Rendering Interiors of the Crescent Hotel of the 1930's

These images are preliminary drawings I made of interiors of the hotel as it was during the Baker years. A great deal of research is involved in faithfully representing this late nineteen thirties converted hospital. Because of the heinous events that took place between these two years, Baker saw to it that there was not much photographic documentation of the buildings interiors. However, through much persistence, I've been able to locate the necessary information and visual references from town historians, old newspapers, the library, historical society and the hotel itself to faithfully tell this very dark chapter of Arkansas history in a graphic novel format.

Documentary Graphic Novel In Development

Here are a few of Sean FItzgibbon's sample drawings and under paintings for this recent documentary style graphic novel. The book chronicles the Norman Baker years of the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. A great deal of research has gone into the production of this book.

The Crescent Hotel first opened its doors in 1886. The hotel closed due to financial difficulties. After reopening as a school and shutting down, it was purchased in 1937 by Dr. Norman Baker and opened as a cancer hospital and health resort.

Dr. Baker had the cure for cancer, but after a short time it became evident that only the new patients were seen walking the hospital grounds. Little did the patients know, their savior Dr. Norman Baker was not a doctor at all.

Though the Crescent Hotel is known to harbor ghosts of nurses pushing wheel chairs and sickly patients walking the halls at night, nothing in its 123-year history is more eerie and bizarre than the events that took place between the years 1938 and 1939.

Graphic Content

In October of 2010 Sean Fitzgibbon gave a visual presentation at the Hot Springs AR Documentary Film Festival October 24th at 1pm. He explained the process of creating a documentary graphic novel from research, story development, panel layout/storyboarding, media choice, and isolating key moments to result in an interesting visual narrative. He also discussed other documentary graphic novels and their relationship to film.

He feature progress on the recent documentary graphic novelWhat Follows is True that chronicles the darkest years of the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, AR.  The presentation took place at the historic Malco Theater Complex in historic downtown Hot Springs. 


The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival is one of the first and oldest documentary film festivals in the world (second only to Amsterdam). In 2008, they had over 1,000 film entries, 400 of them representing 90 foreign countries. 

What Follows Is True

What Follows Is True: Crescent: The Baker Years is a fully painted graphic novel that chronicles the Norman Baker years (1938-1939), the darkest years of the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  Though the hotel is known to harbor ghosts of nurses pushing wheel chairs and sickly patients walking the halls at night, nothing in its 123 year history is more horrifying than the events that took place between these two years.  


We first became interested in the story after visiting the Crescent Hotel and going on their evening ghost tour.  The tour guide discussed the sightings that have made the hotel famous, but the most interesting story to us was not the ghost stories, rather the story of the doctor that turned the hotel into a cancer clinic.  


We decided to take on the project and found every item on Norman Baker and the Crescent we could get our hands on.  After exhausting the library of its resources, we visited the historical society and copied old photos and interviewed as many people as we could find that had ties to the hotel and Baker.    We began putting a script together using all the collected interviews photos and other research.  Storyboards were often drawn while scripting the book.  A portion of the story is a recreation of historical events based off our interviews, book and old newspaper research.  We strive for accuracy so this is difficult because the hotel and the town itself looked somewhat different than it does today.