There’s a tour you can take at the Crescent Hotel that claims you might see the walking dead – not the zombie kind, the transparent kind. We made reservations for the tour at the 1886 landmark on a recent Monday night. Fred would be joining us, driving over from his home in Fayetteville. KM and I were staying in the recently constructed Crescent Cottages, close to the hotel.
Fred was to meet us around 5:45, which would give us plenty of time for pasta and red sauce at Ermilio’s before making our tour time of 7:45. But I think he took a route through Ft. Smith or maybe Branson, so we found ourselves shoveling in the tasty meal faster than I would’ve liked.
We got to the Crescent, and Fred and I looked for a bathroom. I got to the men’s room just ahead of him, and since there was no one around, he decided to hop in the ladies room, asking KM to guard the door.
Inside the restroom, I slammed my palm on the wall that separated the men’s from the women’s – twice, very hard. When we came out Fred’s eyes were opened wide. He looked agitated. “Did you hear that?” He nervously asked.
“I didn’t hear anything.” This was going to be fun.
We proceeded to the fourth floor for a quick orientation from our lovely guide, Elvira (not really her name, but I’m drawing a blank). There were 13 of us, which, I wondered, if the ghosts had planned.
The first stop was where a little girl had fallen down the stairwell to her death on the basement floor. A lady in the tour asked the little girl’s name. Our guide paused before saying, “Her family has asked that her name not be revealed.”
Fred stood right in front of me, and I said, “Her name was Elizabeth.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, wide-eyed again.
“It just came to me.”
We moved on, into one of the more haunted rooms, and most of us took out our cell phones for some photos, hoping Siri and her camera could capture something our naked eyes could not. I dropped my phone and Elvira snapped her gaze in my direction. “Did you do that or did something pull it out of your hands?” Everyone looked at me. How could I resist. “I didn’t do it.”
Fred’s eyes were bigger than ever now. KM, standing next to him, glared at me. I shrugged and grinned but she just shook her pretty head.
A woman, probably sensing I was a portal to the fifth dimension, came over to me, and showed me a photo.
“Look here,” she whispered. “See that figure there on the wall with the aura of light around her?”
“Why, yes, I do,” I said. “That’s amazing!” I just didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d snapped her own reflection in the mirror.
We ended the tour in the basement and the dark damp room that had once been used as a morgue.
“You may not want to go in there if you are claustrophobic and scared of the dark,” Elvira warned us as everyone but me shuffled in.
“You’re not going?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m claustrophobic and scared of the dark.”
Fred got back in his car, a little shaky, and headed back to Fayetteville. When he arrived three hours later, he realized he didn’t have his reading glasses. He texted me to check in my car for them, which I did, finding them in the back seat.
As I walked back through the moonlight toward our cottage, I looked back at the old stone hotel, wondering if it had really been Fred who had taken off his glasses, or instead the small ageless hands of the little dead girl who could have been named Elizabeth.