The mist curled low around the mountains of Asheville, shrouding the Biltmore estate in an eerie, dreamlike haze. Once built as a symbol of wealth and extravagance, its gilded halls now stood silent, heavy with the murmurs of a long time gone. Yet, beneath its polished charm, something unseen stirred, shadows whispering, spirits watching from dimly lit corridors where the air itself seemed to remember. 

As thunder rumbled through the hills, the truth began to surface. This little mountain escape was a place where the past refused to rest and where the line between the living and the dead had long since blurred. Things are about to get strange.

Hello, all you ghouls and goblins. Welcome to Conspiry Weird, where we talk about conspiracy theories and all things weird. I am your host, Molly, and with me is Josh.

Yo. Sup? Just... Chillin'? Chillin'. Like a villain? Yep.

What are you munching on today? Nothing. It's a little late for me to get the munchies. Well, I'm eating strawberry Italian ice.

I did have Spam. And grilled mashed potatoes. Spam, I would say, is a poor man's meal, but it's expensive now, so it's not.

Like four dollars a can. It is. Crazy.

Spam. It's good. So what are we talking about today, Josh? Built more escape.

Estate. Wow. Built more escape! It was an escape room, you know? No. 

Built more estate. You want to start us off with some history? Um, sure. Well, first, George Washington Vanderbilt would visit his mother Maria regularly in the Asheville area in the 1880s.

Imagine having that name. George Washington. Strong name.

Strong name. This was during the height of the Gilded Age in the U.S., a period from about the 1870s to the early 1900s. That was a time of fast industry growth, big wealth for a few, and widespread poverty, corruption, and inequality.

Like now! We're going to shorten his name to G.W. Vanderbilt. Um, he loved the climate and scenery around Asheville so much that he decided to build his little mountain escape of a summer house in that area. Vanderbilt named the estate Biltmore.

He even eventually bought 125,000 acres. It was composed of nearly 700 parcels, and it included at least five cemeteries and 150 farms. A part of that estate was once a community called Shiloh.

A spokesperson for the estate said that a lot of the land had been in poor condition, and many of the farmers and other landowners were glad to sell. Construction of the house began in 1889. Good year.

Was there a reason? I don't know. Somebody had a good reason. Well, good for them.

They got to start building this mansion. Oh no, the A.C. Oh no, the A.C. in Florida! I know. Oh no! It's just background noise.

Oh no! Can you turn it off? No! No! Hold on. Construction of the house began in 1889. A brick kiln, a type of furnace or oven used to bake and harden clay bricks, and a woodworking factory were built on site.

A three-mile railroad spur was also constructed on site to bring materials. Construction of the main house required the labor of 60 stonemasons and a hundred, I'm sorry, a thousand workers. Vanderbilt went on extensive trips overseas during construction so he could purchase thousands of furnishings.

It must be nice. Yeah, it must be nice. This included carpets, prints, tapestries, linens, and decorative objects.

These objects dated from the 15th century to the late 19th century. There were a few American-made items, and they included the more practical oak drop front desk, walnut grand piano, rocking chairs, and bronze candlesticks. So now we're going to talk about the next 60 years, the 1890s through the 1950s.

Vanderbilt opened his estate on Christmas Eve of 1895. This was so that his friends and family from across the country and they were encouraged to enjoy country pursuits and leisure. The gilded age mansion reportedly cost five million dollars to construct.

This back then, and that would be equivalent to about 189 million dollars today. Must be nice. Can I just have the five million dollars? Great.

Guests to the estate over the years were U.S. presidents, ambassadors, Lars Andersen and Joseph Hodges Choate, and novelists Edith Wharton and Henry James. Vanderbilt married Edith, I'm not going to say her middle name because I don't know how to say that, Dresser in 1898. They were married in Paris.

Their only child was Cornelia Vanderbilt, and she was born at Biltmore in the Louis. Fifteen, I had to do the math in my head, sorry, room in 1900, and she grew up at the estate. Vanderbilt started the sale of 87,000 acres to the federal government because he was stressed by congressional passage of income tax and because it was expensive to maintain the estate.

He unexpectedly died in 1914, and this was from complications of an emergency appendectomy. His widow, Edith, completed the sale. Edith carried out her husband's wish, and that wish was that the land remained pristine and the property became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest.

She began consolidating her interest. She sold Biltmore Estate Industries in 1917 and Biltmore Village in 1912. She occupied the house on and off and lived in the apartment created in the former bachelor's wing.

Imagine having a whole wing just for bachelors. This was until the marriage of her daughter Cornelia to John Francis Amherst Cecil in April 1924. The Cecils went on to have two sons.

They were Biltello. They were born at Biltmore in the same room where their mother was born. Cornelia and her husband opened the Biltmore to the public.

This was at the request of the city of Asheville in March 1930. This was an attempt to bolster the estate's finances during the Great Depression, and the city hoped that it would revitalize the area with tourism. Biltmore closed from 1941 to 1945 due to World War II.

17 sculptures and 62 paintings were moved to the estate by train from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This was to protect them from the event of an attack on the U.S. government. Isn't that pretty cool though? Just saying. Come bring them to my mansion.

Bring them to my summer. Not even their main house, their summer house, quote unquote. Summer escape.

The music room on the first floor was never finished, so it was used for storage until 1944 when the possibility of an attack became more remote. Gallery director David Finley was a friend of Edith Wienerbilt. He stayed at the estate.

The Cecils divorced in 1934. Which was a big deal back in the day because they never divorced. Cornelia left and never returned.

John Cecil maintained his residence. He stayed in the bachelor's ring wing until his death in 1954. Their eldest son occupied rooms in the wing until 1956.

At this point, Biltmore stopped being a family residence and was operated as a historic house museum. The younger son returned to the estate in the late 1950s and partnered with his brother to manage its financial troubles. They worked to create the self-sustaining and profitable enterprise that their grandfather envisioned.

How nice. How nice. Now we get to wander its halls.

As strangers said, just look at this stuff. It actually is really cool. It is.

And the 1960s to now. So William Cecil inherited the estate when his mother Cornelia died in 1976. His brother George inherited the dairy farm, which was more profitable.

Dairy. William Cecil turned over control of the company to his son, William A.V. Cecil in 1995. This is while they were celebrating the estate's centenary or 100th anniversary.

The Biltmore is privately held. There are 8,000 acres that make up the Biltmore Estates. Only 1.36 acres are within the city limits of Asheville, and the Biltmore isn't part of any municipality.

The estate was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1963. It remains a major tourist attraction in western North Carolina. William A.V. Cecil died in October 2017.

His wife passed the following November. Their daughter, Dinnie? Dinnie? Dinnie? Help? How do you say it? It sounds like Dinnie. Dinnie.

No, Dinnie. Be respectful. Their daughter, Dinnie.

Dinnie. Peering. Peering serves as board chairman.

Their son, Bill Cecil, serves as chief executive officer. The estate was closed temporarily in September 2024 after Hurricane Helene. The sales office was destroyed.

The conservatory, Biltmore House, and several other structures survived without serious damage. The operators of the estate pledged $2 million for hurricane recovery efforts in western North Carolina. Biltmore reopened November of 2024.

That was that crazy hurricane. There were nasty floods all over the place. Everybody recent memory, you know, of what happened in North Carolina.

That was crazy. And your baby sister was in the area and there was like a landslide in her neighborhood and she couldn't leave her neighborhood for like a week or something like that. A lot of people like that.

It was nuts. I mean, North Carolina is not meant to handle hurricanes. It's not meant for hurricanes and heavy rains because every mountain is just like... Dry.

There's the road and then there's... Hill. Mountain. Mountain.

Just dirt. Not even like rocks in some areas. It's just dirt between layered dirt layers and we got the next level up and it's just, you know, the water comes through.

It's taking it out. Yeah, there were people who lived on like rivers where like there were houses floating down the rivers. It was bad.

Yeah, it was definitely... There's a lot of videos and stuff like that. It was heartbreaking. It was.

So now we're going to get into the shadowy corners of the Biltmore. Both guests and staff have reported different hauntings over the years. This has included a sense of being watched or followed.

Cold spots or even being pushed. Staff members stated that they heard sounds of a party in the Great Hall when there was no one there. There was also a smell of cigar smoke, even though there is no smoking at the Biltmore.

The basement and Grand Staircase are the two spots that have the most hauntings reported. People have heard footsteps and have seen shadowy figures going up and down the stairs over the years. And the basement, which is really creepy in my opinion, there have been reports of ghosts doing chores in the kitchen and even cooking.

The indoor pool, which I hate, just letting you know, I hate the indoor pool, is also located in the basement. There have been reports of splashing being heard, even though the pool has been empty for years. It's creepy.

Yeah, I have every time we've been there twice and every time we get to the pool area, I feel like this sense of dread. I hate it. Okay, it doesn't look like a horror film would take place there.

Like it looks like there could be like sacrifices being done in that area because it's easy to clean up. It's not easy to clean. They said it wasn't easy to drain.

But it's easy to clean. Yeah, it's all tile. It's all tile.

There have even been sounds of laughter coming up from the pool drain because they're killing people in there. You know, seeing it inside like that makes me understand why they're always outside. You know, because it's so... Why in the basement? It's just, it's, it's weird.

And, and, um, yeah, I definitely could say that I would prefer an outside pool than an inside pool. Maybe if like it was in an area that had nothing but like glass. If it was like a glass enclosure.

Yeah. But in a basement. No.

Not in a mansion. Like you would feel outside if it was glass enclosure, you could see outside. You know, you'd feel outside.

But not in a basement. Under a mansion that's like five stories tall. The only things leading up to it or after it were like the... There was a Halloween room.

I don't... That had all the paintings on the walls. That's called the Halloween room. Well, there was the gym, the gymnasium or whatever, or the gym.

The workout room. Right after it and some showers or whatever right after it. But like, I don't know.

It was just, I didn't... Creepy. I wouldn't put my pool in the basement. No.

Maybe a hot tub. No. No? You go in there on there by yourself.

No, a hot tub in a house. Oh, I thought you meant a hot tub in the basement. Well, yeah.

No. No? My mom has a basement and it's creepy. Well, not that small of a basement.

Creepy. We live in Florida. My mom has like one of like 10 basements in Florida.

Yeah, right. There is a unfounded rumor that a kid drowned in the pool. Yeah, great.

That just adds to the beauty of it. Visitors often feel a sense of dread and anxiety when they enter the pool area. Like I said.

Like my wife. Like me. The basement also has a Halloween room.

Like I said. It features a series of murals. We have seen them.

They are beautiful. Yes, but they are also very creepy. We will post pictures on our Patreon.

Maybe Instagram. Most likely Patreon. Could be on Twitter too.

Maybe. We'll see. We'll see how I feel.

Oh, you can't look them up online. I know, but you need to go to our Patreon. Anyways.

Some have seen a woman in a flapper dress in that Halloween room. She may have been reliving one of the Halloween parties that took place over a century ago. So we have people hearing voices, seeing shadows.

Hearing laughter. Hearing laughter. Hearing splashing.

Feeling a sense of dread in the pool. Thinking there's a flapper in the pool. No, in the Halloween room.

In the Halloween room. Pay attention. Oh my gosh, it's late.

Um, yeah, all sorts of stuff. You know, there are a few ghosts at the Biltmore. Just a few.

Two have been identified as the original owners. Edith and George Vanderbilt. George loved the huge two-story library.

I think we all love that library. As a person who reads a lot, I wanted to hide somewhere in the house just so I could read all of the books. I would like to touch the books.

I would like to smell the books. He would go there all of the time during, to read during the rainstorms. He spent so much time there that Edith would have to go get him to attend to the guests.

If I had a library like that, I would not be going to no parties if I had a library like that. You don't have to go to, well, I guess in a house that big, you do have to go to the party. That house is huge.

Even though the party is at your house. That house is huge. Okay.

It's like literally like five stories in a basement. I think it's like four or five stories. We don't have access to like the top like story or two.

Because of this, the staff have seen George's ghost on the onset of a storm. Others have heard George whisper in the empty room as if Edith is calling out to him. George's ghost has been seen sitting in a chair by the fireplace.

Reading. There has also been a ghost of a woman in pink who has been seen wandering the halls. This is possibly George's mistress who died in 1898.

Isn't that the year he said was a good year? Anyway. Mind your business. She died in 1898 at a hospital not far from the estate.

That's what she gets. It's his fault. A woman in black has been seen near the pool.

We have lady in pink, lady in black. There's also a rumor that a sex worker was murdered at the now defunct Biltmore Forestry School. Her spirit has been seen inside the building.

One of the strangest apparitions is the ghost of an orange cat. The cat has no head and has been spotted in the gardens. No one knows who owned the cat or why it's headless.

It is pretty disturbing. I would honestly try to love on my cat though. Knowing me, I'd be like, it's a ghost cat.

Come here. Let me love on you. Ghost cat.

Is there any other thoughts that you might have that you would like to share? If you have any evidence of any of these ghosts, we would love to see it. Yes, please email us. We're on social media.

You can reach out to us any which way you find us. There's all, it's everywhere. All the time.

We love hearing good ghost stories. We do. I just bought a book on Irish ghost stories today.

Oh, you actually picked it up? I did. Nice, very nice. I did.

We'll have to read it. To Ezra. No.

To our child. Scare me. Okay, good night.

Good night, honey. There's monsters under your bed. We love you.

And we're singing Irish folk songs. If you hear anything, don't come get us. See a leprechaun, close the door.

Are you ready for some fun facts? Okay. Construction on Biltmore house took about six years. That's a while.

Imagine you're saying, I'm going to build a house. And then you can't live there for six years. Listen, I work for a building department and some of these houses take forever to build.

And they're not mansions. And they're not, like it's 2026. There's some houses from like 2022 that are still open.

And I'm like, what are you doing? It's a small house. Oh, my gosh. Sorry, late.

Some of the artwork that was stored at the Biltmore during World War II were works by Raphael, Rembrandt and Anthony Van Dyck. There was also the Gilbert Stewart portrait of George Washington. Yeah, I know the names Rembrandt and Raphael.

Those are major ones. Biltmore's art collection includes what you said. No, did you just say that one? No.

No, okay. Well, the artwork collection includes works by Renoir, Monet and many more. I saw some of the Monet ones while we were walking through last time.

Yeah. Very pretty, very pretty. Too bad I got brushed along.

I know there's like always so many people there. I think you had to pee. No, I didn't.

I made sure to go to the bathroom when we got there. No, but there were a lot of people. And it's like people have no social awareness ever.

And it's like when I see someone trying to take a picture, I try to be respectful and I like stop walking so they can take a picture. Other people are rude. I'll be trying to take a picture and they'll just like walk into me or like in front of me.

And I'm like, bitch, do you not see me trying to take a picture? Rude. About 1.4 million people visit the Biltmore every year. The house is assessed at 157.2 million dollars.

County property taxes are paid on only 79.1 million of that due to an agricultural deferment. Can we get that? I don't want to pay taxes on 79.1 million dollars. The estate has been used several times as filming locations for TV and movies.

Our driver from the parking lot to the to the house actually was in one of those movies as the driver of the little bus thing. Those movies include The Swan, Being There, The Private Eyes, Mr. Destiny, The Last of the Mohicans, Forrest Gump, Richie Rich, My Fellow Americans, Patch Adams, Hannibal, and The Odd Life of Timothy Green. The Hallmark Channel made a movie called A Biltmore Christmas that was filmed at Biltmore House in January 2023.

It first aired the following November. It was the first movie to be set at the Biltmore House. Like not just like it was actually set like the whole movie.

Like we were saying hey we're at the Biltmore House not just we're using the house and saying we're somewhere else. Yeah yeah like in the movie Hannibal I think it was a rich dude's house and it was only used for like it's like this is my house. No it ain't.

No it ain't. Who are you kidding? There's a non-fiction book called The Last Castle. It was written by Denise Kiernan and it details the estate's history.

Fun little read if you want to. I guess. I haven't read it.

The Biltmore is filled with hidden passageways and doors. That's the way to do things. Right.

One example is in the billiards room there is a hidden wooden door leading to the smoking room. I think they told us about that one. Yeah.

Edith and George Vanderbilt told the story about how they avoided death on the Titanic. They booked passage on the ship but cancelled. There's no clear reason why they cancelled.

And this is a little... Sus. Sus. And let me just tell you go listen to our episode on Titanic if you haven't listened to it yet.

There's the plug. There's the plug. Okay.

How many times have you been to Biltmore? We have been twice together. Have you gone? Because you lived in North Carolina for like six months. But I have family that lived there for years.

So I've probably gone like two or three other times. Yeah. Not a lot but two or three other times.

Because we drove up together when Eli, our firstborn, was like two I think. Two or three and spent Christmas there. And we went there when we were still dating.

I thought we had... No, we've only been there twice. And we had Eli with us one time and Michelle, his stepmom, watched Eli while we went. Oh, is that what it was? That was our first time.

Was that the Christmas time? The Christmas time. That makes sense. And then... That's where we got that photo.

Yeah. And then we just went to North Carolina in August. Was it August? September? I'm so bad with dates.

It was in September because it was the week of my mom's birthday. I love you, mom. I'm sorry.

And we went to North Carolina for your baby sister's wedding. And we went then because we had a day to spend before we could check into the hotel. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And your sister, baby sister, was kind enough to give us tickets for the day. Thank you, Rebecca. We love you.

Did you get any weird or eerie feelings when we were there? Not really. Maybe inklings, maybe? Like, I could perceive something as creepy, but like, not really. Oh, I did.

I wasn't like, ooh, kocho. I think a ghost just walked through me. Nothing like that.

I did. You did. Especially, like I said earlier in the episode, the pool area gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I'm like, someone is watching me. See, for me, I was just more admiring the artwork and stuff all over the place. That was it.

I didn't really get any heebie-jeebies. Now, I wouldn't want to be walking around with all the lights off in the middle of the night. I would be getting all the heebie-jeebies anywhere like that, let alone the mansion.

So that doesn't really count. But it was interesting. I got the heebie-jeebies.

I'm like, get me out of this pool area now. I feel like I'm being watched. I am uncomfortable.

Yeah, I was trying to look at it and you were trying to rush us through. I was like, we need to get the F out of here right now. I do not like this.

I wish I had my tarot cards so I could be like, tell me what you want to tell me. I should have brought a Ouija board. No, I know.

Before we went, did you know about any of the hauntings or spooky stuff? I've heard there was spooky stuff, but I didn't really know about it because I've only gone through looking at the artwork, looking at the house, looking at how beautiful it is. It really is beautiful. Learning a little of the history of the house.

They don't exactly market the house as a spooky haunted house. Haunted mansion. There's actually haunted tours around Halloween time, I think.

Probably not by them. It's probably groups that go out. Maybe, I don't know, but I want to go.

I want my heebies jeebies.

Hey, hey, we're keeping this rated G, okay? That is G. We can heebie or jeebies later. Oh my god, that's how I got pregnant too many times. Jeebies to the heebies. 

Oh my god. Anyways, anything else you want to say before we peace out of here? We would love your support. We would. 

On Patreon. Yes, come join us on Patreon. Or anywhere.

Or anywhere. We would say hi. Follow us, we're on Instagram, Twitter, or X, whatever, and Facebook, and YouTube. 

I think we're on YouTube. Yes, the podcast is on YouTube. So if you would like to listen on YouTube, the podcast is on YouTube as well.

And we do have a Patreon. If you join Patreon, you do get one free tarot reading every month with your membership. And there is a book club on there. 

Haven't started it yet because no one has joined the Patreon, but I would love to do a book club with you guys. And we may or may, I have an extra book of one of the books we will be reading. So if anybody joins Patreon, I might send that extra book out to you. 

Be the first. Be the first and you'll get a free book from us. Okay, we love you guys. 

Stay weird, y'all. We want to thank you for tuning in. You can find us on all your favorite social platforms by searching ConspiracyWeird, posting photos and details from each episode. 

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And remember, question everything.