Visiting a New Place

Since October is here and ghost stories abound, I'm starting to think about the time I visited the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park for the first time. I went with my now ex boyfriend and I forced him to watch The Shining the night before so he would have context for why the hotel is creepy and cool (he fell asleep). 

The hotel is open to the public for people to walk around and there's lots of movie memorabilia, it even has a resident psychic and a miniature of the maze used for the movie. I remember being drawn to the grander of the building and laughing at the fact that we looked so out of place there in our grimy hiking gear with our school backpacks among the guests who could afford to spend around $300 a night for a room. 

It's a lavish and beautiful building (although I've heard the food is bad) and it is definitely a fun tourist attraction to check off the Colorado List while the leaves are turning up in the mountains. After we roamed around the lobby and the outside of the hotel, we ended up sneaking into the rooms which are usually not open to the public. This was something I was very hesitant about but ultimately resulted in a fun time and a good story. A housekeeper had left a back door open at the top of a fire escape and taking one look at it we knew this was an opportunity we wouldn't get again. With the plan to say we were guests of the hotel if anyone asked what we were doing up there (I'm sure we wouldn't have fooled anyone as I mentioned earlier, we were very out of place) we tiptoed up the stairs and into the hotel. We didn't try to get into any of the actual rooms, but wandered around the hallways. They were eerily quiet and I will say there was a strange energy to the place, maybe I was freaking myself out from having watched scary movies all night. 

If I ever go again, I would love the chance to actually spend the night in the hotel, and to go on a ghost hunt.