From: leslya@ksg1.harvard.edu (L.R. Adkins-Shellie)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 12:13:53

On a recent trip to North Carolina, I had an opportunity to tour the Biltmore Estate that George Washington Vanderbilt constructed at the turn of the century. The house is beyond vast and the tour took several hours. I have to say that I was quite ignorant of the estate before we went to visit; I had never heard of it frankly. However, during the tour of the home, I began to experience vague feelings of ‘familiarity.’ I’d go into certain rooms and know them. This knowing didn’t take the form of being able to mentally picture them before entering them, but simply not being surprised at what I saw.

As we headed down to the servant’s area, I began to experience a sense of dread. I had a bad reaction to the swimming pool area which is located on the same floor as the servant quarters. I felt sad, angry, and a definite impression that someone had died there. I knew that this death hadn’t been experienced by me but by someone I had cared about. I felt that this death had been needless.

The evening after the tour I was discussing the tour with my sister who had the misfortune of missing it. When I began to describe the downstairs area, she asked me to stop talking about it because just hearing about it disturbed her. I tried to tell her why I didn’t like the pool, but she again told me to stop. Sensing something big here, I gently prodded her and asked her to describe what she thought the place looked like – she began to describe it to a ‘t.’ I asked her to start by describing the areas that preceed the pool room and we worked our way to the pool itself. By the time we ‘reached’ the pool area, my sister was crying and near hysterics. She felt that sometime in the past she had been allowed to die there and actually began to experience a sensation of not being able to get enough air. Granted, this sensation could be attributed to the emotional stress that she was undergoing, but how does one explain all the descriptions that she was able to describe? I didn’t tell her that I thought someone died there, I told her that I didn’t like the room and she never allowed me to finished sharing my impressions!

We suspect that the individual who had died there was a servant whose value as a person was small and therefore whose death did not cause a stir. My sister and I both were very disturbed by the bachelor’s wing of the mansion. This wing contains secret entrances, only one of which was obvious when I took the tour. When I stood in the main doorway, I felt compelled by something in a far wall. Later, I had a chance to examine a schematic and I literally felt a shock when I saw that the other two secret entrances were located just where I felt my attention being drawn to. We felt that whatever had happened to the servant, began in the rooms located beyond the secret doors.

So here’s the question readers, what do you know about the Biltmore Estate and any tragedies that may have occurred there? I didn’t have the luxury of time to stick around and talk to the locals. I was wondering if somewhere out on the net there was someone who could shed some light on what my sister and I experienced.

Thanks for listening!

One Reply to “Biltmore Estate”

  1. I visited there about 5 years ago and caught some images in the library and pool area. They are unlike anything I’ve ever seen or even heard of. I’ve always wanted to find out more about them.

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