A visitor from Houston recently captured an eerie photo at the Stanley Hotel, a more than 100-year-old hotel that inspired Stephen King’s “The Shining.”
Henry Yau was visiting the hotel in Estes Park when he snapped a panoramic photo of the lobby and grand staircase.
The photo caught more than an empty staircase. A ghostly image of a woman appears in a corner at the top of the stairs.
Yau, director of public relations at the Children’s Museum of Houston, said he doesn’t remember anyone standing on the landing when he took the photo.
“The next morning, I was checking and I saw something strange. I said, ‘this might be a ghost, and started posting on Instagram,’ ” he said on Monday.
The picture has since gone viral.
Yau was surprised at the apparition, but does not doubt that it is a ghost, he said.
“I am terrified of ghosts. I grew up in a very superstitious culture, my mom is Chinese and Buddhist, and I was born and raised in Venezuela. But I never imagined that I would capture a ghost,” he said.
Yau, who was visiting Denver, had always wanted to see the Stanley Hotel, where King was staying when he conceived the paranormal tale “The Shining.”
King based the threatening Overlook Hotel, a central character in his 1977 best seller, on the Stanley Hotel.
In 1980, Stanley Kubrick produced and directed a horror film inspired by King’s book.
Even before the movie, the hotel had a reputation for hosting ghosts. “After a century of collecting spirits, the hotel has become renowned by specialists and experts in the field of paranormal investigation as one of the nation’s most active sites,” the hotel’s website says.
The hotel offers a 90-minute ghost tour.
“I never imagined that I would capture ghosts,” Yau said of his picture.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or @dpmcghee
