Built in 1922, the Millennium Biltmore Hotel is as iconic as the names that have walked through its doors. Stars like studio head Jack Warner, filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, actress Mary Pickford, and gangsters Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. The hotel was once the location of the Academy Awards (1928, 1935-1939, 1941-1942). It even operated as a speakeasy during the prohibition era. Some elements of this history still remain, with a recessed spot for hiding liquor in the presidential suite, and a hidden door that helped folks evade police by leading them through a room and out to the streets unnoticed. Today though, the hotel is known for a much different reason. The Millennium Biltmore Hotel is haunted.
There have been sightings of soldiers moving through the lobby, believed to be from World War II. Also from this timeframe is a more commonly witnessed spirit of a female nurse. She frequents the second floor where it is known that cots had been set out for visiting soldiers during the war.
Children have also been spotted. A little girl likes to run up and down the corridors on the ninth floor. You can hear her footsteps as well as disembodied giggling. On the roof of the hotel, the ghost of a little boy has been spotted. This boy has no facial features, and little is known of him.
Finally, you have the ghost of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia. She is said to frequent the tenth and eleventh floors as well as the lobby. Elizabeth Short was an aspiring actress who had moved to California when she was 18 to live with her father. On January 9, 1947, she returned home after a brief trip to San Diego with Robert “Red” Manley, a 25 year old salesman she had been dating (who happened to be married to another woman at the time). Manley dropped Elizabeth off at the Biltmore Hotel where she was supposed to meet her sister. Staff reported seeing her use the telephone in the lobby. While she was later spotted at the Crown Grill Cocktail Lounge, it is believed that the Millennium Biltmore Hotel could have been where she took her final breath. After January 9, no one saw Elizabeth until her body was discovered six days later on January 15, naked, completely drained of blood, and severed into two pieces via an incision dividing her torso in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles.
The spirit of Elizabeth Short is described as a woman in black, and has been seen roaming the lobby, riding the elevator, and was even spotted walking through a wall. She has not caused any harm to those who see her, aside from the initial jolt of shock, which can be experienced by witnessing any ghost.
Employees have reported hearing what sounds like a party, when no events are happening, and have seen orbs, but nothing that frightens them away. So, next time you’re in Los Angeles, take a trip to the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, where history has been made, and some of it still lingers to this day.
The Millennium Biltmore hotel is no doubt haunted, but is it as scary as a hotel full of clowns?
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