The most haunted spot in Arkansas

I'm back from the annual Oghma Creative Media writers' retreat, after ten days of schmoozing with other authors and enjoying the lovely hills and valleys of the Ozark Mountains in northwestern Arkansas.  During my stay there, the CEO of Oghma (and my dear friend) Casey Cowan took me around to some of the local attractions, and because of my interest in all things paranormal one of these was the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs.  [Note: all photographs taken by me except as noted.]

Gordon Bonnet, Paranormal Investigator.  [Photograph by Casey Cowan, used with permission]

Eureka Springs is a charming little town, with steep, narrow, twisty streets, beautifully-maintained old houses, and flower-filled gardens.  The crown jewel, though, is the Crescent, which sits on a high point overlooking the deep forested valleys north of the town.  It was built in the 1880s for the then-astronomical cost of $294,000, and it became renowned for its opulence and grandeur.

The hotel, however, fell upon hard times once visitors realized that the "healing waters" that put Eureka Springs on the map in the first place were actually just plain water, and in 1908 the Crescent became the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women.  Even the college didn't do well, however, especially after a series of tragedies (one of which is the subject of the haunting novel by J. C. Crumpton, Silence in the Garden) that culminated in the building's abandonment in 1934.

One of the hallways on the second floor.  Is it just me, or are there two spots on the floor that look like eyes?

In 1937 it was purchased by one Norman Baker, who revitalized the claim of the alleged healing properties of the water in the area, and in the process defrauded cancer patients of an estimated four million dollars -- which led to his being sent to Leavenworth Prison, and the Crescent was again abandoned.

Looking down the staircase from the fourth floor.  Kind of Escherian, isn't it?

Repeated (failed) attempts to renovate the place were foiled by running out of funds and (worst of all) a massive fire in 1957, but in 1997 the building was purchased by a couple named Marty and Elise Roenigk, who promised to restore the Crescent to its original grandeur.  And they have.  It's an impressive place, and when you're there you feel like you've stepped back in time a hundred years or more.

The central fireplace on the first floor

Of course, my primary interest was not the admittedly beautiful furnishings and architecture, but the Crescent's reputation for being haunted.  It has quite a retinue of ghosts -- an Irish stonemason who supposedly died in a fall from the building's roof while it was being constructed, a nurse from its days as a fraudulent cancer hospital, and a girl who committed suicide during the 1920s (the latter is the subject of Crumpton's novel).  In addition, there are various apparitions seen on the third floor, which was the location of "Doctor" Baker's morgue and autopsy room.  The hotel's phone system was handled for a time using the original antique switchboard, but that was discontinued when the switchboard operators reported getting calls from the basement -- which at the time was completely empty.

A staircase where people report seeing the ghost of a little girl.  [Note: the figure looming behind me in the reflection is not a ghost, but my friend Casey.  So no luck there.]

Then there's the Victorian gentleman who is often seen in the bar, sitting quietly in a tophat and formal dress, who doesn't answer if you address him; the dignified lady reported from room 419 who will introduce herself as "Theodora, a cancer patient," if you ask her, but then vanish immediately afterward; a small boy who haunts the kitchen; and the appearance of dozens of ghostly dancers in the ballroom who disappear as soon as you turn on the lights.

Sad to say, I didn't see any of 'em.  We did, however, pass two women in 1920s garb sitting on a bench, and after I passed them I whispered to Casey, "You did see those women, right?"  He assured me he had, and explained that they were leading a tour for the hotel, thus missing a valuable opportunity to scare the absolute shit out of me.

On the other hand, Casey's wife Amy, and our friend Venessa Cerasale (who is also Oghma's ultra-competent Chief Operations Officer), both report having had creepy experiences in the Crescent, and both of them are about as level-headed and pragmatic as you could hope for.  So I don't know if it was my aura of disbelief that kept the spirits at bay, or if they were just taking a break for the evening.

I do want to go back, however, and maybe even spend a night or two there.  For one thing, Eureka Springs is a cool town and deserves way more exploration than we had time for.  Plus, I don't think an hour of wandering the grounds is really offering the ghosts their best shot at me.  So I'm sure I'll be back for another visit to "the most haunted spot in Arkansas" -- and maybe have more success in rousing the Crescent's deceased residents next time.

***********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is sheer brilliance -- Jenny Lawson's autobiographical Let's Pretend This Never Happened.  It's an account of her struggles with depression and anxiety, and far from being a downer, it's one of the funniest books I've ever read.  Lawson -- best known from her brilliant blog The Blogess -- has a brutally honest, rather frenetic style of writing, and her book is sometimes poignant and often hilarious.  She draws a clear picture of what it's like to live with crippling social anxiety, an illness that has landed Lawson (as a professional author) in some pretty awkward situations.  She looks at her own difficulties (and those of her long-suffering husband) through the lens of humor, and you'll come away with a better understanding of those of us who deal day-to-day with mental illness, and also with a bellyache from laughing.

[Note: If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Dog days

Yesterday, we found out that the president of the United States ordered his lawyer to commit perjury before Congress, and has taken his "Oh, yeah, well you're a great big poopyhead!" style of interaction to new levels with revealing the details of a (formerly) secure visit to the troops in Afghanistan by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, presumably to get back at her for denying him the opportunity to deliver his State of the Union speech.

Oh, and there's another "caravan" on the way.  And Ivanka Trump has been tapped to help select the next leader of the World Bank.

*looks around desperately for something, anything, else to think about*

Okay, folks, today we're going to consider: why have sightings of "dogmen" been on the rise lately?

Yesterday we considered eyewitness accounts of seeing pterodactyl-like flying creatures, which is weird enough.  But now we're having to contend with scary visitations by bipedal canines.

As if the quadrupedal kind weren't enough trouble.  Our rescue dog, Guinness, is a truly wonderful guy, but his nickname of "El Destructo" is well earned.  In the past two weeks, he's chewed up a bottle of red ceramic underglaze, a visitor's shoe, a magazine, a pillow, and a single piece from a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.  About the latter, I'd almost have preferred if he'd eaten the whole puzzle; having one piece gnawed is just maddening.

Oh, and he swiped a chunk of gourmet cheese off the counter and ate the entire thing.

Do NOT let this innocent expression fool you.

So the idea that there might be intelligent bipedal dogs, perhaps even with opposable thumbs, is kind of alarming.  But that's just what people have been seeing.

Starting with an anonymous (of course) eyewitness in northern Arkansas, who two months ago saw a fearsome doglike creature while driving home from his job as a roofing worker.

"I came across this evil-looking wolf creature," he said.  "It was carrying something in its hands, like a leash or a rope.  It was standing on two feet on the left side of the road.  It was gray, maybe seven feet tall, three hundred pounds."

That, in the words of a friend of mine, is "a big bow-wow."

Then there's the guy in Colorado who was driving home with his own dog, and saw Fido's scary cousin.  He'd stopped the car and let his dog out to pee, but evidently that was the last thing on her mind.  "She wouldn’t do her business," he said.  "She started barking.  At first I thought she was barking at the traffic, but there was no traffic."

The fact that he even considered the explanation that she was barking at traffic that wasn't there makes me wonder about his reliability as a witness, but let's hear the rest of his testimony.

"I noticed five lights hovering in the sky in the distance...  I quickly put the dog in the car and went to investigate.  The lights rose higher and then got smaller and zigzagged, then vanished."

This did not calm his dog down, and in fact, she seemed even more scared than before.  Then...

"I tried comforting her, and that’s when I noticed something moving in the corner of my eye.  I looked up and saw something running behind my car, through the taillights... It had red fur and a tail, but it also had a human face...  It's hard to describe."

Understandably, the guy hauled ass back out onto the road, but he adds that his dog was still terrified when they arrived home, and he had nightmares for several nights thereafter.

There were other sightings in the last couple of months in Michigan and California, the latter by a retired Air Force security officer who was in a park with her daughter and saw "a large male dogman," six-and-a-half to seven feet tall, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, long arms, dog-like legs, a tail, and amber eyes.  She pulled a gun on it, and started speaking to the thing in her native language (she is Shoshone), and that stopped it from advancing on them.  She and her daughter hightailed it back to their car, and got home safely.  She decided to return the next day with her husband, and see if she could find more evidence (or possibly see it again), and there was no certain trace of the dogman, but they did find a cat skeleton "stripped clean down to the bones."

Skeptic though I am, if I'd seen something like that, I don't think you could pay me enough to return to the same spot.  So major props to her for doing this, and I'm glad that the Shoshone-speaking cat-eating dogman of California didn't harm any of them.

But as far as our initial question -- to wit, why there have been more sightings of dogmen lately -- the only thing I can come up with is that the dogmen have decided we humans had our shot at running the world, but we've fucked things up so royally that they're going to take matters into their own, um, paws.  Maybe they'll team up with yesterday's pterodactyls to form a really New World Order.  Myself, I say let 'em.  Can't be any worse than what we have now.

Of course, if the dogmen are anything like Guinness, they will stubbornly refuse to even consider running the government until you throw the ball for them 459 times, and follow it up by saying "whoozagooboy?" and giving them a dog cookie.

So that's today's cryptozoological news.  And now, sad to say, I've dithered around long enough, and I should probably gird my loins and check the news.  Who knows what might have happened in my absence?  Maybe Donald Trump threw a mud pie at Nancy Pelosi.  Maybe Mitch McConnell finally decided that his title of "Senate Majority Leader" means he should actually lead the Senate.  Maybe Ivanka Trump will be appointed to replace Sarah Huckabee Sanders as White House Spokesperson, given that Sanders is allegedly resigning, probably because she's used up her quota of egregious lies, so now has no option other than telling the truth.

And we can't have that.

But in any case, be on the lookout for dogmen, but play it safe.  A seven-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound dog could do a lot of damage to shoes and jigsaw puzzles.

********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a little on the dark side.

The Radium Girls, by Kate Moore, tells the story of how the element radium -- discovered in 1898 by Pierre and Marie Curie -- went from being the early 20th century's miracle cure, put in everything from jockstraps to toothpaste, to being recognized as a deadly poison and carcinogen.  At first, it was innocent enough, if scarily unscientific.  The stuff gives off a beautiful greenish glow in the dark; how could that be dangerous?  But then the girls who worked in the factories of Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, which processed most of the radium-laced paints and dyes that were used not only in the crazy commodities I mentioned but in glow-in-the-dark clock and watch dials, started falling ill.  Their hair fell out, their bones ached... and they died.

But capitalism being what it is, the owners of the company couldn't, or wouldn't, consider the possibility that their precious element was what was causing the problem.  It didn't help that the girls themselves were mostly poor, not to mention the fact that back then, women's voices were routinely ignored in just about every realm.  Eventually it was stopped, and radium only processed by people using significant protective equipment,  but only after the deaths of hundreds of young women.

The story is fascinating and horrifying.  Moore's prose is captivating -- and if you don't feel enraged while you're reading it, you have a heart of stone.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

The ghostly hotel

I'm back home after a very productive week of writing, networking, and general schmoozing with a bunch of my fellow fiction authors at the Storytellers of America Conference in Winslow, Arkansas.  The publisher who handles my books -- Oghma Creative Media -- was well-represented, as they're headquartered in Bentonville, right nearby.

Among the writers I got to meet was another Oghma author, J. C. Crumpton, and (most fun of all) I got to hear an excerpt from his fantastic upcoming release Silence in the Garden.  Silence is about an (allegedly) true tale of the supernatural that I had never heard about -- the story of the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

The Crescent bills itself as "the most haunted hotel in America," and every year has hundreds of visitors motivated to visit solely by its reputation.  To be sure, there are lots of other reasons; the Crescent is a beautiful and historically important building, has 78 luxurious rooms, and is smack-dab in the middle of the Ozarks, which (I found) is stunningly beautiful even though it's prone to thunderstorms that'd knock your socks off.

Hopefully only in a figurative sense.

The Crescent Hotel was opened in May of 1886, mostly to accommodate visitors who had come to partake in Eureka Springs' "healing waters."  This kept it going for about fifteen years, until people figured out that the "healing waters" were actually just "plain old water," and the tourists began to go elsewhere.  After that it became for a time the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women.    That, too, turned out to be a financial failure; it was abandoned for a time, had a brief return to its heyday of sham cures in the 1930s (ended when the proprietor was convicted of defrauding cancer patients and was sent to Leavenworth Prison), and returned to being a hotel in the 1950s.

The Crescent Hotel, circa 1900 [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

There was a fire that caused extensive damage in 1967, but due to its historical value and beauty, it was rebuilt and is now once again the gorgeous landmark and tourist destination that it was in its early days.

A building with such a checkered past, however, is bound to have some sketchy stories attached to it, and very early on the Crescent gained a reputation for being haunted.  The oldest ghost people see is called "Michael" and is said to be the spirit of a red-haired Irish stonemason who was working on the roof shortly before its grand opening in 1886, lost his balance, and fell to his death.  From the days of its serving as a cancer hospital there are the ghosts of a nurse and several patients, all dressed in white, that have been seen on multiple occasions.

What is interesting about these accounts is that unlike most ghost stories, the specters that supposedly populate the Crescent seem pretty benign.  The dining room has been visited by an elderly gentleman in fine 19th century dress clothes, who if approached, will explain to you that he "saw the most beautiful woman here last night and is waiting for her to return."  Which, honestly, is kind of sweet.  About the only truly frightening apparition -- except insofar as any ghost would probably scare me to the pants-wetting stage, because I am, not to put too fine a point on it, a great big wuss -- is the spirit of a teenage girl who, according to the legend, lived in the hotel during its time as a Conservatory for Young Women, and fell (some say she was pushed) to her death from a balcony.  People see her falling, hear her scream -- and when they rush to the sidewalk to see who has taken such a dreadful plunge, they find... no one.

(This is, in fact, a central piece of Crumpton's novel.  Trust me, in his hands, it is way creepy, and when this book is published, you should all read it.)

I'm a little disappointed at not having had time on this trip to go see the place.  Considering my fascination with tales of the paranormal, it's frustrating to have come so close to the "most haunted hotel in America" and not allowed the ghosts a shot at convincing me of their existence.  But given that my publisher is not far away from there, I'm sure there will be other opportunities.

So many hauntings, so little time.

Mike Huckabee, Josh Duggar, and hypocrisy

Rape and pedophilia are two of the most unforgivable crimes.  From the horrific emotional scars they leave in the victims, to the complete disconnect from anything remotely close to human empathy in the perpetrator's mind, attacks of this sort turn my stomach so quickly that I can barely stand to read news stories that cover cases of rape or child molestation.

It is why I have, up to now, avoided dealing with the whole debacle surrounding Josh Duggar, and the allegations that when he was a teenager, he molested five little girls, including his younger sisters.  It seemed to me that the police were dealing with it, and the backlash against the hyper-Christian, ostensibly ultra-pure family would take care of itself.

The Duggars have been the darlings of the Christian Right for some time; their TLC show 19 Kids and Counting was held up as an example of how good Christian families should behave.  Everything was about traditional family values and going to church and dedicating your life to Jesus.  When the allegations surfaced, it was a devastating blow; the "reality show" was cancelled, and Josh Duggar resigned his position as a lobbyist with the Family Research Council, an organization that raises money and support for conservative causes.

Which is as it should be.  You get accused of something like this, you retreat in disarray.  So far, nothing much to comment, unless you count exclamations of disgust.

But then the support for Josh Duggar began to surface.  His family came out on his side, which was unsurprising until you think about the fact that some of the alleged victims are his sisters.  Josh's parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, said, "Back twelve years ago our family went through one of the most difficult times of our lives.  When Josh was a young teenager, he made some very bad mistakes, and we were shocked.  We had tried to teach him right from wrong.  That dark and difficult time caused us to seek God like never before."

Which, you'd think, would include getting his victims some counseling from professionals trained to help molestation victims, something that there's no indication ever happened.  Josh, on the other hand, was told what could happen to him if he did it again, and was sent to "stay with an acquaintance and do manual labor."  Apparently, in their eyes, this did the trick; Josh Duggar said he's patched it all up with Jesus. "I asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life," he said.  "In my life today, I am so very thankful for God's grace, mercy and redemption."

So far, still not something that's all that surprising.  In this worldview, if you apologize to god, you're just hunky-dory no matter what you did.  When this happened, I still thought, "Nope.  Not going there."

But then Mike Huckabee got involved.

Huckabee, a contender for the Republican nomination for president, has been vitriolic in his stance against LGBT rights.  In a speech just last month sponsored by the Family Research Council, Huckabee said that legalizing gay marriage would lead to Christians being arrested for their beliefs:

If the courts rule that people have a civil right not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage, then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor who believes in biblical marriage who says ‘I can’t perform that wedding’ will now be breaking the law.  It’s not just saying, ‘I’m sorry you have a preference.’  No, you will be breaking the law subject to civil for sure and possible criminal penalties for violating the law….  If you do practice biblical convictions and you carry them out and you do what you’ve been led by the spirit of God to do, your behavior will be criminal... Christian convictions are under attack as never before.  Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation.  We are moving rapidly towards the criminalization of Christianity.

And this same man, who has over and over again claimed that marriage between two same-sex people in a committed relationship is an abomination, has come out unequivocally in support of Josh Duggar:

The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand — that being a minor means that one’s judgement is not mature.  No one needs to defend Josh’s actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family’s authenticity and humility... (F)ollowing Christ is not a declaration of our perfection, but of HIS perfection.   It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness.  We have been blessed to receive God's love and we would do no less than to extend our love and support for our friends.  In fact, it is in times like this that real friends show up and stand up.  Today, Janet and I want to show up and stand up for our friends.  Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.

Then, there's the fact that when the story about Josh Duggar hit the media, Judge Stacy Zimmerman ordered that the file on the allegations be destroyed.  No reason was given, and Springdale Police Department spokesperson Scott Lewis said that this was unusual -- that records of this kind are typically kept indefinitely.  But the situation becomes a little clearer when you add to that the fact that when Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas, he twice appointed Zimmerman to serve on influential committees, and that she gives prominent mention of her ties to Huckabee on her re-election website.

Gotta stick together, you know.  Can't have any nasty allegations stinking up the party of the pure of heart.

The whole thing has such a nauseating smell of hypocrisy that I barely know where to begin.  The man who in his stump speeches has been all about "traditional family values" rushes in to support an accused pedophile, while simultaneously expressing revulsion toward consenting adults who happen to be attracted to members of the same sex.  The fact that the Duggar family is "saved" somehow puts them outside of the realm of criticism; the media that has brought to light these charges is "blood-thirsty," and Josh himself is "responsible and circumspect" because he "confessed his sins."

So let's make sure that a judge orders the documents destroyed, and pretend the whole incident never happened.

I think that it's the self-righteousness that bothers me the most.  Even the mealy-mouthed "we're not perfect" declarations by the Duggars, and by Huckabee about them, smacks of "but because we're saved, we're going to heaven no matter what, so we're still better than you godless scum."  They've set themselves as paragons; just the fact that they felt the need to have a "reality show" about their family speaks volumes.

Yes, I know, I'm not perfect myself.  I've done bad things, things that I very much wish I could go back and undo.  I've tried to make amends when I could, and (most importantly) tried not to repeat my mistakes.

The difference is, I know that the times I've fallen short morally can't be fixed by apologizing to some invisible Sky God.  Forgiveness comes from the people you've hurt, not from Jesus.

Nor, incidentally, from Mike Huckabee.