The Stanley Hotel opened just before the death of its founder, Freelan Oscar Stanley. In 1903, the inventor of the two-cylinder steam engine and popularizer of the gelatin-silver photographic process was diagnosed with tuberculosis. It was believed that fresh air helped slow the disease, so the engineer and his wife Flora were sent to the state of Colorado. However, this was also done so that Stanley could spend his last days surrounded by pleasant landscapes. First, the couple went to Denver, and then, at the doctor's suggestion, even further, to Estes Park.

In Estes Park, Stanley’s condition improved, he gained weight, and began to recover. Believing in the power of nature’s rest, the couple decided to return to the same place a year later. At that time, it was a real wilderness: Rocky Mountain National Park practically did not exist until 1915, and Estes Park was recognized as a town only in 1917. Accustomed to the elite lifestyle of the East Coast, the couple built a new residence to their taste.

In 1909, the Stanley family’s country house opened in Estes Park, featuring 100 rooms in colonial style. A second guest house, slightly smaller, was completed a year later. Only friends of the couple and members of high society could enter the estate. Former U.S. Army composer John Philip Sousa conducted the orchestra at the house’s opening. His autograph on the lower panel of Flora’s piano, which he tuned, was erased in the 1990s by a tuner who mistook it for graffiti. Harry Houdini performed in the luxurious concert hall; the hatch he used for his famous escape is still on the stage. The whiskey bar in the estate is now one of the largest in the U.S.

In 1930, Stanley sold the estate to a corporation that converted it into a hotel. The nearby national park was just beginning to be developed, so the new hotel did not particularly prosper. In the mid-1990s, the hotel was sold to John Cullen. At that time, the hotel’s budget was so limited that bed sheets were used as curtains on the windows, which guests covered themselves with at night.

“Our owner thought he would hardly get the title to the hotel,” says Reed Rowley, The Stanley’s vice president of business development. “He was ready to invest $3.14 million. He set the number pi. Two competitors dropped out of the bidding, and the hotel went to him.”

The hotel could have remained a ghost of past wealth, but in 1974, Stephen King and his wife Tabitha stayed there for one night. The hotel was closing for the winter season, and the last guests had left. At night, Stephen went to the bar, and when he returned to his room number 217, his imagination ran wild: the writer saw a grand but abandoned hotel lost in the mountains; looking at the claw-foot bathtub, he thought of murder, and the idea for a new book was born. In various interviews, King told different stories, but it is known for sure that after that night, Stephen wrote the novel “The Shining,” set in an isolated resort, and the pet cemetery there inspired the book of the same name.

Dissatisfied with Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation, in the 1990s King proposed to remake the movie at The Stanley. Cullen agreed. Furniture from the 1997 miniseries still decorates the hotel.

But do ghosts really live in The Stanley? Hotel guests believe so. In 1911, there was an explosion in room 217. Chambermaid Elizabeth Wilson fell down a floor and broke both ankles. She survived (and her medical bills were paid), but many believe her ghost still wanders the hotel corridors. Residents of the guest house regularly reported seeing a ghostly figure resembling Flora Stanley on the fourth floor.

Stephen King counts himself among those who believe in the hotel’s curse. He wrote about the supernatural presence in the hotel that inspired him to write “The Shining.” “I dreamed of my three-year-old son running down the hotel corridors. He looked back over his shoulder, his eyes wide, he was screaming,” King wrote. “He was being chased by a fire hose. I woke up with difficulty, all sweaty, almost falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat on a chair by the window overlooking the Rocky Mountains, and by the time I finished the cigarette, I had already come up with the basis for a new book.”

The Stanley does not shy away from its status as one of the most haunted hotels in the U.S. Next to the Streamers café on the hotel’s basement floor hangs a poster with recommended actions in case a ghost appears in a phone photo. The Stanley is full of Halloween references, most often in the style of “The Shining.”

Daily, the hotel hosts spirit tours; one even made the news because a guest allegedly photographed the ghost of a little girl. On the hotel’s website, you can specifically book the “cursed” rooms 401, 407, 428, and of course, 217. According to hotel management, the plaque with this number is stolen almost weekly. And if that’s not enough, the hotel employs Madame Vera — a psychic who offers consultations.

The famous room 217 at The Stanley Hotel

However, this was not enough to convince the director of the “The Shining” remake, Mick Garris. He built his career inspired by the scary and supernatural but remained a skeptic even after spending an unusual night in room 217.

“I fell asleep around ten in the evening,” Garris recalls, “and exactly at midnight I jumped up for no reason. There was a feeling of something supernatural, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Other guests in that room talked about the sensation that someone invisible was sitting on the bed, but nothing like that happened to me. If it had, I would have been able to believe in the idea of a haunted hotel.”

Interestingly, the film “Dumb and Dumber” was also shot at The Stanley. The creepy legacy of this film is the silly quotes from it that hotel bar customers regularly scatter around.

The old-fashioned white buildings with red roofs and neat lawns of The Stanley are located on a hill above Estes Park. The hotel’s elite style is emphasized by interiors with red carpets, heavy-framed mirrors, portraits, and majestic wide staircases.

The hotel owner does not try to build marketing around associations with Stephen King, but small references to his work are everywhere. For example, on the lawn in front of the hotel, as in the fictional Overlook Hotel, there is an intricate hedge maze.

The Stanley’s location, six minutes’ drive from Rocky Mountain National Park, suits nature lovers. Nature, however, often comes right to the hotel’s doors. Animals roam nearby so often that the area around the hotel resembles Disney cartoons. In August 2018, a bear came onto The Stanley’s main terrace, moved several chairs and tables, and then left the premises.

Prices at the hotel depend on the season, but popular “cursed” rooms must be booked in advance.

Sources:

https://perito.media/posts/stanley-hotel-history, Anton Dyakonov