Need I say I was excited beyond believe to be staying at the haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado??  What first began as a trip to Colorado Springs to see my favorite uncle turned into a visit to Estes Park where he & his grown kids & grandkids would be vacationing during the only week we could come visit.  So he said why not come to Estes Park?  I figured yeah, why the hell not?  Then I began to think.  Why did Estes Park sound so familiar to me??  I then googled for hotels and the number one search result was none other than the Stanley Hotel.

 

The Stanley Hotel has been prominently featured on SyFy’s paranormal show, “Ghosthunters.”  The team had a nighttime investigation here as well as one of their six-hour long Halloween live investigations.  The Stanley Hotel has also been visited by the crew of “Ghost Adventures.”  Both sets of investigators caught various types of paranormal activity on film and deemed the Stanley Hotel truly haunted.

 

Made famous by Stephen King, who stayed here in Room 217 and has his own paranormal experiences, the Stanley Hotel inspired him to write the classic horror novel, “The Shining.”  That’s the only book to give me nightmares for over 20 years!  I still can’t get over the lady in the bathtub, and I’m talking the book version.  The movie version was kind of lame.   Contrary to popular believe, the movie, “The Shining” starring Jack Nicholson, was not filmed here.  However, the TV mini-series, “The Shining” was filmed here later.

 

I was thrilled to see we could easily book a room on the haunted fourth floor & did so immediately without bothering to consult my husband, who would have naturally nixed the entire thing due to what he would deem the silliness and the expense.  It’s not the cheapest place to stay around here, but it’s also not the most expensive if you book well in advance (at least 60 days, which is what I did).

 

We were given room 426.  There isn’t much to be said about it from other sources I have been able to google.  Within the room itself it felt fine. However, as we approached it from the classic antique Otis elevator (!!!) my daughter and I could feel a heaviness in the air that made it difficult for me to breathe, while she had no trouble.  My husband thought we were building ourselves up into a frenzy.  We assured him that was not the case.

We checked in and checked out the town a bit without any incidences.  My husband decided to turn in for the night while my 14 year old daughter and I gleefully took off with the K2 meter provided by the Stanley Hotel and our cameras fully charged and reach to rock & roll.

 

We roamed the 4^th floor and only in one area, a corner across from our room, did we ever pick up on any spikes, and only one spike the stairwell that is also just outside our room.  At one point while investigating that stairwell we both heard the distinct sound of two firm footsteps on the 3^rd floor landing.  We stopped to use the K2 and take some pictures, but nothing at that time showed up.

Just past Room 426 my daughter was walking behind me when she said, “Mom!  Stop!”  I did so & spun around.  She motioned for me to come to her & I did so quietly. She whispered she had just heard a voice in her right ear say, “Hey!”  We immediately used the K2 and took pictures.  Nothing again.  However, we now had two personal experiences.

 

As we continued to walk around we met three teenage boys also doing the same thing as they told us they had caught a lot of orbs in a back stairwell so we went to investigate.  That’s where we met another mother-daughter team and we walked around with them for about 30 minutes.  All the while I was snapping pictures of anything and everything.  A corner, the ceiling, the floor, a door jamb to one of the rooms, and so on.  My digital screen isn’t the best and I was convinced I wasn’t catching anything while on my daughter’s camera LCD screen we were seeing orbs.

 

I’m a sensitive and I sense fluctuations in energy.  Once I got over my excitement of being here and was able to tune into that I began to get some results in my pictures, but again, due to the poorer quality of the LCD screen of my camera, at the time I was unaware of what I was capturing.

 

Returning to our room around 1 AM we went to bed.  I began to feel sick to my stomach so for the entire night I was up and down like a yoyo going to the bathroom.  I felt miserable.  I was awake the entire night with perhaps 45 minutes of sleep between 4 and 5 AM. 

 

I’m a side sleeper and I was laying on my right side.  At approximately 2:17 AM I felt the pressure of a single finger press against my rib cage just below my arm pit. It carefully ran a line from my armpit to the side of my hip, then stopped.  I laid there not believing what I had just felt.  I slightly turned over thinking it’s got to be my husband. However, he was sleeping on his side, but facing the other direction.  He was also sound asleep & snoring. There’s no way it was him.  Plus, the sheets are starched here. If he had moved at all I would have heard him.

 

So I rolled over onto my left side so now I was facing my husband with my back to the wall.  I closed my eyes trying to rest as my stomach gurgled.  Then I felt the same finger and it began again just below my armpit and traced a single straight line down to the side of my hip.  At that point this cloud of icy coldness descended upon me.  It enveloped me from head to toe.  I was so cold I was shivering.  It was 78 in our room (there is no air-conditioning at the Stanley). 

 

The blanket of icy coldness lasted what seemed like 2 minutes, but in reality it was probably more like 10 seconds, I am guessing.  It lifted just as suddenly as it had descended.  I did not experience anything else that night, except that twice I heard the pitter-patter of little footsteps right outside our room.  It is said the fourth floor is haunted by the spirits of several children.

 

The pictures below are only from our FIRST night here.  We’re booked for 3 more nights and we take the ghost tour tonight, so who knows what else we may also catch on film.  Enjoy the pictures and be SURE to scroll all the way through.  The one on the bottom is shown in actual size then enlarged in several subsequent image files and that one is certainly NOT to be missed!

 

 Feel free to enlarge this last picture. I’ll try to get a better copy posted once I get back home.

I shall try to blog more as our trip continues and will recap once we return home on Saturday, so stay tuned for more on the Stanley Hotel and its ghostly inhabitants.