The Stanley Hotel - Scotty's Haunted Stay

I am not ashamed to say that one of my favorite venues to visit in my free time is the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.  With such a great history in the area, and my favorite movie was inspired by the stay of Stephen King back in the late seventies.  Most of the time when visiting this hotel, I am just happy to be put in any room they give me, but this time, with the group, I wanted something to happen.

I booked room 401 for myself on this stay and made sure the group was in equally haunted rooms.  With 401 being haunted by the old land baron of Estes, Lord Dunraven, I did not feel too uncomfortable in the room alone, but the same could not be said for others. One Friday night when the rest of the group went to bed, my friends and I decided to do a little bit of investigating around rooms, along with the hotel. 

Exploring the grounds, I led the two bravest members of the team to the concert hall and gave a little bit of a back story of what was said to happen. We got excited when we heard a door close, but came to find out that there was a tour being conducted, so that first experience was somewhat diminished. Heading back to the main building, I noticed that the only window in my main room was sitting wide open.  I know that I shut it before we started our adventure, but there was doubt in the group that I had it shut properly. What is it with myself and the windows at the Stanley that do not get along? Waiting to go back up to the rooms to try some EVP sessions, we toured the Billiard Room and from a distance took some pictures in the Music room since it was roped off. When we were discussing going back upstairs, we heard the piano in the main hall play some bass notes.  Now, one of my friends thought that there was a kid playing it, but when we looked around the piano, there was nobody even close to it. But the strangest thing for me, is that nobody else seemed to notice it.

So with strange things happening, we decided to go back upstairs and try out an EVP session in my room. Shutting the window again, which was unlatched, so somebody had to do it, we tossed our female friend into the room’s closet to see if the reports were true about woman being touched inappropriately. I have never seen anyone run out of a door so quickly in my life as she could describe in-depth the feeling of the fingers touching her.  At this point, my other friend was starting to feel a little uncomfortable as well, from the first moment he stepped into 401, he was saying that he could feel something. 

We started our EVP session, mind you this was our first attempt and we were very anxious to hear or witness anything. Still trying to review the session as there was a ton of wind outside this night, along with an elevator right next to the room which makes it hard to decipher anything too crazy.  Near the end of the session, my buddy was ready to leave the room as it seemed to have pinpointing him the entire night, when his camera died upon first entering the room, along with his voice recorder. It seemed to have a thing for the young man, I hope to hear a response to at least one of the questions that we asked. 

We then headed to room 407.  Same ghost, but different reports of the haunting. Lord Dunraven is reported to be seen in this room when nobody is occupying it, but when people are in the room, they report smelling cherry tobacco.  We tried our session in this room as well, but nobody was feeling out of sorts at all, so we tried the closet activity, but still nothing. I guess the ghost was busy in my room, opening my window.

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Our first night had come to an end and I commend my pals for sticking with the hunt as it was their first time and both of them felt a little bit out of sorts since my one friend was getting targeted by someone or something in my room all night, and my other fried had felt the cold caress of an unseen hand. For the rest of the night, nothing happened that I noticed, but I slept very heavily as I was exhausted.  So this takes us to our second night.

On Saturday night, we were going to try the same thing, with Shae and John coming along, but we got some extra ideas from the tour guides as we were letting them and groups into our rooms while we were there. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it and we had a fun time with it as well.  Finding out that there were ghost kids in Shae’s room, 428, we moved small soccer balls into there’s to see if anything would happen with it. We also set up our podcast in the room with another piece of equipment that we did not know about, the Ghost Radar app. 

Although the skeptics seemed to think this was silly, it seemed to be very accurate in my room as I tried it out. So we let it play during our podcast while trying to see who or what was in the room with us and what they wanted. Now most of the time, the indicator light was showing up behind the girls on the couch during the show, so hopefully one of their mics picked something up. We had a lot of fun on the show and heard a couple of things on our playback, and hopefully you will hear more when it is up. Bumps and creaks mostly, but I have not finished reviewing the recording yet.

After the show, we went to investigate the hotel once again. We were happy to see that the Music Room was open so we jumped right in. Now my one friend seems to be the haunting barometer, as he got goose bumps when entering the room, the same feeling he had the previous night in room 401.  We snapped a lot of pictures and explored the other rooms on the main floor and even jumped into the MacGregor room where the housekeeper that haunts room 217 fell and broke both of her ankles after blowing up half of the building. It is a beautiful room, but we did not feel anything special in there.

Heading back upstairs, we called it a night and went back to our rooms. With nothing out of the ordinary happening, my room did feel a little bit heavy tonight, so I left my recorder running for a couple of hours. I am having a hard time coming up with anything special, as I said the room was right next to the elevator and that makes plenty of noise during the night. But I did feel like someone was watching me, which made it very difficult to fall asleep, but when I finally did, the hallway went active. I did not have time to get the recorder to the door, but it did sound like someone was running up and down the stairwell that leads to the tower. Looking through the peep hole and opening the door, there was nobody there. It only lasted for a couple of seconds, but it did make it hard to go back to sleep as it was almost the normal time that I get up in the mornings.  I did sit in my little reading room, watch and listened as the new day was approaching once again.

I was kind of upset at the time that the others in the group were having strange things happen to them, but then I remembered that they were skeptics and those are the people that need to have things happen to them, to make them believe. I had a great time and I sincerely hope to do this again with the group as with all of the scares, it was a different work environment than we are used to. With a ton of laughs and even some trying to scare each other, it reminds me why I like working on the site so much, as we are still friends. If you have not been to the Stanley Hotel, what is wrong with you?  I have been going for several years now and love every minute I am up there. Now it is not a guarantee that something will happen to you while you are there, but if you want to feel a different kind of energy, it is the place to visit. I hope everyone gets a chance to visit this location, as it is beautiful and welcoming. And bring a friend if you want to share it with somebody, if only to keep you safe from the ghosts.

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