The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa has a reputation for being America’s Most Haunted Hotel but it’s not the only building atop that limestone-based Crescent Mountain to have stories about the unexplainable.
Those who once frequented the cottages in Crescent Park, now known as Lookout Estate, have some unexplained “visitors”. Perhaps one of those could be Marge Lyons, a feature writer for the Chicago Tribune, or her husband Jedge. They lived in Lookout manor beginning in the late 1940s. Marge, like many locals, would often visit Basin Spring Bathhouse and take advantage of the Eureka’s “magic” spring water, bathing in it for her health.
Perhaps one could be the gregarious young nurse who Marge met at the bathhouse. Alice Coleman built up quite a clientele dispensing her skill as a therapy caregiver. Alice, who is recognized as the “founder” of the modern day spa movement in Eureka Springs, often visited Lookout and gave Marge in-home healing treatments.
Perhaps one could be another of Alice’s clients, a world-renowned dancer, actress and Eureka Springs’ resident, Irene Castle. Irene’s ghost has been seen, it is reported, at the Crescent Hotel. And perhaps one could be yet another of Alice’s clients, a paralyzed man who lived on the estate in the gatehouse. So appreciative was he that, upon his death, gave Alice his gatehouse and the adjoining guest quarters which she renamed Anchorage (her nickname for Eureka) and Suite Alice, respectively.
Could these intertwined characters be some of the “visitors” who still frequent the cottages at Lookout Estate? Perhaps.
Here are a few of those unexplainable stories that Lookout employees have told: >A couple, just going to bed in the Anchorage, watched a blue orb travel from the living room doorway, across the bedroom and disappear through the upstairs door. The next day the husband made an unrelated phone call to his mother who surprisingly explained -without prompt- a blue orb was harmless even though her son had not mentioned the mysterious incident from the night before. NOTE: It is said an orb is a ball of energy, the manifestation of a spirit beings’ soul.
Occasionally guests driving up to the estate’s gate have seen a ghostly light in an upstairs Anchorage window, yet no light source has ever been found by guests once inside the cottage.
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