10 Haunting Details Surrounding The Real-Life “The Shining” Hotel

6 /10 The Staircase Figure

Perhaps one of the unique paranormal events to have taken place in the Stanley recently, however, is the photograph of a creepy (shrouded? decapitated? tin-foil-hatted?) figure standing at the top of the lobby’s staircase, which a guest took in 2016.

The man, Henry Yau, purposefully waited until the stairs were not used and took the photo using his iPhone’s panoramic feature.

That night he felt “strangely ill” and wasn’t able to sleep well: only after checking his pictures in the morning he noticed what he had caught on camera.

5 /10 Get Out!

Other supernatural characters of the hotel are less eerily anonymous, such as Paul, an employee who worked at the Stanley between 1995 and 2005.

He died while leaving the hotel to go to the hospital after experiencing chest pains, and his soul stayed right where it parted ways with his body.

He continues enforcing the hotel’s policy of an 11:00 PM curfew, faintly whispering “Get out” to the guests that stay in the Concert Hall after hours. It is reported that he has even nudged some towards the door.

4 /10 Lucy, Who Were You?

“Lucy” is another of the hotel’s ghosts with a known name, though not much is known about her past.

Hotel personnel and guests report that she likes to play around with the lights, trying to lift everyone’s spirits in the rooms where she’s in.

Stories speculate that she was a runaway girl thrown out of the hotel by former management, who froze in the wilderness while trying to get elsewhere.

However, rather than becoming vindictive, she likes to hang around the hotel, humming melodies and appearing in guests’ photographs.

3 /10 A Former Stinking Man

Not every ghost there is as bright and cheery, though. Another one was initially known as the “Stinky Man” as he liked to make himself understood by a very displeasing smell.

Since then, he has reformed (probably to lose the nickname) and smells better, having consequently been called just ‘Eddie.’

He still does some very unpleasant things, however, such as kissing ladies on the cheek or running his hand through their hair.

2 /10 Drop-Dead Parties

At other hallways and seemingly at random, more critical events also occur. Some report hearing the roaring sounds of parties that ended long ago, with jazz music and the deep laughter of hundreds or dozens of people resounding through the walls.

As with the giggling children of the fourth floor, however, these sounds seem to disappear as quickly as they came, reminding the guests of that photograph at the end of The Shining, where the protagonist appears depicted in the middle of a party in the 1920s.

1 /10 Only Happy Ghosts!

However, for all its strange and creepy happenings, the management of the hotel swear by the friendliness of their ghosts.

If you stay there, you’ll hear the managers and staff frequently explain to you that there have never been reports of actually evil things happening in the hotel or of ghosts hurting or purposefully scaring people.

One is compelled to believe them since they work and sometimes live there and probably have encountered more paranormal events than anyone else. And yet, still…