EUREKA SPRINGS — EUREKA SPRINGS - Ghosts are a way of life in this resort town.

Residents co-exist with them, and tourists come to see them.

Mayor Dani Joy said she has lived in three houses in Eureka Springs, and all had ghosts.

In a town famous for its contentious politics, four of the five City Council members interviewed for this story agree with the mayoron this issue. They believe in ghosts, too.

Eureka Springs has six aldermen. Alderman Patrick Brammer couldn’t be reached for comment.

Joy said her ghosts are benevolent for the most part, adding that the most mischievous thing one of them has done is fling a coffee cup out of a kitchen cabinet, causing it to shatter against the wall.

“It’s not blood and guts and gore,” Joy said. “It’s notHollywood. ... They’re more subtle than that.”

Joy has learned to live with her ghosts.

“I learned very quickly that you just talk to them,” she said. “They were here first.”

Joy said her first home inEureka Springs had three ghosts. After doing a little research, she said the ghosts appeared to be spirits of an adult couple who had lived in the house,and a child who was their maid’s daughter. The child had died in the house, Joy said.

“She would take things from my girls - ribbons, bows, girl stuff - and it would turn up in the basement,” said Joy, who has two daughters. “Turns out, the basement is where she lived with her mother. It’s like having another kid in the house.”

Joy said the ghost of a woman sometimes tucked her into bed at night.

“At night, you’d feel somebody cover you up and pat you on the back like a mother would do,” Joy said.

Joy’s second Eureka Springs home had served as an orphanage.

“You can stand in the bathroom, and out of the corner of your eye, you can see this nun coming up the stairs and feel this cool blast of air when she got to the top, which was kind of nice in the summer,” Joy said.

Besides the nun, the mayor said, spirits of some of the orphan children also seem to haunt the house.

“I think that’s what’s messing around in the kitchen throwing coffee cups,” she said.

In the house where Joy lives now, she said the faint shadow of a man would move across the room to her son’s cradle when he was a baby. The man would put his hands against the side of the cradle and look over at the sleeping boy.

Joy said she did some research and learned a man who had eight children had once lived in the house.

“I never felt threatened,” she said. “Having another child in the house would only be normal to him. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

From 1999 to 2005, Joy helped run Eureka Springs Ghost Tours. She has been mayor for the past four years but isn’t running for re-election on Nov. 2.

Butch Berry, a preservation architect, is among the four aldermen who said they also believe in ghosts.

“Absolutely, especially in Eureka,” he said. “I believe in spirits - let’s put it that way. Just running around in these old buildings, I’ve just had some funny feelings. I’ve never had any visuals or anything like that. It’s just a sense.”

Alderman Joyce Zeller also used the word “absolutely.”

Zeller said ghosts were an important part of the folklore of Lancaster County, Pa., where she was raised.

“My paternal grandmother was a pow-wow woman, which is a folk healer who knows how to put spells on and take spells off to cure ills,” said Zeller, quick to note that a “pow-wow woman” is not a witch.

“That folklore was part of my growing up,” said Zeller, who is running for mayor this year. “My mother felt that she was bewitched at one time and had to go to a man who was a pow-wow healer.”

Zeller said she doesn’t recall ever seeing a ghost.

“I was told by my mother that when I was a child, I very frequently saw the ghost of a child who had died in the apartment where we lived, but I don’t remember that,” Zeller said.

When asked if she believes in ghosts, alderman Mickey Schneider said, “Hell yes!”

Schneider said that years ago, she and several other people went into an abandoned house in Beaver that had served as a hospital during the Civil War. She said they could hear moans and tapping on the walls.

“I’m a very firm believer in ghosts,” Schneider said. “There are way too many stories of encounters not to believe. It’s just one of those things. You can’t scientifically prove them, but you know something is there.”

Beverly Blankenship, another mayoral candidate, said she’s never seen a ghost, but she believes in them, too.

“I guess I’d say yes, I do believe in ghosts,” Blankenship said. “I don’t have any that I know of, but I do believe in them.”

James DeVito was the lone councilman interviewed for this story who said he doesn’t believe in ghosts.

“It might be a good public relations ploy to get people into town, especially this time of year,” he said.

FRIGHTENING APPEAL

Tourists travel from across the country to experience the ghosts of Eureka Springs.

The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa often makes top-10 lists of the most haunted hotels in the country.

About six years ago, Crescent management began calling it “America’s most haunted resort hotel,” said Jack Moyer, vice president of operations and development at the hotel.

“It seems like the Crescent Hotel is a ghost hotel,” said Bill Ott, a spokesman for the hotel. “We’re a mountaintop resort that happens to have ghosts.”

Last January, the 124-yearold hotel began offering nightly ghost tours. Previous tours of the hotel, which served as a cancer hospital in the 1930s, had been conducted by Eureka Springs Ghost Tours.

“We’ve never had a macabre-type report,” said Ott. “Everything has been mischievous. Our ghosts are ‘Casperesque,’” referring to the cartoon character.

Beth Shibley of Burgaw,N.C., disagrees.

Shibley told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in March that she stayed in the Crescent Hotel last year with her mother, Lou Ann Moles, wife of Harrison Mayor Pat Moles.

During the night, Shibley said something pinned her to the bed, making her feel as if she was suffocating. She awoke, then went back to sleep. Later that night, Shibley said she felt something grab her ankles and pull her under the covers.

“These manifestations felt demonic,” Shibley told the newspaper.

In October, the Crescent added six more daily ghost tours to accommodate all the visitors who wanted to see an apparition on Halloween weekend.

Ott said 10 tours were offered for each night for the final weekend of October, including tonight.

When Marty and Elise Roenigk bought the hotel in 1997, they began marketing the many ghosts that reportedly roam the halls and dance in the large dining room. Previous owners had played down the supernatural connection, thinking it might hurt business, Ott said.

Hotels have been popular destinations for ghost hunters, particularly since Stephen King wrote The Shining, which was published in 1977 and released as a movie in 1980. The horror novel was set in a haunted hotel in Colorado. Hotel ghost tours now are conducted in several cities around the country.

Ott said the Crescent Hotel’s ghosts have been featured in People magazine, USA Today and on television shows such as Ghost Hunters on the SyFy cable channel.

The Crescent has a website devoted to its ghosts: americasmosthauntedhotel.com.

“A year has not gone by in the last 10 years when we have not gotten international exposure on our paranormal stuff,” Ott said.

He said ghost tours also are conducted at the 1905 Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs. Elise Roenigk owns the Crescent and Basin Park hotels. The Basin Park Hotel appears to be haunted, too, Ott said.

Ghost tours at the Crescent cost $18 for adults and $7 for children under 12. Tours at the Basin Park cost $15 for adults and $7 for children under 9.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 17 on 10/31/2010