The Winecoff Hotel

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back. Welcome back.

Are you all right? I'm just leaving my ear. It's just a hair. It's okay now.

Sorry, that was a lot. It was a lot. Sorry. We, we had a rough night actually.

I just got really tough. We, um, I had gone to the store, um, thinking that Hailey was gonna be like, I'm gonna be here at six and normally when she tells me a time I'm about 30 minutes late because I don't anticipate the traffic to get here, but we're having to record on a different day than normal because of like freaking tornadoes that whipped through my end of the state. Yeah, yeah. None confirmed, but that's definitely what it was.

Yeah. Roofs were flying. Cows. Cows were out.

It was bad. It was bad times. Um, no. So I, um, today there wasn't really as much traffic and I didn't know what to do with myself.

I know. I thought I got plenty of time. Mm-hmm. I went to the grocery store, um, did some things.

So we were at the grocery store and I was, you know, fighting with myself to try and get in the car. And Hailey was like, I'm here in the house. And I had gotten a notification that, you know, Randy had let someone in, you know, through the car, Jack like, oh, hey, someone's coming in and I didn't even pay attention really. And then Hailey's like, I'm here.

Like what? Oh, you're early. Oopsie. I'm the grocery store.

In fact, not early. I was exactly on time. You were, um, to be exact, three minutes early. Was I really?

You were three minutes early. Oh, never happened again. Yeah, I know. I know.

Never. So I was like, oh, wow, what do I do with that? So I was putting groceries into the car. Yeah.

Yeah. So I was like, okay, well, huh, like 15 minutes away. So it was also cold outside. I'm so sorry.

I was gonna skivig in my car. But then there was a part of me that was like, because you didn't tell me, because normally like, if you think you're not gonna be here, you'll like send me the door code that changes every fricking time I come over here. Um, and you'll text it to me. So I was like going back through my text, like look to see when the last time you sent me a code was like, maybe that will work.

That's gonna break into your house. Yeah. But also, I was like, you know, she hasn't texted me that she's not gonna be here. So then there was a piece of me that thought you were dead.

Like something had happened inside and you were like dead. And I was like, oh my God. Like I'm gonna, cause I called you and you didn't answer me. I was like, oh my God, she's dead.

So I'm like looking around, I'm like, how am I getting this house? And then I saw there was a light on in your garage. So I like peered through the window there and I was like, oh, there's no car here. I'm like, oh, I guess she's not here.

Okay. So she's not dead in the house. She's out somewhere. She might be there.

She against her will in her car. Yeah, like she's not here. So then you'd finally text me back and I was like, okay, she's just a bookstore. She's just, she's just, she's just, she's just being so rude.

No, I was like worried for your safety for a moment. I, yeah, me too. Being at the grocery store with a kid who was like, I want a toy. I'm like, we're not at the grocery store for a toy.

We're at the grocery store to get food because there's impending snow and we need to hurry and get food and do all the things at Auntie Haley's at our house. Let's go. Oh, supervised in her own. She may deal something.

Come on. Let's go. No. I thought I don't know.

I watched a dog. Yeah. No. I was like, we don't have any issue with that.

Aunt Haley's been to our house many times. I'm supervised. His biggest concern was that you were playing with his toys. Oh, I did see that.

I did see that kinetic sand and I thought maybe, maybe it is fun. It is fun. But then I did it. There's some on the carpet over here though.

Oh, there's plenty. It's everywhere. I told him, don't worry. She's not playing with your toys.

And he took a beat and he thought about it. He said, I bet she's playing with your toys. We're not that close. Two places.

We clearly don't wear my way. Instantly the dark one. Exactly where yours went. And I was like, close that bedroom drawer.

Oh, you're not that close. Nope. Not that close. Is anybody.

Is that that you share? I wouldn't say even if you even if you said, hey, I don't even have an extra toothbrush. I wouldn't even say here's my toothbrush. No, I would give you the spare one that I thought from the dentist last week.

Yeah, the brand new one. Yeah, they have traded out. Exactly. You could have that one.

Sure. If you said, I'm really cold or I got something all over my sweater, I would say, here's a sweater. My closet. Wear this.

Here are some socks. I wouldn't give you my underwear. Right. Just again, we are close.

And we have learned that we're very similar in personality. Oddly very similar. Yeah, but I'm not going to wear your underwear. And you're not going to be with my toy.

So when he said that, I was like, no, no. I also have this image of like, I have an iPad that he has no idea about because it's mine. But I also thought if adults acted like kids, and like, I just had this whole image of you going to, like, touching my iPad or going in, I have an office at home too. If you came and you touch my laptop or something, then I would go, hey, that's mine.

And we just started acting like little kids. And so that helped get the dirty thought out of my head. So that was better. That was better.

That was better. He did tell me when he came in that his first words to me were not high. They were, mom didn't buy me Hot Wheels. Mom didn't get me Hot Wheels.

I was like, oh man, that's tough. I know. At the tough time. Lessens to learn.

Yeah. I know. When mom won't get you Hot Wheels. Because have you seen his room?

Yeah. I filled with tons of them. Well, I tripped over that little orange excavator, yellow, whatever color that is. And there was a crunch.

So I was real scared. I broke it, but I did an investigation and I did not. In fact, break it. I spent a lot of time prior to Christmas trying to get rid of a lot of stuff.

So he was sick right before Christmas and it was great because I was able to go through. Like when he's sick, he sleeps a lot. So I was able to go through a lot of stuff in his playroom and like purge something. So it was funny because we went to this local place where we don't need a lot of things.

Yeah. And so he was in the car, but he had no idea what was in the trash bags. And he said, are we going to take the trash? And I was like, sure.

Because like, when have you ever taken your trash? We have trash service. We have trash service. And I was like, yes, we're taking trash.

And he was like, okay. And so then he just kind of didn't pitch. So we go to the donation center and I said, oh, actually, no, we're mommy's donating some old clothes of hers. And he was like, oh, okay.

And so we go there and the man's like, what you got there? A little lady or something like that. And I was like, I want you to be quiet about this. We're going to do this faster.

I want you to hear me out. I got toys. My son's in the car. These are his toys.

No, don't look at him. Look at me. Only me. Keep your eyes on me the whole time.

I got my son to let him know what's in these bags. They're toys in these bags. Look at him. Look at me.

I was like, no, let him know. If he knows, we're going to blow the whole thing. He's going to lose it. I was like, let's do this fast.

All right. And he was like, okay. I was like, no, no, don't look at him. Look at me.

Only me. Only me. Don't look at him. He was like, all right.

Oh my God. Yeah. We have to do amazing. Yeah.

So that's pretty cool. We've urged a lot and there's, yeah. I feel like for me, 2024 has been your purge. I want to declutter my life.

I cannot handle it. I can't handle it. There's a lot happening in my house all the time. And I just, and it shouldn't be because I live with one other person.

It was never home and a dog. Am I cat? Are they home? Yeah.

Yeah. And you can't kick them out. You can't kick them out. So, yeah.

Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely holiday season. Well, I mean, that's been a hot minute. It's been a second. But I hope it was still lovely.

I did too. And you're all braving this weather if you're in the, you know, so. And we apologize to you. We had posted about the episode last week and then we didn't get to upload it until about four o'clock Eastern time.

Oh, yeah. Just because Hailey ended up having a really bad migraine headache. So she wasn't able to upload it at prior to midnight. And then she worked that day with a really bad migraine, went home early.

And so she wasn't able to upload it until later that day. Sorry about that. My brain decided to attack me. But yeah.

So just so you know, we still love y'all. We didn't forget about you. We didn't forget about you. Just Hailey was feeling ill.

Yeah. I got home and I took, if you have migraines and you have to take, like, I take Suma Tripton. There's some other ones out there. But I take Suma Tripton one.

And for some people, it's just like taking that in person. It's like a stronger one. For me, it makes me absolutely insane. Like I get so loopy.

Like, come on. It makes me actually get exhausted. Yeah. And then I knock out.

Yeah. But I feel like I have had, like, I don't know, I've drank. So I'm like, I'm drunk. Really?

Kind of. Like I couldn't operate a car if I took one. Like, can't do it. So that's why we didn't knock things up.

Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Because I was drunk.

Incastated. Hailey was drunk again. I was drunk again. No.

It was like being drunk with none of the fun. It was all just the headache and the lay in a dark room and try to throw up. But I do have to say, there's something weird that happens, and I don't know if this is a phenomenon that happens to you. It happens to me.

When you're coming out of a really intense migraine, there's this kind of high that you get when it starts to alleviating the pressure and the pain. And it's sort of in this, like, it's sort of point where you start to kind of feel it wash over your body feel better. Like it starts to leave your body and you're sort of like laying there. You know you can't make a lot of movements.

But you also are starting to feel better. It's kind of a weird high. I usually get the next day. My whole face hurt.

Like my face hurt. My hair hurt. Like to brush my hair hurt. It was just bad times.

I always have the hangover. Yeah. That always feels like you went out partying. But you just had a migraine.

Yeah. Well, if we all have migraines, let us know and we'll see you next week. We talked about this either last week or a couple weeks ago about migraines and how intense they can be. They're really awful.

Yeah, they're terrible. I've suffered for years and they think. So, yeah, that's fine. Alright, today we are going to Atlanta.

Atlanta. Atlanta. Hot, hot, Atlanta. We're going to talk about the Wynekoff Hotel.

Cool. I had never heard of this. I have another. It's fascinating.

Great. Okay. So, December, 1946. In the bustling metropolis that is Atlanta, Georgia, the Wynekoff Hotel sits in the heart of the city.

The jewel of the city. In fact, it's the landscape and one of the tallest buildings at the time. It had 15 floors. It's pretty tall.

Yeah. Wynekoff opened in 1913 and was very fancy. It was very elegant. And a lot of the posh stay there.

Do you think we would have stayed there if, you know, back in the day? No. Maybe the super-rate. We'd have been at the tavern.

The tavern Inn. Drankin? Drankin. We would have drankin.

We would have stumbled upstairs and slept on some straw mattresses. You started off. We'd have been drankin. And then you sounded like force go.

So, it would have sounded like the time we got up there. Laugh is Laka Box chocolates. We would have filmed the mattress. The mattress.

Yeah, probably. We would not have been at some place. The 1913 version of the super-rate. Yeah.

Yeah. Fair. The tavern Inn. Yeah.

We probably had to wash them dishes or something to be able to even stay there. They're not like us. We got one room. We had to share it.

We had to share a toothbrush then. Yeah. It was really sad. That was a low point now.

We had to share some straw and that was the last straw. Yeah. That was the last straw. Somebody was going to die that night.

It was not like those romance books that you read where it's like the, where they have to share the one bed at the inn. And then you know something that's about to go crazy and happen. No, it wasn't like that. It was cold.

My cold toes kept touching Holl's leg. And that was the last straw. That was the last straw. Then we weren't friends anymore.

I didn't know that something romantic was going to happen in our book. I didn't know we had that kind of friendship. Obviously. Obviously not.

Wow. Well, honey. I'm so bummed. That was not good enough friends to share each other's toys.

So I don't think we can make it enough. Like there's not a romantic inkling here. Sorry if anybody was shipping that. It's not so sweet.

That's so sweet. We're flattered. But no. Oh, you know, I never thought of that.

That is really sweet. That is sweet. No, I've always seen myself as the older sister. Yeah.

Same. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Tell me more about the straw. Tell me more about the straw. What were my straw mattress in 1913? OK, let's wear them out.

So it also boasted that it was fireproof. That's a heavy claim. But here's the thing, think about the Titanic that boasted that it was unsyncable. It is probably not a good idea to boast about certain things.

I mean, there may have done straw mattresses in the posh hotel. This is 1913. I mean, they have real mattresses. And everything?

Yes. Yes. They did. They had real mattresses in 1913.

They weren't just made of straw. just made a straw. Okay. In nice hotels, yes.

Okay. Seriously. I believe you. That's why you're looking it up because you believe me?

Oh my gosh. Yeah. All right. You find it.

Just verify. See you guys shipping us out there. Look at the bigger ring that we do. So the exterior building was made with very solid materials, brick, mortar, all the good things, you know, fireproof.

Don't you know? Did you find pictures of it? I didn't, but I believe you. Okay.

We'll go back to it. Okay. The wine cough was very busy due to the Christmas holiday approaching. Great deal of guests were visiting the hotel and were in town to shop and see the new Disney movie called the Song of the South, which was playing at the cinema house across the street.

There were 304 guests checked into the hotel that night, including a group of students on a state of Georgia YMCA sponsored trip for a legislative program. That was a lot. That's a lot. I mean, get it.

Legislative students through the YMCA. Through the YMCA. State of Georgia program. Yeah.

All that. They were doing all the things. I know. Go for it.

Yeah. Rooms 10, 11 and 10, 12 acted as an apartment for the hotel's namesake and builder, William Winekoff and his wife, Grace. So they actually lived in the hotel and had for many, many years. So if that's kind of neat, as the chaos of the evening settled down in Slumber overtook the city, a peaceful silence echoed through the halls of the hotel.

That is until around 3.15 a.m. That's right. Always around that time. That's usually when Haley and I would go upstairs from the bar.

Yeah. Yeah. We've shut it down. I had no door-strong address.

I happened to sleep toe to head because, you know, what you do. What you do. You're taller than me. Yeah.

So. But then we had to stop doing that because I might call it cold-tose or touch-and-hollies cheek. Well, actually more in my head, like the top of my head. Yeah.

Well, it's bad. It was bad. It was. Yeah.

I was like a thrasher when I sleep. It wasn't even bad. It would not have ended well for you. No.

I like flail. Notice my wording. It would not have ended well for you. Yeah.

I don't know. I'm not too unconscious. You know, I, in the end, would have killed you. Oh, okay.

While we think that like you would have hurt me, you probably would have, but in the end, you would have been victorious. See. Already then. Okay.

So what happened to you? We didn't do that coming in the story. You did not meant to. Ooh.

That's a good novel. Yeah. I like that. I'd ship that.

Same. Okay. So. 3.15 a.m.

A bell boy responds to a call from a hotel gas on the 5th floor. The gas claimed to be trapped in a need of assistance. I'll trap to where? I don't know.

I'm trapped and I need assistance. But yet you have a phone? Yeah. I've been reached the phone.

Yeah. It seemed very odd. What do you mean trapped? Okay.

So the first thought is it's 1946. No good good come of this. Right. I'm trapped and I need assistance.

I fall in and I can't get out. Exactly. I'm trapped and I can't get out. I'm stuck to the floor like a peanut buttercup.

The bell boy noticed a fire emanating from a lower level corridor thought to be the third floor where a mattress and chair had temporarily been placed. Yeah. So to give you a picture, two floors below the third floor corridor or the hallway, there's a mattress and a chair just hanging out there. Okay.

So like maybe it was just taken out of a room to give it more space. I don't really know why it was there. Or it was like they'd taken it's late at night. Maybe the like night crew was taking stuff out and closing of things.

Yeah. I don't know. Who needs this mattress? So clearly Haley not made a straw.

And this is also 1946. Yeah. Yeah. We've got our mattresses now.

Yeah. So maybe it's one of these things like, you know, we don't we need more space, actual floor space in the room. So we're just going to take this out. Who knows?

So anyway, it had been taken out and it was placed close to the stairwell near the fourth floor. Okay. So it's believed that someone dropped a cigarette down the stairwell. What an asshole.

Exactly. Like, what are you doing? Stop it. So rude.

A cigarette down the stairwell and hit the mattress or something close to it and ignited it starting the blaze. One telephone call, one, was made to the fire department around 3 42 a.m. Some 27 minutes after the fire was initially discovered. Wow.

So plenty of time to do some damage. Yeah, that's a lot. But I guess we think of things in terms of like, I'll just pick my cell phone up out of my pocket and give a call. So the bell boy would actually have to run or take the elevator or the stairs back down and go tell someone at the front desk, hey, there's a fire we need to call somebody to be able to call and then of course he could have called from a room.

Right. But I was like, I'm sorry. I don't feel like, you know, you see a fire. It's an emergency.

You're running and yelling fire. Yelling fire or you're running and getting to like that takes what from the third floor like three minutes. Yeah, tops. Exactly.

Why did it take so long? Right. My guess would be he probably went down there and the manager probably maybe had doubts. Like, well, I don't know if somebody comes up to me and says, hey, there's a fire call 911.

I'm not asking questions. Yeah, but thinking about, you know, this time it probably was like, oh, I don't know, son, let me go look for myself. You know what I'm saying? So he probably went to check it out and then determined, oh, yeah, that is a fire manager call somebody.

I don't know. So they basically wasted a lot of time. So call was made by the night manager, but he failed to sound the fire alarm. So back then someone had to manually go to the front desk and sound the alarm.

Okay. Yeah. Most of the guests in the hotel were alerted to the fire, not because of the alarm, but by hearing other guests screaming in the accompanying rooms. Yeah.

Oh my God. Wouldn't that be horrifying? Like, what a way to wake up. You're hearing people screaming.

I know I'm going to have what is happening. Exactly. So the floors were on fire above where the fire was initially trapped. So it started to spread really, really quickly.

Yeah. After that phone call to the fire department, the first crew arrived on the scene within 30 seconds. Dang. Because the fire department was just like down the street.

Nice. Yes. So that was handy. Yep.

That's nice. But by that point, hotel guests had begun jumping from the windows. Yeah. Yeah.

At the time, the Wine Cough Hotel was the tallest building as I mentioned in Atlanta. So the fire department's ladder, even with its longest extension, couldn't reach the top floors. They did, however, get as many guests out in this manner as they could. Firefighters ended up attaching ladders horizontally from buildings that set across from the Wine Cough, creating almost like a catwalk.

Yeah. That sounds terrifying. That is scary. Yes.

But I'm guessing they didn't actually stand up and walk it. They probably... Well, I mean, if it's the tallest building, you're going at kind of an angle to get to the roof. I'm sure there was roof access that way they could go down.

Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Scary.

So several desperate guests tied bedsheets to their bodies. And tried to descend the site of the building. While others misjudged the distance between the hotel and the mortgage building 10 feet away. In a last attempt at saving their own lives, they plummeted to the alley below.

Wow. So I can see how this would happen because you can easily look at something and think, that doesn't look too far. Like, I could make that. I could make that.

I could feasibly jump and make that. But if you don't get a good running start, if you don't have enough to get you across, if you, you know, miscalculated, you're not going to make it. And most people didn't. And most people died in the process.

So that was happening quite a bit. Firefighters were being hurt by people who were falling. Yeah. The first set of firefighters on the scene quickly realized that they were way in over their heads.

They needed backup. So they sounded the alarm and the Atlanta Fire Department throughout the city sent 385 firefighters, which included 22 engine companies, 11 trucks with ladders, four of those trucks had aerial ladders or extenders that could be used as for excavations and higher level floors. That's to the point by 4 a.m. That a call went out for all available units within a certain mile radius to come and help with the blaze.

Additional aid came bringing with it close to 50 pieces of extra equipment. So, huge fire. Like everybody came. Firefighters were injured, like I mentioned, when guests started jumping from the building and it took a long time to make rescue attempts while trying to put out the fire.

Can you imagine? We're trying to put out a fire. We're trying to save lives. People are jumping.

We're trying to dodge falling bodies. Like it's chaos. It's absolute chaos. When all was said and done, 119 people lost their lives, making this the most deadly hotel fire in American history.

Isn't that crazy? And I'd never heard this before. There were 65 people who were injured and 120 who were un-injured. Yeah.

The hotel's founder and namesake, William Onekoff, was found by a firefighter deceased in one of the corridors. Oh, yeah. It is said. He was on one of those higher level floors.

His wife Grace had fallen to her death when she jumped from a window onto Pete Street. Pete Street was the street right in front of the hotel. So, yeah. Remember the group of YMCA students?

I didn't. There were 40 of them all together. 30 of them dying the fire. Oh my God.

Yes. 30. 32 of the individuals who died jumped or fell after they created those makeshift ropes from the bedsheets. Yeah.

Jumping from their windows really gives you that like 9-11. Yeah. That was like the first thing I think about. Yeah.

So, there's a photograph of a young woman jumping from the hotel during the fire. So, the story goes that a Georgia Tech grad student named Arnold Hardy was coming home from a dance when he heard all these sirens. He was a bit of a nosy rosy. He was like, what's going on?

He was like, oh, there's a siren. Wonder what that is. Better check it out. Yeah.

So, he called the fire department to inquire about all the sirens and found out that there was a fire. Typically that's what's going on. What? What?

A lot of fire trucks. You know what? I think I'm going to call the fire department and see what's up. Oh, there's a fire you saying.

What? I can't believe it. So, they told him where the fire was. Why?

Exactly. I'm like, dude, tell the creep. Like, why would you do that? Why are you calling them?

And also, why are you getting out this information? Exactly. It feels like you should do that. And also, it sounds like he's not going to help.

Right. Like, he's not like calling to offer his assistance. Exactly. He's not saying I'm a, but maybe he lied.

Maybe he said, hey, I'm a physician and I want to help. You know, like, who knows? I don't know what he said. So, he marches himself down to the wine cough.

He has his camera with him and he begins snapping photographs of the raging inferno and the chaos that was ensuing. Okay. I'm going to say this. I understand that someone has to document and get the story and the record, you know, out whatever record history that's happening in front of them.

I get it. I do. And I appreciate that that there's someone there to document it and that he was the one who was there to do it. He saw it out, whatever.

I can also say, if I was a firefighter trying to rescue hundreds of people from a burning building and someone was just there snapping pictures, I would be pissed. Well, I think that's like today, you know, anytime there's like something major going on, like you see all these people filming. Yeah. Or like they have their phones out and they're videoing it or taking pictures or filming or whatever.

And like, that's never my initial thought. No media. Like when I'm in an emergency situation, like my initial thought is to help and to get there and to do what like just whatever needs to be done. Like my, it's not to grab my phone and, you know, film is.

No. And I just, I don't know like where that mindset comes from. Yeah, I don't know either. I don't get it.

I think it's, I don't know. Right. And so I, and I don't know, I don't know if it's a recording, a piece of history. I don't know if it's a, I want to be famous.

Right. And like I get the, like I'm thinking of the one video that went around as a guy who fell in the subway, like down in the train tracks, like he fell. And there were obviously, there was a lot of people there helping him get up, but there were a lot of people there like standing there filming it. Right.

And I'm like, why would you film something like that? Yeah. That is that wild to me. And it's like different when it's press in like war zones, like that's different to me.

That's their document history, not, you know, screaming out of barista. Yeah. Like it's just weird. It's so weird to me.

Well, it's true. It's why you get off your straw mattress and lend a hand. Hayleywood. Yeah.

If that's that straw mattress. Yeah. Or like if I know I'm not of any help in the situation, like the best thing you can do is just get out of the way. Exactly.

Exactly. You got to yank your phone out and feel like that's so incredible. And that's in the scenario. That's what I feel like that, you know, it should be like move out of the way, buddy.

We got lives to save like either like move or put on a suit. Right. You know, I mean, start helping or get out of here. Exactly.

But nonetheless, he's, you know, we've got folks who are begging for their lives, essentially, people who are on these higher level floors, who are making choices. Right. So the smoke is filling up the rooms that they're in and they're making a choice of do I let the smoke take me out or do I make a choice to jump and hope for the best and hope for the best. And you look down below and here's this guy taking your picture.

You're making a choice of how am I going to die in this moment and you're petrified and you're going through all these feelings. This guy's snapping your picture. Just taking pictures. I don't know.

And maybe you're not feeling any kind of way. Right. Like maybe that's not going through your head. But I don't know.

I would think that there would be some kind of like feeling of helplessness. Right. Yeah. I would feel helpless as someone who is there watching this.

I. Yeah. Oh, 9 11. Yeah.

As a 17 year old girl watching people jump from buildings hundreds of miles from me. Yeah. It was unimaginable. I felt horrific watching it because I knew I what could I do.

Nothing. So that a guy would be taking pictures. I don't know. I don't know.

Okay. I'm gonna get off my soapbox. But I'm a history buff. So I appreciate that it was documented that there is picture evidence that it occurred that we have it.

But but the way we got it is just kind of odd. Exactly. So how do you rectify that? Exactly.

Some mixed feelings here. So with the last flash bulb. So you got to remember we're talking to old school cameras here. He takes a photo of a young woman by the name of Daisy Bell McCumber who was jumping out of the 11th story window.

So a lot of folks who jumped and survived. Daisy did. Wow. She had a lot of broken bones and a lot of severe injuries.