Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Erin

Manky.

Listener discretion is advised.

When Norman Baker arrived in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in 1937, he brought along promises

of a miracle cure to cancer.

His methods he claimed combined with the power of the healing springs in the area would

be potent medicine against the disease.

Ailing patients flocked to the town deep in the Ozark Mountains, seeking treatment at

the Baker Cancer Curing Hospital.

Many were removed under the cover of night, having succumbed to their illnesses, with Baker

trying to hide their deaths and obscure the fact that his treatments were no more than smoke

and mirrors.

After Baker was run out of town as a fraud and a huckster, the building, which had been

previously known as the Crescent Hotel in Spa, fell into disrepair, sitting abandoned

for years.

Eventually, it was purchased by a hotel group and revived to its former glory as a Victorian

era escape for the well to do.

In 1997, during renovations of the property, workers found a bizarre discovery.

In the woods behind the hotel, they unearthed a glass jar with a mystery object inside.

Local authorities determined that it was a cancerous tumor, preserved in alcohol.

One of the very specimens that Norman Baker had used as evidence of the efficacy of his

miracle cure.

...