Part One – The First Night
I do my best thinking while I’m driving, that’s why most of the time I drive in total silence. My mind forms plan after plan. Plan, edit, plan, until I form a course of action. Then it’s on to the next plan. The round trip, from Birmingham, Alabama, would be just over twenty-six hundred miles of planning time. I was going to visit The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado and then head north to Wyoming to visit Devil’s Tower. From Devil’s Tower, I would turn towards home. On the return trip, I planned to visit Mt. Rushmore and then drive through the Badlands. For most of the trip, I was going to wing it. The only reservations I made were for The Stanley Hotel.
The Stanley Hotel was built in 1906, by F.O. Stanley. F.O. Stanley was the inventor of the Stanley Steam Engine, and the famous steam powered motorcar, the Stanley Steamer. Staying at The Stanley Hotel had always been a dream. It was on my bucket list. At over four hundred dollars a night, The Stanley Hotel is very expensive. I decided to splurge, and stay five nights. This was the first trip I’d taken in a long time and I was taking it on my own.
I consider myself a huge Steven King fan, and I give him credit for teaching me how to read. In school, it seems like the only thing the teachers assign you to read is either too boring, or too advanced for younger readers to grasp. Assigning Shakespeare to a sixteen-year-old just doesn’t make sense. When I was nineteen years old, I joined the United States Navy. On my flight to San Diego, and boot camp, I had a two-hour layover in the Memphis airport. While I was sitting in the boarding area trying to figure out how to kill some time, I noticed someone reading a book in the seat opposite me. Looking at the book’s cover peaked my interest. The cover had the picture of a huge, growling beast of a dog, with the word “Cujo” written at the top. I decided to visit the airport gift shop to see if I could find a copy of this book. Sure enough, they had many copies available, as “Cujo” had just been released in paperback. I bought a copy, returned to my seat, and opened the book. That day, I learned what a joy reading could be. I’ve been reading Stephen King novels ever since.
Stephen Kings writing led me to The Stanley Hotel. The Stanley Hotel is most famous for being the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write, “The Shining.” He and his wife Tabitha visited the Stanley Hotel in 1974. Their room, room 217 is the most requested room at The Stanley Hotel. To reserve room 217, you must plan your trip years in advance. I was not so fortunate, but at least I got a room on the same floor. Not far from room 217, my story begins and ends, in room 202.
Room 202 was beautiful and well worth the price of the stay. When you enter Room 202 the first thing you notice is the bed. The bed looked inviting. The bed looked expensive and rich. It had a large arched headboard with four huge pillows, a deeply padded mattress and what looked to be a white down comforter. You could die in this bed. The walls, freshly painted in beige, were adorned by large, sepia colored, photographs from the period. One was a shot of two women in early nineteen hundred dress carrying parasols. One held her parasol high and open and the other held her parasol closed and to her side. The women were walking a large white poodle towards the front of the hotel. The other photograph was of the front of an old steam locomotive running through one of the many tunnels in the Colorado Rockies. The shot of the train was from the direct center of the railway. I wondered how the photographer got that shot without getting run over by that very same train. Other than that, the room had the usual amenities, flat screen television, phone, wireless internet connection, and the most beautiful walk-in shower that I had ever seen. Even the smallest details of the room, down to the complementary shampoo bottles, were immaculate. Normally, the first thing I would do when I got to my hotel room would be to take these tiny bottles and store them away in my suitcase. It looked like someone had taken the time to measure the distance between the bottles, so it would have been a shame to move them. I dropped my suitcase on the bed and turned to look out the window. My room window was facing the back of the hotel looking out over the courtyard below. At the far end of the courtyard there was a man-made waterfall, the water running toward the hotel.
Room 202 was different from the pictures of the rooms online. All those rooms had wall to wall carpeting but room 202 had a wooden floor. This floor was not that cheap laminate they sell today, but looked to original to the building. The floor was richly decorated with two oriental area rugs. A large round rug in the middle of the room and a matching square rug at the foot of the bed. The floor looked like it had recently been refinished, however in front of the entrance to the bathroom was an odd shaped stain. At some point the bathroom must have flooded and stained the floor.
I moved my suitcase from the bed to the valet in the bathroom. In the bathroom, I noticed another strange thing. I small, possibly four-foot-high door. The door was cut at an angle on one side, to accommodate shape of the room. It was a solid wooden door, stained in a dark color, and adorned with antique brass hardware. Finding the door gave me a slight chill. Was this, perhaps, a secret passage? I opened the door and discovered a small closet. Room for hanging your clothes and a small water heater. The only inhabitants were a few lonely looking wire hangers hanging from the clothes bar.
My stomach was growling so I decided it was time to get something to eat. I went off to find the Cascades restaurant.
To get to the Cascades restaurant you must pass through the Whiskey Bar. With just over sixteen hundred brands, the Whiskey Bar boasts the largest collection of whiskeys and single malt scotches in Colorado. Many of these bottles were displayed in front of a mirror that ran the whole length of the bar. The Whiskey Bar is also famous for being the location where they filmed the bar scene in the movie, “Dumb and Dumber.”
The Cascades restaurant was a little upscale from what I was used to and had the prices to match. After the long drive from Salinas, Kansas, I was road-worn, tired and hungry. I ignored the price and ordered a twenty-nine-dollar meal of elk, buffalo and pork meatloaf with a side Yukon gold mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. To drink, a tasty glass of the house red wine. The meatloaf was rich and delicate. Each bite seemed to melt in my mouth, which was great, because I was almost too tired to chew. After the meal and with a full belly, I decided to head back to room 202.
I took the 1906 antique “Otis” elevator to the second floor. I could have taken the stairs but I wanted to ride this beautiful elevator at least once. The elevator doors are adorned with mirror like brass panels on the bottom and ornate brass bars on the top. The inside of the elevator had dark wooden panels. It had been modernized with normal looking floor selection buttons, but still had the old crank that would have been used back then.
Back in room 202, I took a Vicodin, and laid on the bed fully clothed. The bed was as comfortable as it looked and I fell asleep almost immediately. My last waking thought had been about Tim. Tim would have loved this last long ride. I missed my dog.
The Stanley Hotel is also considered one of the most haunted hotels in Colorado. At about half past two in the morning, I was jarred awake by a loud thumping sound, coming from under the bed. My first waking thought was, “No matter what you do, do not look under this bed.” I lay there for several minutes before I got up the nerve to get out the bed. Standing on wobbly legs, I stumbled across the room to the light switch on the far wall, forgetting all about the lamps on either side of the bed. After turning on the light, and against my own advice, I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed. There was nothing under the bed, except for a few dust bunnies, left by the cleaning crew. Not enough to lose a star on TripAdvisor. Still my heart was racing and I was wide awake.
A good thing about taking a trip by yourself is that you are free to do practically anything you want. So, walking the halls of The Stanley Hotel, at half past two in the morning, was a treat. “No better time for a ghost hunt.” I thought. It seemed like I had the whole hotel to myself because I was alone, not one single guest in the halls at this hour. This was my bonus, my little sprinkle of Disney fairy dust, and I had my iPhone ready, hoping to catch a ghost on camera. I should have been afraid, but I didn’t really believe in ghosts.
Sometimes when we look in the mirror in the morning, we expect a miracle to have happened over night. Our hope is that we reflect someone handsome, or beautiful, or fit. As we get older, we learn to accept ourselves flaws and all. At fifty years old, I had long since given up hope of my reflection being anything other than what it was. I mention this, because on each floor of The Stanley Hotel has huge mirrors with ornate golden frames at each end of the hall. My first encounter with one of these mirrors was a bit of a shock. I was looking through the view finder on my camera and as I turned I was startled when I saw a pale figure taking my picture. My first thought was, “Why would a ghost be taking my picture?”. Alas, the hopes of seeing my first ghost were dashed. As I brought the camera down from my eye, I saw that it was only my reflection. Pale, Overweight, and slightly greying at the temples.
I turned left and down a short hall to find room 217, the infamous Steven King suite. As I walked up to the door of room 217 I thought of how silly I must look. But at this hour, it would have been equally as silly, if anyone were looking through the peep hole on the other side of that door. I took a close-up picture of the front of the door, making sure I got the brass, oval, 217 plaque in the shot. After I felt satisfied, I turned back down the hall toward the grand staircase. I walked down the staircase to the first floor.
At the first floor I rounded the corner, and went down another flight of stairs to the basement level. The basement level is where guests of The Stanley Hotel bought souvenirs from a small gift shop or tickets for a midnight ghost tour. There was no one manning the ticket counter at this hour, and the gift shop was of course, closed. I walked west toward the basement entrance of the hotel. As I walked I noticed one of the night janitors, moping the floor of what appeared to be a café, which was the first room you walked through if you came through this basement entrance. The janitor was bent to his work and did not acknowledge the strange character roaming the halls at this ungodly hour. I was going to say hello, but he had headphones on his ears, so I decided not to bother him. I walked past him unnoticed and out the doors and into the hotel parking lot.
Even in late July, the night air was crisp and cold. It was a clear night and the stars in the night sky seemed so close you could reach out and touch them. The full moon gave the snow-covered mountains in the distance had a ghostly glow. Estes Park has an elevation of just over seventy-five hundred feet. I had been warned that it would be hard to breathe at this altitude but I found the thin air invigorating.
I turned right toward the far side of the lower parking lot. Just past a low hedge maze, I would be able to take some great photos of The Stanley Hotel. The main building of the F.O. Stanley’s hotel was built in the, “Colonial Revival” style. Since then, several similar additions had been built nearby. (When I first arrived, it took a few minutes to realize I was lost.). I focused on the main building and was careful to make sure I got a shot that showed The Stanley, framed by the multitude of visible stars in the night sky.
The parking lot was eerily quiet. The air was so cold that even the crickets had placed their nightly discussions on hold. Breaking the silence was the click clicking of small wheels moving up the steps of the hotel. A late arrival was lugging a large suitcase up the stairs toward the main entrance. She was young, maybe in her early twenties, with straight blond hair. She wore a full length brown leather coat and matching brown leather gloves. I could tell by her foggy breath that she was winded from the effort. This must have been her first time visiting the Stanley Hotel. A more seasoned visitor would have known that just through the basement entrance, past the café, was the elevator. It would have been much easier to roll her suitcase through the basement entrance. Had I seen her earlier, I could have saved her the trouble of moving that heavy bag up the stairs. She reached the doors of the hotel and turned to look back at the parking lot. She surveyed the parking lot as if she was looking from the peak of the mountain she had just climbed, to the valley below, proud of her accomplishment. I gave her a small wave, embarrassed that I had not rushed to help her with her bag. She was not amused, and she did not wave back.
I glanced at my watch and realized that it was already four o’clock. I decided to go back to my room, and continue this ghost hunt at another time. I had a big day planned and would probably need the sleep. Walking back towards the basement entrance, I noticed a blurry white shape moving through the parking lot. Eventually the shape came into focus. It was a large white poodle. I watched the poodle until it ran around the far corner of the hotel. I thought about the photo adorning the wall of room 202. I decided it was just a coincidence and continued walking back to my room. “Maybe I’m the ghost.” I thought as I again passed the unwitting janitor.
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