The Hotel That Inspired Stephen King's THE SHINING is Getting a Horror Museum
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado was the inspiration behind Stephen King's classic horror novel The Shining. I visited the hotel once years ago and it was such a cool and creepy-ass experience! If you ever have a chance to go, you totally should! The hotel is about to get even better because it was just announced that there are plans to build a building on the premises that would include a horror-themed museum, film production studio, and film archive. The news comes from the LA Times, who report:
Plans for the Stanley Film Center call for an auditorium, museum, traveling film exhibits such as "The Walking Dead" based on the film work of Charlie Adlard, a sound stage and post-production and editing space. It would operate as a nonprofit public-private partnership, a statement says, and partner with the Colorado Film School in Denver on educational projects.
It was also revealed that actors Elijah Wood and Simon Pegg are among those on the museum's founding board.
So now there will be even more of a reason to visit the hotel. It really is quite a sight to see. The hotel currently offers a ghost tour and is the host of a horror film festival every year. Now I really want to take a trip back up to Colorado to visit the hotel again. It's been way too long.
Here's a little background on King's experience at the hotel for those of you who aren't familiar:
The Stanley is famous in popular culture for having inspired horror novelist Stephen King to write The Shining, published in 1977. In 1974, horror writer King spent one night in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel with his wife Tabitha while on a vacation to the Boulder area. Upon arrival, they discovered that they were the only overnight guests. "They were just getting ready to close for the season, and we found ourselves the only guests in the place — with all those long, empty corridors" He and his wife were served dinner in an empty dining room accompanied by canned orchestral music. "Except for our table all the chairs were up on the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall, and, I mean, it was like God had put me there to hear that and see those things." That night, a dream struck King with inspiration for his next book. "I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind."
According to King in later interviews, the Stanley served as his model for the Overlook Hotel, the ominous setting of The Shining, his third major work after Salem's Lot (1975) and Carrie (1974). The hotel in King's book is an evil entity haunted by its many victims. The main characters - Jack and Wendy Torrence and their young son Danny - are employed as winter caretakers. As the winter wears on, the hotel begins to exert its influence upon Jack, urging him to murder his family. Danny's clairvoyant abilities - referred to in the novel as "the shine" - lend the book its title.