The Stanley Hotel, located in Estes Park, Colo., has nearly a century of history. The hotel was also the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel, the setting for Stephen King's masterpiece The Shining. It has also hosted some famous names such as Stephen King, Theodore Roosevelt, and even the Emperor and Empress of Japan. But the Stanley may be hosting more than just guests. It has been the site of numerous reports of supposed hauntings.
The Stanley was built in 1909 by Freelan O. Stanley, inventor of the Stanley Steamer automobile, after coming to Estes Park when he came down with tuberculosis. When he found that the town was economically poor, and with the amazing view of the Rockies, he decided to have the hotel built using his connections he had made from the success of the Steamer. He also had a new road built into the town. To help christen it, he had the first visitors come in on steamers. In 1940, the year he died, he finished having a sewer, water, and power company developed for the town. Since then, the hotel had become a major success.
The hotel still stands and is still in operation today.
Many reports have come from the guests of the hotel that they had seen strange images and had unexplainable things happen to them. Some believe that F. O. Stanley haunts the hotel himself. He has been seen most often in the lobby and the Billiards room, which was his favorite room when he was alive. He has also been seen in the bar but quickly disappears before anyone can get a better look.
It is also believed that F.O.'s wife Flora haunts the hotel as well. When she was in the hotel, she used to entertain the guests by playing piano in the music room. Though there have been no actual sightings of her, the keys of the piano have been seen by several guests to be moving by themselves.
Guests have also reported hearing children playing in the hallway when no children were present, one couple even checking out because of the noise. Various employees have reported hearing voices when no one was around and seeing impressions in beds in rooms where no guests have stayed in for awhile. One guest claimed to have recorded a faded image of a man in a cowboy hat in his room, standing in front of the window. It lasted for a few minutes and then faded away. Another incident occurred where a guest attending her sister's wedding wrote "REDRUM" on a mirror with lipstick in her sister and her groom-to-be's room a joke. Later, as she was walking down the grand staircase to the lobby, she felt someone shove her and she fell down the stairs. After being helped up, she looked to see who shoved her, but no one was around to have done so.
Many strange events seem to take place in the Stanley Hotel for sure. Some are certainly less explainable than others. Why people believe they see the Stanleys has no reasonable explanation. Noises that guests and employees hear could be the creaking of heaters that they think might be ghosts, or the shifting of the pine wood that some of the hotel is made from. Voices that they hear could be echoing through the floors and walls from other rooms. That could account for the children that are heard as well. Or they could actually be children that hide when someone tells them to stop or keep it down. The guest who recorded the ghost wearing the cowboy hat would be more reliable if he showed this recording rather than say he did. And the girl who claimed to be shoved could very well have lied. After all, she was in the process of pulling a prank when it happened.
The Stanley Hotel has managed to stand as the very essence of the haunted hotel story, even before Stephen King used it for inspiration. It has also been visited by the T.A.P.S team, aka the Ghost Hunters on the SciFi channel. But does the Stanley still have guests that have not checked out?
34 comments
We could have spent the whole day in Rocky Mt. National Park rather than waste our vacation time on something that is so misleading.
We felt like it was nothing more than a tourist trap making money on misrepresentation!