Occult rumors haunt the historic 1920s Biltmore Hotel standing at 11 Dorrance Street in Providence, Rhode Island. From satanic beginnings to hurricane floods and mysterious disappearances, the Biltmore Hotel has survived vacancy and grandeur to welcome guests for the past hundred years. With its iconic red neon sign, fabulous ceilings, and blazing chandelier dangling above the central staircase, the Biltmore is worth checking into on your next visit.
When the hotel first opened in 1922, it offered 600 rooms. Over the years, different owners knocked down walls and created new suites or merged rooms. Today, the Biltmore has 292 guest rooms. The spacious hotel offers a 19,000-square-foot banqueting space and a Grand Ballroom overlooking the city at rooftop level. In the hotel’s early days, it had a Bacchante Dining Room that saw famous stars like Douglas Fairbanks, Louis Armstrong, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. During the Prohibition period, a speakeasy ran out of the hotel basement. Funded by Johan Leisse Weisskopf, a reported Satanist with mob connections, the hotel had odd features like chicken coops on the roof and a decadent dining room. In 1954, Hurricane Carol flooded the hotel, submerging most of the lobby underwater. Today, a plaque shows that the water came up eight feet high on the columns in the lobby. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the hotel changed hands several times. Faced with a demolition scare, the Coventry group put over $10 million into renovations and included the hotel in Curio – a Collection by Hilton in 2014.
Possible satanic acts gave the hotel a paranormal glamor that inspired other fictional hotels such as the Bates Motel and the Overlook Hotel. According to legend, Johan Weisskopf intended the hotel to introduce Puritanical New Englanders to satanic rituals. Rumor had it that initiates used basement hot springs for purification rites, while scandalous Bacchante Girls waitressed in the dining room, and rooftop chicken coops provided a sacrifice for weekly black masses. Visitors report visions of ghostly drinking, dancing, and disappearances. After new management took over the hotel, they ripped out the chicken coops, tore out stained velvet upholstery in the Bacchante Dining Room, and boarded up underground rooms where Satanists reportedly built their altars. During the Biltmore’s heyday, the place proved a hotbed for power, money, and crime. Multiple murders and assaults occurred on the premises. At least six policemen, the mayor, and a governor ended up implicated in crimes that included the drowning murder of an eleven-year-old trafficked prostitute. Some people claim that the disappearances, including six people in 2008, started after these changes. They claim that the rituals kept the real danger trapped in the walls and with ritualistic vestiges removed, the vengeful ghosts returned. It’s likely that the satanic ritual stories cover up real criminal activities taking place at the hotel.
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