1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa

The 1886 Crescent Hotel is the grandest building in Eureka Springs, a Victorian pile perched on a ridge above the town with sweeping views over the Ozark hills. It was built as a luxury resort when the town was at the height of its popularity as a health destination, and it has never quite lost that period atmosphere — high ceilings, ornate woodwork, and a certain creakiness that comes with genuine age.

Today the Crescent trades heavily on its reputation as "America's most haunted hotel," running nightly ghost tours through the basement and the operating room from its brief, grim incarnation as a cancer hospital in the 1930s. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the tour is a good way to see the building's less public spaces. The rooftop terrace bar has excellent views, and the hotel restaurant is one of the better places to eat in town.

Sources: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Hotel_(Eureka_Springs,_Arkansas)

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A story
In the late 1930s, a fraudster named Norman Baker bought the Crescent Hotel and reopened it as a cancer hospital. Baker had no medical training but charged desperate patients enormous sums for a "cure" of water from the hotel's springs mixed with watermelon seed, brown corn silk, and carbolic acid. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1940 and sentenced to four years in prison. Ghost hunters have claimed the hotel's basement — where Baker stored the bodies of patients who died during "treatment" — is one of the most haunted spots in America.

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