Special Guest Interview with Keith Scales:


I had the privilege of interviewing one of the most popular paranormal authors in Arkansas this past February: Keith Scales.

Keith is the manager of the amazingly popular Ghost Tours at the Crescent Hotel, located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The Crescent Hotel is 134 years old and is billed as “The Most Haunted Hotel in America,”  and has been featured on several TV shows including “Ghost Hunters,” where the show’s investigators picked up several bits of evidence of paranormal activity.

I spoke to Keith about his exciting book House of a Hundred Rooms: Tales the Ghost Tour Guides Do Not Tell.  The book takes the reader through the history of the Crescent Hotel using stories of real people who lived and worked in the hotel, bringing the stories, people, and its haunted tragedies to life.

Scales dives into the characters who once lived and breathed at the Crescent Hotel and tells its rich history with: the Stonemason, Michael, Nurse Theodora, a little boy named Breckie who died at the young age of 6, and the infamous con-doctor: Dr. Norman Baker. Scales also tells about several other ghosts from the hotel, including a little girl in the mist and the man on the stairs. The author also goes into the history of what the hotel building was used for during its time. For example it was a women’s college, a brothel, and a hospital for dying cancer patients.

What I love best about Scales’ book is that he claims his book and his ghost tours are full of FACTS! Keith said he does not like to falsify claims for the benefit of tourism. And he surely doesn’t need to for his book because the characters surely speak for themselves: they were fascinating people whose times in history are rich with emotion and description.

He says a long time ago when he took a job as a tour guide for the hotel, he was told, “just tell them anything.” But Keith didn’t like that message. So as time went on, he explained to his boss why it was IMPORTANT not tell the tourists false information. With permission, he soon began to dig into the hotel’s interesting history learning the truth about its workers, patrons, students (when it was a college), doctors, staff, and patients (when it was a hospital where a well-known con-man claimed he had the cure to cancer).

With all this NEW knowledge, he updated the ghost tour telling the correct history of the Crescent Hotel really bringing it to life. Then he thought one day, “Why not write it all down.” That’s when the idea for his well-known book was born! And not just any book but THE BEST SELLING BOOK at the Crescent Hotel!  

       

          So, who are the most fascinating spirits at the Crescent Hotel? Well, I won’t delay any longer. Scales tells me they include Theodora, Michael, and Breckie. As well as another well known character, who has not been spotted at the hotel however appears to have had many imprints in time, from none other than Dr. Baker. 

In 1937, the infamous Dr. Norman Baker claimed he could cure patients dying from cancer; however, he simply lied to them, stole their money, and watched them die. After their deaths, he would cover up their disease by cutting out the patient’s cancer or tumor as proof of success then hid the evidence by burying it on the hotel’s grounds. The current hotel gardener, Susan Benson, recently discovered some artifacts from Dr. Baker’s time on February, 5, 2019. Those discoveries prompted an archaeological dig by University of Arkansas on the grounds and is far from done. So far the collection outside the hotel consists of 500 jars containing organic matter in alcohol as well as many unidentified medicines. However, in 1940 Dr. Baker was sent to prison. The hotel then sat empty for 6 years.

 Scales also believes that Theodora, who may have been a nurse for Dr. Baker when it was a hospital, remained in the hotel after her death to serve those who were terminally ill. He says, “The patients still needed her so I think she stays to help others in the building even in her afterlife. She often is seen outside of room 419 fumbling for her keys. 

          

          Then there’s Michael, a 17 year old, Irish-immigrant and Stonemason. Michael was in charge of lowering the stones onto a narrow wall, making the outer stone walls of the hotel. Known to daydream, Michael really wished he had a girlfriend. One day on the first hot day during the summer when the sun was blazing down all the men took a longer than normal break without telling Michael. As he waited for them to come back he saw a lovely red-headed Irish girl walking by, waved her down and began showing off doing the jig while up real-high on his post. As the girl shouted for him to stop out of fear of him falling, poor Michael did just that, falling to his death tragically while trying to impress her.

          

          In addition to these spirits at the Crescent Hotel there is poor little 6-year-old Breckie who died after four days in the hospital after a bout of appendicitis.  He is often heard by guests bouncing a ball off the walls in the hallway. Still suffering from the loss of her beloved son, his mother later attended a séance to contact little Breckie. Allegedly, she did speak with Breckie who told his mother that he was happy and playing somewhere in a dream-world. Throughout the years, Breckie has been seen, only by child guests, either on the grounds or inside the hotel playing ball. Suddenly Breckie disappears into thin air while playing with the guest children staying at the hotel. When the guests ask staff members about the boy and tell them that he suddenly vanished, the staff knows it’s little Breckie. Not wanting to scare the children and tell them they’ve been playing ball with a ghost, they simply say, “He had to go.”

         

         So would I recommend, House of a Hundred Rooms: Tales the Ghost Tour Guides Do Not Tell..? Yes, I certainly would recommend it!

          

          Not only does it tell all the important history of the hotel but the book is so well written that the characters jump off the page at your heart! Paranormal-seekers and lovers will FALL IN LOVE with this book for its thrills and chills and non-believers will value it for its rich- knowledgeable history. It is even wonderfully illustrated by Keith Scales’s wife, Rebecca J. Becker, who truly brings the ghostly characters to light with her gorgeous artwork of those who lived and died at the Crescent Hotel, The Most Haunted Hotel in America!

©Rosella C. Rowe

Book by Keith Scales and other works:

-House of a Hundred Rooms: Tales the Ghost Tour Guides Do Not Tell…: https://www.amazon.com/House-Hundred-Rooms-Tales-Guides/dp/1978086881

-The Cloverleaf Development

In process: Seven Story Hotel

Other books by Keith under his pen name: Julian Keith:

-Brane Fever

-John Dee's Back Leg

In process: Red Sky at Night

-Coming Soon: Audio book (as Keith Scales) The Fool in the Forest

For more information about the Crescent Moon Hotel: https://www.crescent-hotel.com/

Crescent Hotel Ghost Tours and Events: www.americasmosthauntedhotel.com