The Stanley

Thanks Michelle.

What Happened To Jim Carrey In Room 237?

I was watching Dumb and Dumber last night with my daughters.  It's sad when you reach the age when things that were hilarious in your 20's are now just -- stupid.  What did catch my eye was The Stanley Hotel.

James Parker at The Atlantic wrote:

 Jim Carrey requested 217 during the filming of Dumb and Dumber, but checked out—so the story goes—after only three hours. “That’s a shady one,” says the hotel’s tour guide Kevin Lofy. “What happened to him in that room, we don’t know. He’s never spoken of it.” A fantastic, if apocryphal, image: Carrey the rubbery actor-medium, the channeler of presences, windmilling out of the Stanley in a post-ghost panic.

Advocate "In Focus" editor, Lindsay Maynard, reports a similiar details about Carrey's stay at the Overlook -- I mean Stanley Hotel.  Maynard took the hotel tour and wrote a very nice article in which he wholeheartedly embraces the spooky elements of the old place.  In fact, she says the hotel is deemed one of the "most haunted."  HERE is the article, titled "Tour Estes Park's most haunted hotel."

Maynard also includes the tid-bit about Jim Carrey's stay in room 217, and also reports he did not stay the entire night.  Seems a few hours after checking in, he left the room and "never returned."  Why?  He's never said a word about it.  Could it be that the woman in the tub bothered him?  She was so very pretty!  Or perhaps the two dead girls made it hard to settle down.

Some interesting facts gleaned from the article:

• Ghost Hunters has visited the hotel nine times!
• Travel Chanel's "Ghost Adventures" has also paid their respects.
• In June 1911, during a power outage, a chambermaid named Mrs. Wilson entered room 217 to light a candle.  A gas leak caused the room to explode!  What's amazing is that she lived, and was given a job at the hotel for life.  Maynard says that she is known to appear from time to time and even put away clothes for guests.  Nice ghosty.
• On the fourth floor, there is sometimes the sound of unseen children playing.

Jim Carrey Flees Room 217

photo: Olivia Lewis | UCD Advocate

This was the most read article at talkstephenking.com this year, with almost 70,000 views.  Thanks Dumb and Dumber To.

$15 will buy you a tour of the Stanley Hotel, the inspiration behind Stephen King's novel The Shining.  Kubrick didn't use the hotel as his filming location, but mini-series director Mick Garris did.  The creepy spooks aren't just the stuff of novels and movies, seems some people actually believe the old place is haunted.

Advocate "In Focus" editor, Lindsay Maynard, took the tour and wrote a very nice article.  It seems this time of year there are always a pile of stories about the Stanley Hotel.  Maynard's is a lot more fun than most!  She wholeheartedly embraces the spooky elements.  In fact, she says the hotel is deemed one of the "most haunted."  Not most haunted in America. . . just "most haunted."  I assume she means in the world!  Yikes.

HERE is the article, titled "Tour Estes Park's most haunted hotel."

Maynard has an interesting story about Jim Carrey, who stayed in room 217 -- but not for an entire night!  Seems a few hours after checking in, he left the room and "never returned."  Why?  Seems he's never said a word about it.  Could it be that the woman in the tub bothered him?  She was so very pretty!  Or perhaps the two dead girls made it hard to settle down.  I dunno. 

About King's visit, Maynard writes, "While stuck in the mountains, King and his wife begged the innkeeper to let them stay for the night. They were the only guests to occupy the hotel and they stayed in Room 217, where they experienced uneasy tension throughout their visit. Seven days later, the outline for The Shining was created."

I'd never heard that they "begged the innkeeper to let them stay for the night."  Sounds familiar, though.

Some interesting facts gleaned from the article:

• Ghost Hunters has visited the hotel nine times!
• Travel Chanel's "Ghost Adventures" has also paid their respects.
• In June 1911, during a power outage, a chambermaid named Mrs. Wilson entered room 217 to light a candle.  A gas leak caused the room to explode!  What's amazing is that she lived, and was given a job at the hotel for life.  Maynard says that she is known to appear from time to time and even put away clothes for guests.  Nice ghosty.
• On the fourth floor, there is sometimes the sound of unseen children playing.

Is The Stanley Hotel Really Haunted?

T.R.U.E investigates the Stanley Hotel

I'm creeped.  They should have gotten these people to film The Shining miniseries.  The photography on the approach to the hotel really is unnerving.  Sometimes professionals make things feel a bit sterile.  But this really does make the hotel feel secluded.

This episode will give you the true "prequel" to The Overlook.

The Worst Hotels In Movie History

What hotel do you not want to check into?  You probably have a few on your list based on personal experience.   Tom Szaroleta at The Florida Times Union (jacksonville.com) has an interesting short list of "The worst hotels in movies, television and literature."

Of course, pictured in the article is none less than the famous Stanley Hotel, featured in Stephen King's novel The Shining.  In the novel, the Stanley Hotel became the Overlook hotel.

Szaroleta's list includes:

• Bates Motel (from the 1960 film “Psycho”)
• Hotel California (from the 1977 Eagles song, “Hotel California”)
•  The Overlook (from the 1977 Stephen King novel “The Shining” and the 1980 movie of the same name)
• Heartbreak Hotel (from the 1956 Elvis Presley song, “Heartbreak Hotel”)
•  The Pennsylvanian (from the 1993 film “Groundhog Day”)
• Motel Hello (from the 1980 film “Motel Hell”)

See (jacksonville.com) for the commentary that goes with the list.

and I nominated:

• The Dolphin Hotel (from the 2007 movie, 1408)  I promise, it's about the worst room you could ever enter.  Ever.  How did it not make the list?  Because it was waiting for Talk Stephen King -- that's how.

Okay, your turn.  Worst hotels from literature, movies or songs.

A Visit To The Stanley Hotel

I enjoyed Shannon's 2009 posts on her visit to The Stanley Hotel.  This is reposted  with permission.  Visit her blog at: shannonsweetvalley.com

The Stanley Hotel

What a beautiful place.

Okay, I know I usually only talk about Sweet Valley, but the Stanley Hotel was amazing and I thought you guys might be interested in knowing what I’ve been doing this week instead of updating the blog. Our room was sufficiently spooky, the creepy four-poster bed so tall there was a little set of wooden steps to get into it. Our room had a walk-in closet, which I’ve never seen in a hotel. There was a channel that played Kubrick’s The Shining on a loop.

Kevin the tour guide took this picture for me.
It's at the top of the stairs leading to the bell tower.

If you are ever in Estes Park for any reason, you should definitely stop in and take the ghost tour. We learned a lot and our tour guide, Kevin, was hilarious. We liked him a lot, even though he thought the name of the bartender in The Shining was Grady (Grady was the previous caretaker, Lloyd was the bartender and I’m a dork). Anyway, here’s what we learned:

F. O. Stanley and his wife, Flora, lived in a mansion in Estes Park but it wasn’t large enough to accommodate all the guests they wanted to entertain. The hotel was built in 1909, and guests, all friends of the Stanleys, could come by invitation only. (There’s a Stanley Museum just down the road from the hotel and they told us this is completely untrue, it was a regular old hotel, but whatever. We believe in Kevin.) There’s a building separate from the main hotel. It’s called the Manor House, and this is where the bachelors stayed when they came to visit, since Flora didn’t think it was proper for them to stay in the same building with the married folk. The children stayed on the fourth floor with their nannies and pretty much didn’t see their parents for the duration of their visit, which usually lasted a whole summer.

Our tour didn’t take us to the Manor House, but we explored most of the main building and learned what kind of paranormal activity happens all around the hotel:

On the fourth floor, people hear children playing and running around, and children who stay there find their toys misplaced. The fourth floor is also home to Room 401, which was the nannies’ break room back in the day. Supposedly, this room is haunted by Lord Dunraven, a misogynistic jackass who used to own the land on which the Stanley was built. A woman who stays in that room might feel a hand on her leg or someone touching her hair.

Room 217

On the second floor, we stood in front of Room 217, which used to be the Presidential Suite. Room 217 is at the end of a hallway and the rooms on either side of it, 215 and 219, used to be part of it. This room is haunted by Elizabeth Wilson (my husband raised his hand to play Mrs. Wilson when Kevin asked for a volunteer during the ghost tour). Apparently, Mr. Stanley asked Mrs. Wilson to go light the candles in the room when the lights went out. The hotel used gas, and when Mrs. Wilson lit her match, the room blew up. For real. Mr. Stanley felt like crap about this. He paid all of Mrs. Wilson’s medical bills (yeah, she survived) and said he wanted her to keep working for him. She stayed and was given a raise every year she worked there, which she did until she died.

This is, of course, the room in which Stephen King and his wife stayed when they came to the Stanley. 

According to Kevin, Stephen and Tabitha showed up looking for a room on the last day of the season when everyone was going home. The manager gave them the keys and asked them to lock up when they left. After dinner, Tabitha went up to the room while Stephen went to the bar and had a few drinks. Then he went to the dining room and found a huge party going on. He tried to talk to the partiers, but nobody seemed able to see him. I’m not sure I believe that part. It was during SK’s coke period, after all. He could have seen all manner of strange things. Anyway, when he went up to the room, Tabitha thanked him for putting away the luggage, which he of course knew nothing about. At the time, SK had been trying to write a story about a family trapped in an amusement park. It wasn’t working out, but after his stay at the Stanley, he moved the whole thing to a haunted hotel and it became The Shining.

The MacGregor Room

The MacGregor dining hall is something else. This used to be where the Stanleys would feed their guests. It’s now used for wedding receptions and other events. This room used to be completely white, but when ABC came to film the miniseries version of The Shining, they wanted a darker, spookier look. The wood you see in the picture to the right isn’t actually wood. It’s white plaster airbrushed to look like wood. And now the Stanley has a deal with ABC: they’re not allowed to change the appearance of the hotel until “interest in The Shining dies down.” So basically never.

Our tour took us downstairs to the basement, where we learned that there really is no foundation for the hotel. It’s just sort of perched on the mountain rocks. Some people believe it’s the quartz in the mountain that brings out all the paranormal activity. This is now called the Stanley Effect.

The pet cemetery

That’s where our tour ended. The next day, my husband and I explored the rest of the property. In the main building, there’s a music room where Flora used to hang out with the women, and a billiard room where the men did manly things like smoke cigars and play billiards. The Stanley has its own concert hall, where Flora Stanley’s ghost is said to hang out. The Manor House, where the bachelors used to stay, isn’t very exciting, but Kevin the tour guide said he had an experience in one of the rooms there. If you walk to the left of the hotel a little way, you might find a little pet cemetery where some Stanley relatives have buried their pets. You’ll also find the new Presidential Suite, which appears to be sort of a duplex.

Bottom line: you should go there. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, you should just stop by for a while and look around. It’s a beautiful hotel with a really interesting history, and the Rocky Mountain National Park is five minutes away.

Third floor hallway

Flora's music room

The grand staircase

A Stanley Steamer car

Stay At The STANLEY HOTEL if you dare

Booking.com has a new advertising line -- stay at the Stanley Hotel, if you dare.  "Over 350,000 accommodations, including haunted hotels."

They give this note on The Stanley Hotel:

Welcome to The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO, the inspiration behind Stephen King’s novel The Shining. It has everything for the true ghost hunter – from supernatural parties in the ballroom, to a guest killed in a gas explosion still haunting room 217. If that’s not enough to spook you, spectral children can be seen and heard playing in the hotel’s hallways.

Check it out at www.booking.com

The Overlook Has A Pet Cemetery?

picture from: shannonsweetvalley.com

The Stanley Hotel, which inspired Stephen King's novel The Shining and  was  the filming location of the mini-series, has a pet cemetery right next door.  No, I'm not kidding!

The irony isn't lost on the UK publication The Telegraph, which noted, " a stunning irony considering that King also penned the novel Pet Semetary about a burial ground with the power to bring dead animals and children to life."

The article also recounts strange incidents at the Stanley Hotel, including,

Numerous ghouls including the ghost of Lord Dunraven - the original owner of the hotel - have apparently taken up house in room 418 in particular. 

Guests and staff have reported hearing the sounds of children playing in the corridors late at night and of piano music coming from its empty ballroom.

So what do you do if your hotel is haunted?  Move the pet cemetery of course!  Seriously -- that's the plan.  The owners of the hotel plan to dig up the pet cemetery and relocate it.  Nothing like disturbing the graves of local pets when people already think your haunt is, well, haunted.

source: www.news.com.au

FANGORIA Is Ready To Send You To The Stanley Film Festival

THIS IS FROM FANGORIA:
(www.fangoria.com)

Who's ready to get creepy? Our friends at the Stanley Film Festival just sent over two passes to their inaugural celebration of classic and contemporary horror film. One lucky winner and a guest will receive VIP access to a weekend full of films, screenings and special events.

The Stanley Film Festival will take place on May 2-5, 2013 in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado. As a unique destination festival, all events will take place throughout the historic and haunted Stanley Hotel, that which provided Stephen King with inspiration for both THE SHINING and PET CEMETERY. The four-day event will showcase filmmakers latest works, Q&A discussions, industry panels, the "Stanley Dean's Cup" student film competition and special events for cinema insiders, enthusiasts and fellow artists.

Want to join the experience? Send an email to fangoria.prizes@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with "STANLEY FILM FESTIVAL" in the subject line, and please include the following information: name, mailing address, email address, phone number and age.

Best of luck! Be sure to keep up to date with the Stanley Film Festival, visit the official site; Like SFF on Facebook; Follow SFF on Twitter and Instagram (@StanleyFilmFest) and join the conversation using the hashtag #YeahItsCreepy

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The guidelines are posted at www.fangoria.com

Stanley Hotel Ghost Investigation

This article is from UFONUT.  They graciously allowed me to repost it here.  Lots of cool -- spooky -- stuff about the Stanley Hotel!

Stanley Hotel Ghost Investigation (02/08/10)

The Stanley Hotel is 7,500 feet above Estes Park and an hour from Denver. It’s over 16,000 square feet and has 138 guest rooms. It’s also listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a member of Historic Hotels of America. Originally built by Freelan O. Stanley of the Stanley Steamer fame it opened on July 4th, 1909.

The hotel was made popular by novelist Stephen King. While he and his wife were staying at the hotel, King conceived the idea for his book, “The Shining”. Later the 1997 television miniseries version of “The Shining” was actually filmed at the hotel. Unlike the movie, Stephen had more artistic control with the mini series than he did with the film. I’m actually standing next to a prop from the mini series.

Throughout the history of the Stanley, ghostly encounters have been experience not only by the employees but the guests as well. Some of the apparitions seen at the Hotel include F.O. Stanley himself, his wife Flora, Lord Dunraven who the Stanley’s bought the land from, and a few others. Some of them include a maid who was seriously hurt and survived a gas lantern blast, a maintenance man named Paul who just recently died a few years ago, and a female transient named Lucy who used to live there before it’s renovation. 

Ghost tours are performed daily for hotel guests and visitors, and on the weekends they’ve included ghost investigations in which I was a part of. The investigation’s price is $50.00 and usually includes about a dozen people who stay in the bachelor’s building from 8:00pm till 1:00am. I happened to be there on Saturday for the 5:00pm tour and was able to purchase a spot for the late night paranormal investigation. The late night investigation is run by one of the hotel’s local ghost hunters who hosts interested individuals and guides them through different aspects of a standard ghost investigation. Other paranormal investigators use these types of investigations to get into places they normally couldn’t get to. Well I broke off from the group a little after it started and ran my own personal investigation taking one or two individuals with me who were interested to see what I was doing. No dis-respect to the Stanley’s ghost hunter specialist, I just had my own agenda which utilized the tools I had on hand and was graciously allowed to venture on my own. Thank you Stanley Hotel.

My tools included a 3D camera which I was experimenting with, and my normal kit I put in my vehicle when I go out. The kit includes a Sony Hi8 night vision camera, voice recorder, Tri-Field Natural EMF meter, night scope, and some other assorted gadgets for standard UFO investigations.

This is a Nishika35mm 3-D camera N8000 with a quadra lens system. Basically this camera is comprised of four 30mm two element lenses positioned to an accuracy measured in thousands of an inch. You can find this on sale throughout the Internet, this particular one was given to me by my good friend Joe Fex. Some ghost hunters use this type of camera to help with their investigations. Using 35mm film, they can get multiple images per print. Most of the time you will get 2 of the same images per print being able to achieve a stereoscopic image. Staring at the middle of the two frames and slightly crossing your eyes, you’ll be able to see a 3 dimensional image.

You can do this with any two identical images but the difference between using two identical images and using a camera which uses multiple lenses, is that the left and right images are taken by different lenses. You could pick up an anomaly on one lens, the left picture and not on the other lens, the right picture. I’m still experimenting with this camera using different types of asa film. The following images were taken using asa 200 and shot indoors, some in complete darkness. When looking at them, concentrate on the center black vertical bar while crossing your eyes slightly until you achieve three separate images. Then concentrate on the center image until you’re able to focus clearly and get a 3D image. Then you can slightly scan the 3D center image looking for any type of anomalies. It takes some practice.

The following pictures were taken during the 5:00-6:00pm ghost tour.

Picture taken during the Stanley Ghost Tour

The following pictures are of the Fourth Floor and has a history of supernatural activity. This floor is where the children were kept with the nanny’s while their parents enjoyed all the outside activities of the hotel. Guests who stay on this floor have complained of hearing children playing late a night and also reports of impressions on the bed and noises in the rooms.

This is part of a tunnel in which present day employees use to get around. This is the last stop on the guided ghost tour.

The next few pictures were taken in a building where the bachelors stayed. It wasn’t proper for single men to stay in the main building where the married couples were, so they got their own pad. The spirits who frequent this building are Flora Stanely who maintains a watchful eye over any events occurring there, Paul who was a Stanley employee and had recently passed, and Lucy who was a transcient that lived in the tunnels before the building was renovated and later died due to exposure.

The following pictures were taken during the 8:00pm to 1:00am on-site investigation.

Apparitions are known to pass through this area and sometimes catch visitor and employees attention. In this picture (it’s a little difficult to see) the left image has an orb or dust particle just to the upper left of the top of the stainless steel containers, but the right image does not. Looking at them together achieving the 3D effect, the little orb appears to be floating.

This room is where I was getting responses from my EMF meter when I was asking questions about Lucy. All this was caught on my Sony Hi8 video camera including a nice little orb which passed right in front of me just after I asked one of my questions. The door in the background is the entrance to the tunnels where Lucy lived, so we know she passed through this room allot.

This is one of the tunnels in which Lucy travels during her spiritual life.

I did experience some interesting things during this investigation and am currently going over my audio and video tapes. I picked up an unusual floating orb on video and need to verify if it’s actually an unknown or just a dust particle. Also while I was video taping in the hallway late at night, I’m pretty sure I saw a shadow cross in front of me. The hallway was near a room in which Paul has been known to visit and I was calling out his name when I saw the shadow. I had my video camera rolling at the time but was not able to see the shadow through the small screen. I’m going to experiment with that segment of video and see if I can enhance the image.

I’ve been wanting to do an investigation at the Stanley for some time now, so this was a real treat for me. I do plan on going back for another try, and this time I’ll bring more gear. There’s some experiments I want to try and a little more research on the visitors who frequent there so I’ll be better prepared too. I’ll go through my video and audio and will post any results I get which seem interesting. I need to compare the orb light to a known dust particle video to make sure It’s not a particle floating near my lens being illuminated by the IR light. I do have some interesting video of me asking Lucy questions and getting pretty good responses on my EMF meter. I’ll review that segment and post the video on this sight a little later. So at this time I need to stop typing and start reviewing my tapes to see if I picked up any EVPs too!

Haunting Of The Stanley Hotel

The Stanley Hotel is a popular topic at Halloween time.  Rebecca Pittman has written a book titled, "The History and Haunting of the Stanley Hotel."

Stanley Hotel Dumbed Down

So I'm watching Dumb and Dumber. Don't judge me. And when they finally make it to "Aspen". . . guess what hotel exterior I spot; that's right, it's the Stanley Hotel. Of course, it's not in Aspen, but who really expects the brilliant minds who made Dumb and Dumber to actually be able to find Aspen, eh!

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Of course, in October 1974, King spent the weekend at the Stanley hotel. He and his family were the only guest there, because the hotel staff was clearing out for winter. King's own version of The Shining was filmed at the Hotel in 1996, just two years after Lloyd and Larry made their visit. In Dumb and Dumber it was the Danbury Hotel.

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If only. . . Larry and Lloyd had an opportunity to meet our friend Jack -- the end of Dumb and Dumber would be so much better.

The Stanley Hotel Shines On

Here's a really cool article by Caryn Eve Murray titled "Hotels in Literature - One Novel Idea!" It looks at some famous hotels that appear in literature. Of course, the section that interested me was on the Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for The Shining.

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Haunted Amusement Park

Murray quotes operations director Leslie Hoy as saying, “He didn’t know the hotel existed and he was toying with the idea of writing a novel about an abandoned amusement park. . ." wait! I didn't know that. A novel about an abandoned amusement would be awesome!

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I just got home from Disneyland. It's raining pretty hard here in Southern California, and the thought of something spooky happening on one of those rides is pretty cool. Of course, making it all broke down and abandoned is even more exciting. But then , I did see a B-rate movie that followed that idea. It wasn't good. But then, it wasn't Stephen King! I wonder if he'll ever return to that idea.

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An amusement park is a naturally scary setting. See, it's full of clowns and "characters." Further, once we are on a ride -- we're trapped. That bar goes down and the ride follows the set track, and there is not a thing in the world you can do about it.

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My mother told me about a fun house she used to go through at an amusement park along the California coast (The Pike). She said it was absolutely the scariest thing she had ever been in. Then, on an HBO show titled Autopsy, I learned that a real skeleton was found inside that fun house!

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Wikipedia says: "In December 1976, during filming at Queens Park (A.K.A. The Pike), of the television show The Six Million Dollar Man 1977 episode "Carnival of Spies"(1979), a crew member was moving what was thought to be a wax mannequin that was hanging from a gallows. When the mannequin's arm broke off, it was discovered that it was in fact embalmed and mummified human remains. Later, when medical examiner Thomas Noguchi opened the mummy's mouth for other clues, he was surprised to find a 1924 penny and a ticket from Sonney Amusement's Museum of Crime in Los Angeles. That ticket and archived newspaper accounts helped police and researchers identify the body as that of Elmer McCurdy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy

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Not Bad For Business!

Murray reveals that the hotel's center stage position in The Shining was good for business. "King’s room – which is Room 217 – now gets reservations months and months in advance and it is already sold for the next couple of Halloweens,” she (Hoy) said. The hotel had been near bankruptcy in the 1970s and was struggling at the time “The Shining” gave it a new shot at prosperity, Hoy said. The horror novel was published in 1977. The top draws at the hotel are now its guided ghost tours and history tours. “We’ve had 61,000 people come through since January [2010],” she said.

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Reading The Shining At The Hotel:

Murray's last lines are pretty spooky: "As for Hoy, it took her about two months to build up courage to sit down with Stephen King’s book. “It took me some time to read it. I had to get myself acclimated,” she said. “I was living on the property and in a building all by myself in the winter.”And then, when she did, she said “I made sure I had my door locked.”

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I think that lady has got guts! Would you read The Shining while all alone in the Stanley Hotel? I'm not sure I would.

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http://www.hotelinteractive.com/article.aspx?articleid=19767