The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables wasn’t always a hotel.
He built it in 1926. His name is George Merrick, and he is known as the father of Coral Gables.
It was the biggest pool in the world at the time, so the hotel was the site of fancy fashion shows, galas, golf tournaments, and water shows.
There was a party on the 13th floor of the hotel in 1929 that was very loud. One thug shot and killed Thomas “Fatty” Walsh. Many ghost stories have grown up around that murder over the years.
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Bessy Skipp in her home in Coral Gables. Skipp and her friends used to sneak into the empty Biltmore Hotel when they were kids.
After World War II, the Biltmore was turned into a military hospital by the federal government. It stayed a hospital for soldiers after the war was over. It was the first home of the University of Miami in 1952.
After the hospital closed in 1968, the Biltmore was left empty. That’s when kids from the neighbourhood started getting in.
All the kids in Coral Gables, like Betsy Skipp, who grew up there, would always say that the Biltmore must have ghosts. She and her friends would sneak into the house. “You’d sneak out of the house and we all had flashlights.”
The City of Coral Gables hired a security guard because so many kids were breaking into the closed building.
Also, Kim Dunn-Zocco grew up in Coral Gables and would sneak into the empty building. It was part of the fun to sneak past the guard, who they called “The Greenie” because of his green golf cart.
“Once you got in, that’s when it started to get a little creepy and quiet and creaky,” tells Zocco.
In 1988, Kathy Bolduc made “The Biltmore’s Strange Guest List” as her final project for a University of Miami class. Check it out!
That her friends were most afraid of was seeing a dead body inside the Biltmore because it had been a hospital for veterans and a medical school. Her friend said he saw a cut limb one time.
“I remember we just ripped it out of there and hauled ourselves all the way home.”
Coral Gables spent $55 million to fix up the Biltmore in 1983. The hotel was brought back to life and reopened in 1987. It took ten years for the Biltmore to be added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Linda Spitzer posts a picture of herself in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel telling ghost tales.
The ghost stories didn’t stop, though. Since 1994, Linda Spitzer has told ghost stories in the lobby of the Biltmore every Thursday night. She worked there for ten years before moving to Lake Worth.
Spitzer would dress in sun hats that made people think of the Roaring Twenties. “The guests loved it,” she says. “I would tell them I’m here from 7 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. and it would drag on until 8 p.m.”
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She did some study before she told the stories, but she says the best ideas came from the people who stayed at the hotel.
The Biltmore is not at all the scary place that scared Coral Gables kids in the past.
Zocco has had to deal with it all his life. When it was a hospital, her husband’s uncle was a veteran patient. Her father went to medical school while a student at the University of Miami. She and her sister both worked at the hotel. Now she goes there with her family for lunch.
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