The Real-Life “Shining” Hotel
The Real-Life “Shining” Hotel
Though its story remains lesser-known, the hotel that inspired The Shining is just as chilling as its fictional counterpart.
Long before his stay at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado prompted author Stephen King to write The Shining, this Rocky Mountain lodge was leaving its visitors terrified. Seen here under construction in the early 1900s, the hotel was home to an unexplained explosion in 1911 that left a chambermaid maimed. She returned to work, but after her death years later, guests reported seeing her ghost stalk the halls, especially the scene of the incident in Room 217.
This was the exact room where King spent his fateful and terrifying night at the Stanley in October 1974.
The Haunted History Behind The Shining's Stanley Hotel
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BY DANIELLE RYAN/UPDATED: JULY 13, 2022 10:42 AM EST
While fans of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's "The Shining" might have a love for the fictional Overlook Hotel, King was inspired by a real, historically haunted hotel: The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The Stanley has been embedded in my psyche since childhood, so I can understand King's reaction to the place. It's an imposing, beautiful building that somehow emanates a feeling of wrongness, a "bad vibe" that's almost impossible to shake even if you're a true-blue skeptic. King was so shaken by his stay at the Stanley while he was in Colorado that it inspired him to write "The Shining," which went on to be one of his most famous works.
The Stanley Hotel sits on a huge foothill nestled in the Rocky Mountains, in the tourist town of Estes Park. As a child growing up in a nearby Denver suburb, Estes Park was the one vacation my family could afford each year — a place where we could race go-karts and go hiking in the beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park. On our way to whichever tiny riverside cabin we had rented, we would pass the Stanley up on the hill, leering down at us from on high. When my parents explained to me that it was the very hotel that had inspired "The Shining," I felt justified in being creeped out. Years later, I would return to the Stanley, take the ghost tour, and spend the night — and its haunted halls have lingered in my memory ever since.
What is it about the Stanley Hotel that leaves its guests so unnerved? Is it just the stories of hauntings and King's association that make people see and hear things that aren't actually there? Or is it truly as haunted as its fictional counterpart?
The History Behind The Haunting House
According to the Stanley Hotel's website, when inventor Freelan Oscar Stanley arrived in the valley of Estes Park in 1903, he discovered the mountain air helped ease his tuberculosis symptoms. He planned to return to the town every summer until the day he died — but he and his wife, Flora Stanley, were accustomed to a different lifestyle than what Estes Park could offer. They built the Stanley Hotel, which officially opened in 1909, as a home away from home where they could host friends and other guests. The hotel was designed to be top-of-the-line, with electric lights, telephones, bathrooms attached to each room, and a staff of uniformed servants. Stanley Hotel even boasted a fleet of steam-powered automobiles, one of which has been on display at the hotel for decades. By 1917, the tiny hamlet of Estes Park was an official municipality that owed its development to Stanley and his hotel.
Throughout the hotel's history, there have been reports of ghostly apparitions. When I visited with my family about a decade ago, guests could sign up for a ghost tour that highlighted all of the most haunted rooms in the hotel. Stanley himself is said to wander the halls, most often in the hotel bar. Sightings of his wife Flora have also been reported, usually of her playing her piano in the ballroom. Employees and guests both have reported hearing piano music coming from the room and seeing the keys moving. I didn't hear the music or see the keys move, but the ballroom does feel colder the closer you get to the beautiful grand piano.
Room 407 is supposedly haunted by Lord Dunraven, the man who owned the land prior to Stanley. Some guests have reported seeing his face in the window even when the room isn't booked. Room 418 is haunted by children, whose laughter can be heard in the hallways by guests and cleaning crew inhabiting the room. The ghost of a small boy is said to appear outside of room 217, where author Stephen King stayed, and he reportedly saw the child, who was calling out for his nanny. Brave guests on the hotel tour can stand in the closet in one of the haunted rooms, where voices are said to be the loudest. I volunteered, and while I didn't hear anything besides my own heartbeat in my throat, I can definitely appreciate the kind of fear King must have felt while visiting back in 1974.
There have been several unexplained or spooky accidents over the course of the hotel's history, which only adds to the legend of the building be cursed. On June 25, 1911, Elizabeth Wilson, the head chambermaid at the two-year-old hotel, went into room 217 with a lit candle, only to tragically discover there was a leak in the hotel's gas lanterns. The candle ignited the gas and there was a major explosion, destroying about one-tenth of the hotel and putting Wilson into a coma.
Wilson miraculously survived and continued working at the hotel until 1950. According to some guests who have stayed in room 217, the maid is still working there in the afterlife. Guests have said that they woke up with their room straightened up and their suitcases neatly organized. Now that's a friendly ghost.
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