Most Haunted Place in America: Biltmore Estate
There are houses, there are manors, and there are mansions. And then, there is the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. Since its completion, with its 175,000 square feet and 250 rooms, it has been the largest privately-owned home in the United States. It is as opulent and majestic a building as has ever been called a home.
The house was constructed between 1888 and 1895 on 125,000 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina by George Washington Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt has made many trips to the are with his mother and fell in love with the scenery and climate, and decided to build a summer home of his own there. Biltmore was built to be self-sufficient, with its own livestock and poultry farms, dairy, and the first forestry education program in the United States, the Biltmore Forest School. The grounds even had a church and small village, populated by employees.
George Vanderbilt wound up devoting all of his attention to his estate – it is said that the construction and upkeep of his mountain hideaway wiped out much of his inheritance. After eventually becoming a widow, Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt sold 85,000 acres of the land to the federal government, which would become the backbone of what is now the Pisgah National Forest. Today, the Biltmore Estate is owned by The Biltmore Company, which is headed by George Vanderbilt’s grandson William A.V. Cecil, II. It is an internationally-known tourist destination with tours of the house and gardens, and is home to the award-winning Biltmore Winery.
Finding a ghost story about a house the size of the Biltmore Estate is like finding a rock in a garden, but finding a ghost there must be like finding a needle in a haystack. Having so many different rooms, with so much square footage, something could go bump in the night in one wing with the others never hearing about it. Of course there are the requisite disembodied voices, phantom smells, footsteps in unattended rooms, and the like. With all of the employees and guests that have passed through the doors of the place, it would be amazing if there weren’t a few residual hauntings in each wing.
The main ghost story about Biltmore Estate concerns George and Edith Vanderbilt, who loved their home so much that they haven’t left, even in death. In 1914 George Vanderbilt died from complications of an appendectomy, and Edith was devastated. She was known to sit by the marble fireplace in the library, holding full conversations with George after his death. People still report hearing her voice there from time to time. The apparition of George himself has been seen in the Billiard Room and the second floor Oak Sitting Room usually reading and smoking his pipe.
While those events may be strange to the untrained eye, they are not really frightening. That isn’t the case with the Pool Room. At times you can hear the sounds of splashing and swimming, even though no one is present. This is sometimes accompanied by maniacal laughter from an unseen source in the drain at the bottom of the pool. There have also been reports of a lady in black floating just below the water’s surface.
There is a saying in the mountains of Western North Carolina that once you visit here, a part of you will never leave. For George and Edith Vanderbilt that was certainly true. Sometimes we leave all that we love behind, but sometimes we remain a part of it forever.
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- The Chatham Manor’s Lady in White
- The Haunting’s at Woodlawn Plantation
14 comments ↓
hi, i was at the biltmore estate a ,few years back. i do see ghost, if they are there. your place is haunted. the little man. approx 3.5 to 4 foot tall appeared in front of me. he had red hair. he causes no one any harm. he is a happy person and does like chaos. enjoy
I ddnt see anything paronormal.. But my friend Brooke said she saw a woman in labor!!!
the bilmore estate is not haunted. I worked inside that house for years, and ive been in every inch of it. I’ve pulled all nighters plenty of times and yeah nothing is in that house everything you read about it is bull bull bull. Just because its a big old house doesnt mean it has ghost. Don’t get me wrong i believe in ghost, but not in that house i can tell you that for a fact.
If there is NOTHING there ummyeah… Then please by all means, explain to my husband and I both… Just WHY when we were standing side by side in the breakfast room of the Biltmore home about this issue….
WHY would GV’s mother’s painted portrait change before our very eyes from a sweet innocent looking lady… To an “ANGRY LOOKING WOMAN” GLARING at the both of us as if to say “GET OUT OF HERE”… And then suddenly morph back to the sweet looking motherly lady all within seconds before our eyes!!!????? We BOTH saw it at the same time! True it is as if the eyes of those painted portraits follow you around that room too. That is NOT as frightening to someone as their whole face changing in the blink of an eye! One person I would question… But TWO people?!!!! We would gladly like for you to explain this.
In closing,… You simply CANNOT tell me there is NOTHING strange in that house! You cannot tell me the others who work there haven’t heard this issue from others either.
We loved the Biltmore home and plan to return. We are season pass-holders. We spent a whole week there on vacation in Sept. 2010.
Before I knew about the hauntings, I went there with my family when I was 12 and saw somebody in the pool dressed in old clothes, I got cold and had goosebumps that wouldn’t go away until e left the pool room.
hi:
I have been in this house also i havent seen nor heard anything but i have feelt very werid in one part on the 3rd floor i couldnt explane the feeling but it was a feeling of get out!! but i was there with my aunt tara and her boyfriend jim and it was pretty and i hope to go back to that house with my mom and dad but i love ghost and i thought it was very cool that i got that feeling out of no where but i wish i would of seen something or heard!!! i hope i do if i ever go back so i do beleave that there is something in that house but only comes out when wanting to
I was there once and i had a very strange feeling as soon as i entered the mansion, i never saw anything strange, i was to busy awying everything, but the feelin never left me. Weird. We were with a group so thing differ if you are with a group, i’d like to go there at nite just to see or listen, awesome place is all i can say, I Loved It, plan to go back, TEXAS!!
okay first George didn’t smoke. or they didn’t tell us he did on the tour. so how can people see him smoking? now i understand the reading a book part, because he LOVED to read and learn. but seriously? another thing. how could you see a lady in black under the water’s surface in the pool? there isn’t any water in the pool! i’m pretty sure they can’t anymore because of all the cracks! please, someone explain to me this not very solid investigation of the so called ‘haunting’ i’m not saying i don’t believe in ghosts it’s just this isn’t a very solid theory. and yes i’ve been to the actual estate. just a few weeks ago actually. but i had never heard or even thought about it being haunted until a friend of mine just told me. i even went on the butler’s tour (very interesting i would recommend it for your next visit) and still felt nothing.
Hi I went to the estate and when I took a picture It looked like a man standing in front Of the mansion with a beard.. But I think it was George Vanderbilt…oh yeah when I went in the library o heard a noise coming from the couch in front of the fire Place it was weird I told my mom and she didn’t believe me. Then I went to edith’s room and I looked down in her closet and I saw her in front of the door i was freaking out and I tugged on my moms shirt and she looked and she was gone….
We just left that beautiful home and believe me when I say there is no entity in or on that property. I should know I live with one and you caint get rid of them till there ready to leave. How there is no ghosts on that property I will never know because my entity would love it………..
I was there the Thursday before the 4th of July 2011. I loved the Biltmore house and would love to go back. But as we were walking through the “dungun” right before the Halloween room I felt reallly cold like I’ve never before and then as I entered the Halloween Room that really freaked me out because of the way it was decorated. But another part of the house was when we were walking in the hallway with all of the pictures of the random people that kinda freaked me out. But anybody who doesn’t believe there isn’t anything roming around in that place doesn’t know the real feeling. As though I didn’t see anything I did feel like there was something in there. So that was my exprience with the Biltmore Estate
We went to the Christmas candle light tour. It was wonderful and beautiful. No ghosts no feeling. Just wonderful!
While agreeing with literally every statement, I can admitt that I have been to the candlelight tour as well as the roof top and behind the scenes/backstage/whatever tour. I did get a feeling of something being off but no more than I do in my own house. The place is HUGE and footsteps will travel. Someone is always in the estate and there will always be noises traveling everywhere. There is no water in the pool and hasn’t been for some time. If anyone were to even shuffle their shoe or scuff it when entering the pool room, the noises would bounce around the pool sides and tiles walls creating a laughter effect. And seeing a face change, I unfortunately have a hard time understanding but then again I did not see it. I have seen a candle go out for a minute on its own and light again in my own home but when we see something, our mind likes to disfigure it and make it out to be something it is not. How your wife and you both saw something that I can’t be sure if it was there, it’s like two people mistaking what someone said for something else. It might have been just a coincidence or actually happened. Regardless people go in thinking it is haunted and will make anything unusual seem more of a paranormal activity than it is. Go in with an open mind and see if you still get odd feelings or see things that aren’t there. I mistook my cat for a human head before and screamed. Anything can become anything that your mind wants it to be. You just don’t know what your mind has done.
I went to this home when I was a girl and never once did I feel uneasy nor did I see any one from the early days.
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