The Stanley Hotel, Colorado: History and the Ghost Stories Behind The Shining

Southwest US Haunted Hotels, Colorado
The white main building of the Stanley Hotel lit up at night in Estes Park, Colorado

At a glance

  • Location: 333 E. Wonderview Avenue, Estes Park, Colorado, about 5 miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Opened: 1909, built by F.O. Stanley of Stanley Steamer fame
  • Style: Colonial (Georgian) Revival, with a main hotel, concert hall and the Lodge (originally the Manor House)
  • Listed: National Register of Historic Places historic district (1977; expanded 1985 and 1998)
  • Best known for: inspiring Stephen King’s The Shining, and for Room 217, the fourth floor and the Stanleys’ own ghosts
  • Ghost tours: 60 minutes, $35 per person, ages 8 and up, open to non-guests

History

In 1903 Freelan Oscar Stanley was very ill. He and his twin brother, Francis, had made a fortune with the Stanley Motor Carriage Company and its steam-powered cars, but F.O. had a serious return of tuberculosis. The standard treatment was dry air, sunshine and good food. On a Denver doctor’s advice, F.O. and his wife, Flora, spent that summer in Estes Park, a mountain valley of ranches and rough lodges. His health improved so much that he resolved to come back every year.

The rustic valley did not suit the Stanleys’ East Coast tastes, so F.O. set out to build a grand hotel. Construction began in 1907. Wikipedia says the land was bought in 1908 through the representatives of the 4th Earl of Dunraven, an Irish peer who had tried to turn the valley into a private hunting preserve and who was deeply unpopular with locals. When Stanley suggested naming the hotel “The Dunraven,” 180 people reportedly signed a petition written on buckskin asking him to name it after himself instead.

The main hotel and concert hall were finished in 1909. Wikipedia gives the opening date as July 4, 1909; a National Register nomination cited by the research archive IOPAR gives June 23, so sources differ. The Manor House followed in 1910. Stanley designed the buildings with Denver architect T. Robert Wieger and Henry “Lord Cornwallis” Rogers. The design followed the health thinking of the time: big porches, southern exposure and cross-ventilation instead of central heating. Stanley built a hydroelectric plant on the Fall River to power the hotel, which also brought electricity to the town for the first time. Guests came by train to Lyons and finished the trip in Stanley Mountain Wagons, multi-passenger steam vehicles made by his company.

Stanley ran the hotel almost as a hobby and once remarked that he spent more each summer than he made. He sold it in 1926 to a company formed to run it. When that failed, he bought it back out of foreclosure in 1929 and sold it in 1930 to Denver hotel and transportation man Roe Emery. The hotel stayed a summer-only resort until 1983. Its presence, and Stanley’s own civic work, helped Estes Park grow; Rocky Mountain National Park was established in 1915, and the town incorporated in 1917. F.O. Stanley died in 1940, a year after Flora.

Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha, stayed one night in 1974, as the hotel was closing for the winter. In King’s best-known retelling, they were nearly the only guests. They ate in an empty dining room with the chairs stacked on the tables, and that night King dreamed of his young son being chased down the corridors by a fire hose. By the time he finished a cigarette at the window, he had the bones of a novel. The Shining came out in 1977. King’s front matter says the Overlook Hotel is based on no real hotel. Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film was not shot at the Stanley, but King’s own 1997 miniseries was. The hedge maze on the front lawn, a nod to the Kubrick film, dates only from 2015.

The hotel changed hands several times. In May 2025, it was sold for about $400 million to the Stanley Partnership for Art, Culture and Education, a public-private entity created through the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority. The partnership plans an expansion and a new event center.

The ghost stories (reported folklore)

Room 217 and the chambermaid. The best-known story starts with a real event. On the evening of June 25, 1911, an explosion of gas from a new auxiliary lighting system wrecked part of the west wing. An Associated Press dispatch the next day said eight people were hurt. It said a hotel employee named Elizabeth Wilson, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was “hurled from the second to the first floor” and broke both ankles. The Lancaster paper reprinted the story but could not find her in local directories. Colorado papers named the maid Elizabeth Lambert, and a 2014 Estes Park Trail-Gazette review found five different versions in five Colorado accounts. The Fort Collins Express of June 29, 1911, which Wikipedia calls the most detailed account, put the damage at $10,000 and rejected the claim that the maid had been hurled between floors.

The hotel’s own telling, as its archivist explained to the Trail-Gazette, adds a storm, a candle and Room 217. In that version Wilson recovered, became head chambermaid and worked at the Stanley until her death in the 1950s. Guests in 217 now say their clothes are folded and their bags unpacked overnight. Unmarried couples report a cold presence coming between them in bed. The same article says the hotel has no employee records from that period and no photograph of her.

Children on the fourth floor. Guests report hearing children running and laughing in the fourth-floor halls, and objects moving as if children are playing, with no one there when they look.

The Stanleys. F.O. Stanley is said to appear in the billiard room and the bar. He loved billiards but did not drink. Flora is said to play the piano in the music room at night.

On TV. The hotel has hosted many paranormal investigators and appeared on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures.

How strong is the lore? Famous, but thin as evidence. The 1911 explosion and an injured chambermaid are documented. The Room 217 details are not, and the newspapers of that week disagree on the woman’s name and what happened to her. IOPAR, a research archive that scores paranormal claims, rates the case “insufficient evidence.” It notes that skeptic Brian Dunning found no book of Colorado ghost stories that mentions the Stanley before The Shining. It also cites a 1997 news report in which the hotel’s sales director credited the book’s fame with a run of ghost sightings. When investigators tested specific claims, they found ordinary causes: an elevator shaft next to Room 401 that made the floor vibrate, and a porch rocking chair moved by the wind. The fairest summary is that Stephen King made the Stanley haunted, and the hotel has embraced it.

Visiting

  • Address and phone: 333 E. Wonderview Avenue, Estes Park, CO 80517; (970) 577-4000.
  • Ghost tours: the hotel’s ghost tour page lists a 60-minute evening walking tour for $35 per person, up to 20 people, with advance reservations recommended. Children under 8 are not allowed. The tour is wheelchair accessible, and the route varies by time of day and year. Tours never enter guest rooms, and the night tour never goes onto guest floors. Tour office: lower level, (970) 577-4110.
  • Non-guests welcome: you don’t need a room to take a tour or eat at the hotel, but book tours ahead, especially in October.
  • Other tours: the hotel also runs a historic day tour, a Shining tour, a whiskey tour and the “Frozen Dead Guy” cryonics tour.
  • Staying in 217: Room 217 is a bookable guest room, so the only way to see it is to stay in it.
  • Practical notes: Estes Park sits at about 7,500 feet, so take it easy if you’re coming from sea level, and check parking and policies with the hotel before you go.

FAQ

Is the Stanley Hotel really haunted?

The hotel says so and sells ghost tours. The stories mostly became popular after The Shining, and researchers have not found evidence that holds up.

Did Stephen King stay in Room 217?

That is the hotel’s story. King has described a one-night stay in 1974, but his own accounts do not name the room.

Was The Shining filmed at the Stanley?

Kubrick’s 1980 film was not. Stephen King’s 1997 TV miniseries was filmed there.

More haunted hotels

Read about La Fonda in Santa Fe and Hotel Monte Vista in Flagstaff.

Sources

The Stanley Hotel in snow in February, Estes Park, Colorado
Photo: Sgerbic via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

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