2. Gross Things are in the Backyard

What happened on that balcony?  Plus, something had been buried in the back of the hotel… and it was pretty nasty.

Check out videos and photos from our trips to haunted hotels and our Scary Stories!
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Secrets won't stay buried for long at America's most haunted hotel.

Someone or something was up on a balcony when the ghost of a woman in white fell and then vanished. Now others have seen her before, but what my kids and I are about to encounter would be the biggest, the scariest, and all around craziest adventure. At least so far. And just wait, because we're about to get a scare in the middle of the night.  Something was in our room with us.

Well, hello again from the low budget Ghost Squad. 

I'm Natalie. And thanks for being along on this ride with us because we're about to stumble onto a murder mystery at what's known as America's Most Haunted Hotel. If you're gonna find a mystery, it's probably gonna be here.

Now my kids got the idea to come here after something they saw on YouTube. You know, what do they not see on YouTube?

It was the sam and Colby channel. I'm Alison, by the way. 

And I’m Ethan and we're sharing our story of what happened when we went to the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, AR And somehow we convinced Mom to go. 

It didn't take much convincing because I'm secretly into all this too, and it won't be much of A secret anymore after you hear our story. Honestly, I have to tell you, we're learning as we go with this podcast.  And as you'll hear, we're learning about ghost hunting too.

Now, after we saw that ghost fall from the balcony, we made so much noise that the manager came out and so did a slew of people.

But the manager's face lit up when we told her what happened.

You know, things like this are good for business. They sell stuff with Ghosts on it.

Yeah, they don't shy away from ghosts there now, even on their blog. 

On the hotel's website, it says a section of the third floor said to be a portal to the other side. And maybe we opened it.

Anyway, let's get back to the story. 

The manager took us inside and she gave us a really old copy of a newspaper about the story of Delilah Carrington.

Now that's a name you're going to hear a lot.  She had gone to school here when it was a women's college from 1908 to 1934. OK, I mean, she wasn't here the whole time. That's just how long the school was open.

Hey, Mom. I think they get it.

The article said that she took her own life by throwing herself from the balcony in 1934.  The college shut down after that.  The official reason for decades was the Great Depression. You know, people couldn't afford to send their daughters to school anymore, and I wonder maybe the scandal was too much?

So after we were done talking to the manager, we realized that it was really late, so we decided to head back to the room to get some rest. But, this part, I can't really understand what happened.  So when we got there we opened the door and I swear it sounded just like this. (door creaking)

She's not lying. That's actually what it sounds.

Well, just so you know, I had us sleep with all the lamps and even the TV on and I was worried, I wasn’t going to fall asleep because I'm going to be watching something, but it was a law and order marathon. And I've seen them all already.  

But then in the middle of the night we heard something like this. But when I looked over, the door was closed and locked.

Yeah, the door looked closed and locked, but nobody slept after that. And no, we didn't check out of the hotel like you're probably yelling at us to do right now like I would be doing.

Well, that ghost hunting app started going off again.

And then we saw words like help again, and then these names popped up.

Jack and then Whiteford.

It felt like it took forever just for morning.

Yeah. Well, we asked the guy at the front desk if he knew a Jack Whiteford.  He didn't know of a  Jack Whiteford, but he knew the last name, Whiteford.

The hotel was founded by several railroad men, very influential, who went on to much bigger things.  One of them was named Samuel Whiteford. His name and the others are all engraved on the back of the fireplace that sits in the middle of the lobby. We told you about that fireplace in the first episode with the owl bat vulture thing on it. You know, when I saw his name on there, I wondered, could this Jack person be related to him? 

And then I got nauseous again.  Like out of the blue.  We were in the middle of the dining room waiting for breakfast in the same place that it happened the night before. 

Can you stop getting nauseous? It happens every single day. 

It's not my fault that the ghost is attached to me.

It probably is, because knowing you, you probably did something to make him mad. 

OK, enough of that. I don't know if you remember from episode one that some people experience nausea when coming into contact with a spirit. Well, Alison walked out of the room. And that app went off again. No words came through this time, but the lines stayed red.  And yes, people were staring at us because it was so loud.

Leaving the room helped.

OK, get this guys. I saw on the hotel's website that they have this blog and on it there's a picture of something, I don't know Ghost-like in that very spot. I mean, maybe it's always hanging around there. Or maybe he just wants to hang around you.

I don't really want to stick around to find out, but I kind of did.  So we started walking, so we started walking around the hotel, you know, just checking stuff out and the app was somehow still going off.

At this point we're thinking, OK, this is like a goofy coincidence, this $4.99 app is not real. I mean, it couldn't be. It probably just goes off on a timer and you know there's a list of words that rotate. 

Well, why would it say Whiteford.

OK, I love this next part. When we're out walking around, we found this excavation site that was covered with glass. I gotta give you a little background. If you remember from our first episode, this was a cancer hospital run by a doctor, not doctor who offered to cure your cancer for $5000.  Now, recently, somebody from the hotel was digging A mulch pit and found thousands of jars buried.

Thanks, Alison. I just want to give a a quick recap for everybody. So it opened as a hotel in 1886, the Crescent and then it doubled as a women's college starting in 1908 that we've been talking about.  And then it turned into that alleged cancer curing hospital in 1937 and that's where those very jars were from. OK. So this is going to be kind of nasty and I'm just going to apologize now.  But in those jars that had actual tumors inside there and human tissue and God knows what else from 1937, I mean think about all that stuff just buried underground since 1937.

It was so cool.

Are you sure about that? Because you know, now. 

Anyway, we shall go on. Later that day, there was going to be a dedication ceremony for the site.  You know that we're going to add some sort of historical marker or something like that.

And that's when Henry came up to us. Yeah, he looked like a hotel employee and he asked us, “Did you see her?”

I told him yeah, and described how she came out like a mist thing. And then went over the balcony and just vanished.

And he had said he'd seen her, too.

He was so sweet.  He was about 80, maybe, and introduced himself as an honorary bellhop.  He had worked at the hotel for years. And so had his dad,  He told us that the only way he would ever leave the Crescent would be in a pine box. And even after that, he’s probably want to stick around. 

And he had plenty of information about our ghost Delilah.

Well, he said his dad was the one to find Delilah's body, and he was a young man who worked in the kitchen when it was a college.  And he said everybody came running after his dad started yelling. Now Delilah's roommate, Alice Faye Warlick, came over and pushed him out of the way.  I mean, she was hysterical.  Her fiancée came running over and was cradling her head in his lap.

He told us that her parents lived in Eureka Springs and he said they were really mad.  So they reached out to their friend and business partner, Samuel Whiteford. 

Remember, he's the one who helped found the hotel and was a big deal in town. And drumroll please, 

That's my part.

Delilah was engaged to his grandson, Charlie.

Well, that was an awesome mic drop.

So I'm going to tell this next part, and Henry didn't seem too comfortable sharing it with us, but his father told him, the roommate, Delilah's roommate, Alice Faye Warlick, was yelling something about a baby when she was down there with Delilah's body. But the head of the school quickly ushered her back inside. And one of the teachers told all the other people who were out there - don't gossip about this and you need to pray for Delilah and her family. 

According to Henry, not a lot was said about Delilah afterwards.  It's as if it never happened. Alice Faye got a new roommate and she got engaged to Charlie Whiteford. 

Of course she did. 

But during that time, girls were being taken out of the school and it just shut down. 

And then that's when the cancer doctor came into the picture. 

Yeah, the whole building was sold to him after that. 

And you know what, guys? Y'all may be too young for this, but it just sounds like some 80s soap opera drama that my friend Danielle and I would watch all summer when we were in middle school. 

Those soap operas were one person has a split personality disorder. They ended up having three kids that they didn't even know about, and the twins had two different dads. That doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, back to our story. Now, Henry said, his father hardly ever talked about that time. But when he heard about what happened to us the night before, specifically in the dining room when Alison was contacted by some spirit named Jason. He definitely wanted to meet us.

He said his father's name was Jason, just like the spirit thing that came from the app.

So is he the one that's sending his words like help push and hurry?

I mean it could be if you want to believe this app actually works. Again, it was $4.99. I pulled out a copy of the newspaper article that the manager gave us last night. 

And Ethan, you want to tell us? 

Yeah. Thank you very much. So I noticed the date on the article.  It was February 24th 1934 and the crazy part is yesterday was February 24th. I finally get to tell a twist to the story.

So Henry left us with another bombshell.

Delilah Carrington had a twin brother, Now we're really getting 80 soap opera-esque here. And he was adamant that his sister did not take her own life. And she would show up at the school before it closed, demanding to speak to everybody who knew her. Now he's one of the first people to claim he saw her ghost. And many of the girls at the school did believe him because if you remember from the first episode, one young woman wrote home asking for her family to send a Ouija board because something was going on. Delilah's roommate, Alice Faye, later denied knowing anything about a baby, even though she was yelling about it the night Delilah died.

The doctor shouldn't bother to do an autopsy because her family didn't want one. 

That's convenient.

The brother would still show up even after it was a fake cancer hospital, telling everybody I saw my sister up there, but they would kick him out because they already, they already had too many problems going on. 

Yeah, when you're running a fake hospital, you kind of do have a lot of situations.

Let me give you a little update on the doctor, not doctor, and I am using my quoting fingers again when I talk about it. 

So Doctor Norman Baker in 1940, he went to prison for, wait for it, mail fraud of all things.

And Delilah's brother later went on to fight in World War 2 and the building, the Crescent was closed up. And most of the people forgot about this young woman who jumped from the third story balcony.

Allegedly jumped.

But Henry says he remembers when the brother came home from the war and the hotel reopened a little while later.  He would come up there and still claim to see his sister falling from the balcony.

He was just hoping somebody would look at her case or even maybe confess. But no. He died. Never knowing the truth. And y'all, once we learn more about him, we started to wonder, is he here too? Because his name was Jack. Just like that had said.

So does this app really work? 

Just wait and see, because do you remember who else sent us a message on that app?

Coming up on our next episode of Low Budget Ghost Squad, what secret was revealed in plain sight just hanging on the wall? And how does Al Capone sister fit into all this?

The Low Budget Ghost Squad is part of Spellbound Productions.

This was written, directed, edited, produced and whatever else by the leader of the low budget Good Squad yours truly. 

And thanks of course to Alison and Ethan for their hard work and willingness to play along. 

And maybe you saw some of awesome graphic art design by Lucinda Peterson.

And if you want to see some of the things you've heard about throughout this podcast, go to our Instagram and YouTube channel that are in the description and that's where we'll have some fun Pictures, videos and behind the scene stuff.