HGB Ep. 611 - Haunted Newport Mansions

This Month in History - First Deep Level Electric Tube

In the month of November, on the 4th, in 1890, the world's first deep-level electric "tube" railway was officially opened in London, England. Deep-level rail lines are subterranean train tunnels and they were created to result in less disruption to surface streets and buildings. The railway was designed by James Henry Greathead and was inaugurated by Edward, Prince of Wales, in November, 1890, but did not open to the public until December 18th of the same year. This was the first major railway to use electric-powered trains. The line ran approximately 3.2 miles from Stockwell to King William Street in London. The construction method consisted of tunneling and lining the tunnels with cast iron tubing which earned the route the nickname of "The Tube". The nickname is still used today for London's underground railway system. The initial tunnels ran under the River Thames and were a major technological achievement proving the viability of deep-level electric tube railways, thus paving the way for future lines. Today, The London Underground AKA 'The Tube', accommodates on average, around 4 million people per day. 

Haunted Newport Mansions

Belleview Avenue was the Millionaire's Row of Newport. The avenue was lined with Gilded Age summer cottages built by wealthy industrialists. Those "cottages" were actually palatial estates and many of them still stand today and are run as museums or are privately owned. Several of them are haunted. These include Belcourt Castle, Seaview Terrace, The Breakers and Rough Point. Join us as we explore the history and haunts of these summer cottages to the rich and famous in Newport, Rhode Island! 

Belcourt Castle 

Newport is thought to have become a summer playground to the wealthy because of its proximity to New York City, views of the Atlantic Ocean and mild climate. Oliver Belmont was an interesting character. Belmont was born in New York City in 1858 to August Belmont who was an agent for the Rothschilds family and he built great wealth. August was so prominent that the famous Belmont Stakes, which is the oldest horse race in the Triple Crown, was named for him. Oliver attended the United States Naval Academy and served for a year as a midshipman before joining his father's banking firm. He became the publisher of the weekly paper, Verdict. Oliver served as a Representative in Congress for New York's 13th district from 1901 to 1903. August died in 1890, leaving his vast fortune to Oliver who was still a bachelor at the time. He decided to use some of that inheritance to build a massive summer home in Newport. And this wasn't because he had a large family. Belmont was a bachelor at the time. And as to why he chose Newport, it must have been because this is just what the rich and famous did because Oliver detested the nouveau riche (reesh) who built what he felt were ostentatious homes in Newport and he asked the architect to build his house facing away from all the others. Now, perhaps his neighbors didn't really care for him either. This was a guy who proposed marriage to a debutante named Sara Swan Whiting, but his parents objected because he was too young and they sent him off to Germany to learn the banking business. While there, Oliver delved deeper into gambling, which he had taken up in America before getting to Germany. He also discovered absinthe and became a heavy drinker of it. His playboy lifestyle got so bad that his parents agreed to him marrying Sara, which wouldn't be a good thing for her. The couple married in 1882 in Newport and they traveled to Paris for their honeymoon. Sara's mother joined them for several weeks and Oliver decided he had enough of that and he went out hitting up gambling houses and brothels and continuing with his drinking of absinthe. He got violent with Sara and see left for America. Oliver took up with a French dancer. After Sara got home, she realized she was pregnant. Oliver would disown that daughter - she managed just fine without him, becoming a prominent New York socialite. Belmont married Alva Vanderbilt in 1896, the ex-wife of a good friend of his. And she may have become that ex-wife because Oliver traveled with the Vanderbilts when they were married and it is believed they were having an affair. Belmont died in 1908 after he got septic from an operation for Appendicitis.

Richard Morris Hunt was the architect of Oliver's gorgeous Victorian mansion, which he called Belcourt. Belmont really did most of the planning and Hunt disagreed with much of the design, but he figured that it was Belmont's money so he did what Belmont wanted. One of these design elements was having stables and carriage areas on the first floor. Oliver wanted his prized horses in the mansion. Construction started in 1891 and was completed in 1894. Another quirk was building no kitchen because Oliver had his meals delivered from town. Several architectural designs were used including French Renaissance, Gothic and various German and Italian styles. The main house was a large three-story block with two-story wings coming off it with a large central courtyard. The roof on the main house is mansard with oval copper dormers. 

The mansion had 60 rooms and covered 50,000 square feet. The interior had magnificent hallways to highlight Belmont's love of pageantry and horses. The first floor had a Grand Hall and foyer with stained-glass windows decorated with the Belmont coat of arms and damask in blood red. A Grand Staircase connected the Lower Grand Hall to the Upper Grand Hall and most rooms are French in design with elements of Gothic. After Oliver's second wife passed in 1933, Belcourt went to Oliver's brother Perry Belmont. When World War II started, he emptied Belcourt out because he was afraid it would be damaged during the war and he sold off most of Alva's belongings because he hadn't cared for his sister-in-law. Perry sold Belcourt to a man named George Waterman in 1940. Waterman planned to open the house as an antique auto museum, but zoning wouldn't allow that, so he sold it to Edward Dunn after he had spent a bunch of money restoring the mansion to its original look. Dunn owned it for eleven years and never lived in the house. He rented out the stables to the military so they could repair equipment. Louis and Elaine Lorillard bought the mansion in 1954 and they used it as a seat for the Newport Jazz Festival, but the neighbors protested a continued use in this way and the property was sold to the Tinney Family in 1956. What they bought was rundown and abandoned house for the most part. The Tinneys poured their hearts into bringing the mansion back to life. They changed the name to Belcourt Castle and restored it, filling it with their own antiques and reproductions they made. The banquet hall featured a chandelier done in an Imperial Russian style with 13,000 rock crystal prisms and 105 lights. The rose marble mosaic floors in the hall were refurbished as well. The family installed tracker organ in the Organ Loft and raised the roof of the loft to accomicate thatand they converted a reception room into a chapel with German Renaissance stained glass. They added taller entrance gates and sculptures of terra cotta, marble, stone and bronze. The mansion was opened as a museum and visitors marveled over the English style libraray, Empire-style dining room, French Gothic ballroom and antiques and furnishings from 33 European and Asian countries. A Tinney family member lived in part of the mansion as a private residence and when Harle Tinney lived there, she hosted the tours. No better guide than the owner. The Tinney family held onto the property until 2012 when Harle sold to Carolyn Rafaelian who renovated the mansion and reopened it as a tour house, event space and gallery for art. 

From the 1940s to the mid 1950s, the mansion was abandoned and boarded up. Teenagers would challenge each other to sneak in and a creative caretaker decided to scare intruders by pretending to be a ghost and it worked with rumors spreading that the house was haunted. And while this was fake, it seems the place has real ghosts. There are many ghost stories affiliated to Belcourt and many of the spirits must be connected to the artifacts and antiques in the house because there are reports of knights and ghostly monks. 

Harle Tinney wasn't shy about sharing her own experiences. She even wrote a book about the ghosts in 2006. Harle claimed to wake up one night and see a man clad in a brown robe. For an instant she thought it was her husband until she reached over and felt him next to her. Then she watched the robed entity turn and walk through a wall. There is a monk statue that Harle believes has this monk attached to it, so they say the statue is haunted. The first floor ladies room used to have the monk statue near it and people claimed to see the spirit go from the Grand Hall into the bathroom. The statue was later moved to the chapel and there were claims the ghost monk was seen in there. One time a person thought the monk was preparing a mass in the chapel and she asked Harle when the mass was going to be held and when Harle asked why she asked that, Harle ended up informing her that she saw a ghost. Likewise, a suit of armor on the second floor is rumored to be haunted. People claim to hear it screaming when they pass by it. A psychic said that she had been told by the knight that he had been killed by a spear and left by his fellow knights for dead and so he died alone. The helmet on the suit of armor sometimes turns on its own. Chairs in the ballroom move on their own. Sometimes this movement is throwing the sitter out of the chair. A tour guide only worked one season after she had an experience that terrified her. She was leading a tour group through the ballroom and she heard a male voice saying to get out several times. She felt very uncomfortable the entire summer and didn't return after that. A lady in pink has been seen in the master bedroom and Harle thought it was her mother-in-law visiting. A woman in a ball gown is sometimes seen on the second floor gallery.

Ghost Hunters investigated the house during Season 5 in 2009. Harle and her husband had painstakingly recreated a golden coronation coach and this was one of the items that the Ghost Hunters wanted to investigate because of reports of a ball of light floating above the carriage. One of the interesting things that happened was Jason and Grant were in the banquet hall when they heard footsteps above their heads. When they got upstairs, the thermal imaging camera revealed a heat signature on the floor that looked to be the shape of a footprint. Disembodied footsteps were heard on the spiral staircase. Some people believe that Mr. Tinney haunts the house since his funeral was held in the ballroom. People say his spirit has been seen on the balcony above. The crew were able to pick up voices either humming or moaning near the suit of armor.       

Seaview Terrace

Seaview Terrace is massive and gorgeous. This is the fifth largest Newport "cottage." It is also known as the Carey Mansion, but was built by a man named Edson Bradley, Jr. Bradley made his wealth in Bourbon whiskey and built his first mansion in Washington, D.C. in 1907, which was known as Aladdin's Palace. This was a French-Gothic mansion on the south side of Dupont Circle that covered more than half a city block. The mansion had a large ballroom, an art gallery, a Gothic chapel and unbelievably, a 500-seat theatre. Edson was in D.C. to try to fight against Prohibition. Bradley decided in the 1920s that he would like to move to Newport, but he loved his mansion. So he decided to disassemble it and move it with him. This would be a big undertaking and is thought to be one of the largest buildings to be moved in this manner. The site that he bought in Newport already had an Elizabethan-Revival mansion that had been built in 1885. Bradley clearly liked massive homes, so he incorporated this mansion into his mansion. Edson planned to give this to his wife, Julia Wentworth Williams, for their 50th anniversary. The construction was completed in 1929 with a mostly Châteauesque style of the 16th century in France. Howard Greenley built Aladdin's Palace and he moved it and built Seaview Terrace. For his efforts, the American League of Architects awarded him the President's Medal in 1928. The original mansion on the site had been called Seaview Terrace and Bradley kept the name. The house had some "quirks." The attic was where the servants lived and the floors had many spy holes, so the servants could see into the rooms before. It was said this was so they could make sure guests didn't steal anything. The chapel had a pipe organ in a hidden room next to the chapel and this room could only be accessed by a trap door on the second floor. Stained-glass windows were all made in the 16th century.

Edson and his wife Julia moved into the 54-room, 39,648 square foot mansion. The Bradleys filled the home with medieval decor that included hunting trophies, there was Chinese porcelain, Renaissance chests, Chippendale chairs, Gobelin tapestries, elaborate hanging lamps and Persian tiles. Julia was a leading society hostess in D.C. and hosted the American Beauty Ball. She wanted the house to be the most beautiful in the city for that ball and she bought up every rose in the city to decorate the house. The city was devoid of roses for a while after that. 

Julia and Edson had one daughter together. Julia didn't enjoy Skyview Terrace for long. She passed away the same year it was completed at the age of 77 and her funeral was held in the chapel. Edson's fortunes turned and he passed in 1935. Their daughter, Julie Bradley Shipman, acquired the estate and she lived there until 1941. She failed to pay three years worth of taxes, so the city made her vacate and the house became officer quarters for the U.S. Army. The property was sold for only $8,000 in 1949 - it had cost $2 million to build. .In 1950, the mansion became a girls boarding school named "Burnham-by-the-Sea." The mansion became famous starting in 1966 when it was featured as the fictional "Collinwood Mansion" in the vampire soap-opera, "Dark Shadows." In 1974, the Carey-Bettencourt family bought the property and they still own it today, thus the name "Carey Mansion." Parts of the mansion were destroyed in a fire on February 28, 2024.

Several paranormal shows have investigated the mansion. SYFY's Stranded (created by Josh Gates - was similar to the reality show Fear. People were left at a haunted location for several days ) was there in 2013, Ghost Hunters investigated during Season 7 in 2011 and Ghost Nation and Kindred Spirits teamed up for an investigation on Halloween in 2020. That is because the Carey Mansion is said to be one of the most haunted locations in Rhode Island. Weird banging that happens randomly is heard, as are disembodied voices. One of the spirits is said to be Julia Bradley and she is seen most often as an apparition sitting at the Estey organ, playing it in the chapel. 

On Stranded, three musician friends investigate the house and they hear disembodied footsteps, doors open and close on their own and their EMF goes off several times. A set of locked double doors burst open in front of all three of them. And they heard phantom organ music, which freaked them out because the organ appeared to have been dismantled for years. Was this Julia playing? On their first visit, Ghost Hunters heard an audible male voice in the grand hall saying, "Hello, is that you?" A door handle turned by itself on the third floor. The crew said that up to this point, this was "the loudest evidence they've ever heard." Ghost Nation got a lot of evidence when they returned before Halloween in 2023, which included disembodied whispering, eerie noises and cold spots. They caught on camera a weird mist in the garage. It looked like smoke, but there was no one in there when they went to investigate. 

The Breakers

The Breakers is another mansion built by a Vanderbilt. Cornelius Vanderbilt II had been left $5 million dollars by his grandfather for whom he was named and he was also left $70 million by his father, William Henry Vanderbilt, so he was a very wealthy man. He took over as President of the New York Central railroad when his father passed in 1885 and was known to be a hard worker and he also donated a lot of money to charitable causes. Vanderbilt married Alice Gwynne in 1867 and they had seven children. 

The couple built their 70-room Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance summer mansion in 1893 to replace an earlier wooden home they had on the property that had burned to the ground. This was declared the grandest and biggest, three-story cottage in Newport. Architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the house and the interior was designed by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman Jr. The mansion was built from Indiana limestone blocks with a foundation of brick, concrete and limestone with a Terra Cotta red tile roof. The interior had marble, terrazzo and mosaic floors, alabaster fireplaces, gold painted hand-carved woodwork and marble fountains. The National Register of Historic Places says of the mansion, "The elaborately decorated facades and interiors appear now as they did upon completion in 1895, as documented by the photographs of its construction in 1895 and those of its interior in 1904. The original furniture and fixtures, interior plasterwork, gilding and decorative painting remain untouched from when Cornelius Vanderbilt II occupied The Breakers." The first floor has a Great Hall with six doors that have limestone figures representing humanity's progress: Galileo, Dante, Apollo, Mercury, Richard Morris Hunt and Karl Bitter. There is a library with coffered ceilings featuring paintings of a dolphin within a frame of walnut paneling with gold leaf and green Spanish leather embossed with gold. (Library picture: By UpstateNYer - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7548915) There are two busts in the library: a bronze of William Henry Vanderbilt II, the oldest child of Cornelius II and Alice, who died of typhoid at the age of 21 while attending Yale University; and a marble of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. There is a Music Room on this level as well that hosted recitals and dances. The ceiling is gilt coffered with silver and gold lining and the edges feature the names of composers. A Second Empire French mahogany ormolu mounted piano is in the room and Alice was known to play this while her husband played violin. This floor also has an ancient Rome styled Billiard's Room with slabs of Italian Cippolino marble and Renaissance style mahogany furniture. A dining room, kitchen, breakfast room and pantry are on the first floor too. That dining room is said to be the grandest room in the house with 12 freestanding rose alabaster Corinthian columns.

The second floor had bedrooms for the family. The third floor had a sitting room with Louis XVI style walnut paneling and mostly servants' quarters. The attic had a few more servant rooms and cisterns that supplied hydraulic pressure for an Otis elevator in the house and a fresh water cistern and salt water cistern. The Terrace was an open-air patio that had classical columns and arched openings with a view of the ocean and estate gardens. (Picture: By Renata3 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109923572) 

Cornelius died at the age of 55 in 1899. Alice outlived five of the Vanderbilt children, dying in 1934. The couples son Alfred died on the RMS Lusitania after he gave his life jacket to a woman who couldn't swim. Gloria Vanderbilt was a granddaughter of Cornelius and Alice. During World War II The breakers served as "Newport No. 1 air raid shelter." Youngest daughter, Gladys, inherited The Breakers and she opened it for public tours in 1948. Her heirs sold the mansion to The Preservation Society of Newport County in 1972 with the stipulation that they could still use the bedrooms located on the third floor. Alice Vanderbilt loved this home and seems to still be here in the afterlife. Her full-bodied apparition has been seen and staff claim to feel as if they are being watched. No investigations have been granted at the house, so we have to trust the staff on this. The house doesn't seem to embrace its haunting.

Rough Point

Frederick William Vanderbilt had Rough Point built in 1887 by architectural firm Peabody & Stearns. This was in the English Manorial style and the house was constructed from red sandstone and granite. The location was in a beautiful spot overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, bordering the Cliff Walk. The Vanderbilts started renting the house in 1894. Tinplate King William Bateman Leeds, Sr. rented the house in 1904 and 1905 and bought it in 1906. Leeds died in 1908 and his wife held onto the house until 1922 when she sold to James Buchanan Duke and his wife Nanaline. 

Duke had made his money in electric power and tobacco. Duke University is named for his father. The Dukes added two new wings to the house. They had a daughter, the infamous Doris Duke. She was twelve when her dad passed in 1925 and he left his whole fortune and residences to her, leading her becoming a billionaire and one of the richest women in America. Her debutante ball was held at Rough Point in 1929 and this became her most prized property. For a time in the 1950s, she emptied Rough Point out completely and lived in New York City, but she returned in 1958 and refurnished the house. Someone who helped her with the redecorating was interior designer Eduardo Tirella, who became her good friend and close confidant. Tirella would come to his end at the hands of Doris. Doris was an interesting woman. She used her vast fortune to buy lots of things, but she also was very philanthropic. And she had a wide array of interests. Doris studied singing under Composer, soprano and celebrated voice teacher Estelle Liebling. She learned to surf from the Duke himself in Hawaii. She was the first non-Hawaiian woman to take up competitive surfing under surfing champion and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku. She worked in a canteen for sailors in Egypt during World War II. Doris also worked as a foreign correspondent for the International News Service in 1945. After the war, she wrote for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. She could speak French fluently. Duke also loved animals and even owned a couple of camels. But she was also described as vindictive and possessive. She once stabbed a lover during a fight.

Those two personality flaws may have lead to the death of Eduardo Tirella. Tirella had been an actor and advised on films and he was a Renaissance man and war hero. He was gay and quite skilled at interior decorating. Doris had hired him as the artistic curator and designer for her several homes. Ed had worked for her for ten years and in 1966, he was ready to move full-time to the West coast and dive deeper into his Hollywood career. He would have to sever his professional ties with Doris to do this and he knew she wouldn't be happy. Surely, he had not only heard about her famous anger, but probably witnessed it first hand. 

On October 6th, he flew into Newport and Doris picked him up at the airport. The next day, Ed told Doris the news and they fought, as reported by Rough Point's staff. Things calmed down and the two got into Duke's station wagon to head to an appointment with Ed driving. When they got to the gates of the estate, Ed got out of the car to unlock the chain and open the gates. Doris jumped into the driver's seat, released the break, shifted to drive and hit the accelerator without the gates even being open yet. The two-ton vehicle hit Tirella, burst through the gates, crossed the street smashing through a fence and crashed into a tree. Ed was left crushed under the rear axle, dead. Doris was taken to the local hospital with minor injuries. Police questioned her and held no inquest. Within 96 hours, they rules the incident a terrible accident and Duke would never face consequences for what nearly everybody believes was a murder. Some people believe there was a quid-pro-quo here because Doris donated a massive amount of money to Newport to refurbish 84 colonial-era homes. 

Several of the police were rewarded as well. The police chief retired shortly after the crash and bought a couple of condos in Florida and the investigator that questioned Duke got a promotion over other detectives to police chief. Doris died in 1993 and Rough Point has remained much as it was when she lived there. The house was tied up in litigation for a few years and eventually opened as a museum in 2000. The Newport Restoration Foundation, that Duke set up to restore the mansions in Newport, manages it today. And it would seem that Doris is still at her mansion according to employees.

The podcast Hometown Ghost Stories shared an employees experience at Rough Point in 2020, "Shirley ran through in her head everything she was supposed to do before leaving for the night. She cursed herself for not taking notes when Mrs. Clark explained it to her earlier in the day. It was her first night closing up shop at the Rough Point Mansion and she made mental notes rather than writing everything down. She said out loud, 'I think I just shut off the lights and lock up.' The echo of her voice bounced around the immense foyer, sending a chill down her spine. The building gave her the creeps during the day, never mind alone at night." Shirley always chuckled to herself about how picky Mrs. Clark was about how things should be left, like chairs pushed in, but not touching the table. And Mrs. Clark said the employees always had to say goodnight to Doris. Shirley forgot to do that. She grabbed her car keys out of her pocketbook and got the feeling that something was watching her. Looking back at the house she thought she saw a woman in the window. She put on her glasses to see better, but dropped them in the dirt and bent down to get them. When she looked back up at the house, the figure was gone. Shirley went back to the house, unlocked the door and hollered inside, "Goodnight, Doris." As she closed the door again, she heard what she thought was the faint voice of Doris Duke singing her favorite song from the room with the window where she saw the woman.

In the process of finding stuff on Doris Duke, I came across this story on Reddit about another mansion Doris had owned that is now demolished, Duke Estates in Hillsborough, New Jersey. This person wrote, "Before this was removed, me and my father had one of the scariest encounters in our life here. Back in the late 00’s, me and my father went to the estate for a boy scout outing. After everything was over, my father, my friend, my friends father and I decided to walk around for a little bit. We stumbled upon the closed down mansion, and decided to sneak past the gates to have a look around. After we last those gates, I started to get a really weird anxious feeling, but just brushed it off. My friend and his father ran somewhere, and my dad and I were at the side of the house. We both instantly freeze up, and get this absolute dread and fear coursing through our bodies. I’m in absolute tears, but we can’t move. My dad recounts that he heard a voice screaming “LEAVE NOW”, but he replied, “I’m a follower of Jesus Christ and God, you can’t hurt us”. The feeling then slowly subsided, and we can move. We got out of there quickly, and didn’t talk about it for about a decade. When I brought this up a few years ago, he was surprised I even remembered. We talked it over and we both remember the same exact events and how it played out. My friend and his father didn’t experience this though, just us two." 

The historic mansions on the former Millionaire's Row of Newport, Rhode Island are really something to see. We're glad that many of them still stand and that they have been restored to their former glory. Are these summer cottages haunted? That is for you to decide!