Medical Specimens Buried At Haunted Hotel Will Be Displayed To The Public

The Crescent Hotel & Spa, located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, made headlines earlier this year when hundreds of glass bottles containing medical specimens were uncovered in the backyard of the hotel. The specimens date back from 1938-1940 when the property was used as Baker Hospital and Health Resort.

The owner of the hospital, named Norman Baker, claimed that he found the cure to cancer which caused many people with the deadly disease to come see the “doctor” with hopes of getting cured. No evidence has ever been found to prove his claim of having a cure for cancer. In fact, his “cure” was believed to have been found in one of the bottles that were discovered earlier this year and according to a 1940s court case, it contained nothing more than brown corn silk, ground-up watermelon seeds, red clover, glycerin, peppermint, and carbolic acid. He administered this concoction to some of his patients up to seven times daily.

Baker ended up spending three years in jail for mail fraud and his hospital was shut down. He then passed away in 1958.

Some of the bottles contained tissue that was believed to have been taken from Baker’s patients and some of the samples were even preserved in alcohol. Now, those bottles are going to be unveiled to the public on June 8^th as part of a watch party that will be held in the Conservatory of the hotel. Tours will also be held that evening to the site where the bottles were uncovered.

To further authenticate these bottles, two women who attended high school there in the 1940s used to go down to the basement of the once-hospital during lunch breaks to explore the area and they recently returned for a school reunion. “We invited these ladies to come to the hotel while they were in town to see these unearthed artifacts. They did and both said that these bottles were the bottles they saw in the hotel’s basement room where the autopsy table sat. Artifacts and eye-witness verification were our indisputable, proof positive that these were indeed Baker’s bottles,” said Jack Moyer, who is the vice president and general manager of the hotel.

Since the Crescent Hotel & Spa is already known as “America’s most haunted hotel”, the unearthing of these medical specimens could cause an increase in paranormal activity. “The archaeological dig also proved that these bottles just weren’t dumped down an Ozark ravine but were placed in a pit purposefully dug just for the sole purpose of disposing of this gruesome hospital medical evidence,” Moyer said, adding, “What was buried has now risen from the grave for all to see.”