the stanley

I like to think of myself as one of author Stephen King’s “original fans.” I read his first novel “Carrie” long before anyone else I knew had ever heard of him and I’ve read every sngle one of his books ever since. He has his own affectionate term for fans like me: “Constant Reader.”

One of his most famous novels is called “The Shining.” Briefly, it was about a couple who are hired to tend to a huge vacant hotel, “The Overlook,” in its harsh winter off-season. They have a young son who has paranormal abilities and, in their isolation, the whole family becomes negatively impacted by the history of evil-doings in the hotel. A blizzard besets the area and they are trapped within the hotel. Because this is a Stephen King tale, horrific mayhem ensues.

A number of years ago, I learned that the hotel in the story was actually based on a real one called “The Stanley Hotel” in Estes Park, Colorado. King had an inexplicable experience when he and his wife stayed at the hotel. They checked in and left their suitcases unpacked in their room and went to the hotel dining room for lunch. Upon returning to their room, they found that their suitcases had been unpacked and their belongings neatly put away in drawers.

He inquired about this service at the front desk and soon learned that the old hotel had a very checkered past and that there had once been a house maid who had died in the hotel. It seems she was extremely conscientious in her work and would frequently unpack the guests’ belongings for them even though it was not a required hotel policy. The room the Kings were staying in had been one of her responsibilities and they were far from the first guests to experience this very same odd phenomenon. This incident inspired King to write “The Shining.”

When I learned that The Stanley Hotel had begun offering special paranormal-focused weekends, I jumped at the opportunity to experience it, especially because they included the opportunity to spend some short time in the same room the Kings occupied. The weekend included your own hotel room, a variety of lectures on the paranormal and, of course, the opportunity to explore the hotel for ghostly activity.

The stark “Overlook Hotel” as depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s famous film “The Shining” bore absolutely no resemblance to the real one. The real “Stanley Hotel” is much smaller and, in spite of its location, almost has a charming southern antebellum feel to it. My daughter and I enjoyed the lectures and the nightly “ghost hunts” but experienced nothing out of the normal. Until the last night.

While we had been “ghost hunting” in small groups, this last night we were given free rein to explore unoccupied rooms by ourselves. After some searching, we found a vacant room and sat on the floor in the dark alone, attempting to communicate with any spectres. I settled in and leaned up against the wooden footboard of one of the beds.

While we enjoyed the weekend, I would describe us as open-minded skeptics. We were not nearly as prone to declaring having experienced paranormal activity as some of our fellow attendees were.

As we sat in the dark, we asked generalized questions such as “Are you male or female?” and “Were you an employee or a guest here?” We tried to stay vigilant to any noises or movements but after several nights of no activity, we were feeling rather doubtful about the possibility of any experiences.

As I was leaning up against the footboard of the bed, I suddenly experienced someone strongly grab the right side of my waist. I instinctively lurched my body forward, away from the bed and fell face-first on the floor. My first reaction was that someone was hiding beneath the bed in the dark and I thought we might be in danger from someone very much alive. We quickly left the room but once we were outside the door, we paused and decided to re-enter the room to re-investigate, only this time we would have leave the door to the corridor wide open and we would turn on the lights.

We crept in and saw that the room still appeared vacant. We checked the bathroom. Nothing. After much trepidation, I got down on my hands and knees and focused my flashlight underneath the bed from which I had experienced the grabbing. I half-expected to find a prankster, laughing at our gullibility. There was no one there. We looked under the other bed and it was empty as well. We explored every inch of the room and fully satisfied ourselves that we had truly been alone and no one could have left without our notice.

I experienced a confusing mixture of both relief and disturbance. I was relieved that we had not been alone in a dark room with a living hidden stranger but there was the remaining question: who — or what — had grabbed me?

While we slept that night, the town experienced an unexpected heavy snowfall. As we left for the long drive back to the Denver airport early the next morning, I gazed at the snow-blanketed building in the gray dawn and realized that I was seeing the hotel under the same circumstances that King’s characters had experienced it: cold, white desolation. Although the interior of the car was toasty warm, I shivered.