‘The Shining’ hotel ups the fear factor with plans for horror museum

King stayed in room 217 in 1974, which helped to inspire him to write his famous novel The Shining, and serves as inspiration for the Overlook Hotel.

Plans for the conversion include a building that would house the main museum, plus a film production studio and film archive.

The owners of the Stanley Hotel, which inspired Stephen King’s “The Shining”, are hoping to raise $24 million for a museum as well as funding for an exhibition space. It’s a small price to pay for a “year-round horror destination”, don’t you think? The story may be fiction, but was based on a real life haunted hotel, The Stanley Hotel in Estes, Colorado.

“Multiple indoor and outdoor entertainment venues, including a 500-seat auditorium; a 30,000-square-foot interactive museum and discovery center that would feature rotating exhibits; a 3,000 square-foot soundstage; classrooms and workshop spaces; and post-production and editing suites”.

The developers hope to work with the Colorado Film School and run the project as a public-private, non-profit endeavour, are lobbying for $11.5 million in state funding.

When Stanley Kubrick filmed the book in 1980, though, the ghost-ridden hotel was “played” by Timberline Lodge in Oregon.

The founding board of the museum now has members who come from the biggest films in the industry. namely Elijah Wood, Simon Pegg, George A. Romero, Mick Garris, Josh Waller and Daniel Noah, according to the Denver Business Journal.

The grand hotel, located just a few miles from Rocky Mountain National Park, opened in 1909. King and his wife were on vacation and stayed at the hotel in 1974.