Paranormal Profit at The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado

Old tricycle atop lobby fireplace, reminiscent of trike in movie

The Stanley Hotel was built by Freelan O. Stanley, inventor of the Stanley Steamer, a steam-engined automobile sold in the early 1900s.  The 138-room hotel opened in 1909, has a beautiful view of Rocky Mountain National Park and is widely considered to be haunted.

The Stanley Hotel was the inspiration for Stephen King's book, The Shining, although the Stanley Kubrick movie of the same name wasn't filmed at this hotel. King allegedly wrote the story after spending a night in room 217 during an extended hotel closure in 1974.

Paranormal rumors attract carloads of tourists to the hotel. They pay to wander the halls snapping photos, attending hotel-run ghost tours and listening to apocryphal phantom encounters related by the hotel's young, overly-dramatic summer employees.  Kubrick's movie replays endlessly on one of the hotel's television channels.

I may seem a skeptic, but there's no explanation for the big-toe-squeeze that woke me in the wee hours of my first night in room 248.