The Stanley Hotel
The Stanley Hotel is a 140-room Colonial Revival hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, United States, about five miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was built by Freelan Oscar Stanley, co-founder of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, and opened on July 4, 1909, as a resort for upper-class Easterners and a health retreat for sufferers of pulmonary tuberculosis.[2] The hotel and its surrounding structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[1] Today, the hotel includes a restaurant, spa, and bed-and-breakfast; with panoramic views of Lake Estes, the Rockies, and Longs Peak.
"Stanley Hotel" redirects here. For the hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, see Stanley Hotel, Nairobi.Location
333 Wonderview Avenue, Estes Park, Colorado
Freelan Oscar Stanley, Thielman Robert Weiger, Henry Rogers; built 1907–10
May 26, 1977 (expanded June 20, 1985, and April 16, 1998)
The Stanley Hotel served as the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining and its 1980 film adaptation. It was also a filming location for the related 1997 TV miniseries.
June 2008
February 2011
South elevation
Lobby looking east
Music room looking south
The Shining[edit]
In 1974, during their brief residency in Boulder, Colorado, American horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha spent one night at the Stanley Hotel.[13] The visit is known entirely through interviews given by King in which he presents differing narratives of the experience. At the time of his visit, King was writing a book with the working title Darkshine set in an amusement park, but was not satisfied with the setting. According to George Beahm's Stephen King Companion, "on the advisement of locals who suggested a resort hotel located in Estes Park, an hour's drive away to the north, Stephen and Tabitha King found themselves checking in at the Stanley Hotel just as its other guests were checking out, because the hotel was shutting down for the winter season. After checking in and after Tabitha went to bed, King roamed the halls and went down to the hotel bar, where drinks were served by a bartender named Grady.[14] As King returned to his room, numbered 217, his imagination was fired up by the hotel's remote location, its grand size, and its eerie desolation. Later, when King went into the bathroom and pulled back the pink curtain for the tub, which had claw feet, he thought, 'What if somebody died here? At that moment, I knew I had a book.'"[15]
In a 1977 interview by the Literary Guild, King recounted "While we were living [in Boulder] we heard about this terrific old mountain resort hotel and decided to give it a try. But when we arrived, they were just getting ready to close for the season, and we found ourselves the only guests in the place – with all those long, empty corridors." King and his wife were served dinner in an empty dining room accompanied by canned orchestral music: "Except for our table all the chairs were up on the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall, and, I mean, it was like God had put me there to hear that and see those things. And by the time I went to bed that night, I had the whole book [The Shining] in my mind."[16] In another retelling, King said "I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of The Shining firmly set in my mind."[17]
The Shining was published in 1977 and became the third great success of King's career after Carrie and 'Salem's Lot. The primary setting is an isolated Colorado resort named the Overlook Hotel which closes for the winter. In the front matter of the book, King tactfully states "Some of the most beautiful resort hotels in the world are located in Colorado, but the hotel in these pages is based on none of them. The Overlook and the people associated with it exist wholly in the author's imagination."[18]
Film location and venue[edit]
The Stanley Hotel served as the fictional hotel and filming location for Danbury of Aspen, Colorado, in the 1994 film Dumb and Dumber.[19]
The Shining, a three-part miniseries and horror tv-adaptation, was written and produced by Stephen King, based on his 1977 novel of the same name, which had been largely inspired by the Stanley Hotel. The miniseries was produced by King, who had been dissatisfied with Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film.[20] Unlike Kubrick's version, the miniseries, directed by Mick Garris, was filmed at the Stanley Hotel, which stood in for the fictional "Overlook Hotel", located in the Colorado Rockies. Film production started in March 1996, with the first episode being released in March 1997.
From 2013 to 2015, the hotel hosted the Stanley Film Festival, an independent horror film festival operated by the Denver Film Society, held in early May. The festival featured screenings, panels, student competitions, audience awards and receptions.[21] The Stanley Film Festival was put on hiatus in 2016 and canceled for 2017.[22]
Bravo's cooking competition Top Chef also used the Stanley as a venue for Episode 10 of Season 15, which took place in various locations around Colorado.
Indie rock band Murder by Death have performed an annual series of winter concerts at the Stanley Hotel since 2014, with the 2020 edition being their seventh such event.[23][24]
Haunted reputation[edit]
Despite a peaceful early history, in the years following the publication of The Shining, the Stanley Hotel gained a reputation as a setting for paranormal activity,[25][26][27] and has been frequently named as one of the most haunted hotels in the United States. It has hosted numerous paranormal investigators and appeared in shows such as Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures.[28][29][30]
The Stanley Hotel has hosted the following persons of note:
