Norman Baker “Comes Back To Life”
“CANCER CURING DOCTOR” NORMAN BAKER COMES BACK TO LIFE IN NEW THEATRICAL PRESENTATION
AT “AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED HOTEL”, THE 1886 CRESCENT HOTEL & SPA
(EUREKA SPRINGS, AR) –Thanks to such occurrences as being named on several lists as the Number One Haunted Hotel in America by such sources as TripAdvisor.com most people know or have at least heard of the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, located here high in the Arkansas Ozarks, and its “guests who checked out but never left”. However, not that many know about the infamous Norman Baker, the faux doctor who purchased and operated this mountaintop spa resort in the late 1930s to be used as his “cancer curing” hospital. But all of that is about to change.
Starting on Friday, November 18, the character of Norman Baker will be brought to life in an hour-long theatrical presentation entitled “Midnight Theatre In the Morgue of the Mastermind: Norman Baker Speaks”. This intimate portrayal of this flamboyant, dynamic character will take place in The Crescent’s “Faculty Lounge” of this proud member of Historic Hotels of America.
The creator, writer, producer and star of this one-man multi-media show is award-winning actor Keith Scales, formerly of Portland (OR). Scales’ exhaustive research on Baker will allow him to present Baker’s story from Baker’s perspective as Baker himself.
The hour-long production finishes in the hotel’s macabre morgue, a leftover from the Baker Hospital days, and will leave it up to members of the audience to decide if this native of Muscatine, Iowa, was a genius or a charlatan.
“Norman Baker was self-educated, a vaudevillian, inventor, radio pioneer, publisher, a mail-order mastermind and a millionaire several times over,” tells Scales. “However, he became most notorious for claiming to have discovered a cure for cancer, a claim he ‘served’ to his patients when he ran Baker’s Cancer Curable Hospital in a retro-fitted mountaintop spa resort in the Ozarks of Arkansas in the late 1930s.”
It is said that much of the paranormal activity that haunts The Crescent can be traced back to Baker’s days while in the five-story limestone structure. Hospital artifacts, such as Baker’s autopsy table and walk-in cooler where he kept cadavers and other body parts, still exist in the hotel’s basement.
“Since 1997 when Marty and Elise Roenigk purchased The Crescent and began to embrace the tales of the property’s spirits, probably more than 10,000 people have walked the hotel halls during one of our nightly ghost tours,” Scales added. “In those tours, patrons were told of Norman Baker. Now, thanks to our new Midnight Theatre production, patrons can meet Norman Baker.”
Midnight Theatre’s In the Morgue of the Mastermind: Norman Baker Speaks will debut on Friday night, November 18 at 11 o’clock and can be seen at that same time every Friday and Saturday night. Due to limited seating, advanced ticket purchases are encouraged. Those tickets, as well as the nightly ghost tour tickets, may be purchased online at americasmosthauntedhotel.com, by calling 800-342-9766, or at the hotel’s front desk.
For more information, one may go to americasmosthauntedhotel.com.