Overview
The Biltmore Hotel opened in 1926 in Coral Gables, Florida, a Mediterranean Revival palace with a tower modelled on Seville's Giralda and one of the largest hotel pools in the country, drawing Jazz Age high society, royalty and, in legend, figures such as Al Capone. Its most famous dark chapter came in 1929, when gangster Thomas 'Fats' Walsh was shot dead during a gambling dispute on the thirteenth floor. During the Second World War the hotel was converted into the Army's Pratt General Hospital, and it later stood largely abandoned for years before a celebrated restoration returned it to luxury; it is now a National Historic Landmark. Its haunted reputation draws on all of that layered past, with guests and staff over the years describing a presence and figures on the thirteenth floor, a woman in white, elevators behaving oddly and echoes attributed in lore to its hospital era. These accounts should be presented as guest reports and legend rather than proven phenomena, and the real deaths in its history handled with care. Current room and booking details should be confirmed from the official site before publishing.