When it comes to UCA alumni, none were more passionate than Bill Ott. Bill was also passionate about Eureka Springs, where he was a mainstay, spending more than 25 years as head of marketing and advertising at the Crescent and Basin Park hotels — as a member of Eureka City Council, as a minister marrying thousands of couples, as Santa, and as an all-around supporter of where he lived. Bill died this week.
We had many conversations with Bill Ott on Ozarks at Large, and there was never a question asked that he wasn't ready for — like in August 2019, when I asked if he could track the influence of something like a report about hauntings at the Crescent Hotel on Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel.
Ott: We sure can. Our first big spike was back in 2005, when the program Ghost Hunters came and caught a full-bodied apparition on their thermal imaging camera. They could not debunk it, so they referred to it as the Holy Grail of ghost hunting. When that episode aired, our ghost tour business just took an almost straight-up line, skyrocketing, adding people coming to see the hotel and to go on our ghost tours. And the same has been true with Ghost Adventures. Since 2005, we've always had strong attendance on our nightly ghost tours. Some nights we have to do two, three, four because we hold the minimum down to 25 so everybody will enjoy it more fully and can hear the tour guides. But then the exception is like in October, and especially around Halloween — we'll do 10 or 12 on a night. But yeah, after the Ghost Adventures thing just ran, it skyrocketed. And that coupled with the stories that went out about the archaeological dig of Norman Baker's bottles — those two things coupled together have just made our, yes, we've seen a definite spike upward on those who are interested and want to come and take a ghost tour.
Bill Ott speaking with Ozarks at Large in August 2019. Bill was inducted into the Arkansas Tourism Hall of Fame in 2022. Now, whether you talked with Bill on the phone, over Zoom, or in person, you were going to laugh, you were going to hear him laugh, and you were going to end the conversation feeling better than when it began. Thanks for all your time and your efforts, Bill.
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