The Stanley Hotel

Also known as Stanley Hotel, Hotel Stanley, The Overlook (inspiration)

The 1909 Rocky Mountain resort that inspired Stephen King’s The Shining, where guests report a phantom pianist, a tidy maid and children’s laughter.

Freelan Oscar Stanley, co-inventor of the Stanley Steamer car, came to Colorado in 1903 seriously ill with tuberculosis and was sent up to Estes Park for the mountain air. He recovered, fell in love with the valley and resolved to give it a grand hotel. Built between 1907 and 1909 on land bought from the estate of the Earl of Dunraven, the white Georgian Revival hotel opened on 4 July 1909 for wealthy Easterners and health-seekers, with its own hydroelectric plant, a concert hall and steam-powered Mountain Wagons to carry guests up from the railhead at Lyons.

For most of its history the Stanley was a summer resort, closing every winter until 1983. Its early record is peaceful: the most dramatic event was a gas explosion on 25 June 1911, after auxiliary gas lighting was installed, which injured a chambermaid – named in different newspaper reports as Elizabeth Wilson or Elizabeth Lambert – and several waiters. Contemporary accounts disagree on the details, but she survived and, according to hotel tradition, went back to work there.

Everything changed after one night in 1974. Stephen King and his wife Tabitha, then living in Boulder, checked in just as the hotel was closing for the season and found themselves almost the only guests, eating dinner in an empty dining room with the chairs stacked on the tables. King has said that by the time he went to bed he had the whole of The Shining in his head. The 1977 novel and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film made the fictional Overlook world-famous; King’s own 1997 miniseries was filmed at the Stanley itself. Room 217 – the haunted room in the novel – is said to be the one the Kings were given.

The hotel’s ghost lore largely follows that fame. Staff and guests say Flora Stanley can still be heard playing the piano in the music room, that F. O. Stanley appears in the billiard room and bar, that the maid of the 1911 explosion unpacks and tidies guests’ belongings in Room 217, and that children are heard laughing and running on the fourth floor. The Stanley leans into the reputation with ghost tours, a hedge maze inspired by Kubrick’s film and paranormal-themed events, and it has hosted Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures.

What people report

Reports include piano music from the empty music room attributed to Flora Stanley, F. O. Stanley seen in the lobby, billiard room and bar, luggage unpacked and clothes folded in Room 217, unexplained cold presences in bed, children laughing and running in fourth-floor corridors, lights switching on and off, and figures in photographs.

Where and when

Room 217 and the fourth floor (especially rooms such as 401, 407 and 418) are the most famous; the music room, billiard room, bar and lobby, and the concert hall are also named. Night-time and the off-season are said to be most active.

Timeline of the haunting

4 July 1909
The Stanley opens Estes Park, Colorado
F. O. Stanley’s grand hotel opened as a summer resort and health retreat at the gateway to what would become Rocky Mountain National Park.
25 June 1911
Gas explosion injures a chambermaid Estes Park, Colorado
A day after gas pipes were filled for auxiliary lighting, an explosion damaged part of the hotel and injured a maid and several waiters. The maid survived; later lore attaches her to Room 217.
1974
Stephen King’s night at the Stanley Estes Park, Colorado
King and his wife stayed as the hotel was closing for winter. The empty corridors and dining room inspired The Shining, published in 1977.
1997
The Shining filmed on site Estes Park, Colorado
King’s television miniseries of The Shining, directed by Mick Garris, used the Stanley as the Overlook Hotel, fusing the real building with the fictional one.
15 October 2010
Ghost Adventures investigates Estes Park, Colorado
The Travel Channel series broadcast an investigation of the hotel, one of many paranormal shows to film there.

What could explain it?

Fiction feeding folklore: the hotel’s haunted reputation grew after The Shining, and many reports echo the novel’s themes – Room 217, playing children, a hotel that comes alive at night.
Unverified backstories: the 1911 maid survived the explosion, and accounts of what happened that day differ even in contemporary newspapers.
Marketing: ghost tours, themed events and a maze inspired by the film give the hotel a commercial stake in its legend.
A big wooden hotel at altitude: wind, temperature swings and an old steel-and-timber structure create creaks, drafts and noises, especially in quiet off-season months.

Ghost tours, books and screen

The Stanley is inseparable from The Shining: it inspired the novel, hosted the 1997 miniseries and now holds film-themed events and a hedge maze. It appears on Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures and countless “most haunted hotel” lists, and in 2023 became home to the frozen body of Bredo Morstøl, the subject of Colorado’s Frozen Dead Guy Days.