Haunted hotel guide · Coral Gables, Miami, Florida

The Haunted Biltmore Hotel, Miami (Coral Gables)

A 1926 palace with a Spanish bell tower, an unsolved gangland murder on the 13th floor and a century of elevator stories. This is the complete guide to Miami’s most haunted hotel.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate hotels

4.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1926Year opened

Everglades SuiteMost requested haunted room

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables has been called Miami’s most haunted building for as long as anyone in the city can remember. Its most famous guest never checked out: Thomas “Fatty” Walsh, a New York gangster shot dead at an illegal casino in the tower suite in March 1929. Nobody was ever convicted, and staff and guests have blamed him ever since for elevators that rise to the 13th floor on their own, doors that open for waiters carrying trays and a sudden smell of cigar smoke.

Walsh is not the only story. The hotel spent a quarter of a century as a military and veterans’ hospital, then stood empty for almost twenty years while neighborhood kids, police and psychics poked around inside. A lady in white, a waltzing couple and soldiers in wartime uniform all belong to that era. For about ten years the hotel even paid a storyteller to tell these tales by the lobby fireplace every Thursday night. Below you will find each ghost, the rooms where people look for them, the real history and how to book the tower suite yourself.

The ghosts of the Biltmore Hotel

Thomas "Fatty" Walsh, the gangster on the 13th floor

Walsh, also written “Fats” or “Fat” Walsh, was a heavyset New York mobster and a former bodyguard of the gambler Arnold Rothstein. He arrived in Miami in early 1929 and became a partner in a speakeasy and casino run by a gambler named Edward Wilson in the tower suite at the top of the Biltmore. In the early hours of March 7, 1929, after an argument that most accounts tie to an unpaid gambling debt, Wilson shot Walsh in front of the suite’s fireplace. Another gangster, Arthur “Chick” Clark, was wounded. Wilson vanished, a warrant came to nothing and the murder was never solved.

His ghost is the one the staff talk about. The best-known stories say he opens the doors for servers carrying trays, plays with the lights, moves lampshades and writes on steamed-up mirrors. He is said to be fond of the tower elevators in particular: guests report pressing the button for their own floor and riding up to the 13th instead, with the doors standing open onto an empty landing. Engineers have checked the elevators many times without finding a fault, at least in the version told on ghost tours.

The couple and the elevator

The most retold Biltmore story concerns a married couple heading for the fourth floor. The elevator carried them past it to the 13th, where the doors opened and stayed open. The wife stepped out to look around, and the doors closed behind her and the car dropped back down with her husband inside. When he came back up with staff they found her shaken in the dark suite, saying she had heard people talking and laughing in the shadows and smelled cigar smoke. Nobody has ever named the couple, so treat it as the hotel’s best campfire tale rather than a documented event.

The lady in white

Guests have described a woman in a long white gown who appears in their rooms or races toward a balcony and disappears. Local legend says she fell or jumped from the tower, though no record of who she was has ever been produced, and the reason for her fall changes with every teller. A separate story, of unknown origin, describes a woman wandering the grounds searching for her child.

The waltzing couple and the piano player

The Biltmore was built for parties, and some of the guests apparently stayed on. Staff have described a couple in 1920s evening dress waltzing across a ballroom floor before fading away, and a man in a top hat playing the piano. These are the gentlest of the hotel’s ghosts and fit its Jazz Age heyday of gala balls and fashion shows.

Soldiers and patients from the hospital years

From 1942 to 1968 the Biltmore was a military hospital and then a veterans’ hospital, and many patients died in the building. Guests and staff tell of figures in World War II uniforms in the corridors, and when the building stood empty in the 1970s people on the golf course reported lights moving behind sealed windows, crashing sounds and music. In the summer of 1979 police searched the building for suspected drug dealers, found no one, and their dogs reportedly refused to stay inside.

Psychics, seances and a president's television

The empty hotel attracted ghost hunters early. In 1978 psychics walking the 13th floor and the elevator lobby said they sensed many presences, and a tape recorder picked up a loud tapping nobody had heard. A group in 1979 recorded heavy breathing and a sigh. In October 1986, just before the first reopening, mediums held a seance in the hotel; one said she heard a tapping cane, “like maybe a blind man.” A later favorite says President Bill Clinton’s television in the tower suite kept failing during a 1994 stay, which his aides could not explain. It is a fun story, but a faulty television is not much evidence.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The Everglades Suite (13th floor): The heart of the haunting. This two-story suite fills the top of the tower, with hand-painted ceilings showing scenes of the Everglades and views over all of Coral Gables. It is where Wilson’s casino operated and where Walsh died; some accounts place the shooting on the 14th floor because the suite spans both levels. Locals still call it the Al Capone Suite. Access is limited to staff and the guests staying in it.
• The tower elevators: Where most modern reports begin: elevators skipping your floor and opening on 13. Ride up late at night when the hotel is quiet.
• The ballrooms: Look for the waltzing couple. The grand public rooms on the lower floors hosted the 1920s galas the ghosts seem to remember.
• The lobby and its fireplace: The vaulted lobby is where the Thursday ghost story evenings were held, where Dade Heritage Trust tours start, and where Walsh is said to hold doors for staff.
• Upper-floor balconies: The lady in white is usually seen racing toward a balcony. Rooms on the higher floors of the main wings are the best bet if you cannot get the suite.

History of The Biltmore Hotel

Coral Gables founder George Merrick and hotelier John McEntee Bowman broke ground on March 13, 1925, and opened the Miami Biltmore on January 15, 1926, after about ten months of work at a reported cost of $10 million. Architects Schultze and Weaver modeled the 315-foot tower on the Giralda, the cathedral bell tower of Seville. The pool was then the largest in the world, and future Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller worked there as a swimming instructor and set a world record in it.

In the Jazz Age the hotel hosted fashion shows, water ballets, golf tournaments and society balls, and its guest list ran from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Judy Garland to Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers and Al Capone. Gambling and bootleg liquor flowed in the tower, which is how a New York gangster came to die there in 1929.

In November 1942 the War Department took over the Biltmore as Pratt General Hospital, a 1,200-bed military hospital. Floors were covered in linoleum, windows were sealed and the walls were painted green. After the war it became a Veterans Administration hospital and an early home of the University of Miami School of Medicine. The VA moved out in 1968 and the building was left empty.

The City of Coral Gables took ownership in 1973, but the hotel sat abandoned for years. It appeared in the horror film Shock Waves, and local children dared each other to sneak past a guard they called “The Greenie” after his green golf cart. The city began a restoration in 1983 and the Biltmore reopened on December 31, 1987, closed again in 1990 during a downturn, and returned under Seaway Hotels in 1992 after a long renovation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996.

The Biltmore celebrates its centennial in 2026. It has 271 rooms, restored Donald Ross golf, the famous pool with cabanas, and it has appeared in Miami Vice, Bad Boys and The Specialist. The hotel’s centennial pages invite past guests to share their own Biltmore stories.

Tips for a haunted stay

• The ghost story evenings: from 1994 storyteller Linda Spitzer told ghost stories by the lobby fireplace every Thursday night for about ten years, scheduled for 7 to 7:30 p.m. but often running past 8. She wore 1920s-style sun hats and said her best material came from guests. The series ended when she moved away, and as of November 2026 no ghost story event appears on the hotel’s published calendar, so ask the concierge before you plan around one.
• Free history tours: Dade Heritage Trust has run free walking tours of the hotel on Sundays at 2 p.m., meeting at the fireplace at the east end of the main lobby, with advance registration on Eventbrite and a limit of 20 people. Check the current schedule before you go.
• Want the 13th floor? Call the hotel directly about the Everglades Suite rather than booking online, and ask about rates outside the busy winter season.
• Staying in a regular room? Ask for a high floor in the tower wing and use the tower elevators late in the evening. Non-guests cannot reach the suite.
• Afternoon tea is served in the Alhambra lobby, which is a good excuse to spend time in the oldest public rooms if you are only visiting.
• Read more about the city’s other haunts in our guide to haunted places in Miami, and see Florida ghost hunts for overnight investigations.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Marrero's Guest Mansion, Key West: a jilted mistress who never left, about three and a half hours down the Overseas Highway
• Haunted hotels in Key West: the closest cluster of haunted stays to Miami
• The Don CeSar, St. Pete Beach: Florida’s other great 1920s haunted palace, on the Gulf Coast
• Haunted hotels in Florida
• Haunted places in Miami

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.

• The Biltmore Centennial: hotel history
• The Biltmore: Presidential suites (Everglades Suite)
• The Biltmore: Hotel FAQ
• WLRN: A history of the Biltmore, Miami's best known creepy hotel
• The Mob Museum: Thomas 'Fatty' Walsh died as he lived, by the gun
• Coral Gables Magazine: The Ghost of Christmas Past
• Southern Spirit Guide: That divine rendezvous, the Biltmore Hotel
• Wikipedia: Miami Biltmore Hotel

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