Ghost Hunting at The Stanley Hotel

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, is famous for a few things. It’s hosted royals, celebrities, and is loaded with a history over 100 years old. But most importantly, it’s where Stephen King was inspired to write his famous novel, The Shining.

As the story goes, King and his wife found themselves at the hotel one night during a snowstorm. After arriving, they quickly realized they were the only guests, and The Stanley was getting ready to shut down for the winter. (The hotel is now open year-round.)

That night, King and his wife ate dinner in the empty dining room, had a drink at the empty bar, and then returned to their room —the now-infamous room 217. King couldn’t help but feel the odd vibe of the hotel. It was so grand, so stately. Its history so legendary…and yet, it was desolate. It felt empty and dead.

When King went to bed that night, he had a horrible nightmare that his son was being chased through the hotel’s hallways, screaming and wailing, while being chased by a firehose that eventually coiled around his neck, suffocating him.

King awoke, drenched in sweat. He lit a cigarette and stared out at the dark shadows of the mountains. He knew what his next novel would be about.

Room 217

But it turns out this wasn’t room 217’s first brush with horror. In the early 1900s, the hotel had a massive gas leak, back when the lanterns were all still gas-fed instead of electric.

Many people don’t know this, but natural gas doesn’t actually have a smell. The odor wasn’t added until 1937 after a school in Texas exploded from an undetected gas leak. After that, a pungent chemical called mercaptan began being added for safety reasons.

Sadly, decades before that life-saving change was made, Elizabeth Wilson, one of the hotel’s employees, went into room 217 to light the lanterns, completely unaware of the leak. The second she struck her match, a fiery explosion destroyed the room and severely injured her.

Decades later, the room would see infamy once again. The Aspen scenes in Dumb & Dumber were actually filmed at The Stanley. While filming, actor Jim Carrey decided to sleep in room 217 because of its reputation…though he only lasted a few hours before walking down to the lobby without any of his belongings, checking out, and refusing to ever step foot in the hotel again.

This is where I should tell you that I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe in ghosts, God, the afterlife, UFOs, cryptids, demons, or anything else. Both Stephen King and Jim Carrey are open about their past drug addictions and could have easily just been tripping out of their minds during their “encounters.” Plus, the hotel employee didn’t even die in the explosion. So, why would I think this hotel is scary or haunted?

Well, I decided to take The Stanley’s nighttime ghost tour to find out. The hotel does numerous ghost tours throughout the day, but their nighttime tour, which departs at 9pm, is the standout experience.

The Stanley’s Ghost Tour

Even if you’re a skeptic like me, the tour is 100% worth your time. You learn about the hotel’s history and get to explore places that are normally off-limits, like the service tunnels that were dug beneath the hotel, the basement of the theater, and the old abandoned dormitories where the hotel staff used to live.

You also discover some of the hotel’s darker history. Opened in 1909, The Stanley has been operating for over 100 years. Naturally, when you’re around for that long, you’re bound to develop a few stories…especially when the gilded-era wealthy and elite were coming for their debaucherous vacations in the mountains.

At The Stanley, hearts were broken, affairs were had, disappearances occurred, people died, and in one case, an employee was even murdered. The more I learned about the hotel’s history, the creepier the tour got. It’s one thing to explore a basement. It’s another to explore a basement and discover that an employee once keeled over and mysteriously died in that very spot.

The guides also show off photos that have been captured on previous tours. Some are easy to roll your eyes at, like “orbs.” In a hotel as old as The Stanley, they’re likely just dust particles. But then, there are the photos of full-bodied apparitions and glowing eyes. It gets even weirder when the same apparition appears in numerous photos taken from different tours…that happened years apart.

The Camera Malfunction

On my tour, we saw no ghosts. But, as a journalist, it would be unfair of me not to mention that we did have one very creepy instance. While touring the basement of the theater, the guide told us that one of the spirits is known for messing with people’s cameras. Sometimes a photo will come out pure white or pure black, or disappear, or the camera will seem to malfunction and not take an image at all.

I rolled my eyes at this. Clearly, some idiot who can’t use an iPhone held their thumb in front of the lens, then thought it was a ghost. Classic rube.

But then, about 20 minutes later, while we were exploring the underground tunnels, I took a photo. I know I took the photo because it was low-light, so my iPhone went into Night Mode and the yellow bar appeared with the timer, indicating the long exposure time.

I see it counting down, and then…nothing. The photo simply didn’t take. My phone is only a few years old, and I’ve never had my iPhone malfunction before. Remembering what the guide had said to us earlier, I told the group that I just tried taking a picture, but the camera didn’t work. The guy standing right next to me then looks up and says, “It just happened to me too.”

Even as a skeptic, that’s a little too much of a coincidence. Had my camera not worked right after the guide brought it up, I would have thought it was suspicious. But considering that two of us on the tour both had our cameras not work, while standing right next to each other… that’s creepy.

Alone in the Lodge

Then, as the tour concluded and we walked back to the main building, we walked past “the Lodge,” where I was staying. I had arrived during the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival —a massive party that honors a cryogenically frozen corpse being stored in the Colorado mountains (more on that in another article). When I got there, guests filled the hotel to capacity so the smaller Lodge building next door housed the overflow. Originally that’s where single bachelors had to stay. In the early 1900s, it was seen as improper for single men and women to sleep in the same building. During the festival, the hotel was full of men and women. It was lively and loud, riotous, and full of life.

But I took the ghost tour the night after the festival ended, a Sunday night. All the partygoers had returned home. Estes Park was once again a sleepy little mountain town in the off-season. The few remaining guests were all in the main building. There was no need to use the Lodge any longer. That’s when I noticed the entire building was dark except for my room.

I was the last person left in the Lodge, which was now a dark, desolate, empty 100-year-old building that had one single guest…me. I couldn’t help but think of King and how empty the hotel was when he visited back in the 70s.

Haunted…or not?

The Stanley is distinctively creepy. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but it is. It has a vibe, and there’s something not quite right about it. And while I still say I’m a skeptic, I’ll also admit that after getting into bed that night and turning off the lights —knowing I was the only person in an empty building that might be filled with ghosts— I may have hid under the covers. (Just maybe.)

Is The Stanley haunted? I can’t say yes…but I also can’t say no.

For More Info

Visit https://www.stanleyhotel.com.

Check-In

Have you ever stayed at The Stanley or taken any of its tours?