Haunted Hotels in Eureka Springs: 5 Places to Stay With Ghost Stories
Eureka Springs is home to the 1886 Crescent, often called America’s most haunted hotel, and a cluster of Victorian hotels on Spring Street with ghost stories of their own. These are the five you can book, and the rooms to ask for.
This little Ozark spa town grew up in the late 1800s around its healing springs, and its stone hotels still cling to the hillsides much as they did then. Two of them, the 1886 Crescent Hotel and its sister the 1905 Basin Park Hotel, run their own ghost tours and investigations and have some of the best-documented ghost stories in the South. Down on Spring Street, the Palace Hotel & Bath House and the New Orleans Hotel have smaller, quieter legends, and we have been honest about how thin those are. For a fifth stay we have added the Inn at Carnall Hall in Fayetteville, about an hour’s drive away. Every hotel here is open to guests, and each story is told as guests, staff and local guides tell it. For the rest of the state, see our guide to haunted hotels in Arkansas.
$$ · $150 to $300Haunted room bookableGhost tours or eventsHotel embraces its ghosts
Address 75 Prospect Avenue, Eureka Springs, AR 72632
Where to look Room 218, Room 419, the basement morgue, the Crystal Dining Room and the third floor
Reported ghosts Michael the stonemason, Theodora, Norman Baker and a nurse with a gurney
Booking the haunted room Ask for Room 218 (Michael) or Room 419 (Theodora) when you book by phone; they are in demand, especially around Halloween.
The Crescent opened in 1886 as a luxury resort on a mountaintop above Eureka Springs, then spent decades as a college for young women before Norman Baker, a radio huckster with no medical training, turned it into a cancer “hospital” in 1937. Baker went to federal prison for mail fraud in 1940, and the basement morgue from his era is still part of the hotel’s nightly ghost tour.
No hotel in the South talks about its ghosts more openly. Staff say they have heard thousands of guest reports. Room 218 belongs to Michael, said to be an Irish stonemason who fell during construction; Room 419 to Theodora, linked to Baker’s clinic. Guests also describe a nurse pushing a gurney, Baker himself in the lobby and Victorian dancers in the Crystal Dining Room.
Haunted Rooms tip: Book the ghost tour that ends in the morgue for your first evening, then ask for Room 218 or 419 when you reserve; both go fast in October.
$$ · $150 to $300Ghost tours or eventsHotel embraces its ghosts
Address 12 Spring Street, Eureka Springs, AR 72632
Where to look The third and fourth floors, the stairwells, the Barefoot Ballroom and the lower levels cut into the bluff
Reported ghosts A tall cowboy, a giggling little girl and a woman in Victorian dress
The Basin Park opened on July 1, 1905, on the site of the Perry House, Eureka Springs’ first big hotel, beside the town’s famous Basin Spring. It is built straight up against a limestone bluff, so several floors open onto ground level, and its sixth-floor Barefoot Ballroom hosted the Barefoot Ball from 1948 for more than thirty years. Marty and Elise Roenigk bought it in 1997, the same year they bought the Crescent.
Its ghost stories are told by guests and the town’s tour guides: a tall man in cowboy boots and a wide hat in the third- and fourth-floor halls, a little girl giggling in empty stairwells, and a woman in Victorian dress at the edge of the ballroom floor. The hotel runs its own 90-minute paranormal investigation, which ends in an underground speakeasy cave.
Haunted Rooms tip: Book the hotel’s paranormal investigation, then walk up the hill to the Crescent for its morgue tour; together they make the best haunted weekend in Arkansas.
Address 465 Arkansas Avenue, Fayetteville, AR 72701
Where to look Guest room beds and the upper corridors
Reported ghosts Ella Carnall, said to appear as a woman in a ball gown
Carnall Hall was the University of Arkansas’s first women’s residence hall, completed in 1906 and named for Ella Carnall, an early alumna and associate professor of English and modern languages who died in 1894, aged 32. It housed women until 1967, then a fraternity, offices and classrooms. By 1991 it was closed and slated for removal, but a campaign saved it and it reopened in 2003 as a hotel with a restaurant named for Ella.
Fayetteville’s own visitor bureau tells the ghost story: Ella’s spirit is said to appear inside the building as a woman in a ball gown without a head or feet. Guests and staff also describe someone seeming to sit on an empty bed, lights switching themselves on and off, and objects moving.
Haunted Rooms tip: Eat at Ella’s Table, the restaurant named for the ghost, then walk the Old Main lawn after dark.
Address 135 Spring Street, Eureka Springs, AR 72632
Where to look Room 5 and the upstairs hall in local lore, and the bath house below the hotel
Reported ghosts A brothel madame, a murdered working woman and a child, all from local lore
The Palace is the limestone castle on Spring Street, finished in 1901 with electric lights, steam heat in every room and an elevator, and it is still the only one of Eureka Springs’ old bath houses in business. The baths sit three floors below the hotel, cut into the hillside, and the eight Victorian suites upstairs have whirlpool tubs for two. Its vertical neon sign, said to date from the 1940s, is one of the most photographed in town.
The Palace does not promote ghosts, and its stories are thin but persistent. Local lore says the building was once a brothel. One guest account tells of a loud bang on a couple’s door with nobody outside, blamed on the old madame; a 2025 reader comment on a travel blog claims a working woman was murdered in Room 5 and that a child is the most active spirit in the building. No record backs these up, so treat them as town legend.
Haunted Rooms tip: Book a soak in the bath house for the evening you arrive, then join the walking ghost tour that starts at the Basin Park Hotel a few doors down Spring Street.
Address 63 Spring Street, Eureka Springs, AR 72632
Where to look The guest floors above the lobby and the four-story staircase
Reported ghosts Nineteenth-century travelers said to linger, and an unseen guest at the foot of the bed
The New Orleans Hotel opened in 1892 as the Wadsworth, a 50-room hotel with steam heat and electric lights on the curve of Spring Street. It became the Hotel Allred in 1915, was later the Springs Hotel and has carried its French Quarter name since 1954. Built into the hillside, it stands four stories at the front and six at the back, with wrought-iron balconies, a four-story staircase and a bar, The Quarter on Spring, below the lobby.
The hotel itself says nothing about ghosts, but it is a stop on the downtown ghost walk, where guides say weary travelers from the nineteenth century still roam its halls. One guest’s published account describes being woken at 2 a.m. by the weight of someone sitting on the end of the bed in Room 106 while a friend heard the bathroom tap run. These are guest stories, not records, so it rates as a lightly haunted stay.
Haunted Rooms tip: Ask for a room with a Spring Street balcony; you can watch the evening ghost walks pass below, and the Basin Park and Crescent are a short walk and shuttle ride away.
About this guide: Eureka Springs has two hotels with well-documented ghost stories, the Crescent and the Basin Park. The Palace and New Orleans Hotel stories rest on a few guest accounts and ghost walk tales, and we have rated them accordingly. We left out other Spring Street hotels, such as the Grand Central, because we could not find their ghost stories in any published source.
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We collect first-hand accounts from guests and add the best ones to our guides, with your first name and the date of your stay. We read every story before it’s published.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most haunted hotel in Eureka Springs?
The 1886 Crescent Hotel, often called America’s most haunted hotel. Guests tie Room 218 to Michael, a stonemason said to have died during construction, and Room 419 to Theodora, linked to Norman Baker’s 1930s cancer clinic, and the nightly ghost tour ends in Baker’s old morgue.
Can you stay in Room 218 at the Crescent Hotel?
Yes. It is a regular guest room. Call the hotel to request it, and book early for October, when it sells out first.
Is the Basin Park Hotel haunted?
Guests and tour guides describe a tall cowboy in the third- and fourth-floor halls, a little girl giggling on the stairs and a woman in Victorian dress near the Barefoot Ballroom. The hotel runs its own paranormal investigation, and the town’s walking ghost tour starts there.
Which Eureka Springs hotels have ghost tours?
The Crescent runs several ghost tours a night, and the Basin Park runs its own paranormal investigation. A walking ghost tour of Spring Street starts at the Basin Park and passes the Palace and the New Orleans Hotel.
Are the Palace Hotel and New Orleans Hotel haunted?
Both have small reputations rather than famous ghosts. The Palace is said to be visited by a madame from its rumored brothel days, and ghost walk guides say nineteenth-century travelers still roam the New Orleans Hotel. Neither hotel promotes the stories.
When is the best time for a haunted stay in Eureka Springs?
October is the busiest and most atmospheric month, with extra ghost tours, but it books up months ahead. Late autumn and winter weekdays are quieter and cheaper, and the tours run all year.
Does Haunted Rooms run ghost hunts in Eureka Springs?
Not at the moment. Our nearest current events are overnight ghost hunts at the Thomas House Hotel in Tennessee and the Hotel Metropolitan in Kentucky; see Arkansas ghost hunts for updates.
Sources and how we research
Every hotel in this guide is checked against the hotel’s own website, historic register listings and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as the hotels, guests and local historians tell them; we note where a story can’t be confirmed. Read how we rate haunted hotels.
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About the authors
The Haunted Rooms Team runs public ghost hunts and overnight investigations at historic venues across the United States. We research every hotel in our guides using hotel histories, local archives, news coverage and the accounts of guests and staff, and we review each guide regularly so you are not booking a hotel that has closed or changed its name. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.
Booking links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It never affects which hotels we include or how we score them.
