Prepare for a Frightful Stay
At The Stanley Hotel
Remember the Stephen King book The Shining?
The movie was a huge hit with horror fans.
Let me introduce you to the hotel that inspired it — The Stanley Hotel.
Grand Beginnings
The Stanley Hotel is a 140-room hotel sitting on 160 acres in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Besides the guest rooms, there are over 41,000 feet of meeting rooms and event spaces.
Freelan Oscar Stanley, a wealthy man best known for the steam-powered car he developed with his twin brother, began building the Georgian Revival house in 1907 as a summer retreat for himself and his wife. The townspeople petitioned him to name it The Stanley. Stanley summered there until his death in 1940. It had been a popular destination for wealthy vacationers for many years by then.
New Fame
The hotel became somewhat shabby in the next couple of decades. Then famous author Stephen King and his wife stayed there as the Stanley was about to close for the season. He had heard rumors that the hotel was haunted. King got the idea to write a book about a man losing his mind in a hotel closed for the season. This became the best-seller The Shining, which was filmed at a different hotel but the inspiration was his stay at The Stanley.
