Chilling tales from The Shining’s real-life hotel

What’s even scarier than the fictional resort in the movie is the real hotel that inspired Stephen King to write his novels.

With its blood-filled lifts and bone-chilling history of butchered children, The Shining’s Overlook Hotel has terrified audiences since the film was first screened in 1980.

But what’s even scarier than the fictional resort in the movie is the real hotel that inspired Stephen King to write his novels, The Sun reports.

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado is considered one of the most haunted hotels in the United States.

Guests and staff have complained of hearing ghost children playing in deserted corridors, and the spirit of a hanged murderer is said to walk its halls.

The Stanley Hotel in Colorado. Picture: Supplied

King’s stay in room 217 of The Stanley Hotel in the winter of 1974 inspired the isolated resort at the heart of The Shining, The Overlook.

King’s novel focuses on Jack Torrance, an alcoholic who moves with his family to the deserted hotel to be its caretaker through winter when it’s closed.

When the Torrance family are alone, they soon discover the hotel is haunted with people murdered in its blood-drenched walls.

And stories about the real hotel that inspired the film are almost as terrifying as King’s imagined resort.

The different hotels relating to The Shining.

GHOSTS CLIMBING INTO BEDS

A chilling cast of characters are believed to haunt the hotel, which costs approximately $275 a night for a room.

On the fourth floor, guests regularly complain about children running or laughing in the early hours of the morning, only to find the corridors empty.

A child spirit, Matthew, is said to pull the covers off guests in their beds.

Even more terrifying is the ghost of Elizabeth Wilson, who was one of the hotel’s first maids and was seriously burned when a lantern exploded during a storm in 1911 in room 217 — where King stayed 70 years later.

Since her death, she’s said to climb into unmarried couples’ beds in the night as a way of punishing them for premarital sex. Talk about a mood killer.

The Stanley Hotel’s fourth floor is said to be haunted by children.

HANGED COWBOY AND DEAD CARETAKER

In room 428, sleepless guests say they’ve seen a cowboy who was hanged for murder staring at them from the end of their bed.

In the concert hall, a ghost named Paul, who died from a heart attack in the hotel, has been heard by staff at night.

Paul, a caretaker who once had to enforce an 11pm curfew in the hall, has terrified workers by telling them to “get out”.

Then there’s Lord Dunraven, a landowner in the area who died in 1926, whose ghost has reportedly startled female guests by touching them as they unpack in room 401.

‘DISNEYLAND FOR SPIRITS’

The Stanley Hotel is said to have so many evil spirits haunting it that it crops up on countless “most haunted lists”.

It has even employed its own “paranormal concierge”, Lisa Nyhart, who works as a resident ghost investigator and shows other ghosthunters around the 142-room accommodation.

She says guests regularly feel cold air and spider-like touches creeping on their legs and heads inside the hotel.

And they hear eerie voices singing in the night, accompanied by lights turning off and doors creaking open by themselves.

The main staircase leading into the lobby of the Stanley Hotel.

“We have more nights with activity than (without),” Ms Nyhart told USA Today. “It’s a Disneyland for spirits.”

Apparitions have reportedly been spotted all over the property, including in the underground caves once used by workers beneath the Stanley’s floorboards.

And some guests have even claimed to have captured ghosts on photos creeping up and down the lobby’s grand staircase.

WRITER’S HAUNTING NIGHTMARE

King got the idea for The Shining after he stayed in The Stanley Hotel in 1974.

He and his wife Tabitha checked in just as the hotel’s only other guests were checking out and the staff were preparing to close the resort for winter.

King said he roamed the building’s big empty corridors after Tabitha went to sleep and he drank at the hotel bar where he was served by a man called Grady, the name King would give to a character who murdered his family with an axe in the book.

Jack Nicholson in a scene from ‘The Shining’.

When he went to sleep one night in room 217, King was troubled by a horrific dream.

He said: “I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming.

“He was being chased by a fire hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed.”

The room he stayed in remains the hotel’s most requested by guests.

Stephen King at a special screening of ‘IT’. Picture: Scott Eisen/Getty Images

At The Timberline Lodge in Oregon, which was used to portray the Overlook Hotel in the film instead of The Stanley Hotel, director Stanley Kubrick wanted one of the most disturbing scenes to be set in room 217.

But its management team demand it be changed to room 237, which the real hotel doesn’t have, because they were worried people would refuse to stay in it.

If anything, it seems King’s bone-chilling story has actually attracted people to The Stanley Hotel where guests still come to this day just to feel the terror for themselves.

A sequel to The Shining is set to hit Aussie cinemas on November 7. Doctor Sleep stars Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson and Jacob Tremblay.

Set years after the events of The Shining, an now-adult Dan Torrence meets a young girl with similar powers as his and tries to protect her from a cult known as The True Knots who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission