Haunted Travels | The Stanley Hotel

There's a good chance you've visited, possibly even unknowingly, a haunted location at some time in your life. Maybe it was a castle, cemetery, house, restaurant, or even a historical location with a past. You might be surprised by the number of places that have their very own stories of hauntings.

My husband and I had our own haunted experience while visiting The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. It's the very hotel that inspired author Stephen King to write his famous novel The Shining, and it's said to be frequented by plenty of paranormal activity. We took part in a ghost and history tour of the hotel that made our necks tingle and hair stand on end.

Construction of the hotel wrapped up in 1909. Owner Freelan Oscar (F.O.) Stanley and his wife enjoyed entertaining friends at their fancy new hotel in Estes Park. It was often an escape for the rich and famous of their time. The hotel holds plenty of history that keeps your mind reeling and guessing which spirits might still be haunting the historic hotel.

Read some of the stories for yourself on The Stanley hotel's haunted hotel and history page.

Plan far ahead if you want to stay in the more haunted rooms in the hotel, because they book out months in advance. Stay in room 217, and you might even get extra special care from the hotel's chief housekeeper from the early 1900s. If the rumors are true, she might even unpack for you! Room 217 is also the room where Stephen King stayed and found inspiration for his novel.

* A little trivia: absolutely 0% of The Shining movie was filmed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, but ABC had a Shining mini-series that was filmed at the hotel *

"Heeere's Johnny!!"

We were able to see room 217 during the ghost tour, since no guests had rented it for the night. I'll admit it felt a little creepy in that room, like something (or maybe someone) was watching us. We weren't lucky enough to have experienced room 401 on the tour. Apparently that room is one of the other more haunted rooms in the hotel. An old wealthy European man, Lord Dunraven, is said to frequent room 401 during his haunts. He was said to have been an immoral, creepy old man. I can only imagine he's not one of the friendlier ghosts of the hotel. Or is he?

these people are not ghosts, I did blur these strangers' faces though

climbing stairs during the ghost tour

The Ghost Hunters have even investigated the Stanley Hotel. They concluded that the hotel is most likely haunted. Their investigation showed evidence of noises and paranormal activity. The basement tunnels have shown high amounts of activity too....

See for yourself....

What do you think about ghost stories?

Have you visited any haunted locations?

Happy Halloween!

website: Stanley Hotel

Stanley Hotel Twitter page

visit Estes Park, Colorado

On a lighter note, scenes from Dumb and Dumber were filmed at the hotel. You may recognize the front of the hotel from when they pull up in a Lamborghini, and they also shot Jim Carey's character waiting to meet a woman in the hotel bar.

Escape to Estes Park

A couple of days ago, Nate and I visited Estes Park on an overnight trip. Nate had been there before, but it was my first time visiting the quaint town of Estes Park. A few times I felt like I was "home", because of the touristy nature of Estes Park. We passed multiple ice cream and candy shops. Not to mention, the town felt like an escape from the hustle and bustle of busy city (suburban) life. It was what I expected of a mountain town, and we would both love to return again soon.

Our time in Estes Park was a nice escape from our everyday lives. We spent some time walking the main street that runs through town, and we discovered an operating watermill in the river at the end of town. The running water masked what little bit of noise we heard, making the atmosphere rather peaceful. Beautiful! Multiple times on our walk through town we inhaled deep breathes of the freshest air we had breathed in a while. The town, all of the people walking the streets, the clean air, and the wildlife were all a breath of fresh air to us both.

While visiting Estes Park, we experienced some things we don't usually see back home. We spotted quite a few deer and elk while on a drive up to the entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park. The entrance fee was a little more than we wanted to spend this trip, so we're hoping to visit again some other time and drive into the park when we have more time to explore. Not to mention, the weather was a bit "crisp". And by crisp, I mean it snowed while we were there. I don't consider snow to be the best hiking weather, and we didn't bring our snow shoes (we actually don't own any, but I wouldn't mind having some). Since we weren't exactly prepared for snow, we decided to visit the Stanley Hotel and stay inside for the day. The hotel is on the National Register of Historic Places, so we got our dose of history on our trip to Estes Park too.

Nate and I both loved our visit to the Stanley Hotel. On our drive into the parking lot at the hotel, we saw a group of people obviously on a tour of the property. We both decided, hands down, that we wanted to take the tour too. The earlier tours had filled by the time we got there, so we signed up for a tour about two hours later. We spent some time walking around on our own, and we also enjoyed a little time in the bar next to the lobby of the hotel. I obviously had to drink the "Redrum Punch" and Nate drank a "Shining-inspired" beer brewed by the Estes Park Brewery. The hotel, as we discovered during the tour, has a very rich and interesting history. Not only did the hotel inspire Stephen King to write his book, The Shining, but some scenes from the movie Dumb & Dumber were filmed there too. (If you're a D&D fan, you might recognize the staircase below as the one where Lloyd grabs Mary's ankle and trips her up while they raced up the stairs.) The tour of the Stanley Hotel proved very informative and exciting!

Most importantly, the Stanley Hotel is haunted. We learned quite a bit about the history and hauntings of the hotel on our tour, and we even had a few interesting things occur during the tour....

... more on that tomorrow.

All in all, our trip to Estes Park was everything I had imagined. Nate and I had a relaxing time, but enjoyed ourselves and had fun along the way.