Guests, ghosts give hotel 'Shining' review

Guests, ghosts give hotel 'Shining' review 2003-01-26 By Gary A. Warner The Orange County Register

ESTES PARK, Colo. -- All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Not exactly "Rocky Mountain High." But when it comes to memorable literary moments inspired by Colorado's peaks, the chilling lines from Stephen King's horror classic "The Shining" are right up there with anything John Denver ever warbled.

The ghostly apparitions, dead bodies in the bathtubs and ax- wielding madness of the fictional Overlook Hotel are figments of King's twisted imagination. But the place that inspired him to write "The Shining" is very real -- the Stanley Hotel, smack up against the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. And like the book it inspired, the hotel comes with its own harrowing ghost stories.

You'd think that a haunted hotel that moved an author to write one of the most blood- curdling novels of all time would be the last place tourists would want to vacation. Wrong.

"The kids weren't really excited about taking a family trip until we said we'd be staying at a hotel from 'The Shining,'" said Art Laatsch of Lakeville, Minn.

Laatsch and his wife, Becky, chose the Stanley as a stop on their 25th wedding anniversary trip and brought their three children, Matt, Anne and Samantha.

"I wanted to stay in an active room, one with a ghost," said Samantha, 16.

"I didn't," Becky said. Mom won that one.

Fans of King's book wander the halls, sometimes barging into occupied rooms. Staff members have a hard time keeping the number plates on the rooms -- visitors pry them off as souvenirs. The gift shop sells oval number plates that say "Overlook Hotel -- 217," the haunted room at the center of "The Shining."

Even if you don't see a ghost, the Stanley acts suitably haunted. Once a luxury hotel for the well-heeled Edwardian- era tourist, the Stanley shows its age in spots. The hotel creaks and groans and whistles and moans. The ancient elevator, which has to be operated by a hotel employee, has a nice haunted grinding sound.

The story of the Stanley is a little bit fairy tale, a little bit financial nightmare, a little bit ghost story -- the kind of tale that makes your skin crawl while it's being recounted around the campfire late at night when the flames send streaky shadows across the trees.

It starts with Freelan Oscar Stanley, known more often as "F.O." He was an inventor who had established a booming business in steam-powered automobiles. He suffered from tuberculosis, and his doctors sent him to the Rockies in 1903, where he fattened up, gaining 28 pounds, and stopped coughing. Some say his friendly ghost still wanders the hills around the hotel.

Stanley and his wife, Flora, dreamed up the Georgian-style confection of the hotel, right down to the double rows of pillars. A lot of the wood and rock are from Hidden Valley, which would soon be the heart of the new Rocky Mountain National Park.

The hotel opened in 1909 and soon attracted the wealthy to the mountains. Flora would play the grand Steinway piano for guests. The piano's still here, and some say that late at night, there's music coming from the piano room, but open the door and no one's there. Well, no one you can see. Flora?

The hotel had the first telephones in the area, but as it was open only during summer, heat wasn't added until 1978.

The main lodge now stays open year-round. On chilly days, visitors cluster around the two fireplaces. But the warm days, spent chatting on the wide veranda facing the mountains, have drawn most visitors to the hotel over the years.

President Theodore Roosevelt, Bob Dylan, the Rev. Billy Graham and Emperor Akihito of Japan have dropped in. An early visitor was bandleader John Philip Sousa, who used to tune the piano (maybe he still does).

In the years after World War II, the hotel tumbled through a series of owners and a history that included bankruptcy, foreclosure, a time-share scam and decades of delayed maintenance. Though new owners have pumped millions into the hotel since 1995, it has a way to go to recover its past glory.

It was during one of the darker periods in the mid-1970s that Stephen King happened by. Living at the time in nearby Boulder, he and his wife decided to drive up to Estes Park one October afternoon.

They pulled up to the Stanley Hotel and inquired about a room. It was the last day of the season, and the hotel would be closing for winter the following day. The crowds had thinned to zero. King was handed the key to Room 217 only on the condition that he pay cash.

King heard a story that a woman had committed suicide in the claw-foot tub in the room. Tales of Flora and her ghostly pals circulated. Stories of strange laughter of ghostly children in the hall. A small dog barking, but never seen.

That night, they found themselves alone in the hotel dining room while the hotel orchestra played on as if the place was filled with an unseen sea of tuxedoed jazz-age swells.

"Except for our table all the chairs were up on the tables," King said in an interview in 1997. "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. And by the time I went to bed that night, I had the whole book in my mind."

The book was a smash hit when it came out in 1977, followed by Stanley Kubrick's movie version in 1980 and a miniseries remake in 1997.

"The Shining" renewed interest in the hotel, especially in the haunted Room 217 -- even though the movie changed the center of the ghostly goings-on to Room 237. Kubrick chose the Timberline Lodge in Oregon to represent King's fictional Overlook Hotel. But the soul of the story is at the Stanley.

The beauty of the Rocky Mountains can make you never want to leave. Just don't fall prey to the ghostly twins of King's novel, who beckoned: "Come and play with us. Come and play with us ... forever, and ever, and ever."

KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE INFORMATION SERVICES

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