel like I've seen this kind of
00:27:04
vibe. Yeah, we'll post a picture of it because it's hard to describe, but once you see
00:27:08
it, you can kind of get an idea of what it was. Yeah. So, he came up with that using the like
00:27:13
that specific kophone using compressed air. Previously, they had used steam and it didn't make a lot of sense. Like
00:27:18
exploded a lot. Yeah. You know, that could happen. So, he ended up making a [ __ ] ton of
00:27:21
money on that because it was really in demand for those kind of performances. But then by the end of his vaudeville
00:27:27
days, radio broadcasting really started to take off and he wanted in on that. He
00:27:32
saw a lot of money in that future. Kind of like what we're doing right now. Radio broadcasting.
00:27:37
Radio broadcasting. It's a little different though. But he thought it was going to be a
00:27:41
lucrative business. But the problem he faced was that you needed to get back then certain equipment from the
00:27:47
government if you wanted to start your own radio station. Okay. So he went to these different people and
00:27:52
was like, "Hey government, can I have approval?" And the government said no. Uhhuh.
00:27:57
Which is tough. It that it can happen. It's tough when the government says no. When the government just is like, "No,
00:28:03
no, you can't have that." No. I think they didn't love his ideas. Yeah. They said, "Not cool."
00:28:07
But he said, "Fuck y'all." And he figured out how to make the equipment on his own.
00:28:11
Wow. Like he made his own radio broadcasting equipment. Cuz you asked for forgiveness, not
00:28:15
permission. Exactly. You know, not only did he create his own equipment, but he also literally just
00:28:20
built his own radio tower on some random hillside in Musketone, Iowa. Jesus. There's pictures of it. You got to look
00:28:27
it up. He named his controversial radio controversial radio station KT NT which was short for know the naked truth.
00:28:37
We all know who this kind of guy is. In the beginning he was mostly talking about like small town issues going on
00:28:45
within Musketine and you know he's going after other radio stations but then he started talking and ranting like it was
00:28:53
just him on this radio station. He would rant for hours and he started ranting about, you know, more broadly like
00:28:59
different political and social issues like vaccines, boine TB testing, obviously,
00:29:05
and the upcoming 1928 election where he was backing Hoover. Here we go. He actually even ended up meeting Hoover
00:29:11
and they like kind of bro out. Whoa. Yeah, it's wild. Damn, this guy. Yeah. He also like ran for Senate at one
00:29:16
point. Oh [ __ ] He lost thankfully. Yeah. But eventually he started denouncing real medical doctors.
00:29:23
Um that's where you you know you fall out of line there. Yeah. And he also denounced the American
00:29:28
Medical Association. O Yeah. And that was when he heard that a man in Kansas City had come up come up with his own
00:29:35
cure for cancer. Now this was like the very first time that he had heard about this.
00:29:38
Oh boy. So he himself said he would sponsor essentially five patients to go to Kansas City and try this miracle cure.
00:29:46
He would pay for all of their whatever the cure cost because of course the cure costs money and whatever expenses they
00:29:53
would inquire in incur while traveling down there. He'd cover all of it. Okay? Just to kind of see what happened.
00:30:00
He gathered them all up. He sent them all down there and they all got the cure and it did not cure them. Unfortunately,
00:30:07
every single person within that study passed away after not being cured at all. But this didn't phase him.
00:30:13
Oh. Instead, he started publishing his own paper claiming the cure as his own and this like crazy medical advancement
00:30:21
in science and medicine. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I see what you mean with the grifter. Yeah. And it didn't stop there. In 1930,
00:30:29
he just said, "You know what? I'm going to open up my own hospital cuz I have this miracle cure.
00:30:34
I'm super qualified to do that. Let's go." Even though I don't have a medical license. Um, so yeah, he opened the
00:30:40
Baker Institute using the paper in his radio station. He had a paper at this point, too, and a radio station to
00:30:46
promote it. And again, he didn't have a license to practice medicine or any kind
00:30:50
of medical experience at all. But in big letters on the side of this Baker Institute, he advertised cancer is
00:30:57
curable in like huge letters. Wow. Mhm. Wow. The conditions within his hospital were terrible. Of course they
00:31:08
were. The documentary really goes into it, but it was not a hospital so much as just an
00:31:13
old building with too many patients and too little resources. Just leaving them to
00:31:18
Yeah. Like they were washing themselves with bed pans. Nothing was sterilized properly. It was
00:31:24
overcrowded. There also weren't real [ __ ] doctors that worked there. That's the thing. And you're going
00:31:29
thinking that this is this miracle cure. Yeah. And of course, like I can't imagine being diagnosed with cancer. You
00:31:35
would do, especially back then when we didn't have a lot of information on cancer, you would do anything to be
00:31:39
cured, of course. And this guy is saying he has the cure. You're going to go there.
00:31:42
Yeah. But instead of hiring actual doctors, he hired people with what were called
00:31:47
eclectic degrees, which this is when you go to two terms of medical school. And in some states,
00:31:54
they allow you with this degree to diagnose, write prescriptions, and death certificates.
00:31:59
Oh. But certainly not treat cancer patients. Yeah. That's a whole different level, I
00:32:04
would say. But this is who he was bringing into the hospital. Damn. So the whole time he's, you know,
00:32:08
sitting there claiming to cure cancer at the Baker Institute, he was also going against the American Medical Association
00:32:14
on his broadcast and in his paper. So they were getting rightfully pissed. Yeah.
00:32:19
And eventually things escalated to the point where the American uh medical association went to the Federal Radio
00:32:26
Commission and was like, "You need to shut this down. He's sitting there saying he has this miracle cure to
00:32:31
cancer doing this nonsense. like this is illegal. You can't be doing this. So Baker's radio station did shut down
00:32:38
in 1930 and that's when the American Medical Association started going after the hospital, quote unquote hospital,
00:32:45
quote unquote. So now he was going to be facing uh charges of practicing without a medical
00:32:50
license. So he shut down the hospital and ran away to Mexico for like a couple years.
00:32:56
Holy [ __ ] Yeah. He went full send. He went full send. He spent this time in Mexico and he figured out how to make a
00:33:04
radio station there as well. Of course he did. Which was also broadcasted like throughout the world somehow.
00:33:10
Waste of a brain. That's the thing cuz he you can't argue. He's a very smart guy.
00:33:13
Yeah. That's what's upsetting. He could have done great things if he actually did great things.
00:33:17
He could have. Yeah. But so he builds a radio station there. People are listening all over the world. And he's
00:33:22
still claiming that he knows this cure. People are writing him from all over the
00:33:26
world. Wanting to know what it is. How do they get it? Yeah. but he's facing these charges in
00:33:31
the US. So, he's kind of stuck where he is. So, things in Mexico were getting kind
00:33:36
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
00:33:42
in Musketine if he wanted to start over somewhere else. So, he this whole big trial happened.
00:33:48
The judge ordered him to pay $1,000 fine and spend one day in jail and he was free to go.
00:33:53
Are you kidding me? Yeah. Which also he had been charging people for this cure like absurd amounts
00:33:59
of money. He's completely ripping people off. He's not only is he completely ripping
00:34:02
people off, $1,000 was nothing to him. Yeah. Like that was he could easily do that.
00:34:08
So that is how he ended up picking up and moving to Eureka Springs. Where he purchased the then in limbo
00:34:15
Crescent Hotel. Eureka Springs actually seemed happy to have him. They knew he was a wealthy
00:34:21
man. They knew he was going to bring money back into the town. So they kind of took everything that they heard about
00:34:25
him with a grain of salt. Oh, don't do that. Yeah. And Arkansas, at least back then,
00:34:30
was one of those states that allowed people to practice with an eclectic degree. Eek. So this was perfect for
00:34:36
Norman. Oh, yeah. He loved this. So he moved into the hotel. He renovated the entire place. I think it took him
00:34:42
like 6 months. And he moved all of his patients from Musketine into the hotel that was now, you know, renovated. and
00:34:50
he started advertising to cancer patients in Eureka Springs saying he could help them with no surgery, no
00:34:55
x-rays, no radium. Now, instead, like I mentioned earlier, he had this miracle cure that he called
00:35:03
formula 5. Yes. So, this formula 5 was a mixture of glycerin, watermelon seeds, corn silk,
00:35:11
carbolic acid, and spring water now from the local springs. He would have patients and staff. I
00:35:19
won't even say medical staff cuz they were just staff inject this mixture into their bodies up to seven times a day.
00:35:27
What the [ __ ] And he specifically recommended that it be injected into their chests.
00:35:36
What? He also there was no balance like there was no certain amount of carbolic acid or watermelon seeds. Everything
00:35:44
varied from tincture to ture. Whatever your vibe was that day. And carbolic acid is incredibly dangerous.
00:35:49
Oh my god, it's insane. Yeah, it's wild. And having them injected into their chests
00:35:57
and up to seven times a day. Up to seven times a day. And then on top of that, because there weren't any
00:36:02
actual medical doctors working here. And because he didn't really believe in prescription pain medication, there was
00:36:09
no pain medication. So these people are going through cancer. Like you see photos of some of
00:36:13
these people with like massive growths on their body who should be being treated in an actual medical
00:36:20
facility and they believe that they are but they're not at all. They're just injecting
00:36:25
whatever this is basically poison into their system. Holy [ __ ] And other than quote unquote formula 5,
00:36:32
patients were given a list of mental exercises to go through to keep their mind fighting.
00:36:37
Yeah. Cuz that's the important one. Yeah. Um cuz you just have to be positive. Yeah. So needless to say, a lot of
00:36:44
people died under his quote unquote care. At least 42 people were picked up by the mortuary, but there were
00:36:51
countless more whose deaths went undocumented. Holy [ __ ] Yeah. And he dark. He really didn't keep any medical
00:36:58
records, but he didn't. Any that he did were destroyed in a fire. Oh, convenient.
00:37:03
Yeah. Small fire. And there were also people that he said were cured who just got sent home, but
00:37:10
obviously were not cured. Yeah. And there was also people like they would come in and think they had cancer.
00:37:16
There were people who didn't even have an actual cancer diagnosis that he would diagnose with cancer and then treat
00:37:22
start injecting them with this [ __ ] Yeah. Holy. Yeah. So when people He's diabolical.
00:37:27
He is diabolical. When people died at the hotel or at this time the hospital, they were taken down to the basement
00:37:33
where there used to be a kitchen and he turned it into a morg and used the walk-in freezer to store the dead bodies
00:37:40
of these people. Wow. So now when people go on ghost tours of that specific area because the
00:37:46
morg is still like sort of intact like you can go down there. That's awesome. It's wild. They will feel everything
00:37:54
from lightadedness, a tightness in their chest to feelings of just like fear and
00:37:58
dread. Yeah. People see crazy [ __ ] in this area. People staying overnight usually hear
00:38:04
the sounds of wheels squeaking around around midnight or later. They say gurnies
00:38:09
and that's because this was usually when bodies were taken down to the morg. It makes sense. He was trying to hide
00:38:14
it. He was trying to hide it. Exactly. Like sneaking them past. So people will wake up in the night and hear wheels
00:38:18
squeaking past their room and it's the sound of gurnies, dead bodies being carried down to the morg.
00:38:24
And people have even claimed to see a nurse wheeling a gurnie down a hall. Holy [ __ ]
00:38:29
And think like, oh no, like a medical emergency happened. Very like silent hill.
00:38:33
And then they'll ask and someone will be like, "Oh no, like there was no medical
00:38:37
emergency luckily, but you saw a ghost." Like you saw an early 1900's nurse wheeling a gurnie down the wall.
00:38:44
Isn't that nuts? That's so scary. So, he did a lot of damage, but he was he only
00:38:50
ended up running the Crestston Hotel as his hospital for about 6 months before the mayor at the time got fed up with
00:38:56
what was going on for him. And he basically set up a take down. He's like, "Fuck this guy."
00:39:01
Norman kind of started going into like different political circles. Yeah, it sounds like it
00:39:05
cuz again, like even back when he was in Musketine, he wanted to run for like Senate and all this stuff. He stepped on
00:39:11
the toes of the mayor and was basically being like, "Oh, you don't need the mayor. You have me." Like he said that.
00:39:16
He also at one point said the town wasn't big enough for both of them. So he's like, "Oh my god."
00:39:20
Pissing off the wrong people. Yeah. So Claude Fuller, uh, the mayor of Eureka Springs in 1930. He had a brother
00:39:26
who worked at the post office and basically they found out and sort of set up Norman. He was writing all these
00:39:34
letters to prospective quote unquote patients or really clients promising to cure their ailments for a fee. So, they
00:39:42
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
00:39:49
cure someone's cancer for a price. I love when they can get somebody on that smaller charge just to get them in.
00:39:54
Yeah. Technically, I don't like I don't think they'd probably be able to get them on
00:39:57
this because they set up a kind of scheme, but it worked out. But it worked then. So on September 1st,
00:40:02
1939, he was arrested by the FBI because mail fraud is a federal crime. Yeah, sure is.
00:40:09
So he ended up being sentenced to four years in jail and got a $4,000 fine this time. I think he spent a little more
00:40:15
than 3 years in jail this time. Wow. And he ended up going to Levvenworth prison. And when he got out of prison,
00:40:22
he retired in Florida where he spent the rest of his life on a yacht that he bought.
00:40:27
Okay. until he died in 1958 of cerosis of the liver. Oh, but many people wonder if it was
00:40:33
actually liver cancer. Oh yeah. [ __ ] Yeah. Now, strangely, someone lays purple
00:40:43
flowers at his grave every single year. What? On his anniversary. And I forgot to
00:40:49
mention in life he was obsessed with the color purple to the point where he drove
00:40:54
a purple car. Wow. He wore at least a purple tie, but sometimes a full purple suit.
00:41:00
Interesting. He wrote in a purple pen. And when he renovated the hotel, almost everything
00:41:07
was painted purple. You can actually still to this day on the side of the chimneys of the hotel see that they were
00:41:13
painted purple. Shut up. Like the purple paint. Oh, that's so cool. Like the paint has worn away, but
00:41:18
underneath is the purple thing. Is the original purple that he put Oh my god, that's creepy.
00:41:23
And nobody knows who this is that leaves the purple flowers. Yeah. Who are you? I don't know, but I want to.
00:41:29
Why? Why do you do that? Why do you do that? So, now fast forward to 2019. Susan
00:41:35
Benson, the grounds manager and head gardener at the hotel at that time, was just overseeing some landscaping on
00:41:41
the backgrounds. She's an incredible landscaper. She's won like countless awards
00:41:45
for just her work. Just keeping grounds. Just keeping grounds. Like planting like
00:41:49
these beautiful gardens and everything. Yeah, there it's gorgeous when you look at it. Like look at pictures of it. It's
00:41:54
crazy. So she had somebody kind of like pushing dirt back in an area in the back of the
00:42:00
hotel and they were just like using some kind of landscaping vehicle. So as that
00:42:04
person was finishing up and driving away, she was kind of looking in the area just to see what got done that day.
00:42:09
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.
00:42:15
Like what the [ __ ] is this?" So she pulled it out and when she did, she saw that it was a jar, like a small jar
00:42:21
filled with a clear fluid and some kind of tissue. Oh, like not Kleenex tissue, like like
00:42:28
tissue. Like tissue, like bodily tissue. Bodily tissue. So pulling out that jar loosened up the
00:42:34
earth around it. And within an hour, she had pulled out a hundred more jars filled with weird ass [ __ ] just like
00:42:42
that. What? Uh so they called the police and that led to an archaeologist coming out
00:42:48
to the property where they discovered more than 500 bottles like this and also an old bone saw that they believe Norman
00:42:56
Baker used to cut tumors and god knows what else what else off of these people. My god.
00:43:03
Meanwhile, he claimed not to do any surgeries. No knives, no nothing. [ __ ] He was absolutely doing some crazy [ __ ]
00:43:11
Wow. Yeah, that must have been astounding. Yeah. And eventually archaeologists determined that at least some of the
00:43:18
bottles contained alcohol and human tissue. Holy preserving these in in Oh my god.
00:43:26
My god. I can't imagine finding those. Yeah. There was various tumors found that had been cut off of patients. Um
00:43:32
Susan even found a man's scrotum in one jar. Holy [ __ ] Yep. And she ended up leaving the hotel
00:43:39
like she and she said she was like, "I loved this job. I was going to retire here." But this [ __ ] haunted her.
00:43:46
She started having awful dreams where hands would come up through her mattress and cover her mouth and grab at her,
00:43:53
like pulling her down into her bed. And she said she never knows when she's going to have them, but she has them
00:43:58
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
00:44:05
that she upset spirits by moving them from their final resting. I know. I hope that's not it. I hope she
00:44:11
had no idea. Well, she was she was trying to help. Trying to do the right thing and they
00:44:14
got all buried in like a better place. Yeah. Like she was just trying to help. Yeah. But it really messed her up.
00:44:20
Holy [ __ ] So, and this is the thing. Apparently, when Norman was still operating out of
00:44:24
the hotel, even though he claimed that he was curing cancer with no surgery, no removal of these tumors or whatever, he
00:44:30
would display these jars in the lobby as proof that he was curing people. And he
00:44:35
also featured them in some of his publications. Wow. So, you can go and look back and see
00:44:40
that there was at least like drawings of jars like this in his publications. Oh [ __ ] And then people from like word
00:44:47
of mouth who had been to the hotel back then or the hospital saw these jars featured in the lobby.
00:44:53
What the [ __ ] And then something happened when after he got arrested or before maybe he knew
00:44:57
he was getting arrested, they got buried in the back. Holy [ __ ] Yeah, that's crazy.
00:45:02
Yeah. And it's actually not very far off to think that he might have been doing experiments on people to make this cure
00:45:09
work. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised by that. I wouldn't be surprised either. Apparently, there was a restricted area
00:45:15
in the hotel where the more sick patients were sent. And Sharon Clemens Tepen uh told a reporter in 2024, she's
00:45:23
a worker at the hotel. She said he boarded up the windows, made it even more soundproof, put steel doors with a
00:45:29
lock from the outside outside, and he designated this as his pain asylum. They could scream and yell and do whatever
00:45:35
they wanted to do, but that way they didn't disturb anybody else. His pain asylum. Pain Asylum.
00:45:44
First of all, awesome band name. Band name. Great band name. I call it Pain Asylum is an amazing
00:45:51
name. Yeah. Scariest thing I have ever heard in my life and just gave me full chills all the way
00:45:58
into the core of my very being thinking about the fact that he was just locking away the people that are in the most
00:46:04
pain so they don't deserve um disturb the rest of the hospital. Finding anything that belonged to this
00:46:12
man would be like changing. Like it literally would be like, "Holy shit." Like I have touched
00:46:18
something cursed that has been touched by a diamond. Cursed. Like finding those jars. You'd be like, "He
00:46:26
he did that." That's the thing. And I think that's why is so messed up by that. Like it's just
00:46:31
like can't can't get over that. How do you get over that? Yeah, that area today, that pain asylum, what
00:46:38
was the pain asylum back then, is the honeymoon suite today, and people who stay there report seeing
00:46:46
some pretty disturbing [ __ ] Sharon told that same reporter, "There's a woman who's sometimes seen standing at the end
00:46:54
of the bed. She's wearing a white night night gown, probably from the 30s, we think, and is probably one of those
00:47:00
cancer victims because she appears not to have a jaw or a chin." And she doesn't do anything or say anything to
00:47:06
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
00:47:12
bed. That is horrifying. Can you [ __ ] imagine the fact that the pain asylum is the honeymoon suite
00:47:20
now? Like you have to marry a cite for that to make sense. You do. Like you sure do.
00:47:28
That's wild. Yeah. To be like I hate it. We're going to we're going to stay in the pain of silence.
00:47:34
Yeah, I don't know about that. And also knowing go now that I know that I'm not going anywhere near there.
00:47:39
That's a lot. That specific room. Do I want to see it? Yeah. Like low key. Yeah. But I don't think I
00:47:44
could staying there. No, not in that room. That's for sure. Now, obviously the darkest entity of all
00:47:49
at the hotel is, say it with me, Norman Baker. Oh, absolutely. So, one of the servers and ghost tour
00:47:56
guides at the hotel, Aaron Davidson, told ABC7 back in 2024, "He seems to be the apparition that is the most
00:48:02
unfriendly. you might say. And you do not want to provoke him. We know that much. He has been provoked in the past
00:48:08
and it wasn't good. Oh, please do tell. That's the most ominous [ __ ] I've ever
00:48:14
heard. What the [ __ ] do you mean it wasn't good? I think we have to go there to find out.
00:48:18
We have to go to there. But people know Norman when they see his ghost because he's still dressed in one
00:48:22
of either his purple suits or a purple tie. And a lot of times people will say that, especially after the jars were
00:48:29
found, a lot of people started seeing him in the lobby. But the manager of the nighttime ghost tours, Deborah the
00:48:35
Duchess, said there was an uptick in the activity in the morg after those jars were found. There were more cold spots
00:48:43
than usual, and for the first time, a dark figure was seen in the morg that hadn't been seen previously
00:48:50
after the jars discovered popped off. Mhm. Yeah. One of the nicer and I would say more
00:48:55
helpful ghosts, though, is Theodora. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And she usually stays in room 419. People think that she's
00:49:04
possibly one of Norman Baker's patients. Um or maybe a nurse that was running the
00:49:08
hospital, but more often I saw a patient. She really likes things uh neat and tidy. If you leave anything
00:49:14
scattered around your room, you're going to come back to have everything neatly folded in one spot.
00:49:19
Okay. I like that. One couple was arguing in that room and they were like unpacking as they did it and just kind
00:49:24
of left [ __ ] everywhere. And they came back to their suitcases packed standing
00:49:28
by the door. So they stayed in a different room because they were like, I think we upset
00:49:33
that spirit. She's like, "You know what? Don't argue in my room. You're [ __ ] up my vibe, so why don't
00:49:37
you guys go figure this out in a different room?" Because she said, "Get out of here.
00:49:40
We We don't argue in here." No, we don't. Good for her. There's also been people who stayed
00:49:45
overnight in the room. Um, and they will go to sleep with scattered change on the
00:49:50
dresser and then they wake up to find it neatly stacked and organized. Oh, a lot of people have said that.
00:49:57
I would do that. And people see her outside of uh room 419, and it looks like she's fumbling
00:50:02
with a set of keys. So, if you see that, that's Theodora. Uh 419 is the second most requested room.
00:50:09
Now, the final ghost that I saw mentioned, and I have to say I think it would probably be my favorite ghost of
00:50:15
all, oh, is Morris the cat. Morris the [ __ ] cat. In 1973, Morris walked his ass into that hotel
00:50:22
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
00:50:30
to him as the general manager. I imagine you're a cat. Yeah. And you are just living outside.
00:50:36
Yep. And then you come across this [ __ ] opulent hotel and you're like, I'm going to, you
00:50:43
know, what do I have to lose here? I'm going to take up I'm going to I'm going to take a risk
00:50:48
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. You walk in there
00:50:53
and that entire staff goes, "What's up, Morris? What's up, Morris? You want to be a GM?
00:50:57
What's up? You want a job?" And he's like, "Yeah, I do." And for 21 years, you get to live
00:51:03
in the life of luxury. Yeah. What a [ __ ] like talk about the jackpot. Obsessed.
00:51:10
Like absolutely obsessed. That's amazing. He also had his own special cat door to come and go as he
00:51:16
pleased. And when he passed away in '94, 1994, more than 300 people attended Morris's
00:51:23
funeral. Yeah. He is buried on the property on the east lawn. You can go visit him.
00:51:28
Oh, and leave stuff for him. You can. And there's a photo of him in the lobby with a poem that says, "In
00:51:33
memory of Morris, the resident cat at the Crescent Hotel. He filled his position exceedingly well. The general
00:51:40
manager title he wore was printed right there on his own office door. He acted as a greeter and sometimes as guide.
00:51:47
Whatever his duties, he did them with pride. He chose his own hours and set his own
00:51:51
pace. The guests were impressed with his manners and grace. Upstairs and down, he
00:51:56
kept everything nice. They might have had ghosts, but they never had mice. [Laughter]
00:52:02
Iconic. I'm obsessed with this hotel and the people that run it to be quite honest. Like, this is amazing.
00:52:08
They're great. And people on tour say they have felt a cat brush up against their leg, but look down and there's
00:52:13
been nothing there. Oh, I love it. Yeah. And now the Crescent Hotel usually has one or more resident cats. They've
00:52:19
had tons of cats live with them and stay throughout the years. Um, and they're all mentioned on their
00:52:24
site. I think I mentioned all the ghosts, but to give a few more experiences or happenings before we go, the night
00:52:32
manager, Steven Kerry, told a reporter that he gets calls from rooms with no one in them. Oh. He said, "I send my
00:52:39
security in. They check and make sure there's no one in there, of course, and then I'll send my bell men up to replace
00:52:44
the phone, and then within an hour later, I'll get a call from that same room that there's no one in."
00:52:49
Oh, scary. That's scary. Another woman who stays at the hotel all the time, she was actually
00:52:55
featured in the documentary, her name's um Dana. She said that she was sharing a
00:53:00
bed with her daughter, just sleeping one night, and she felt the bed shift in the
00:53:03
middle of the night. So, she assumed that her daughter was like getting up or something.
00:53:07
Yeah. But then she saw someone standing at the foot of her bed and looked over and her daughter was still sleeping
00:53:12
beside her. And then she looked back and that shadow person at the end of the bed was still
00:53:17
there. Yeah, that would [ __ ] me up. Yeah, I'd probably die. Uh Dana didn't. She's a brave ass woman who went back on
00:53:23
another visit. Dana. Yeah. And this time they've stayed a few times, I think. So this time they got
00:53:28
upgraded to the penthouse suite. Hell yeah. Dana should guess it snaps for that.
00:53:31
Hell yeah. Uh she and her daughter Courtney were like just hanging out in their suite and Courtney all of a sudden
00:53:37
saw like lights flash and then both of them heard footsteps coming down the stairs and she said one of like they
00:53:45
were like with a big group of people and one of the people had a bottle of Tylenol with them. They heard the
00:53:50
footsteps stop and a pill bottle shake almost like somebody was like what is this?
00:53:54
What? And then they felt a sudden shift in temperature. It got freezing. So, they were like both terrified, but they
00:54:01
took they went around and took a bunch of photos. In Courtney's photo, like uh in at least one of them, there are
00:54:09
dozens and dozens of orbs. I was She showed me that. That was a crazy one. It's nuts. It's in the documentary, so
00:54:16
go watch it. And then in Dana's photo, you can see a whole [ __ ] woman in a Victorian style dress just sitting
00:54:26
straight up in a chair, hands folded in the lap just like clear as day. Full body.
00:54:34
It's one of the scariest things I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. Um there's also a portal on the third
00:54:40
floor. Yeah, of course. Yeah, there is. Yeah. Yep. Um, the hotel, it's in an area where the hotel connects to a
00:54:48
section built when it was a hospital. So, that that tells you everything you need to know.
00:54:51
And a lot of people on tours will faint in this area. Some have like completely passed out for
00:54:58
a minute. Oh. And people get super pale and feel drained or like panicked in that area.
00:55:02
Oh, I hate that feeling. Even before they know what that specific area is. Wow. Yeah.
00:55:09
Energy, man. The energy can hit you like a ton of bricks. It can. It It's happened to us. I got
00:55:14
mostly everything that I saw, but I'm sure there's more. Go check out that documentary. Go to their website. Um, in
00:55:21
2005, Ghost Hunters aired their investigation. I love Ghost Hunters. And they called the Crescent Hotel the
00:55:27
holy grail of ghost hunting. Holy [ __ ] I mean, that should tell you. Yeah. And after that, they got like a
00:55:32
whole influx of people who go now. Now, more than 35,000 people go there a year to ghost hunt.
00:55:38
Damn. And stay. Yeah. Holy [ __ ] Go Crescent. So, if you want to book a stay, you can head over to
00:55:45
crescent-hotel.com/stay or you can give a call to 855725-5720 and tell them Morbid sent you.
00:55:54
No, literally tell them tell them I'm trying to get in that penthouse. I know, right?
00:56:00
I want to go so badly. We have to go. I'm so excited. We got to go. We got to make this a trip
00:56:07
now. We do. We got to meet these people. We got to see this hotel. We got to meet these
00:56:10
ghosts. We're going to figure it out. We're going to do it. Norman Baker is such a dick.
00:56:14
Yeah. What a dick. Yeah. Truly. Yeah. [ __ ] you. Imagine just being like, "Oh, I can cure
00:56:19
cancer with watermelon seeds and carbolic acid that I put into your chest." Like, are you okay?
00:56:25
With a syringe. Yeah. Like, what the [ __ ] I think I said carbolic. It's not that
00:56:30
carb. No, carbolic. I was right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You said it right. Yeah, I said it right.
00:56:35
You had me second guess. Let me not second guess myself. Don't second guess yourself.
00:56:39
No, you were right. I was right. Norman was wrong. Norman was wrong. And with that, we leave you.
00:56:48
Yeah. And we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that you
00:56:53
claim to have a cure for cancer that is like five ingredients and that you're telling people to inject in their chest
00:56:58
because that's just super [ __ ] up. But do keep it so weird that you're a cool ass ghost cat named
00:57:04
Morris and that you go listen to Nikki's new podcast, Poppy Killed Mommy. Go listen to Poppy Killed Mommy and go book
00:57:11
a stay at the Crescent Hotel and tell him Morbid sent you. Hell yeah. Goodbye. None of this was an ad. It was really
00:57:22
not an ad at all. It wasn't. None. [Music]