Monday, August 8, 2016

...Haunted Eureka Springs & other haunted things...




“My dear sir,
it haunted me for the rest of my life.”
~Peter O'Toole
The name is a big confusing considering nearly everything in Eureka Springs is considered somewhat haunted. I joked about this as I was buying a glass flower in a glass artisan shop which consequently the building used to be a funeral home.

*Haunted Eureka Springs* is actually a ghost tour. One of the reasons that I selected this tour among so many is that it included a shuttle (an old bus actually that is named Shaggy), and because they responded to my inquiry prior to the trip. My mother is 75 and as much as she has a go-get-um attitude, she’s *supposed to* walk with a cane due to her past knee surgeries. At the time, I had no idea how mountainous Eureka Springs is. When I asked about walking, they said that there wasn’t much walking on the tour. 

That’s a bit relative. And, it’s fair and honest but I just didn’t ask the right questions. I should have asked how many steps or flights of steps were involved.
Mom wasn’t able to board and deboard the tour as well as she would have liked. I’m glad she recognized her limits because much of the time I was over-functioning and attempting to help her.

We learned a great deal about the history of Eureka Springs. We heard several ghost stories as well.

The highlights for me were learning about Carrie A. Nation, a radical conservative who attacked establishments that served alcohol with her hatchet. Nation moved to Eureka Springs near the end of her life and founded a home known as Hatchet Hall.
Other highlights included learning about Eureka Springs’ underground tunnels. 

Originally, the town and its main street with shops were underground. The building where Haunted Eureka Springs resides (and where the tour begins and ends) has an access panel to these old tunnels. For the most part, much of the tunnels are now sealed off.

Finally, throughout the tour we were encouraged to use pendulums to scry for answers and connect with the spiritual world. This was done in a completely tourist kind of way. We selected pendulums out of a lovely wooden box and we were told how to hold them. Presumably, there was no cleansing of the pendulum from the last tourists who held them nor was there any time to focus on asking questions so I did not think anything of my pendulum simply hanging midair. The aspect that made these pendulums different is that the crystals were taken from the chandelier in the lobby of the defunct Victoria Inn in Eureka Springs: a hotel that was haunted.  At the end of the tour we were allowed to keep or select a different pendulum as a souvenir. I opted to select another while Mom kept the pendulum that she had used. Just yesterday, I placed mine in a shadow box. Even with a card of authenticity, I do not believe that it is haunted but having watched enough horror movies, I’m not taking any chances. And, apparently, keeping haunted items behind glass is something that people do :p I’m being silly but if something does happen to me, it’s my own cynical heart that is to blame.
 
Wyatt, our ghost guide, was great! He was incredibly patient with us. He repeated his stories when my mother wasn’t able to deboard the bus, and he never hurried us along.
Spooky entrance to the registration area and challenging for Mom

6 comments:

  1. This sounds like tremendous fun! Your mother seems like such a lovely person, I do hope she had as much fun as you. :) You two look adorable in that photo!

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    1. Thanks Jade. I saw her tonight and she was telling me what she has been sharing with others about the trip so I believe she did have a good time.

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  2. Its sounds lovely you and your Mom share the same interests and you go on holiday together. It looks like it was a fun holiday. Great photo of the two of you.

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    1. If we were a Venn Diagram, our interests would meet in the middle. She's really into ghost hunting; I prefer haunted places and do not really want to try to capture anything on film or audio. She's also really into Big Foot/ Sasquatch. While we were there, one of the local movie theaters was playing "The Legend of Boggy Creek" (1972) about their local Big Foot. She would have loved to go but we found out too late.

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  3. I'm glad the guide was helpful! The pendant is lovely! I wonder if the underground tunnels ever flooded. Reminds me of out local "cat tunnels". Apparently the local cats use the storm water drains in dry weather as a tunnel system under the town!

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    1. They actually discussed how the underground tunnels were always wet and that folks would complain about the mud that people would track into shops. That was one of the many reasons the shops moved above ground.

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