The Stanley Hotel · Apparition · 26:39
Colorado Experience: The Stanley Hotel
Rocky Mountain PBS · YouTube
Rocky Mountain PBS’s half-hour history of the Stanley – F. O. Stanley, the Earl of Dunraven and Stephen King – with the ghost stories kept in proportion.
About this video
This 2016 episode of Colorado Experience, the Rocky Mountain PBS history series hosted by John Ferrugia, argues that the Stanley Hotel’s real story is more interesting than its ghosts. It starts long before the hotel, with the Ute people in the Estes valley, the first settler Joel Estes, and the Irish Earl of Dunraven’s scheme to assemble a private estate through questionable homestead claims.
The heart of the film is Freelan Oscar Stanley: the Maine-born inventor who made fortunes from dry-plate photography and the Stanley Steamer, came to Estes Park in 1903 seeking a cure for tuberculosis, and opened his Georgian Revival hotel in 1909 with electricity, steam-powered auto-stages from Lyons and a concert hall. Historians and staff explain the hotel’s hard years under later owners, Stephen King’s 1974 stay that inspired The Shining, the 1911 gas explosion in Room 217, and the hotel’s revival under John Cullen, who acquired it after a 1995 bankruptcy auction.
Key moments
- 0:00Host John Ferrugia introduces F. O. Stanley and his hotel.
- 3:20Joel Estes, the Earl of Dunraven and the homestead claims behind the Earl’s estate.
- 8:20Stanley contracts tuberculosis and is sent to Colorado for the climate cure.
- 12:00Locals talk Stanley out of naming the hotel “the Dunraven”; construction and the 1909 opening.
- 14:00Stanley’s steam-powered auto-stage service from Lyons opens the valley to tourists.
- 18:00Stephen King’s 1974 visit, as the hotel was closing for the winter.
- 20:00At Room 217, the story of the 1911 gas explosion that injured chambermaid Elizabeth Wilson.
- 21:40John Cullen on the 1995 bankruptcy auction and the cost of reviving the hotel.
What to look for
The film gives the paranormal side only a few minutes, and that balance is instructive. The Stanley’s ghost lore largely followed The Shining: King’s 1977 novel made Room 217 famous, and the hotel’s haunted reputation grew from there. Even in this film, one interviewee says plainly that they have never seen a ghost at the hotel, though many guests say they have – and the 1911 explosion’s victim survived.
Accounts of that explosion also differ: the film names the chambermaid as Elizabeth Wilson, while some newspaper reports of the time called her Elizabeth Lambert. The program was funded in part by the History Colorado State Historical Fund.
Background: Wikipedia: Stanley Hotel
