Estes Park/ Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado, USA
When a reportedly haunted hotel spooks a guest so much that it inspires a best-selling horror novel, it’s going to become a notorious dark tourism destination. Author Stephen King and his wife visited the Stanley Hotel in 1974. When the Kings arrived, the hotel was closing down for the season. They stayed in reportedly haunted room 217. The emptiness of the hotel and the isolation of being there before shut-down had a chilling effect on King.
He had a dream where his young son was running the eerie hallways, chased by a fire hose. This dream, and the eerie sense of closedown inspired the book The Shining, an international best seller and later a wildly popular movie. The Stanley Hotel still welcomes King fans and ghost hunters to its rooms, and capitalizes on its reputation as a haunted hotel by offering ghost tours and paranormal investigation.
