When we talk about the Gilded Age, we mean rich families, grand homes, and rooms built for banquets and ballrooms. These decadent times produced huge mansions, but over time, some gained dark backstories that still fuel ghost tours today. Check out these five creepy Gilded Age mansions with haunted backstories that are sure to keep you up at night.
Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina
Biltmore Estate is the most obvious Gilded Age mansion on this list. Biltmore’s official timeline states that construction began in 1889, and George Vanderbilt opened the 250-room home to family and friends on Christmas Eve 1895.
Information from Biltmore shows the house has 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces, which is almost comically grand. The darker edge comes from decline, early deaths, and a family fortune that no palace could fully protect.
Haunted Rooms America reports stories of George Vanderbilt’s apparition in the library, Edith Vanderbilt’s voice calling his name, phantom splashing in the pool, and a woman in black near the water.
Lemp Mansion, St. Louis, Missouri
Lemp Mansion is located in St. Louis and is tied directly to Gilded Age industrial wealth. According to the Lemp Mansion’s own history, William J. Lemp used his brewery fortune to turn the thirty-three-room house into a Victorian showplace. Then the family fortune collapsed…