Scotty's Spooky Stay at the Stanley Hotel 2016: Night One

With all of the things that have been going on at my day job this year, I decided to take my Stanley Trip early this year and have once again arrived. Now, this being the end of May, I figured that the hotel would be up and kicking and it is in a way as guests are still lining up for tours and personal ghost hunts. The official start of the season is Memorial Day weekend, so the staff have a couple more days to get everything ready for the ever popular weekend and I wish them the best at doing this. 

One of the things I noticed when I got here this year is how hard the cold winters are on the hotel, with maintenance groups running around and doing touchups all around the hotel main floor, but there is much more to do on the upper floors. I never thought that a matter of months could make this much of a difference when it came to paint these days, but The Shining films weren't kidding around, the winters are brutal up in the mountains and now I fully understand this. I have no doubts that all of the touchups will be completed by the end of June to bring the external of the hotel back to its yearly glory.

Enough with that, let’s get into what happened on my first night in the hotel, since that is what everyone likes to know. I am staying in room 414 for this trip, not a reported haunted room, but I will still keep my eyes and ears open for anything crazy that may happen. The only reason that I did not get a haunted room for this trip was my late request to stay through Saturday, but you know what, it is about the experience and I am far from upset. The start of the night was used to reconnect with some of my favorite staff members who were very surprised to see me coming up near the end of the off season, not the beginning. They are a really good group and make you feel like family, especially when you become a known guest.

---

When walking through the halls to go and get some ice, I ran into a couple from Houston that were preparing to start their ghost hunt for the night. Since I am a bit of a veteran in this hotel, I gave them some notes on where to use their EMF detectors when walking by rooms. Then I started to talk to them about our team experience in room 428 and come to find out that they are staying in room 426 and have heard the water running in the room when it was not. That falls back to the little kids story about them running across the floor in 428 and ducking into the closest, since 426’s bathroom is on the other side of the closet and now some of the stories are starting to tie together. 

I also ran into another group from Milwaukee that was ready to start their ghost hunt as well. They had a bit more advanced EMF detector in hand and some more goodies that they were ready to put to the test. As we started talking, we were approached by another couple that has stayed in the hotel as well and we all exchanged stories about what and where things have happened to us in the hotel. Talking with the Houston couple before they joined forces with the Milwaukee team, we chatted a couple seconds while walking to my room and their EMF detector went off at my door. Since I still have Ghost Radar on my phone, I turned it on and the signal was pointing at the door and then it started talking, a lot. The first thing it said was Texas, which freaked out the couple since that is where home is. We chatted with the ghost for a couple minutes until the energy appeared to disperse on the app and EMF detector. Although the couple was a little freaked out, they were ready to continue their hunt and set off with the couple from Milwaukee on their own ghostly adventure.

I have not heard what they have found as of yet, but they were going to cover the entire hotel, so I made sure to give them all of the tips of hot spot areas that I could think of. Now it was pretty noisy in the hotel last night and I do not see that changing for tonight, so the chatting with the Ghost Radar was the only kind of ghostly experience that I can vouch for. The weather report has a lightning storm coming in tonight and that seems to excite the spirits more than anything else, at least that is what I have noticed when being in the middle of such storms out here. With so much changing around the grounds this year, there may be some more crazy events happening, but you never know for sure what will get the spirits attention. Well, onto the next night and I cannot wait to chat with some new people and drop some knowledge once again.  Until next time, Stay Scared.

---