Ghosts of South Florida: Abandoned Hospital and Biltmore Hotel

9/19/2023

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In North Miami off 441 at the Cloverleaf Interchange, where the Palmetto Expressway joins I-95 for over two decades a crumbling, graffitied building decayed while traffic whizzed below it. It was once a hospital, and it developed a reputation for being haunted.

Parkway Regional Hospital

Parkway Regional Hospital deteriorated for the 20 years it was abandoned

Parkway Regional Hospital opened its doors in 1974, with enough room for 300 patients. There was a psych ward on the 7th floor, with a separate entrance for patients brought in due to a Baker Act.

There was a morgue in the basement.

As time passed the area became crime ridden, and the hospital closed in 2002. The empty building became more derelict as the years passed. It was demolished in July, 2023 after more than 20 years where, it stood untenanted, by the living that is.

This story was sent to Miami Ghost Chronicles in 2011:

THE SECURITY GUARD'S STORY

A friend of mine was working security there for a short period of time, so some of us went to visit him. He would sit on the 1st floor right next to the morgue.

Keep in mind, the hospital is completely empty except for some equipment. My security guard friend told us stories of how the place was haunted and how he heard weird noises during the night.

One story he spoke of was of a woman who was giving birth, but had to be taken to the O.R. to deliver... the story goes the woman died during the birth, but to this day she still roams around on the second floor in search of her baby.

On two occasions we roamed the hospital taking a look around, and let me tell you the feeling was a scary one. We walked through the O.R. on the second floor and we walked through the emergency room and cafeteria, and it was freaky.

But the scariest moment happened on my second visit. My friends and I rode the elevators to different floors inside, and we would mess around by trying to leave each other out of the elevator, stuck on the floor. Some floors were lit up, while others were pitch black. We ended up on one floor and got out of the elevator. Can't remember the floor.

The hallway had a linoleum tile, like in schools. We were about a quarter of the way down the hall, when we heard the noise of someone screeching their shoes against the floor as if they were walking. The thing was, no one else was in the hallway but us. The scary part is, that noise kept getting close as if the person was walking towards us. So we hauled ass, and made our way into the stairwell, and closed the door behind us. As we made our way down the stairs toward the first floor and exit we heard the sound enter the stairwell, that sent goosebumps down my spine... I was totally spooked after that incident, I never returned.

To this day if you drive by the hospital, different room lights are lit. But it's impossible, someone is turning on the lights, cause the hospital is empty...So who's doing it???

Julio on July 7, 2014, contacted MGC and wrote the following:
My girlfriend and I visited yesterday about 7PM. I have to say I didn't really think it was going to be such a big deal going into this hospital, but the moment you step inside you know you have to watch your back. We took plenty of video inside but one the video I posted online, is about something I've never thought we would".

Dr. Christina Smith (1959-1998)

HOSPITAL'S HISTORY

On December 3, 1998, Dr. Christina Gabriele Smith was shot twice in the chest by a psychiatric patient. One of the bullets hit her heart, and she died an hour later. The man fled, firing at anyone who stood in his way including James Reed who headed a Narcotics Anonymous meeting on the same floor. He received a wound on the leg. Another man from the meeting held the gunman in a bear hug until Officer Christopher Starnes who was coming up in the elevator with a handcuffed psychiatric patient, handcuffed Sterling until other officers arrived.

It was not known how a patient that had been Baker Acted had a gun or why he shot at his own doctor.

The patient's name was Knollys Sterling, 68. He was angry at Dr. Smith because she would not let him leave again to take care of his dog and attend to his ice cream vending business.

The hospital allowed him to go with a driver to close his house. He had just lost the property in a foreclosure sale a few days before. He was searched upon his initial arrival, but it seemed he was not searched when he returned from the visit to his home. It was suspected he snuck the gun inside the case of a manual typewriter he brought back with him. There were no metal detectors at the hospital.

It seemed the hospital had other security issues. On November 8, 1998, a man jumped to his death from the 7th floor window. Two weeks before the shooting another psychiatric patient jumped from either a 2nd or 3rd floor window, suffering only minor injuries.

A judge had committed Sterling to the psych unit days before. He was out on bail since 1996, for an attempted murder charge. This was his fourth arrest since 1978. He had fired his gun at the ground while arguing with neighbors.

Sterling confronted Dr. Smith near the nurses' station, where he asked her why she was keeping him in the hospital, and when he could leave. She told him he was supposed to stay for 5 days of treatment. He became belligerent shouting this would ruin his business and he had a dog to care for.

Knollys Sterling was convicted of killing Dr. Christina Smith in 1998

Sterling returned to his room where he got the gun he had kept hidden for two days. The doctor saw him and turned to run, but she was hit in the chest. Sterling then fired off two shots at some men who came into the hallway from the NA meeting.

He screamed, "I told you... that I'm a person. That I'm somebody," witnesses said.

Sterling was charged with 1st degree murder. Police found the .380 caliber handgun in the psychiatric unit. He gave a full confession to the police, and it was noted that he was articulate, and did not appear disoriented or confused.

Police records indicated the Jamaican native had a history of violence. In 1978, he was charged with aggravated assault, but the case was dropped and the details of the event were lost. In 1989, he was picked up on a warrant, and a search of a duffel bag he carried yielded a .25-caliber firearm with 7 rounds in the clip, and one in the chamber. He was sentenced to 2 days in jail.

In 1993, he was charged once more with aggravated assault. The victim was selling snow cones for Sterling and they argued over money. He punched the woman and then bit her on the nose.

In September, 1996, he was charged with aggravated assault and two counts of attempted murder for firing shots at two boys from the neighborhood who knocked on his door by mistake. He was out on $5,000 bail when he killed Dr. Smith. The case was delayed several times, running into the current year of the crime.

In August, 4 months before the murder, Sterling's court appointed attorney told the court his client was not mentally competent to stand trial. In October, Judge Gill Freeman ordered Sterling to go for outpatient psychiatric treatment.

Demolition of Parkway Regional Hospital c.June, 2023

The doctors after examining him found that he was worse than the judge had been told, and he needed to be treated at a secure facility, in other words he needed to be committed versus an outpatient treatment. In response, Sterling vanished. The judge issued a warrant, but Sterling turned himself in the same day. They diagnosed him as psychotic, paranoid, delusional and dangerous.

Besides his criminal problems, Sterling needed to come up with $7,000 to halt foreclosure on his house.

According to his attorney, "He blamed everyone for his problems. I was the fourth attorney he used. If he had settled the case two attorneys ago, he could have saved his house, but he didn't want advice from anyone."

To the people in the Strawberry Fields neighborhood where he lived, he seemed a nice man. He was divorced and had several children, but lived there alone. He was known for parking his ice cream truck in front of his house, and letting the neighborhood kids pick what they wanted for free. However his personality and habits had become strange, and neighbors were cautious around him. Especially after he fired a gun into the ground near two children two years before. They had mistakenly knocked on his door at 11917 SW 208th Terrace, Miami.

The death of Dr. Smith caused a ripple effect that seems to presage the closing of the hospital. In 1999, the hospital was put on probation over safety issues tied to her murder.

Dr. Smith's parents sued the hospital for security practice and received an undisclosed settlement in 2003. Soon after her parents sued Parkway, Smith's companion of 6 years, a Miami lawyer filed suit against the estate. She said she should gain control of the estate's assets or be financially supported by it for the rest of her life due to the relationship between them. However under Florida's wrongful death statute the partner has no claim to it.

In 2001, Sterling was declared competent to stand trial for 1st degree murder. He had been diagnosed with colon and prostate cancer. He was sentenced to 15 years.

As of 2023, Knollys Sterling served his sentence and is still alive, age 92.

Noel Chambers c.2019 (Source - Miami Gardens Police)

In 2018, the graffiti on the building made the news because it had taken an obscene turn. Graphic sexual signs could be seen by traffic on the highway. It was referred to as an x-rated billboard.

By then the building had a reputation as a hangout for vagrants, drug addicts and those hiding from authorities.

A year later the decayed building made the newspapers again, when it was rumored a man who killed Lorrice Harris and her young daughter Shayla Chambers was hiding there.

Noel Chambers, 57, hacked his wife of 10 years, and his daughter with a machete. The dispute arose because Harris wanted a divorce. Noel Chambers, a Jamaican was known to friends by the nickname "Massive", despite only being 5'6" tall. He also attacked Shanalee Chambers, 29, his daughter who survived and was hospitalized.

Ironically Lorrice Harris, who was a nurse had gone to Jamaica 10 years before to marry Chambers, and help him immigrate to the United States.

In 2020, a young man fell to his death inside this abandoned building in No. Miami

He was captured a few days after the crime and was charged with 2 counts of first degree murder, and 1 count of murder in the first degree with a deadly weapon/attempt. As of 2023, he's being held without bond, and is pending trial.

In October2020, Adrian Valenzuela, 21, fell to his death inside the abandoned Parkway Regional Hospital. He had just moved from California, and went with 3 friends to the building. He walked away to make a phone call, when they heard "a loud noise, a loud bang". He stepped into a dark stairwell and didn't see the hole in the middle of the stairs. He fell hundreds of feet. His phone was found on one floor, his shoes on another, and his feet at the bottom.

Demolition on the building was completed in July, 2023.

Biltmore Hotel

Golfers at Miami Biltmore Hotel c.1925

A true ghost story submitted to Miami Ghost Chronicles about one of the most infamous haunted places in South Florida, The Biltmore Hotel.

It was a warm August night back in 1999. My friends and I decided to go see the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. So we parked at our friend's house that lived a block away then we proceeded toward the huge landmark.

We walked in like as if we owned the place, right by the bellboy and the front desk, straight to the back of the hotel and then outside. There were 5 of us including myself. Two of my friends stayed at the golf course just talking as I and my other 2 friends crept into the utility elevator in the back. We pressed the 3rd floor which then takes you to the main elevators. We got to the third floor then found the other elevators. I was surprised to see the elevator to the far left leads to the tower. We got on that and pressed the infamous 13th floor. It didn't light up. We then took the elevator to the lobby, but before getting to the lobby it stopped on the 7th floor. The doors opened, we stood still for a couple of seconds, and then the doors closed (why it stopped at the 7th floor, who knows).

We got to the lobby but before we were able to walk out a man with a suitcase walks in and asks, “Going up?" We said "Yeah" and stayed inside. The man's destination was the 14th floor. He slid a special key into the elevator which gives access to the tower floors. He asked what floor we were headed to, I kept a poker face and said 13 please. He pressed it and it lit. We got to the 13th floor and the doors opened, we thanked the man and proceeded outside.

The 13th floor is not like the other floors. It is more like a 10 foot enclosure with double doors facing you. We tried opening the doors but they were locked. So we decided to call on the elevator. We stood waiting and it sounded like rain falling down the elevator shaft. We decided to go back down to the lobby, but before we got to the lobby floor the elevator automatically took us to the 7th floor again. We got spooked then and decided to get off on that floor and take the stairs to the bottom.

We told our friends outside what had happened, and they didn't believe us. So we all went back and took the elevator to the 12th floor, got off and took the stairs to the tower. We passed the exit to the 13th floor, we got to the exit on the 14th and it was locked. We got to the 15th floor and opened the door. To your right there is a door labeled "Merrick Suite" we opened it and went inside. It was dark but through the darkness you could tell it was a detailed and beautiful room. We noticed that there was two windows opposite from each other. One was facing the front of the hotel and the other facing the rear (toward the golf course). These windows were enormous about 10 feet high. We also noticed that we were in a sitting room. There was more rooms inside the actual suite. Two on one side and one on the other side. We walked into the first dark room turned on the light and felt the temperature difference immediately. It was really cold in that room, despite the fact that all rooms were served by the same air conditioning system.

One of my friends was going to open the closet but I told him not to touch anything. We heard a noise coming from the elevator area. We all froze, looked at each other and ran down the stairs to the lobby. My legs were in pain. Imagine running 15 flights down! Somewhere on our trek down the stairs we left two of our guys behind, so we took the elevator back to the 12th floor and took the stairs to the 15th again.

We were just nosy, because we still hadn't found our other 2 friends that we had gone back for. We walked back into the room we were in and as I remembered we had left the lights on, however to our surprise the lights were off. We paid it no attention and opened the room next to it. This room faced the corner of the hotel, it too was dark but one could see the beds were unmade, which we thought was pretty weird.

We walked into the last room across which had double doors. We were shocked to find the room lit. We closed the doors and exited the suite. We decided to go back down,but use the elevator this time. Again as we waited, we heard sounds of hard rain which definitely caught our attention. The doors soon opened and we all let out a shriek when we found our other two friends inside. We all ran into the elevator and pressed lobby, but it took us to the 7th floor again! What was it with the 7th floor?!

We also noticed that it was ice-cold on that floor. We waited for the doors to close and went to the lobby. We walked back out into the golf course and looked up to the window at the Merrick Suite. We saw what seemed to be the shape of a person looking straight down at us. We all stopped and stared and one of my friends gave a suggestion by saying it was probably a vase or something. But I knew that wasn't a vase! We walked the damp golf course grass just to walk off our scare. We walked to the end and turned around heading back to the hotel. I knew we were going back a different way too. Something gave me the feeling to look back at the grass behind us. To my shock there was more than a couple of footprints.

Let’s do the math now, 5 guys’ equal 10 sets of footprints. Right? Well someone explain to me why there was at least 20 footprints going in all directions right behind us. We knew the prints weren't there before because in front of us the grass was perfectly smooth. So we all take one step at a time. When we took about 2 steps together I turned around, again the zigzagged steps, about 15 or more of them. We all ran out of the grounds and didn't stop until we got to my car, where we went home never doubting that the Biltmore is haunted.