The Stanley Hotel

The car maker's hotel

Freelan Oscar Stanley made his money on the Stanley Steamer. Diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent west for the air, he recovered in Estes Park and built a resort for people like himself, opening it on July 4, 1909, with electric light throughout and a fleet of his own steam cars carrying guests up from the railhead.

One night at the closing hotel

By Stephen King's own account, he and his wife Tabitha checked in during late September 1974, although many retellings give the date as October 30. The hotel was closing for the season and they were the only guests in the building. They ate in a dining room with the chairs already stacked, King walked the corridors, and by morning he had the shape of the novel that became The Shining in 1977. The hotel says the couple stayed in room 217, and King's own account does not name the room.

The film most people picture was not shot here. Stanley Kubrick's 1980 version used a lodge in Oregon for the exterior and English sound stages inside. The 1997 television miniseries, which King was closely involved in, was filmed at the Stanley. The building that produced the book and the building on screen are not the same one, and the hotel's reputation draws on both.

What is reported, and who owns it now

Staff and guests describe piano music from an empty ballroom, lights and doors working on their own, and children heard in the fourth-floor corridors, with rooms 217 and 428 named more often than the rest. The hotel sells that reputation directly through nightly ghost tours.

The deflating reading is available and not hard to make: a building from 1909 at altitude, a century of plumbing and settling, and a guest list where close to everyone arrives having read the book or seen the film.

On May 15, 2025, the Stanley sold for $400 million to The Stanley Partnership for Art Culture and Education, a partnership built around the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority, with the former owner as board chairman and bond investors behind it. The most famous haunted hotel in the country is now held by a public entity.

The Stanley works as a day visit as well as an overnight one. The night ghost tour runs about 60 minutes, costs around $30, caps at 20 people, and is open to ages 8 and up, and there are daytime history and film-focused tours that cover the building without the dark. All of them sell out around Halloween, which is the one time of year worth booking weeks rather than days ahead.

Room 217 is sold as its own room type, the 217 Spirited Grand King, and it is booked far in advance.

The hotel sits above Estes Park with the Rocky Mountain National Park entrance close by, so most people build a day around both. It stays a working hotel throughout, with weddings and conferences running alongside the tours, and the public rooms are busiest in the early evening.