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June 24, 2006

The Stanley Hotel, in Estes Park, Colorado, with the infamous Room 217
from The Shining.
Photo: Penny Bradfield
Destination: United States North America
David Wroe on a Shining example of a haunted hotel.

IT COULD have been the start of a horror story. "Have you been up to the
old Stanley Hotel?" the shopkeeper asked me. The woman didn't have a
hunched back or a glass eye or anything like that. In fact she was
brimming with American friendliness.

Nevertheless, it sounded like the last thing a person hears before
they're catapulted into a nightmare of ghosts and ghoulish madness.
We'd admired from a distance the grand, rambling set of white buildings
perched on the hillside above Estes Park, a pretty little town nestled
in the Colorado stretch of the Rockies but had no inkling of its
national fame. The storekeeper explained it was one of the top haunted
hotels in the US and the inspiration for Stephen King's novel, The
Shining.
I know the protagonists in horror stories always seem to have death
wishes, the way they wander voluntarily into spooky, obviously dangerous
places but we couldn't pass up an opportunity like this, so we drove up
and inquired about a room for the night.
"It's the second most haunted hotel in the United States," the young
woman at the front desk confirmed. "How do you measure hauntedness?" I
asked.

She explained it had been judged as such by various psychics and by the
Ghost Hunters, a cable program on the Sci-Fi channel. (It is ranked
behind the Myrtles Plantation, near New Orleans.) The infamous Room 217
from The Shining was being renovated so the receptionist suggested a
room on the fourth floor. "That's where most of the paranormal activity
occurs," she said.
Now, I am a sceptic on the grounds that if I were dead and therefore
freed from the shackles of corporeality, I would use my powers more
wisely than moving furniture around and blowing small gusts of wind.
That said, there is nothing more fun than having the life scared out of
you by a good horror story. I would love to have my scepticism
shattered; life would be far more interesting were it filled with the
kind of supernatural mayhem that goes on in Stephen King's novels.

It came as a disappointment, therefore, when Stephanie, the Stanley's
chirpy tour guide, told us there was no evil, malevolent presence at the
hotel, only "good spirits". "Actually, we haven't had any bloody murders
here or anything like that," she said, ruining the fun completely. By
good spirits she meant the likes of Lord Dunraven, whose austere
portrait hangs in the hotel lobby.
The fourth Earl of Dunraven was a Scotsman who through various
unscrupulous business practices came to own most of the land around
Estes Park when it was a small, frontier community in the late 1800s.
Eventually his neighbours ran him out of town in 1888 and never saw him
again. But before he left, Dunraven sold a piece of land to F. O.
Stanley, a wealthy photographic and automotive pioneer, who later used
it to build the Stanley Hotel between 1907 and 1909.

So, despite having left town and probably died about 20 years before the
hotel was built, Dunraven now haunts the fourth floor, with a special
emphasis on stealing the wedding rings of honeymooners and groping the
female housekeepers. (Several housekeepers had quit after having their
bums pinched by the rascally Dunraven, Stephanie told us.)
Until the early 1960s, when it fell into two decades of decline before
being revived, the Stanley was a retreat for the rich and famous.
Children were not permitted in the main parts of the hotel so the fourth
floor was set aside as a nursery. Dunraven favoured the fourth floor,
Stephanie said, because that was where the young nannies could be found.

After Dunraven, the most prolific spirits are a pair of children, a
brother and sister, who used to stay on the fourth floor in the 1930s.
Both died of tuberculosis and are now often seen playing in period
clothing. In room 420, considered the most haunted room in the hotel,
guests on the cusp of sleep have heard a small girl whisper in their
ear, "Goodnight".
Next, a couple of drifters - a boyfriend and girlfriend - came to the
hotel in the late 1960s and began sleeping in the disused concert hall.
The man abandoned his girlfriend after the management refused to let the
couple sleep indoors. She froze to death one night and has, ever since,
haunted the Concert Hall.
The story that really made the hotel famous was the one in which a
drunken Stephen King stumbled up and down the darkened passageways
looking for his room. It was October 1973, the last day of the season
before the hotel shut down for the winter. King and his wife, Tabitha,
were the only guests that night. They were stuck in Estes Park because a
road that winds up into the Rocky Mountain National Park, was closed.
After a session in the hotel bar, King got lost. As he wandered around
looking for his room, he hit upon the idea of a young family who take
the job of caretaking a hotel during the winter, when it is snowed in.
He changed the name of the hotel to The Overlook and wrote a story in
which the spirits and the isolation drive the father, Jack Torrance, to
homicidal madness.
It's easy to see how the Stanley could inspire such a tale. The old,
white weatherboards and the striking red roof conjure up an American
mountain gothic atmosphere. Inside, the passageways are long and the
staircases angular.

It is also a beautiful place, with exceptional views of the soaring,
snowcapped Rockies in the distance. Franklin Roosevelt stayed there, as
did Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. I would have paid a fortune to meet the
ghost of Johnny Cash. On a less stirring note, the Aspen scenes from the
Jim Carrey film Dumb and Dumber were also filmed at the Stanley. Carrey
stayed in Room 217 and, according to Stephanie, came down in the middle
of the night insisting he be moved. He has never explained what
happened.

Nothing happened to us, even though we were in room 418, practically the
paranormal epicentre. My pants went missing at one stage but turned up
exactly where I had misplaced them, under some towels in the bathroom.
The toilet flushed oddly and the ceiling fan kept spinning after I
turned it off but that was it.
The hotel plays Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining on a constant loop
on its TV system. It is a genuinely frightening piece of cinema, owing
to Jack Nicholson's maniacal performance and Kubrick's genius, although
King was unhappy with the way Kubrick changed the storyline and
sidelined his central theme of a man's battle with alcoholism. Kubrick
also used a different hotel, the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, for outside
shots and built a sound stage in England for the interiors.
Nevertheless, a couple of days after we were at the Stanley, horror fans
voted Kubrick's film the scariest of all time.

Fast facts
Getting there: American Airlines, Air Canada and Cathay Pacific fly from
Melbourne to Denver.
Getting around: Hire a car in Denver for a taste of sweeping Rocky
roads, a pleasure to drive on.
Visas: No visa needed for a stay of 90 days or fewer.
Sleeping: From $139 for a low-season double room at The Stanley.
Currency: $1A = $US0.76
Contacts: http://www.stanleyhotel.com
Tips: Estes Park is probably the best little town in this area but
nearby Fort Collins is also recommended. Dress warm.
Safety: Watch out for snow warnings. Don't worry too much about ghosts.