Just in time for spooky season, USA Today has released its list of the 10 best haunted hotels in the United States, and one Front Range hotel has made the list, mostly thanks to its ties to one of the country’s most iconic and infamous horror novels.
The Stanley Hotel “seems to rise out of the Colorado mountains in the otherwise quaint and old-fashioned tourist town of Estes Park,” USA Today writes. Without Stephen King, that might be all it was known for.
The hotel served as the inspiration for King’s 1977 novel The Shining. The book would then inspire Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of the same name in 1980.
Kubrick shot most of the film’s interior and exterior shots on sets in England and used real footage of Oregon’s Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood for a handful of driving and background shots. King, who famously hated Kubrick’s adaptation, went on to write his own TV series based on the book in 1997, shot largely at The Stanley Hotel.
The Shining tells the story of a recovering alcoholic and struggling writer who takes a job as the winter caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel with his wife and son during the winter. They soon find that the hotel is not as empty as they believed.
According to Locations Hub, King was inspired to write The Shining after staying at The Stanley with his own family in 1974 as the final guests before it shut down for the winter. Though he renamed the hotel in the book, The Overlook serves as a twin of The Stanley, from its unique design to the year it opened, 1909.
Reports of paranormal activity predate the novel, going back to the early 1900s, shortly after the hotel opened, when a chambermaid survived a lantern explosion that caved in the floor of Room 217, according to lore. King included the room in his novel, and it remains in high demand, with a months-long waiting list.
The team at The Stanley has leaned into the connection. Guests are invited to participate in The Overlook Project, a three-hour immersive paranormal investigation led by resident investigators at the site.
“Participants will join an active scientific investigation of the haunts and legends of the hotel’s past and explore some of the most notably storied locations on the property,” reads the website. The site says investigators use the latest tech and skeptical methods, and guests get hands-on.
Resident apparitionist Hannibal also leads theatrical late-night séances at the hotel.
READ MORE: October fun: Things to do in Northern Colorado this month
