Ghost Touring at the Crescent Hotel

This ghost story happened during the spring of 1980 after my second wife, Violet, and I moved from Batesville, Arkansas, to Eureka Springs because her brother was living there at the time, and we needed somebody to sponge off of. Violet was working the front desk up at the Crescent Hotel, and I was in the process of recording a cassette tape at my brother-in-law's house, a project I was certain would make my fortune. As often happens, things took an unexpected turn because of alcohol.

One thing I have always prided myself on is my whistling. When I was still a lad, Pap and I would whistle the Andy Griffith theme song together. Sometimes we even whistled it while we were carrying fishing poles, which is pretty pathetic now that I think about it. I think I told you that I grew up outside Stella, Missouri, where Pap was a farmer and Mama kept the house. As any farm child can attest, a rural rearing is a combination of toil and soil and hot summer days. We never had any money to speak of, and growing up in such an environment can inculcate a profound dislike, even distrust, of the Protestant work ethic. That any group of people should work so hard to earn so little is a testament to the indifference of the universe and the shortcomings of capitalism. I guess that's why I tended socialist in my younger days. But that's not my point. My point is that Pap and I loved to whistle while we plowed and sowed and harvested. We whistled while we milked our cows and whistled when we saddled up JR and Bobby. Damn, we could whistle!

So, after I married Violet and we moved to Eureka, I had a terrific idea that I would record a tape of me whistling Elvis Presley's greatest hits. Her brother Parker had a fine recording machine; he wrote folk songs and played the guitar, and he was always taping himself and sending off cassettes to addresses he found in the back of Songwriter Magazine. I could tell he wasn't completely sold on my idea when I asked him; he kind of grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. But he finally said, okay, and he also agreed to back me up on guitar. He even got his cousin Robert to come in on drums.

We had just laid down a half-dozen tracks when the phone rang. Parker answered it, and cupping his hand over the receiver, said, "It's Violet. She needs to talk to you."

Turns out a ghost tour up at the Crescent was scheduled to begin, and the tour guide had drunk himself into total otiosity. Violet said, "You're a decent bullshitter. Would you do it?" Thinking quickly and relying on a lifetime of talking about things I know nothing about, I said, "Sure, I'll do it: For some feisty, spicy fun this evening." I winked at Parker after I said this when I suddenly remembered he was her brother. An awkward moment ensued. But Violet said to me, "I'll give you the whole damned enchilada if you pull this off." That made old Officer Willie stand up and salute, for sure. So, I grabbed the cassette out of Parker's tape recorder and said, "Boys, I've gotta go. Duty calls." Then I rode my moped up to the Crescent.

Violet was standing behind the desk when I came in, and with a stabbing gesture, she pointed toward a crowd of folks standing somewhat restlessly at the top of the stairs. I was familiar enough with the hotel to know the creepy stuff mostly happens in the basement. I ran up to Violet and asked, "Hey, can you pipe in music downstairs?"

"Sure," she said.

"Well, give me about twenty minutes, and then play the first song on this tape. And hand me that brochure." I read a paragraph double-quick and walked over to the tourists. Smiling and rubbing my hands together, I said, "How we doin' today, folks?"

A man with a camouflage cap said, "It's about damn time you got here."

So I said, "It'll be worth your wait, mon-sewer. Let's go."

The lights over the stairwell and in the basement are kept low for obvious reasons—there's just enough light to see by so people don't trip down the stairs and sue the hotel, but they're dim enough to feel creepy. And the basement of the Crescent really is spooky. There was this man, Norman Baker, who was as big a charlatan and son of a bitch as you'll ever read about. It's men like him who give honest bullshitters a bad name. Baker billed himself as a doctor with a cure for cancer, and he turned the Crescent into a cancer ward. Sick people from all over the country came to swill his potion and a bunch of them died. Norman stored their bodies in the basement, and that's where the ghosts come from.

Anyhow, I must've still had Elvis on my mind, because I started my spiel this way: "Very few people know that Elvis Presley died three years ago right down here in this very basement."

"No, he didn't," said one of the women. "He died in the Jungle Room at Graceland."

An attractive woman in a halter top—a fashion I dearly wish would trend again—said, "He didn't die in the Jungle Room; he died in the bathroom."

And a woman with a cigarette voice said, "Elvis isn't dead. They spelled his middle name wrong on his tombstone. What could that mean except he isn't buried there? 'Sides, change the letters around, and 'Elvis' spells, 'lives.' That's all the proof you need."

Their husbands looked at me with bovine anticipation.

"That's what they want you to believe," I shot back. "They don't want you to believe the truth."

"Who's 'they'?" asked Camouflage Cap.

"The ones who want to control how you think," I said.

"Oh," he replied, and for some reason, that bit of tautology seemed to satisfy him.

"Anyhow, there was this doctor here back in the seventies named Norman Baker," I said next.

"The brochure said he was here in the thirties," said the first woman, who by now had acquired the name Pain in the Ass. "See? It says so right here."

"That's what they want you to believe. Norman Baker is still alive and living in Buenos Aires with JFK," and here I winked at Cigarette Voice, who scowled back at me. "But in 1977, Baker treated Elvis Presley . . . right there!" And not seeing any doors, I pointed to an empty corner.

"He treated Elvis in the corner of the basement? Why not upstairs?" asked Halter Top with a reassuring jiggle.

"Because Elvis didn't want anyone to know he was here!"

"What was he being treated for?"

I paused for dramatic effect (and also to think) and then proclaimed: "Elephantitis!"

"What is that?" asked a teenager with long hair and a Great Passion Play tee-shirt.

"Elvis was turning into . . . an elephant!" I said, putting the sound of horror in my voice.

"That's not what elephantitis is, you nitwit," said Pain in the Ass. "And it's not called that anyhow: It's elephantiasis. There's no such thing as elephantitis."

"Sure there is," I said, "like what the Elephant Man had." I felt pretty certain I had her on this one. The movie had come out earlier in the year. I hadn't seen it, but I guessed it was about a fellow who turned into an elephant. Also, I had seen a picture of a fellow with elephantitis whose balls had swollen up as big as two beanbag chairs, and I figured elephant balls are probably about that big, so it made sense he was indeed turning into an elephant.

"I told you there's no such thing as elephantitis. It's called elephantiasis, and elephantiasis doesn't literally turn somebody into an elephant!" said Pain in the Ass. "It makes them malformed."

"How do you know so much about it?" I asked.

"Because I was a nurse in India back in the sixties. I've seen people with elephantiasis, and it's no laughing matter." My first thought was What are the odds that the only woman in Arkansas who knows anything at all about elephant-whatever is with me at 3:00 in the afternoon in the basement of the Crescent Hotel? But then my curiosity took over.

"Did you ever see a fellow with balls as big as beanbag chairs?"

"Come on, John," she said to a fellow who was presumably her husband, though God only knows why a man would hitch himself to a know-it-all like her, "let's go." But John seemed to want to see what might happen next, so he resisted.

So, I said, "Anyhow, Elvis didn't have 'elephantiasis,' as you call it. He had elephantitis, and that turns you into an elephant."

Pain in the Ass turned to John again, "I said, let's go. Every word out of that fool's mouth is a lie."

And John said, "For Chrissake, Eileen, we're on a ghost tour. The whole thing is a lie. What did you expect?" For some reason, this made me feel like John was an ally of sorts, and that gave me new courage.

Then Camouflage Cap asked, "And you say Elvis was treated for turning into an elephant in that corner?"

"He was treated and died in that very corner!" I said in a stage whisper and making my eyes as big as I could. "He died cursing this hotel, but he couldn't speak the words because of the elephant's trunk he had growing out of his face; all he could do was . . . whistle! And some say if you listen on a quiet night with the rain a-pattering and the gaslights a-hissing, you can hear Elvis whistling still." I let my voice subside into ominous hiss.

Suddenly and in a miracle of synchronicity, Violet popped in the tape of me whistling "Heartbreak Hotel." I thought it would scare the bejesus out of everybody, but they just started laughing, and Camouflage Cap clapped me on the back and said, "You're all right." Pain in the Ass was still miffed, but John shook my hand and the other folks tipped me well. They thought I had planned the whole thing, but, of course, you know the truth. And to top it all off, that night Violet treated me to a fine Mexican buffet. Suffice it to say that ghost touring was worth my while.

I put copies of my tape for sale at the desk, but somehow the Estate of Elvis Presley found out about my enterprise and said they would sue me for about twenty billion dollars if I should persist. So that took care of my terrific idea. The good news is there are always plenty of terrific ideas around.