The Creepy Real Hotel That Terrified Stephen King Into Writing ‘The Shining’

Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining, later adapted into a renowned film of the same name by Stanley Kubrick in 1980, tells the story of a family whose lives unravel during a stay at a sinister hotel, named The Overlook Hotel. (The “shining” of the title refers to the psychic powers of the family’s young son.) 

However, this hotel was not conjured up entirely out of King’s imagination. It was inspired by a real place where the author had once stayed: the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which still exists today and is proud of its connection to the novel and film. Here is the story behind the real hotel and King’s experiences there, which inspired him to write this book.

How Stephen King First Encountered the Stanley Hotel

In a note on his website, King described the genesis of the novel: “In late September of 1974, Tabby [King’s wife] and I spent a night at a grand old hotel in Estes Park, the Stanley,” he wrote. “We were the only guests as it turned out; the following day they were going to close the place down for the winter. Wandering through its corridors, I thought that it seemed the perfect—maybe the archetypical—setting for a ghost story.” 

King’s thoughts on the hotel's creative potential as a story setting would come vividly to life in a dream he had during his stay there. “That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming,” King continued. “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. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in the chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind.”

The idea of a son being chased through a sinister hotel would become a key element of the novel, which developed in the wake of this unsettling dream. Another element from King’s real-life experience that made it into the book is the fact that the novel’s protagonist visits room number 217 at the hotel, which is the same room number that King and his wife had during their visit. 

Was the Stanley Hotel Used in the Shining Movie?

The Shining was published in 1977 and became a bestseller, so it was no surprise when it soon began to draw interest from the film industry. Kubrick’s adaptation of the novel, released three years after the publication of the original, was not filmed at the Stanley itself: instead, the hotel interiors were constructed at Elstree Studios in England, while exterior shots were filmed using the outside of Timberline Lodge in Oregon as a stand-in for the hotel.

However, a later 1997 miniseries adaptation did choose to shoot at the original source of inspiration. Incidentally, King has stated that he prefers the miniseries to Kubrick’s film and thinks it was a more faithful adaptation of the novel as a whole.

The Stanley Hotel Today

Today, the Stanley is still going strong, and is happy to highlight its status as the inspiration for the novel. Guests can book a tour of the building, described on their website as a “theatrical tour experience” in which they are shown the locations that inspired King while the differences between the novel, the Kubrick film, and the 1997 series are discussed and highlighted. 

The hotel continues to acknowledge the importance of The Shining in maintaining ongoing interest in the place, which by the 1970s had seemed vulnerable to potential closure before its profile subsequently rose in the aftermath of the book and film.

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