4. Ancestry.com Came to Life

We meet someone in the hallway who may not want us there. Plus, we’re about to get the biggest shock of our lives…or at least so far.  And of course there’s a ghost cat at the Crescent!

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Episode 4

The past. It never really goes away, no matter how hard you try to bury it..  the death of Delilah Carrington in 1934 haunted her family for decades. And her death led to another mystery at America's most haunted hotel. - The Crescent in Eureka Springs, AR. And the ghosts of the past are making their presence known today. My kids and I couldn't escape it and, well, we really didn't want to. I mean, after all, we are the low budget ghost squad.

Welcome back to episode 4 of. The Low budget Ghost Squad. Yes, that's our name. And we hope you're having some fun with this story and this podcast because really, we're learning as we go, podcasting and as you'll see, ghost hunting.

Now, somehow we've stumbled onto this mystery at the Crescent Hotel thanks to an app and a YouTube channel. You see, my kids saw the hotel on YouTube, so you know we had to go. And here we are now the low budget ghost Squad sharing our adventure with you. As unbelievable as it made seem.

So for introductions, I'm Natalie. 

And I'm Allison. 

I'm Ethan. We went to the Crescent Hotel because it was supposedly haunted. 

Now we should have known. Things would get crazy. As we went driving up a mountain to get there, police cars whizzed past us with sirens blaring (sirens)

And you guessed it, it was a sign.

That we ignored completely.

And that was after we got lost three times. But here we are. And we've made a friend, Henry Quinlan, who's worked here forever, and so did his dad.  And we learned that he may know more than he's been telling us.

After Henry bolted away from us after seeing a picture of his father and Delilah Carrington, a voice interrupted our little conspiracy circle.  You can only imagine what theories we were starting to spin. You know, we had to plot out our next move and decide what to get for dinner.

And a voice said

I hope you’re enjoying your stay.

That's not at all what he sounded like, but good try….question mark?.

Well, he was very sharply dressed.  I couldn't tell how old, maybe at least 70. He was accompanied by the hotel manager and what looked like an entourage of his own.

It looks like there were more than two people hovering around him, so it wasn't an entourage.

Well, I told him yes, we were enjoying our stay and we're just finding so many stories. 

And then he introduced himself as… Here we go… William Whiteford.

I started to say something, but then all of a sudden Alison hit me because she didn't think I should say it yet.

Not the first time, and it won't be the last.

Alright, so if you don't remember, Samuel Whiteford helped open this hotel in 1886 along with some other railroad men. Super influential at the time. 

So I asked - Um, any relation to the Samuel Whitford, whose name I saw downstairs, engraved on the fireplace?  And that was awkward.

And he said that's my great great grandfather. It's like ancestry.com come to life.

And we love our ancestry.com.

But we learned that William Whiteford was at the Crescent for the dedication of that new historical monument on the grounds that we had mentioned in a previous episode.

Do you remember a few years back they had dug up a bunch of jars of like oh, human tissue and tumors and God knows what else and it all dated back to when this was a cancer hospital that didn't cure anyone's cancer and was run by a doctor not doctor,  Again quotey fingers used. 

So that hospital opened in 1937 after the women's college closed. The one that Delilah and Alice Faye went to. So back to William Whitford and what he was up to. He started walking on when, Alison said:

Did your grandfather know Delilah? There was a side eye.

That was almost as awkward as the first time.

Yeah. He stopped dead in his tracks and slowly turned around to face us.

Mom moved us behind her because we didn't know what was about to happen. 

Well, that was just my mom instinct kicking in because, you know, I hadn't really been listening to it this entire visit.

And then he asked this: Why do you ask about her? 

Alison, the way you just said ‘her’ -  That is exactly the way he said it. 

Y'all, So I don't know if you realized I grabbed your arm trying to get you to stop talking to him and and let me do it. 

You know what? I was asking the necessary questions. And in hindsight, that was probably a terrible idea. 

Yeah, I thought, I need to be the one to talk to him because I saw his face. I knew he did not want us there. Well, I told him we've been exploring the hotel and that we had seen what everybody says was Delilah's ghost. Now, I said, Can you believe it? We saw her fall from that balcony, through that room there and I'm pointing down the hallway where we had just been, you know, in Delilah's old room. 

That's when he actually started telling us about her. 

He said his grandfather had been engaged her at one time. And I'm thinking. We already knew that.

Yeah, thankfully, you didn't actually say that.

He said about Delilah quote, tragic story really and that my grandmother knew her too.  Those are his words, not mine. 

And that's where I actually yelled at him. 

You mean Alice Faye?.

His face changed.  I can't explain it. It just had this look of utter shock and anger. And he was not happy that we, three random tourists in this haunted hotel knew so much about his family. 

Yeah, And then he just said yes. Real scary.

And after that he just turned around and continued with that entourage, strolling around saying things like ‘oh, looking nice.  Very nice.’ 

So we made our way downstairs and That ghost app started going off again.

And when we hit the ground floor, the app showed the word - Lover.

This app supposedly lets Ghosts communicate with you. And I wanna say this ghost hunting app was $4.99. And sounds cheap, but that's huge for me to buy because I'm super cheap.  You know, in the low budget part of our name. With that in mind, is this thing real? 

The next word that appeared was fine diary.

And then an employee came up to us when he sees us using that app. He said, I'm sure you've run into a spirit or two.  And then he started telling us about the ghost sightings that he's had, like the face that appears in the gift shop window every now and then. 

Yeah, it went off again and showed the word “hidden.

Yeah, this is something. 

So I asked the worker, do you really think this thing works? And he claims he was testing out the app and walking through the lobby one night on his way out and when he was about to run into a table.

He claimed the word table appeared and another worker chimed in as she was walking by, and as she walked to the front door the word goodbye appeared on her screen.

That guy who had the story about the app and running into the table started telling us about the underground tunnels in downtown Eureka Springs that we've mentioned before.  They were big with gamblers and moonshiners and whatnot, so I wanted to know, did this place still have secret passageways? He told us Yes, it does. But almost all have been sealed up after a fire in the 1960s..

A bellhop was blamed for that because he was trying to burn a lot of boxes in the fireplace in the lobby.

The guy told us that some of the hidden passages has been found during the construction work on the third floor in the 1990s, and at that moment we all looked at each other because that was around the time Lucy Carrington was here and had died.

Just as Delilah had.

The hotel manager found us then. Remember, she had been walking around with William Whiteford’s entourage earlier and try to say his name quickly, three times by the way.  

At first she was nice saying, I hope you're enjoying your stay. I take it you're learning all about the history.

Or at least you didn't say it like some, I don't know, scooby-doo character again. 

What do you mean? Like, I hope you enjoyed your stay.

Don't do that. Just stop.

And this is weird. As if Ethan’s scooby-doo villain Performance wasn't… The manager pulled me aside and apologized if William Whiteford's behavior had offended me because he'd been so curt with us. but she said his family is still big here in town, and even though they haven't owned the hotel in about 90 years, he still likes to act like they do and everybody just plays along with it. 

So my mom then thought that this was a good idea to ask, did a Lucy Carrington fall to her death a few decades ago?

You can't see it right now, but Ethan is shaking his head saying, yeah, this is what got us all in trouble And so she said it had been a tragic accident. That Lucy was looking around the section that was supposed to be off limits to guests because of the construction work, and she went out on the balcony where the updated railing wasn't complete.  So then the manager then looked around and whispered - From what I understand, Lucy Carrington was trying to solve a mystery where there may not be one. My predecessors say she got caught up in the intrigue, sneaking around at night, maybe even posing as her great Aunt Delilah. And the manager said this - Whatever she was doing, it didn't end well and honestly, I would advise you to be careful as well.  Some people, or shall I say some forces, may not want that proof to ever come out. And with that, she walked away.

Was that like a warning or something? But before I could ask or say anything else to her, another guest came running up to her yelling I just saw the ghost of Morris the cat. 

Oh, Morris.

I know somebody here wants to tell that story. 

So Morris supposedly wandered in in 1973 and stayed and stayed until he died, like 21 years later. 

And they actually started calling him the general manager. They put a tombstone outside the hotel and to this day some people say they see him  or at least they feel him moving against them throughout the hotel.

His picture and a poem is up in the lobby, and part of it says -  he chose his own hours and set  his own pace. The guests were impressed with his manners and grace. Upstairs and down, he kept everything nice. They might have had ghosts, but they never had mice.

So yeah, it's a ghost cat.

Let's get back to our story. Sorry we went off on the tangent there.  What we have now is a potential warning from the hotel manager to stay away from our little investigation. 

I've seen this before in shows. we're on to something ghost cat related or not.

So that's when we realized the dedication ceremony was starting, actually really soon outside for the pit where all the old stuff from the cancer hospital was.

Let me tell you a little bit more about that.  A few years ago, someone from the hotel was digging in this area to create a mulch pit. One of the front loaders dug up some jars and they realized everything they were digging up was from the time of the Baker Cancer Hospital in the late 1930s.  

The hotel brought in people from the University of Arkansas to come in and investigate all of the jars.

Now inside them they found things like his homemade cancer curing elixir, lots of quoty fingers there when I said that. You had tumors in it, even parts of a bone saw that may have been used in autopsies was all in that pit. 

All very morbid, yes, but everybody there was fascinated.  And there was William Whiteford standing up front with a big proud, grin on his face.

Do you guys remember what happened after the hotel manager took the microphone? 

Yeah, how can we forget that?

I just wanted to go home after all of that.

Y'all, the manager said, and I'm quoting her here -.I want to pause a moment to remember someone who's been instrumental in keeping this hotel going. We lost him earlier this week. Henry Quinlan, I hope you're still roaming those halls for decades to come.

And the kids and I look at each other and it was so funny because at that exact moment we all said - Wait, Henry’s a ghost? 

Coming up on the low budget ghost squad - what secret has Henry the Ghost been keeping? And something followed us into our room with a message to get out.

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 Pictures, videos and behind the scene stuff.