September 1, 2006
For their season finale this year, Ghost Hunters on the SciFi channel did a 2 hour special on The Stanley Hotel in Colorado. This hotel is said to be the inspiration behind Stephen King's 'The Shining', where he and his wife visited one year during the winter and were the only guests in the hotel... or so the legend goes. This is not actually the hotel that was used in the filming of Kubrick's movie 'The Shining', but was the film location for the TV mini series.

In the Ghost Hunters show, one occurrence particularly piqued my interest. Jason, a founder of TAPS (The Transatlantic Paranormal Society), stayed in room 401 where something bizarre happened. In the middle of the night, while Jason was asleep, the closet door opened by itself and then just a couple seconds later a standard hotel drinking glass sitting on the night-stand shattered. This was partly caught on camera as Jason had setup an infrared camera in the room. The door opening was not captured, but you can hear it. The noise awoke Jason, who then climbed out of bed and picked up the camera to show what had happened. Upon closer inspection of the glass, you can see that it has a fracture going all the way around, and a small shard broke and fell off, apparently caused from a lot of pressure or by heat and cold.

This incident gets more interesting... Jason set the camera on the night-stand facing the closet door (now open). It is hard to tell how much time passes, but it seems that as Jason is going back to sleep, the closet door slowly closes on its own, completely shutting.

The next day Jason tries to understand how the door might have opened on its own, but it cannot be explained. Furthermore, it is quite evident that you cannot fully close or open the door unless you turn the handle. Even trying to slam the door does not cause it to latch. And then the glass breaking is hard to investigate further, because all the circumstances are sketchy and not completely known; perhaps it already had a fracture. But that it broke in sync with the door opening is quite remarkable.

So being very intrigued and also skeptical I decided to visit the hotel to see for myself. Not that I would do better by any means than TAPS, but I wanted to see something like this first hand. Either way, I have always been a fan of The Shining, so to see the inspiration of the story alone would be a thrill. It just so happened that I was planning on driving across the country, from Los Angeles to Edmonton and making a detour out to Colorado would be fine.

I made my hotel reservation more than 2 months in advance. I really wanted to make sure that I got room 401. It was actually booked the week I originally wanted and had to adjust my schedule, but it all worked out. When I arrived at the hotel I was afraid that they may have changed the room number on me, but it was all fine and went exactly as planned.

When I went upstairs to find my room, I had a little trouble finding it. I found room 402, 403 but no 401. I asked a maid standing nearby if she could show me the room. She pointed across the hall and it all became apparent why I did not notice the room; the room had double doors which were open and a group of people were in the room! Instantly it dawned on me that of course the hotel would be incorporating this room into their tours. I announced myself to the group and there was a funny moment as everyone turned to see the crazy nut that was going to stay in this haunted room.

I recognized the tour guide immediately from the Ghost Hunters show. He was kind and started moving everyone out of the room. I welcomed them to stay, but he insisted they were finished. It took me a while to have a sense of privacy in the room, and kept wondering if another tour would come in. And a few hours later there was another group. I had gone out to my car to get some stuff, and upon returning there was a different guide with about a dozen people all standing out in the hall. I went up and opened the door and welcomed them all in, insisting to the guide that it was quite alright.

Luckily I had spent some time earlier that day setting up my camera to start recording tests on the door. I did not have real camera equipment but instead used my laptop! I have a MacBook Pro with a built-in web camera. I downloaded a freeware program called bTV that allowed me to control the camera and save captured movies to disk. I could even capture full 640x480 video. So as the tour group came into the room, I was able to record it all!

Unfortunately I did not have any way of recording infrared and soon found out that the web camera really needs quite a bit of light to capture anything. This meant that I had to leave on a light to be able to see the door. I don't know if it is really true that light dispels ghosts, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway.


I split the night into 3 portions: from 9-12 I left the bathroom light on, and then from 12-3 I had all the lights off, and then from 3-6 I turned on a light closer to the door. After all my effort, nothing actually happened. The door did not open and nothing strange at all happened. For the most part I slept really well, the room was comfortable and I sensed nothing negative about the room. The room did feel special to me, but only in a good way. I would have liked to stay there longer actually.

I don't feel that I really added anything to the Ghost Hunters experience, but it definitely was great to see first-hand what they were dealing with. The circumstances around the door certainly were baffling. Of course there is always the question of fowl play... you know how producers want to make the show interesting and all... but I hate to think that anything was cheated. I like to think the experience they had was genuine. Hopefully someday I can have my own ghost encounter and know beyond a doubt that that sort of life after death exists for some spirits.