Tell your 'what the heck was that thing?' scary story

[featherfinder]

It was Maisie....

Tag: Maisie Plant

Taking a Shining to the Belleview Biltmore Hotel

by admin on Mar.28, 2009, under Belleview Biltmore Hotel

Historic Belleview Biltmore Hotel
The following is my exploration of the historic Belleview Biltmore Hotel. Paranormal investigation of the historic and reportedly haunted Belleview Biltmore Resort in Clearwater, Florida by Tim Huck of Dark House Entertainment on Saturday, Feb 21st 2009. It inspired me to create a special website dedicated to this Historic Hotel and others I plan to visit. I consider myself lucky to be able to take over 300 pictures of the inside, outside and secret areas of the Belleview Biltmore Resort prior to it’s closing at the end of May, 2009. The Belleview Biltmore will remain closed for up to 3 years for renovation. I have not seen anything on the internet that provides this much detail of the inside not even their own website. I decided to present it myself for those who are curious and seek this information of this historic hotels past . I have heard many stories of hauntings, a suicide, seen paranormal photographs and television news investigations that gave me a calling to revisit the place where a few years ago I was hired to participate in a national television commercial for the Toronto Blue Jays inside the Belleview Biltmore Hotel and snapped my first orb photo when my DJ partner stood next to Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Lyle Overbay. I photoshopped it out because he thought it was a glitch in the camera, but I saved the original and here it is:

Orb by Tony Johnson with Lyle Overbay
Areas of the Hotel resemble the Overlook Hotel in The Shining which adds ambiance to my paranormal investigation.

The Shining like Biltmore Hotel
Due to overwhelming information I wish to provide I will be in a constant state of updating so check back often. If you have any personal experience or evidence you would like to provide contact me [email protected] Thanks to Orlando Ghost Tours who provided great information, EVP evidence, supplying EMF detectors

Leaving my mark at the Belleview's Haunted 4th Floor.
and access to parts of the Belleview Biltmore that is closed to the public. I highly recommend them. I will update this daily, check back often to hear my story. Here are some of the photos i took that night.

Maisie Plant
She Wore a Pearl Necklace.
Mae Cadwell Manwaring Plant, better known as Maisie, was born in 1878. Maisie was married to another man when she met Morton Plant, the son of Henry Plant, a self made transportation tycoon and land developer. Henry Plant built, among many other things, the first buildings of what is now the Belleview Biltmore Resort. Morton Plant was immediately “stricken” by Maisie and decided that he must marry her. He offered Maisie’s husband 8 million dollars–an offer to good to refuse. It was accepted, and Morton and Maisie were married in 1914. As a wedding gift, Morton gave Maisie a home, the Plant Mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Sometime in their relationship, Maisie saw a strand of perfectly matched Oriental pearls, with a price of $1.2 million dollars, which she just had to have. She asked Morton to buy them for her, but he felt they were too expensive and he refused to purchase them. Maisie had her heart set on the pearls and felt that the $1.2 million dollar asking price was fair, but Morton would not budge. So Maisie figured a way to get them on her own.
She bartered the purchase of the pearls with the owner, a Mr. Cartier. He gave Maisie the pearls and she gave him the Plant Mansion on Fifth Avenue, which subsequently became the House of Cartier. It is open to this day on that location. We are very sorry to say that somewhere, sometime, Maisie’s pearls just seem to have vanished. Cartier Jewelers would love to have them in their collection. Big question today is, still, where are Maisie’s pearls?
Maisie is rumored to have lost her treasured jewelry at the Biltmore. Some say her ghost is still walking the halls looking for her lost pearls.

Yup thats her! I just could not remember her name. When they were opened They actually had so many sightings of her by guests that they tried to trick her. She had a protait that always hung in the dinning room area for guest to see and she would get mad when her painting was removed so they put it back up with a string of pearls around it to trick her into thinking she had found her pearls. Well i dont remember quite what happened but it was something like they were torn down in the night and broken on the floor or they went missing to. Not sure but i do remember she made a statement that they were not "her" pearls. As i said if you come back down i know some people that would deffinitly go ing with you. My mother being one of them but once again i will be at the car waiting for you all to come back lol.

 

[Razadia]

I've finally decided to tell another on of mine. A couple of years ago (I don't remember exactly when it was, I just remember it was fall) I had a horrible scare. Keep in mind that nothing paranormal scares me and when it first happened I wasn't thinking of ghosts or anything like that. I was up at 2 am and knew I wasn't supposed to be. I had gone to my room after shutting the computer down and I was just laying down to go to sleep when I heard what sounded like my horse running through the yard. I instantly freaked out and at the time Star was notorious for breaking out of his field. I went and woke my dad up to go look for him. We started in the front yard, looking for tracks to figure out which way he had gone. When we didn't see any we walked out into the back yard toward his field. I kept walking, waiting to run into the fence, but it never happened. Dad had left the gate open. I walked out to where my horse was standing and ran my hands over him and listened to see if he was breathing heavily from running. He wasn't. Star had never left the field.Dad thought I must have been dreaming, but that it was a good thing I had been or Star could have gotten out. After we closed the gate and walked to the house I went back to my room and sat down on my bed. I definitely was not asleep when I heard the horse run past my window. I think that it was one of two things that could have happened. It could have been the ghost horse often sighted around here or it could have been the Wild Hunt. I still don't know what happened, but I know for a fact I wasn't sleeping and it wasn't my horse.

 

[OnceAroundTheBlock]

During my 65 years here on earth, I've had several "unusual" experiences and I'll share 2 of them that happened in my grandparent's hometown in PA. At the time, we were living in FL and my mom being an only child missed her family terribly so as soon as school was out, my younger sister, mom and me would be headed to PA for every summer. Our dad was a workaholic and he would drive us up there, stay a week and head back to FL until time to drive up and get us.

One day I was walking around the streets and avenues with my best girlfriend. We were like sisters, shared all our hopes and dreams with each other. We were walking up Adams Ave, where most of the houses in that part of town were old, 2 or 3 story, wooden structures and some were a little on the spooky side. We were coming up on a house that had been obviously neglected for years...in great need of repainting, grass and weeds trimmed back, a sagging front porch. I remember we were laughing hysterically at something one of us said and I happened to look up at the side of this house. There at the kitchen window sat an old bearded man with wild looking uncombed hair, missing most of his teeth, looking our way and laughing back at us. I even pointed at him and said, "Look at that scary old man laughing at us!" She saw him too and said, "Let's run!" and of course we hauled out of there and ran past his house as fast as we could and cut down the next street.

Anyway, later that day after I went on back to my grandparent's house for supper, I told my grandmother what we had seen. I remember she stopped stirring the food and asked me again exactly what house was it that I saw the man in. I described it to her and she quietly said, "The man that you described was a strange old hermit, never left his house, and passed away in it about 10 years ago."

Here's another one that happened a few years later in the same town.....

I was Sweet 16 and spending the whole summer again with my grandparent's in PA. I had a boyfriend in FL but we had broken up (eventually we got back together and married when we were 20) but that's another story...lol. Anyway, the hottest guy in town (I thought he was) was available and started coming around to visit. He didn't have a car so our dates existed of going to a hoagie shop for our date and then walking hand-in-hand around town. One evening, we were walking up and down streets and talking about our schools and how great, or in my case, how stinky our football teams were and having a great time comparing the differences of two 16 year old's living in different states, one in the North, one in the South.

I had a 10 o'clock curfew and I knew I had better not be late either! When I realized that I only had 10 minutes to get back to my grandparent's house and that we were several blocks away yet, we decided to take the quickest shortcut down an alley. As we were approaching a garage (keep in mind, in PA most garages aren't attached to the house but are several yards away from it), I looked up and said, "Look at that shadow on the outside of the garage! It looks like a body hanging!" I remember letting out a nervous laugh. My date looked up and stopped dead in his tracks staring at the shadow, then he said, "C'mon!" and pulled me along as fast as we could run on the gravel road. He didn't say a word the whole rest of the fast walk back home until he walked me up onto my grandparent's porch. It was then he told me how some teenage boy that he used to hang around with, lived there at that house and a couple of years before had hung himself in his parent's garage.

 

[kfchickenlady]

those stories were creeeepy!!!!

 

[guinea fowl galore]

As i said if you come back down i know some people that would deffinitly go ing with you. My mother being one of them but once again i will be at the car waiting for you all to come back lol.

Please Please Please do it. That would be soooo interesting. Take a whole heap of photos and post them here along with your haunting stories.

 

[featherfinder]

Please Please Please do it. That would be soooo interesting. Take a whole heap of photos and post them here along with your haunting stories.

I went past it this weekend to see the best way in. You would have to hop a fence and the place is several yards in the back. You could probably only do the first 2 floors safely. I would take some pictures of the outside and see what i got in windows but i would still have to get over the fence and being pregnant there is no way i am doing that right now. But my offer still stands for anyone that wants to come down here. I will drive you and wait in the car for when you come running back! lol Ask me in like 5 more months and i will be able to hop the fence to get some outside pictures!

 

[Lothiriel]

Quote:
Sounds like fun.... lol If I could get down there I'd probably take up your offer!

 

[OnceAroundTheBlock]

I went past it this weekend to see the best way in. You would have to hop a fence and the place is several yards in the back. You could probably only do the first 2 floors safely. I would take some pictures of the outside and see what i got in windows but i would still have to get over the fence and being pregnant there is no way i am doing that right now. But my offer still stands for anyone that wants to come down here. I will drive you and wait in the car for when you come running back! lol Ask me in like 5 more months and i will be able to hop the fence to get some outside pictures!

Guinea fowl and featherfinder, I would so LOVE to go back there but being 612 miles away (over 1200 mile round trip) is a little too much for me right now. If I only knew 3 yrs. ago that the hotel would not be renovated but closed forever and razed instead, you can bet I would have skipped my reunion (or parts of it) and gone investigating.

Feather, it used to be that the main entrance was off a side street (not in the front), where you had to drive over a small bridge and stop at the guardhouse to be allowed on the estate. I wonder if they still man it?

 

[Gomes Bantams]

I was reading this thread and i suddenly just decided to look out my window. Running along my fence was a 12" high stick guy zoom by

and wave. I waved back. Super creepy. But at least it was polite.

 

[Gomes Bantams]