When Jim Carrey once attempted to stay in Room 217 of Colorado's ...

When Jim Carrey once attempted to stay in Room 217 of Colorado's ...

When Jim Carrey once attempted to stay in Room 217 of Colorado's Stanley Hotel, he only lasted three hours before fleeing. The room's legacy of horror began in 1974, when novelist Stephen King was inspired to write "The Shining" after a nightmarish stay there.

To this day, visitors say that the Stanley and especially Room 217 are just as haunted as "The Shining" would have you believe. Step inside the haunting halls of the Shining hotel and discover the real-life horror — In October 1974, ascendant horror writer Stephen King and his wife spent a night at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, at the foot of the Rockies.

With the winter barrage of snow and cold looming, the hotel was about to close for the season, leaving King and his wife as its sole guests. After King ate in a grand yet empty dining room — with the chairs up on every table except his own — and walked through the seemingly endless empty hallways, a new novel slowly began to take shape in his mind. Later that night, King had a terrifying dream about his son being chased through the hotel's halls by a fire hose. As soon as he woke up, he knew that he had to write. "I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in the chair looking out the window at the Rockies," King said, "and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind."

That book, The Shining, introduced the Stanley Hotel to an entirely new generation. Soon, this faded remnant of early 20th-century high life was reborn as the "Shining Hotel." And once new guests step inside the Stanley, they realize just how much life both does and does not imitate art. 

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