Clearwater Ghost Hunter

How do I sum up my experience at the Belleview Biltmore Hotel?

I will say that my personal experience has changed my opinion on ghosts in general. Always the skeptic, I ribbed my wife for the stories she told me about her childhood experiences regarding ghosts and it wasn’t until after having two notable experiences where I actually saw a ghost that I began to seriously consider these stories as truth.

My first experience happened one night as I was walking into my bedroom. I saw a young girl following me and thought it was my daughter (assuming she wanted to crawl in bed with mom) so without saying anything I kept walking into the room.  I entered my bedroom, knowing I was still being followed, and was shocked that my wife shut the door slamming it in what I thought was our daughter’s face.  After opening the door and looking around, we discovered both of our daughters were in bed asleep. I then realized it was not our daughter and was in shock at what I saw. My wife knew it was a ghost but I just shrugged it off as my mind was playing tricks on me.

As my life progressed, the paranormal experiences increased, also. I was still seeing the same little girl in our hallway periodically but along with that I was seeing shadow people.  I knew it couldn’t be my eyes playing tricks on me or fatigue because there were too many to write off.

It wasn’t long until I discovered a previous high school beauty named Faith on a social network. As we briefed one another on what we had been doing since high school, one thing led to another and I was hired to build a website for her. angelswithfaith.com

As I built her website we had many opportunities to discuss the paranormal and she sparked my interest in ghost hunting.  The Belleview Biltmore was a slam dunk for my first investigation because it was the place I had captured my first orb. I was at this hotel shooting a television commercial for the Toronto Blue Jays with my DJ business clearwaterdj.com and although at the time I dismissed it as dust, I now know it was much more than that.

While ghost hunting at the Belleview Biltmore I had readings on my EMF detectors that soared. Funny….TAPS will go on and on about readings of 1.2, 1.9 (HA) mine were usually 17-23.  I could explain certain areas due to wiring. But there were areas with NO electric power that were giving off very high readings and I would return to the same spot and find it at zero. I used a KII meter like TAPS and a MEL-8704, which is way better than TAPS EMF equipment. This equipment is awesome and why TAPS isn’t using it is beyond me!

I also used an Olympus DS-30 voice recorder and found EVP’s of a hostile disembodied voice telling me to basically “F myself” and another one identifying himself as “Walter”.  Oddly enough, when I booked a room for our ghost hunt, they gave me the EXACT room where “Walter” identified himself.

At the Belleview Biltmore I saw a full blown apparition of a woman dressed as you would in the 30’s and as I chased her down the hall she vanished to the right. When I got to the end of the hall I noticed there was no hallway where she went – only a wall. So much for that being a real person trying to crank me!  As my wife, Mary, was trying to figure out why I was running down the hall she saw the bottom half of the woman go into a wall. As I climbed the steps of the fourth floor stairs to the fifth floor,  I felt like I was walking in water. I was very light-headed, sluggish, and felt a chill as I heard a woman say; “don’t go up there, they are mad at me”.  It was only in one ear, mid flight on the steps and everything seemed to be moving very slowly-like  in a car accident.  Then I heard two men arguing just past the fifth floor door so I turned and asked my wife, “did you hear that?” she said “no” but I thought she was pulling my leg because they were arguing very loudly. I then thought of the security guards and convinced my wife we should scurry along so we didn’t get caught.

After I got my bearings, I realized a woman, which was obviously a ghost, just whispered in my ear! I told my wife what happened and she was dumbfounded that she heard nothing.

My cameras captured many controversial orbs but also an apparition-one that has been very hard to debunk. I thought it was a light smear, yet as I analyzed photos similar in no way could it be reproduced. Was it the Holy Grail of ghost hunting? You decide.

In conclusion, I will say based on evidence that TAPS and GHI has used to conclude that a place is haunted, I believe mine is stronger than most they have put forward and I go on the record with the following:   “Based on the evidence collected and numerous personal experiences, the Historic Belleview Biltmore Hotel is indeed haunted”.

I would stay in the Biltmore every year for a week in the summer. It was a girls youth group convention.  I knew from the start that there was paranormal activity.

One expierence, there were many, was while there was a group of us in our room.  We were just all hanging around in the room when one person tried to leave. The door was not locked but it would not open! We tried to open it, we pulled pushed had a number of us try at once…nothing! Finally it got so bad we called down to the front desk. Someone came with an extra key to unlock the door. Of course that didn’t work either. After a number of trys, calling the maintainance person, they decided to saw the door knob off the door so we could get out. They got the knob off, they had to take part of the frame with it, but finally we got out. To this day, we still have the door knob!

It wasn’t until recently that I started to think of all the activity I expoerenced in that hotel. I am going to pull out some of my old photos and take another look at them.

My husband and I moved out to arizona and have done our first  investigation at the Birdcage in Tombstone. We are trying to move back to Florida and would if we make it back there we would love to get into some investigations out there.

Belleview Biltmore Hotel
Haunted or Hoax?

The Belleview Biltmore was built in 1897 by railroad tycoon, Henry Plant. It boasts many famous guests that include Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth, and Margaret Thatcher. It sits on 22-acres and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It is a beautiful hotel that everyone should experience at least once!

I was fortunate to be invited to accompany Tim Huck from Clearwater Ghost Hunters to this amazing hotel in Clearwater, Florida. He had already been to this “haunted” hotel a few times and I found the invitation to join him too good to resist-especially since this would be the last chance before the hotel closed for 3 years due to extreme renovations.

The existence of ghosts has never been a question in my mind and I found it a challenge to prove this fact to others so on May 16, I checked in for a night of talking to dead people.

My first experience of the presence of earthbound spirits was right off the elevator to our 3rd floor room. While I walked down the hallway to our room, I immediately felt light headed and knew that since I have the gift of clairsentience (clear feeling), this was an indication of a very eventful night. I am also clairvoyant (clear seeing) and have mental telepathy but knew it would take more than these clairs to satisfy the general population of any type of haunting.

Tim was definitely prepared for this ghost hunt by a myriad of equipment-most of which I had no understanding. He was the scientist trying to make the appropriate distinction between haunt or hoax and I was the psychic trying to help by finding the spirits and understand why they couldn’t leave this hotel.

The night began with a bang by the presence of ghosts in the hallway across from the elevators on the first floor. The electromagnetic meter reading went from a 0 to 15 and stayed steady there for most of the night. I was so lightheaded and disoriented that I felt as though I would fall over every time I was in that vicinity but since there were so many people wandering the halls, it was too difficult to get any names, genders, or descriptions. Tim, on the other hand, had to remain neutral so he decided the meter was high because of the enormous amount of electricity in the area, including the massive wiring in the underground tunnels right below the flooring. Although I knew better, I decided to let it go and return after the ghost tour. 4 hours later we returned to the exact spot and the readings of the electromagnetic meter had gone down to a 0.

Tim has had his own experiences at this hotel and believes that it is definitely haunted but his analytical mind has to keep all of this investigation on the scientific level. I understand that most people need actual proof that they can either see or hear, and I also knew that my findings probably wouldn’t be able to do this unless I could get some response from the spirits recorded on his EVP.

The actual ghost tour definitely showed me the presence of a few ghosts that included two young children-a boy and a girl-that were both afraid and very sad, and a very angry man that wanted everyone to leave. Most of the earthbound spirits were located on the 5th floor in the very first few rooms we visited. The one that made the biggest impression and had the greatest effect on me was the scared little boy that seemed to be as drawn to me as I was to him. I was called into this room repeatedly by various reactions within my body; ie: severe headache as soon as I stepped in and immediate relief when leaving, light headed and general feelings of a paranormal presence. I asked Tim to bring his equipment in to verify my impressions. He went through the room with little or not readings so I asked him to give me his meter and EVP to hold. I knew the little boy was as close to me as he could get and wanted to see if he would eventually say something that could be heard by the human ear through his voice recorder. He was very shy and seemed to be looking for and desperately missing his mother. As soon as the meter was handed to me it spiked a very high reading so Tim left the room to see if I could get the little boy to talk. I tried to communicate with him but, as with all children when they are scared, they usually prefer not to talk. It broke my heart to see such pain and anguish so I called on Archangel Michael to help him find the white light so he could be reunited with his parents. The boy would not go for fears that only he knew but just as he was declining, Tim opened the door and the boy vanished. At that minute, the meter went back to a 0.

Although there were other “hot spots” in that same vicinity, this experience was the most daunting to me. The scared little boy would have found the peace and happiness that his soul deserves if he hadn’t been attached to the thought that going into the light would either prevent him from ever finding his mother or that he had already made his mother mad for not following her into the light the first time and feared the consequences.

The other two spirits I encountered that night were only brief but they left a feeling of loss, fear, sadness and/or anger, which is quite typical for earthbound spirits.

I would be very anxious and delighted to be able to return to this amazing hotel after their re-opening in 2012 and try to convince some of these spirits to let go of all attachments and return home where they will find all the love, peace and happiness that their soul deserves.

I would like to express my gratitude to Tim and hope it is the first of many ghost-hunting expeditions that we encounter!

Chris Koharki -

I am so excited that I found your site. I have been searching for more proof of the hauntings at the Biltmore and to confirm our own experiences. Well here goes.

I cannot remember exactly when we (myself, husband and son) were there it must of been when my son graduated college in the summer of 2004. We went with him to look at Florida locations to move to and we stayed at the Biltmore. We had a small room for one night but the hotel saw we were staying for a week so they moved us to a bigger room. It was a suite actually I think on the 2nd floor it was the room in your pictures at the end with the balcony over it. The room over it was actually the presidential suite. Well we stayed there one night and got no sleep at all. We kept hear a certain noise all night. We called the front desk and they said they would send someone but never did. This happened a couple of nights. One night I was hit in the face with a pillow. I looked and my husband and son were sound asleep. A while later it felt like someone took my ankles and pushed down on them. Again everyone else was asleep. I woke up my husband then and told him what had happened. He went down to the desk again and told them but they never would admit to anything. They moved us then to the presidential suite for one night. It was beautiful but we had a strange experience there too. Out of the clear blue we heard a loud sound like a fog horn or like a ship coming into the harbor. We ran out to look and nothing was there and no one else seemed to hear anything. We were moved the next morning to another room and the hotel bought us dinner. We asked lots of questions but got no answers to if the place was haunted or not. We finally left to go home but we talk about it often and would like some answers. I am so glad to have found your site. I understand TAPS will be there next month and am looking forward to seeing what they come up with. I want to go back when the hotel opens again. Since all of this happened we are now living in Naples FL. I will never forget my experiences there.

Henry Plant built his second grand hotel, the Swiss chalet-style Belleview, in 1896 on a high bluff overlooking Clearwater Bay. Plant envisioned the hotel as the focal point of a planned community that he called Belleair. He brought a spur of his railroad right to the hotel’s enterance, assuring convenient access by wealthy tourists and sportsman who was his targeted clientele.
For more information purchase “Florida’s Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age” by R. Wayne Ayers at your favorite book store.

Ghost at Belleview Biltmore

The very first time I investigated the Belleview Biltmore I saw a full blown apparition. It was a woman in a white dress and hat from what appeared to be the early 1900’s. If i would have captured that on film It would have rocked the paranormal community. Was it Maisie Plant? More about that day later…

Maisie Plant

I recommend using headphones when listening to these EVP’s from

The Belleview Biltmore Hotel

This first EVP was recorded outside near a tree that has a

history of paranormal activity.

I was tired and sarcastic and this was the response i got.

This next EVP was recorded on the 4th floor near room 4200,

which ironically i was assigned when checking in.