STANLEY HOTEL

Opening

The Stanley Hotel stands on a hillside above Estes Park, Colorado, at the gateway to the Rocky Mountains. It opened in 1909 as a grand resort for Freelan Oscar Stanley, the steam-car maker, and might have stayed a handsome old hotel if Stephen King had not checked in one night in 1974, just as it was closing for the winter. The near-empty building gave him the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Since then, the Stanley has been sold as one of the most haunted hotels in America.

Timeline

1909The hotel opens, built by F.O. Stanley, co-founder of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, who had come to Colorado for his health.

1911A gas explosion injures a chambermaid, Elizabeth Wilson, in the area of what is now Room 217. The most detailed newspaper report of the time contradicts the later claim that she was thrown between floors.

1974Stephen King and his wife Tabitha stay at the hotel while living in Boulder. It is closing for the season and they are almost the only guests. King is widely reported to have stayed in Room 217.

1977The Shining is published. The Overlook Hotel is based on the Stanley. Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film is shot elsewhere.

1997The television miniseries of The Shining, made with King's involvement, is filmed at the Stanley.

2000sThe hotel appears on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures, and ghost tours become a fixture.

2015A hedge maze is planted in honour of Kubrick's film. King's novel had topiary animals, not a maze.

Key figures

F.O. Stanley and his wife Flora, whose hotel it was, and who are among the ghosts most often reported there.

Stephen King, whose one-night stay turned a mountain hotel into a horror landmark.

Elizabeth Wilson, the chambermaid whose real accident became the Room 217 ghost story.

Physical and documentary trail

The hotel's history is well documented. It is on the National Register of Historic Places, and King has described his stay many times. The ghosts are a different kind of record: guest stories, staff accounts and television investigations, which have grown sharply since The Shining made the hotel famous. The best-known haunting, Room 217, rests on a real accident whose details have been embroidered.

Things you might not know

• The book came from a nightmare. King has said that on his night at the hotel he dreamed of his young son running through the corridors, chased by a fire hose, and woke with the story of The Shining in his head.
• The Overlook was not filmed here. Kubrick used other locations. The Stanley appears in the 1997 miniseries instead.
• The maze came from the film. King wrote topiary animals; the Stanley built a maze to match Kubrick.
• Children are heard on the fourth floor. It is one of the most reported phenomena, alongside the Stanleys themselves.
• It changed hands in 2025. The hotel was reported sold that year to a nonprofit partnership for about $400 million.

Competing explanations

A genuine haunting. Guests and staff have reported music, voices, children's footsteps and apparitions for decades, some before the hotel became famous.

A famous building and an expectant audience. Since 1977, many guests arrive knowing the story and hoping for something to happen. Old hotels are full of noises, and the most famous haunting is an embroidered version of a real accident.

Later life of the case

The Stanley now leans fully into its reputation, with ghost tours, film nights and a horror film centre planned. Like Waverly Hills, it shows how a real building's history and a good story become hard to separate.

Finding

The Stanley Hotel's history is real, and so is its place in horror: it gave Stephen King the Overlook. The ghost stories grew mostly after the book, and the most famous of them stretches a real event. That doesn't explain away every experience guests report, but it does explain why so many come expecting one.

What still will not resolve: what guests heard on the fourth floor before anyone had read The Shining, since the hotel's early ghost stories were rarely written down.