The Haunted Belleview Inn (Belleview Biltmore), Belleair

For more than a century the Belleview Biltmore was the queen of Florida’s Gulf coast: a vast white wooden hotel on the bluff above Clearwater Harbor, built by railroad baron Henry Plant and visited by presidents, ballplayers and royalty. It was also famous for its ghosts. Staff told the Tampa Bay Times in 2004 about figures drifting down the halls, knocking on doors and lights switching themselves on and off.

Most of that building is gone. It closed in 2009 and was largely demolished in 2015 and 2016, but the original 1897 section was saved, turned 90 degrees, moved 375 feet onto a new foundation and reopened in December 2018 as the 35-room Belleview Inn. The question everyone asks is whether the ghosts came too. The name most often linked to the inn today is Maisie Plant, wife of Henry’s son Morton, whose name is on the inn’s cafe.

The ghosts of the Belleview Inn

Maisie Plant and her pearls

Morton Plant took over the hotel after his father Henry died in 1899 and ran it for two decades. His second wife, Maisie, is at the center of the best story told about the inn. Morton famously traded his Fifth Avenue mansion in New York to Pierre Cartier for a string of pearls for her. After her death the pearls sold for a fraction of what they had been worth, and Axios Tampa Bay suggested in 2024 that if any ghost is still at the Belleview, it is probably Maisie, with good reason to be cross about it.

Ghost writers who visited the old Belleview Biltmore before it closed describe Maisie as a figure searching the building for a lost piece of jewelry. The inn has named its all-day cafe Maisie’s Marketplace, so you can at least have breakfast with her.

Figures in the halls

In December 2004 the Tampa Bay Times reported that people at the Belleview Biltmore Resort and Spa described apparitions drifting through the hallways, knocking on doors from unseen hands and lights switching on and off. These reports came from the much larger hotel as it stood then, with hundreds of rooms in wings added between 1905 and the 1920s. Most of those wings no longer exist, but the 1897 core, the part that was saved, was where the hotel began.

Lore from the old wings

Other stories belong to parts of the hotel that were demolished. Writer M.P. Pellicer, who toured the closing hotel in 2008, recorded a legend about a bride who jumped from the balcony of Suite 4336 after her new husband died in a car accident, a busy ground-floor men’s room and shoeshine stand, and a fourth floor that once housed servants and children. None of these stories names dates or people that can be checked, and the rooms they describe are gone, so they now survive only as the old hotel’s folklore.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The original 1897 hallways: The saved heart of Henry Plant’s hotel, and the part of the building where the inn’s ghost talk centers.
• Maisie's Marketplace: The ground-floor cafe named for Maisie Plant. Open daily, early until late.
• The historic photographs: Around the inn you can see what the full hotel looked like, including the wings where most of the old ghost stories were set.

History of The Belleview Inn

Henry B. Plant, whose railroad and steamship lines opened up Florida’s west coast, built the Belleview Hotel to bring his passengers to the area, and it opened on January 15, 1897. It was a Queen Anne style resort built of wood, with electricity, a telegraph in the lobby and a resident orchestra. After Henry’s death in 1899 his son Morton ran it, painted it white, added a swimming pool and new wings in 1905 and 1914, and hired Donald Ross to design two golf courses.

After Morton’s death his heirs sold the hotel to John McEntee Bowman of the Bowman-Biltmore chain, who renamed it the Belleview-Biltmore in the 1920s and added a final wing. Bowman lost the business in the Great Depression. During World War II the Army Air Corps requisitioned the hotel to house troops from MacDill Field in Tampa. At its largest the building covered around 820,000 square feet and the original wooden building alone had been the largest wooden structure in Florida. Guests over the years included Thomas Edison, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Margaret Thatcher, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush.

By the 1990s the hotel needed a new roof and a stronger foundation, and a series of owners could not make the numbers work. It closed in 2009. Preservationists fought several demolition plans, and the hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places from 1979 until it was removed in 2017, after demolition.

In the end, JMC Communities, led by Mike Cheezum, struck a compromise. Demolition began in 2015, and about 90 percent of the hotel came down, but the original 1897 section was kept. On December 21, 2016, the 1,750-ton building was rotated 90 degrees and moved 375 feet east onto a new foundation. Restored with much of its original woodwork and decorative glass, it reopened on December 5, 2018, as the 35-room Belleview Inn and joined Historic Hotels of America the same year.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask about the history tours. The inn offers guided history tours and a self-guided audio tour with QR codes around the building.
• Look for the photos of the full hotel to see how much of the Belleview Biltmore was lost, and where the old stories were set.
• Have breakfast at Maisie’s Marketplace and raise a coffee to the woman whose pearls cost a mansion.
• Use the beach perk. Guests get beach access at the Sandpearl Resort on Clearwater Beach, less than five miles away.
• Go ghost hunting across the bay. See our guide to haunted places in Tampa Bay for more stories nearby.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Don CeSar, St. Pete Beach: the haunted Pink Palace on the Gulf, about 30 minutes south
• The Vinoy, St. Petersburg: a 1925 resort with ghost stories from visiting ballplayers
• Cuban Club, Ybor City: Tampa’s most famous haunted building
• Haunted hotels in Florida
• Haunted places in Tampa Bay

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Wikipedia: Belleview-Biltmore Hotel
• Historic Hotels of America: Belleview Inn history
• Opal Collection: Belleview Inn
• Tampa Bay Times: Biltmore's ghost of a chance (2004)
• Axios Tampa Bay: Get into spooky season with these haunted Florida hotels
• Stories of the Supernatural: Belleview Biltmore Hotel
• Atlas Obscura: Belleview Inn

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