The Shining would have never come to be if Stephen King hadn't stayed at Colorado's Stanley Hotel. Abby and Alan talk all about the haunted hotel that inspired one of the most iconic horror stories and movies of all time.
Lunatics merch, available here!
Featuring a story performance by our dear friends @michaelcrosa and @pilar.kep from @jollyvilleradio
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Consider helping Black Trans folks by donating to the Marsha P Johnson Institute.
Subscribe to Anti-Racism Daily - a daily email newsletter from Nicole Cardoza.
Also, consider donating to The Loveland Foundation, a fund that provides therapy for Black women.
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Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback.
Music by Michaela Papa & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by @pilar.kep
Lunatics Magazine is available here. Subscribe to our newsletter! Follow us on Instagram @thelunaticsproject and on YouTube - Films About Lunatics.
Listen to Technically A Conversation, anywhere you listen to podcasts.
The Shining would have never come to be if Stephen King hadn't stayed at Colorado's Stanley Hotel. Abby and Alan talk all about the haunted hotel that inspired one of the most iconic horror stories and movies of all time.
Lunatics merch, available here!
Featuring a story performance by our dear friends @michaelcrosa and @pilar.kep from @jollyvilleradio
---
Consider helping Black Trans folks by donating to the Marsha P Johnson Institute.
Subscribe to Anti-Racism Daily - a daily email newsletter from Nicole Cardoza.
Also, consider donating to The Loveland Foundation, a fund that provides therapy for Black women.
---
Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback.
Music by Michaela Papa & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by @pilar.kep
Lunatics Magazine is available here. Subscribe to our newsletter! Follow us on Instagram @thelunaticsproject and on YouTube - Films About Lunatics.
Listen to Technically A Conversation, anywhere you listen to podcasts.
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:Hello there. And welcome back to another episode of the lunatics radio hour podcast. I'm Abby Brinker. I'm here with Alan COO Dan. Hello. And today we are talking about the Stanley hotel.
Speaker 3:That's um, that's famous.
Speaker 2:It's famous. Do you know why? You
Speaker 1:Know what,
Speaker 3:I think you're going to tell us in better words,
Speaker 2:It's famous because it is the hotel that Stephen King stayed at that inspired the book, the shining, he too is famous. Yes. And of course the book, the shining inspired the movie, the shining, starring Jack Nicholson. Yes. And directed by Stanley Kubrick. So today we're going to talk about a few different things. We're going to talk about the paranormal activity that the Stanley hotel is famous for a little bit of the hotel's history, but we're also going to end talking about the book and the movie and the differences there. And then we have a fun surprise because a few of our friends voice acted a story that I wrote called the night elevator. Um, and so it's based in a hotel, so it kind of fits the theme. And we're going to play that at the end,
Speaker 3:The night. That sounds really familiar. One
Speaker 2:Of our early episodes, we, when we were sort of just reading stories before we became a history podcast, um, did anything except read stories, right? And it was just stories. We ha it was featured in an episode. And since then it's been edited a bit because it's part of the short story collection that I put out. So it went through like some rounds of editing. Cool.
Speaker 3:I'm very excited for night elevator Mark too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And our dear friends at Jollyville took a stab at it and they added some cool sound effects and edited it themselves. And so it's
Speaker 3:Wait. We have, we have Knight elevator Jollyville version.
Speaker 2:Yes. Michael and PLR. They use their snow day in Austin yesterday to, uh, bring our story to life,
Speaker 3:Which was very generous. Yeah. I'm so excited
Speaker 2:For you to hear it. One thing I do want to plug that's totally unrelated to this is the shining and now is a documentary that's currently on HBO max called beware the slender man Slenderman. And the reason why I'm bringing up a why, because I watched it yesterday and I'm sorry, you said this was unrelated. It's unrelated. God. Yeah. How was it? It was really good.
Speaker 3:Okay. So I think we talked about this back on the creepypasta episode, but like, I've always been super interested in the mythos, but delving through lore is really not my thing. So when they made a movie about it, I was pretty excited, but never got around to watching it. Um, I also know that they made a Slenderman game. Yeah. But yeah, th th the, how, how did the movie come across?
Speaker 2:Well, the movie is a documentary. It's about the stabbing to you. Remember we talked about that there's 12 year old girls that stabbed another 12 year old girl because they thought Sandra ban wanted them to it's a documentary. And the reason why I liked it so much was because it really focuses on the issue of mental health, especially in children, how that relates to access to these really dark communities. Right. And so if you're a schizophrenia and you are on creepypasta.com all day reading about Sunday, man, like, you know, so it's, it's just like a really unbiased look at mental health and the story and what happened and the parents, and, you know, the heartache on both sides of it. So
Speaker 3:Was not expecting such social commentary from a Slenderman dog.
Speaker 2:I know. I know. But, but anyway, that's just one thing I wanted to suggest to people because I did enjoy it. Cool.
Speaker 3:You'd think we would, you would have talked about this on the movie club episode instead.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's a good idea. We could certainly do an episode on it. If you don't know, we do horror movie club, which is bonus episodes of this podcast that are available through our Patrion, but we call it horror movie club because every month we cover different movies, that would be a good one to talk about.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, we just talked about it here, so obviously everyone is now well-versed and going to go out and watch it. We really briefly talked about it. Yeah. Okay. So we'll have to focus on even better movies, your movie club. That's right.
Speaker 2:So speaking of horror movie club, obviously the watch list for this episode is the shining.
Speaker 3:Yeah. About that. Um, I got to start just learning these episodes because I have not seen the shining in years,
Speaker 2:Which I of course assumed you would totally have watched it a bunch of times.
Speaker 3:Everyone loves the movie. It's a favorite film for so many people as the trees have fallen. Uh, I've have not seen in many years. I actually don't remember it that well. I remember, I mean, some bits are obviously ingrained in my memory, but it's been awhile. So I'm going to, I'm sure more is going to come as we start talking about it. But yeah, it's not exactly fresh in my mind.
Speaker 2:The good news for you and anybody who maybe is in the same boat, we're not gonna focus so much on the plot of the movie or the book. I also don't want to give it away for anybody, but we're going to talk about like the history of this hotel that really inspired the story and a little bit about the differences between the movie and the book. But it's not a, I think it's still interesting, even if you haven't yet watched it and hopefully it will inspire you to go watch it and read it.
Speaker 3:Okay. I don't know when the appropriate time to talk by this is so I'm just gonna talk about it now.
Speaker 2:Why is there always, why do you always have a moment on every podcast where you say that sentence?
Speaker 3:Because it happens every time we speak. Okay. Well, what is your big thing? So w w what's the sequel to the shining that you saw?
Speaker 2:I didn't see it. There's a Dr. Sleep movie. Dr. Sleep is that you're talking about.
Speaker 3:It's like in a town, right? Yeah. You heard me it's an independent town. So there was a movie that came out a year or two ago, and I thought it was a sequel to the shining. It is,
Speaker 2:But I've never seen it. Oh, okay. Dr. Sleep,
Speaker 3:Do you know anything about it? No. Okay. So when I saw, well, good, cause I've not seen it either. And I, but obviously I saw trailers and it's all about people or kids or somebody that has like telepathic abilities, I think. And that's what the shining is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's from the original movie too, but I
Speaker 3:Didn't remember that at all. From the original,
Speaker 2:It gets overpowered by the paranormal that happens. Right.
Speaker 3:Right. W so there's paranormal stuff. And then there's also a psychic kid,
Speaker 2:I guess that's not the right way to say it. Obviously paranormal things happen in the movie, but the fact that the kid has, it has some sort of telepathic ability is easy to forget based on like, when you compare it to the bigger things that go down.
Speaker 3:My memory of the plot of the film is that you have Jack Nicholson. He brings his family to the overlook hotel, spooky things start to happen, ghosts, drive him mad, and he attacks his family.
Speaker 2:So there's a scene where Danny and the head chef at the hotel.
Speaker 3:So there's people beyond the Torrance family in the hotel at the beginning,
Speaker 2:At the beginning, because he comes on, he's a caretaker. So they get him set up, like, they think here's the car.
Speaker 3:You're right. That's right. They were, he was like, handing the torch.
Speaker 2:Right. So there's a scene where Danny at the beginning and this chef guy who's like showing them around the kitchen and how to cook for themselves. He talks to Danny telepathically because he recognizes that they both
Speaker 3:Okay. No, that, that sounds familiar. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So anyway, that's, that's a part of what happens. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, I assume we're allowed to speak spoilers about a movie from the eighties. Sure. Okay. So spoiler, spoiler alert, spoiler alert. One of the main things that I remember about the film is the very, very end when we finally see Jack Nicholson in a painting, or sorry, in a photograph sitting with all these like old time people from what was it? The twenties or something. Yeah. What's, what's that about?
Speaker 2:So the movie and the book are very different in the movie. The idea is that Jack Torrens is reincarnated of somebody else. Or he's, you know, there's like, there's like this, what the shining is, is this resurgence of something that happened in the twenties and it's, he's sort of hallucinating it all or it's punting him or whatever, but that's good, you know?
Speaker 3:Okay. So it's, it's, it's cyclical, it's an adventure
Speaker 2:Different, I believe, than how it's like in the book again, having not read the book, I believe that it's a little bit different version of that.
Speaker 3:Oh, th that makes perfect sense. So, you know, having not understood the movie very well understanding, I thought it was just a slasher film. The first time I saw it, um, I had no idea that there was going to be supernatural elements. I thought it was just a guy who gets driven crazy by the winter. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's like the whole hallway of blood and that sort of thing, which I'm still don't understand.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's very visually striking for sure.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's a Kubrick film. How all, all his movies are visually striking. I'm sorry. We we've already gotten like way, way off topic. Uh, this is just me asking a bunch of questions about the lens and the movie itself. First things first, what? The hotel, a real place.
Speaker 2:Yes. So the hotel is a real place. And let me tell you a little bit about it, please do. So today we're talking about the Stanley hotel, which again is a real life hotel that inspired the overlook hotel in Stephen. King's the shining, which is the novel. If you visit the hotel, now they actually have a channel dedicated to playing the movie on repeat.
Speaker 3:So if I were to visit where, where is this place in, in the real world?
Speaker 2:It's in Estes park, Colorado, which is about a 90 minute drive Northwest of Denver, but it's not King's novel that inspired the paranormal reputation of the Stanley hotel reports of ghostly activity at the hotel date, back to when it was built in the early 19 hundreds, we are going to talk about some of the most infamous of these incidents, but it's important to know that there have been reports of hauntings in every single room of the Stanley hotel. And that's not just saying the hotel rooms. I mean, literally every single room, every kitchen, every closet, every bathroom, every hallway we're talking separate hauntings. Yes. It's. It is thought of as the most haunted hotel in the United States, it was one of those haunted places in the United States. What is it about hotels? I think, I mean, if I was a paranormal researcher or whatever, disclaimer, we're not, we're not, I think the idea is that there have been so many people that have passed through there. So people that have probably died organically because it's a massive hotel that it's more likely that there would be spirit. I mean, I don't know, again, I'm not an expert in ghosts.
Speaker 3:Hold on. I typically die in hotels. I mean, that, that is completely pulling a fact that out of thin air,
Speaker 2:But think of like a single family home, okay. Maybe five people die there in a century or two centuries, but in a huge hotel, depends on the home, you know? Sure, sure. Nowadays, the hotel even offers a ghost adventure package, which includes a room on the fourth floor, which is the most haunted floor, an electromagnetic field recorder and a red rum mug and a free continental breakfast. This all might seem a little cheesy, but keep in mind that the Stanley runs a tight ship when it comes to hauntings. If a member of the staff is caught faking anything, paranormal or involved in any sort of hoax, they will be fired immediately sources and article from out there, colorado.com. The spooky story behind Colorado's haunted Stanley hotel by Stephanie, Earl's a documentary I watched called shining secrets of the Stanley hotel, a mental floss article by Meredith Danko. And of course our good old friend Wikipedia. All right. So we're going to get into some really brief history because I think it's important to set the stage. Okay. In 1903 Freeland, Oscar Stanley grew ill with tuberculosis and he was from the East coast. That's a pretty bad one. His doctor ordered fresh and dry air. So he moved with his wife to Estes park, Colorado for the summer. And he actually became healthy and overcame the illness. And he loved the area so much that he returned every summer, clearly sold his soul to the devil. Yeah. And keep in mind, he was a, a very, a fluent person. He had aspirations to turn Estes park into a resort town so that his friends would be able to join him and be entertained each year. Stanley bought the land from Lord dun, Raven. Doesn't that sound like a villain name. Lord done. Roofing done. Raven done. Raven. Yeah. Why was you pronounce it done ribbon? You just take it all the time.
Speaker 3:I mean, I pronounce it Slenderman. Like what, what are you does this surprise you?
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to understand Don Raven was unpopular in the area because he acquired the land through one of the biggest land steals in American history. He was also a vampire. He claimed 15,000 acres of territory. Of course, all of this is stolen land that belonged to the native Americans that lived here before us done. Raven was so unpopular that he was forced out of the area and the stakes in sunlight. I thought this was interesting because Stanley Donovan, no Freelan Oscar Stanley who built the Stanley hotel was originally going to name the hotel after Lord done Raven, because it was his land and the people of Estes park, Colorado on a deerskin signed a petition begging him not to name it after Don Raven, because Don Raven had like stolen all of this land. What year was it? 1907, I believe.
Speaker 3:And they sign their documents on a deer skin. Yep.
Speaker 2:Props perhaps. So the Stanley brothers, he actually had a brother as well had come into their fortune. Fortunate. I only included the sound cause I thought you'd be interested in this. I can't wait to hear this. They came into their fortune by founding a dry plate company. Dry plate though. Dry plate technology had already been invented for photography. Most people were still using wet plates, which meant subjects had to sit still for 30 minutes during portraits, as the chemicals stride. I'm I thought they invented
Speaker 3:Like porcelain as opposed to like wet clay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the Stanley brothers improved the factory production of dry plates and launched a very successful marketing campaign. I mean, hell yeah. That's that was huge.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was a huge, huge innovation for any kind of captured photo optical realism.
Speaker 2:And again, they didn't invent the technology, but they made the technology accessible. Right?
Speaker 3:So it's like people that invented Xerox, right. Xerox came, came up with their technology after photography was invented. It's a similar technology, but it's very limited in the scope of things that it can capture, but it's faster. Right. And obviously what they ended up doing was making photocopiers their technology, which was designed for photography was completely obsolete for photography, but simply got repurposed for the means of making photocopies
Speaker 2:[inaudible]. So the Stanley brothers use the money that they got from their dry plate technology innovations earned every penny and they used it to buy the land and to build the hotel. So when the hotel was built at ha this is actually interesting. I found like every article I read the hotel has a different number of rooms. Some articles said it had 142 rooms, some said it had 48, six. So some said 25. But anyway, all I know is at the time it was built at 48 rooms and it seems to have fluctuated since then.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, in true real estate trends, it started with big rooms and they just chopped them up into little pieces so they could rent them out for more money. There you go.
Speaker 2:The Stanley's guests would come out for the summer. So their friends from the East coast usually paying between five and$8 a night, which included the hotel room, all of their meals and the hotel entertainment,$8 a night, five to eight,
Speaker 3:A very good deal. And that still came with the free continental breakfast and the red rum mug and the red rum mug. What, honestly, what more do you ask for, from a hotel?
Speaker 2:The hotel had a separate concert hall that would attract some of the biggest acts in the country. It still has like a concert hall. I don't know. I'm saying that in the past tense early 19 hundreds. Yeah. When it was built.
Speaker 3:Okay. So yeah, th this is the, uh, the modern era.
Speaker 2:When the hotel was built, there was a system of underground tunnels that the workers use to avoid the elements. So as they were building it, they created a tunnel system. So they could haul lumber store lumber, things like that. Jeez, after it opened and the hotel is built just to say, the hotel is built on top of a mountain. So it doesn't have a real foundation. It sits on top of the rock of this mountain. So it's made to shift and sway a bit as the mountain moves move. Well, there's one story in the documentary that I watched where, you know, a few years ago, they had to blast through parts of the mountain to, to build a highway or something. And everyone was really worried about what would happen. And the hotel was totally fine because it's built to sort of, because it's built to absorb those sorts of shocks.
Speaker 3:Wow. That's a lot of foresight. Yeah. That's like California level engineering,
Speaker 2:Many of the tunnels since have claps naturally, or the hotel claps them as a safety measure to this day, there's only about an eight foot stretch of tunnel left in the basement. And this tunnel leads us perfectly into talking about some of the hauntings,
Speaker 3:The eight foot tunnel, the tunnel haunting. Can you, okay, how much Honda can you get any eight feet?
Speaker 2:Well, we're about to find out ghost hunters visited the Stanley hotel in 2006. And I'm going to reference ghost hunters throughout this episode. Yes.
Speaker 3:Ghost hunters are the little TM at the end
Speaker 2:That yes, it is a scifi show. Ghost hunters, official
Speaker 3:Ghost hunters. That's
Speaker 2:Right. Uh, the episode is season three, episode five. And there's a few subsequent episodes. If you want the ghost hunters go and they do a live Halloween show there in 2006. And then they do a few followup investigations after, because they had so much activity while in the tunnel. Jason and grant here, giggling, that sounds like a little girl. They also hear the voice saying, hello, staff members of the Stanley hotel. Hello staff members of the Sandler hotel have also heard voices in seen shadowy figures around the spot. One hotel tour guide also reported feeling someone tapped him on the shoulder, just outside the tunnel. He turned to see no one behind him. I'm going to avoid beyond a few sections talking about things that can't be proven because I know what your response is going to be. So a lot of the hauntings going forward are things I've seen represented in video, at least in some cases.
Speaker 3:So as soon as you started talking about shadowy figures, that makes me think of shadow people. What are shadow people? So Shay thanks. I'm glad you asked. So shadow people are a known side effect of the abuse of amphetamines. So if you take too much for too long, it is a known side effect that you just see this shadowy figure standing in the corner. And as soon as you try to look directly at it, they disappear. That's pretty terrifying. It's horrifying. So I'm told, is this something you suffer from? No, of course not. Um, an pheta means amphetamines would be, uh, cocaine, methamphetamine, um, any kind of crazy stimulant. Yeah. You use it too much and you start seeing the shadow people it's incredibly inducing and absolutely terrifying. There's a bunch of very, you know, it it's, what's, what's the word when you, you know, the, the car crash effect when you can't look away. There's so many of these stories on the internet of people that have to deal with shadow people, because they've been at a bender for like three days and they're like, Oh, the shadow people have arrived. That's how, you know, it's time to sell.
Speaker 2:Wow. That's pretty upsetting. It's horrifying. But I will say probably not super relevant to the episode because a lot of the cases, it's multiple people seeing a shadow, a shadow figure. And unless everybody in the ghost hunters crew and everybody of the hotel staff are abusing amphetamines, which I guess is possible guilty until proven innocent. Okay. Room 1302, which is part of the lodge, which is a separate building, has an interesting story. Housekeeper one day had just finished cleaning when she poked her head out to talk to her manager. When the pair reentered the room, all of the lamps and art were on the floor mere seconds after she had finished tidying up.
Speaker 3:How many lamps in art are we talking about
Speaker 2:Six. Okay. That's a serious number.
Speaker 3:That's a serious number to talk about. Continue. Your validity has been valid.
Speaker 2:Thanks grant from the ghost hunters team investigates this room during their 2006 Halloween live show. This I saw happen on camera. Okay. So grant was one of the ghost hunters guys. Yup. He is like between, they're not recording. Like they're, they're filming, but it's not really a section yet. Right. Okay. And his cam quarter has run out of tape. So he's changing. This is when they're using like tape they're on many DV tape. Yeah. So he's changing his mini DV tape and he asks one of the production camera guys who has a light on his camera to come closer, just cause it's, they're all in the dark it's ghost hunters. Right. So he just wants to see better so he can change the tape. Okay. So he asks this guy Kendall to come over kettles like sharp Kendall. Yeah. Okay. Hate him already. That's me. And he's a camera guy. You're a camera guy. Sorry, Kendall. So Kendall comes over with his light and he's just standing near grant. Who's sitting at a table so he can, aluminate what he's doing. And, but he's filming. And so you see on Kendall's camera, the table and chair that there, that he's sitting at like a spare chair, but you know, where grant is sitting,
Speaker 3:How much light are we talking about? How, about how many, how many foot candles?
Speaker 2:So he's he's you could see him on the tape, the, the table and chairs sort of like slam, they shift really violently and loudly. And Kendall's like kind of like screams and walks backwards really fast so that you can see in his camera, like pretty quickly the whole, like he backs up and you can still see it sort of settling back into place after whatever happened to it. And it's a really violent like Boba and they both, and again, you can say it's fake. You can say that they're actors like sure. But I would say they they're really, and this is a live show that they're really convincing. Sure. This all could be orchestrated a hundred percent. I'm going to just say that now to, to concede to whatever you're going to say next, but you don't know what I'm going to say. It's pretty convincing.
Speaker 3:The orchestration that goes into these shows is a hundred percent just made for TV. You know, there's not to say that spooky things did not happen, but almost guaranteed. Those spooky things did not happen on camera. And they were recreated in order to capture them.
Speaker 2:You know, they have some episodes where nothing happens or they go and they investigate and nothing happens.
Speaker 3:Doesn't that add validity to your opinion. Yeah. That's why I'm saying it right now, because the show is produced.
Speaker 2:This is what I'll say. If I was going to bring you to any hotel or any place to try to get you to have a paranormal experience. Yes. This would be the place that I would bring you to, because I think it would be the most likely that something would happen.
Speaker 3:Okay. So hang on. We're going to cut. We're going to move to the Stanley hotel and resume. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I am going to reference ghost hunters a few more times in this episode because there is, and here's the thing there there's visual representation in these episodes of a lot of paranormal things that other people report. Right? So just again, maybe they are faking it, but what they're faking is based on the rumors that have already existed. So take it with a grain of salt. Right.
Speaker 3:And that's also what I'm saying, how I'm not saying that these things didn't happen. I'm saying that the things that you have seen on broadcast TV all have been orchestrated for the cameras. Maybe the, if, if a paranormal activity had ever actually been captured with a PR like a proper film crew, I feel like it would have been such a bigger deal.
Speaker 2:Well, you would never believe it. How who's who, how would you say, Oh, it's ghost hunters versus someone on YouTube versus it's Stanley Kubrick. Like you wouldn't believe it, no matter who it came from. I suppose
Speaker 3:It's true. They were there already. The boy who cries
Speaker 2:Wolf, like all of these things already could be true and happening and recorded. But because you are such a skeptic, you're not going to believe it. No matter what
Speaker 3:I you're, you're not wrong. I'll also admit, you know, I'm, I'm pretty jaded in the subject someday. We'll get you out there, please. If anyone has a ghost, what's, what's your handle? Send them in, fill in a text project. Yes. Tweet, tweet the ghost.
Speaker 2:The concert hall is also a part of the Stanley hotel. It's a separate building and the concert. Oh, I'm only talking about this because I final
Speaker 3:Shot of the shining. Well,
Speaker 2:It's interesting you say that because a woman experiencing homelessness, like back, back back a long time ago was living there during the winter. And again, the hotel shuts down just like it has the movie during the winter time, it's a three season hotel. This woman was living in the concert hall and actually died, passed away, froze to death because it was so cold because of course they weren't heating it even still. And they found her body frozen to death later. And so it kind of is similar to, to the ending of the movie. Right. And additionally, a lot of people have reported experiences in the concert hall of hearing shrieking from where the sound booth would be sort of up, up above of everything. Uh, and you know, a lot of, a lot of things like that, there's also in the hotel, a ballroom. And I thought this was another connection to the movie where a lot of the kitchen staff. Okay. When there, cause there's like a kitchen off of the ballroom. Yeah. The kitchen staff report, hearing noises of like a really loud party and they'll come out and it's empty. And so to me that those kinds of rumors feel like the movie, you know,
Speaker 3:That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's I mean, I can't explain this when people are in a room and they see props slammed together, that feels fake to me when people are working in one room and hear a rock is party and go into an empty room for me, that just gives me chills. Why is that?
Speaker 2:Have I told you the one paranormal experience? I believe I've had, remind me, I lived four time in Connecticut
Speaker 3:On the world's largest dairy farm.
Speaker 2:No, it was, it was after that in third grade, I moved to this
Speaker 3:World's oldest dairy farm. Not largest.
Speaker 2:No. Yeah. So my first home was on the worlds or the country's oldest dairy farm. Then I moved to my second home, which was
Speaker 3:Another largest dairy farm,
Speaker 2:Which was just another town in Connecticut. But we moved into a development before it was really developed all the way. And so it was mostly just woods, right. Surrounded very heavily by woods. And when I was young, I could hear it at night. Like every night I would hear chanting noises in the middle of the night. Like I would wake up to it. It would wake me up. What sounded like coming from the woods, like fire crackling, chanting, drumming, like the noises of like some sort of huge procession, like terrifying, almost like a war procession or something traveling through. And I would hear it all the time. It would wake me up all the time. And I kept being like, I remember being in my bed being like, is this real? Like, is this my brain? Like, it's so crazy. Like where's my family. And of course nobody else ever heard it and it was this whole thing. And so I kind of went through life being like, well, I guess that was just, you know, what? It was fast to when I was out of college, I don't know, maybe six years ago now. And a group of paranormal investigators came to that town did a presentation. Like they, there's a bunch of historical houses in that town like that are preserved. And so they studied those houses and then did a presentation at like the town barn. And so we went, of course they said, largely they looked at, there was like three historical homes. They didn't experience anything in the homes. The one thing that they did experience was in the backyard of one of the houses. And if you're looking geographically, like the backyard of that house would have been through the woods, like quite a ways, like maybe half a mile or something, but through the woods would have been my house before all these other houses were built in the middle. Okay. So a bunch eventually the development was developed and there was all these houses though. But at the time when I had heard these noises, it would have been a clear shot. Right? Yep. So fast forward, this is many years later, the paranormal investigators are in the backyard of this house. It's like a field and they hear chanting. And so they follow it. And every, you know, as far as like, they keep going, it keeps here. Like, it sounds like it's the same distance away. Like no matter where they go, it's, it's the same thing. And I was like, Holy. In the same woods. Right. Like I heard this too. And this was 15 years later, these guys are saying this maybe more 15, probably. So I told you find out about it. How'd I find about what
Speaker 3:The, the paranormal investigators, what they do,
Speaker 2:Because we went to a presentation like at the back of the barn. Yeah. So we're all sitting in the town barn where my friend, Jess got married and listening to listening to this presentation and I go up to the guy after and I said like, Oh my God, I experienced that. And he kind of like was addict to me, but he was kind of just like very dismissive about it.
Speaker 3:Well, so screw major penis. Like w we don't, we don't need him. Yeah. But as a skeptic, if I had to quantify what a interaction with a ghost would be my best explanation for what ghosts are, would be some kind of echo or recreation of past behavior of the energy of a human,
Speaker 2:Right. That's a type of ghost. Well, I mean that, that's our residual haunting
Speaker 3:Brazil. Okay. Sure. But for me, that's the only thing that's plausible be it some kind of energy time loop, every time that someone like, you know, paranormal investigators that are talking to a spirit that, you know, interacts with them and their current wants and desires. Like for me, that always feels fake. But when people are observing something of peep of a ghost recreating behavior from the past, that's what gives that. That's what gives me chills. That's what gives me plausibility of this might be real. I have no basis for that. But for whatever reason, it feels more visceral. It's interesting. Yeah, totally. But again, we're talking about the fricking Stanley hotel here.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we got off track again. Let's talk about the fourth floor, please. The fourth floor of the Stanley hotel is known as the most active of all the floors of the hotel. How many floors are there floors? The top floor, the big boy, a lot of these reports center around children on the fourth floor. It's sort of known for children based hauntings, which of course you can see the similarities to the book and the movie with the twins. Right. And with Danny in early stages of the hotel.
Speaker 3:So the twins were just the ghosts in the movie, right? Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2:In the early stages of the hotel, the fourth floor was a space for the hotel nannies to watch the children of guests. However, no children have ever been reported to have died.
Speaker 3:So, so all the children died in one through three? No.
Speaker 2:Okay. The child ghosts are also thought to maybe be the daughter of one of the maids who used to work at the Stanley. The front desk of the hotel has to deal pretty consistently with guests calling to ask them to quiet the children, running down the fourth floor corridor in the middle of the night, mostly. And of course there's no children there. Usually no children are staying there, but they often get calls of like, can you tell those kids to go to a better, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Have you ever called the front desk to ask kids to be quiet?
Speaker 2:I've never called a front desk for anything. I mean, maybe to order a burger sometime, but I'm not going to like complain about people. That's not my thing. Sometimes guests see a red ball bouncing back and forth down the hallway as if kids are throwing it back and forth. To me
Speaker 3:Specifically red. Yeah. Specifically. Right.
Speaker 2:There's also been some paranormal investigators on the fourth floor. Who've had pretty intense experiences with kids. Sort of like not letting them sleep. One woman who is actually the official paranormal investigator of the Stanley hotel tells a story about, you know, one night she was trying to go to sleep. There's like, she could feel like fingerprints, like, you know, kids, her pinching, her tugging the covers. And then at one point,
Speaker 3:How can you feel the finger, the finger tips of a child?
Speaker 2:I don't think that she, they felt like a child. I think she just felt like there was fingertips. Okay. But it was playful. Like it felt like someone was playing with her, like tickling her, that kind of stuff. Like something a kid would do. But at one point she feels in heres a smack on her forehead. And it's so loud that it wakes her husband up in bed next to her and they actually switched places. And then she's able to go to
Speaker 3:Sleep. Right. Cause they're not going to with him. Well, they're not going to with them. Rules are rules
Speaker 2:Room four 28. So many guests of the hotel from the movie. No, it's not many guests of the hotel have also reported seeing a cowboy in this room.
Speaker 3:Right. Th th this was the cowboy room. That's right.
Speaker 2:So the idea is that guests see a cowboy walking back and forth at the end of the bed. So there's actually a photograph that shows a in the hallway sitting next to like a laundry bag, but he has a really broad rim tat and, and like, you know, old period clothing on. And so some people wonder if it's not this cowboy that's haunting the room, but it may be, is this kid in, in a broad room
Speaker 3:That's spooky. Yeah. That spooks you. That got me. All right.
Speaker 2:Well maybe you should watch the documentary
Speaker 3:Freaking cowboy kids. No, thank you.
Speaker 2:Reporter Stephanie, Earl's stayed at the hotel to research an article around its paranormal history and article that we use for the research for this episode, she reported that a gust of wind. And this is something that a lot of people reported. She reported that a gust of wind came through causing her window and door to slam shut. Which of course like, and there's, again, there's a lot of accounts of windows and doors slamming shut, which makes a lot of sense, right. With the wind fricking Colorado mountain. Right. And of course, like, even on top of the mountain, that's shifting like, you know, it makes a lot of sense that things are moving around. Yeah. The thing that creeped her out though, was after the window and the door slam shut with a huge bang, which is fine. All of a sudden the door started to no, the door started to creak open slowly again. It's hung in properly. Well, one of, so she recalls one of the hotel staff who said that there's no straight lines in this hotel, right? Like everything is a little bit off, right. So that was enough to settle her mind. And she went to sleep until of course, to blood curdling shrieks ripped her from her slumber. She describes the sound as definitely belonging to a child. And the last thing I'll say about ghost hunters is in room four, a one Jason stayed and there's video of this, you know, he's pretty much terrorized throughout the whole night. There's crazy noises coming from the closet, the doors opening and closing and a glass like a water glass, totally implodes, and just like shatters into nothingness. So that scene is pretty dramatic and you can watch it in that special, okay. Tragedy. One of the most infamous tragedies, which brings us into the big hotel room two 17 was that there's conflicting. Every article. Again, I read had different information about these things, but either in 1911 or in 1920. So the hotel was a novelty at the time because it had electricity. It was one of the first hotels that was fully electric. It however, had a backup, a gas backup system in case.
Speaker 3:So they had gas flowing to every room for like little sconces. Correct.
Speaker 2:Got it. And so there's different versions of this story. In some cases they say they were just installing the gas lines when this happens. And in other versions, there was a snow storm that caused the electricity to go out. But either way, there was a maid named Elizabeth Wilson who was walking from Elizabeth Warren. Yes. Who was walking around the hotel, lighting the sconces. Okay. She gets termed
Speaker 3:To 17, her matches lay.
Speaker 2:And there's a huge gas explosion she's thrown. So right. She comes in there, must've been a gas leak in the room. She walks into it with a lit match. There's a huge explosion that devastates a big section of the hotel she's thrown off of like, she's on the second floor off of the balcony onto the first floor. Oh. Breaks. Both of her ankles, but survives and recovers and works at the hotel until she's 90.
Speaker 3:Oh wow. And good pension plan. Yeah. And so she
Speaker 2:Is believed to be, and this is room two 17, which is the broom, the big room. Right. That's the room in the, in the book. And that's the rumor, Stephen King stayed. That's like, that's the room.
Speaker 3:Okay. Remind me the significance of the room in the movie, the room in the movie,
Speaker 2:That's like the, you know, the bath tub room, the bathtub scene where there's like a really hot lady. And he's like, Oh, Hey. And he like follows her. And then she turns into like a crazy evil Dee she's like naked. And it, she turns into like a crazy demon thing.
Speaker 3:This is where he chops down the door. No. Yeah. The demon lady, that one you don't remember. No, I don't
Speaker 2:The only scene where there's a naked woman, no memory of it dead to me. But it's thought that that Elizabeth Wilson haunts the room. She is known to,
Speaker 3:She lived to be 90. Yes. Again, this is how folklore starts. Right.
Speaker 2:She's known to pick up people's things to tidy up shoes, tidy up toiletries, the best type of ghost. And the funny thing is at the time, I guess, you know, long ago, it wasn't acceptable for single men to stay in the, in the main hotel. They would have to stay in a separate like side hotel
Speaker 3:As they should. So
Speaker 2:If there's a single man in the room, they almost always report activity because people believe she doesn't approve of it.
Speaker 3:Well, so the gap in the
Speaker 2:Autumn of 1974, Stephen King and his wife stayed at the Stanley hotel. The hotel was going to close for the winter. The next day, it was a three season hotel at the time. And only a small crew was remaining to take care of it throughout the winter. Right. So, boom, we get the setup for the book. Okay. The Stanley hotel, overlooks Estes park. And again, it's no surprise that King named the fictionalized version of this hotel, the overlook in the shining, because a lot of people call it the hotel that overlooks the town. Oh cool. At the time of their stay, the hotel was having a bit of trouble attracting guests. So the Kings were actually the only paying guests in the hotel. And of course they stayed in the presidential suite room two 17. The story goes that King had a nightmare that night. He dreamt that his son was being chased down a long hallway in the hotel by a possessed firehose. Oh. He woke up in a cold sweat and went to the balcony to smoke
Speaker 3:Frozen, have a lot to say about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, he would. It was on the balcony that he came up for the idea for the shining, his third novel, which would be his first bestselling book.
Speaker 3:You remember which it was one of his huge, huge hit novels that he wrote during his like raging alcoholic phase. What's the shining.
Speaker 2:A lot of people think that Jack's character in the shining is very much related to Stephen King overcoming his alcoholism. Interesting. It's like a, it's like a thing that he like, like the hauntings or his demons, you know, that kind of a thing. Interesting. Okay. The book and the movie both helped to inspire over surgeons and the hotel, which now does not struggle to fill rooms. So remember how he said that the fourth floor was like the children's haunted for Stephen King also reported seeing the ghost of a child on the fourth floor. Okay. So this is the one I'm most excited to tell you about please. This is our final moment here. Haunting moment. Okay. Jim Carey, Jim Carey, while on location from the mask, while on location filming dumb and dumber, Jim Carrey stayed in room two 17. What did adventurous? He didn't last the night, really early hours of the morning. He came to the front desk asking to be moved to another room. He told staff something had happened and he didn't feel safe when they respond to that. All of the other rooms were booked. Carrie fled the hotel. We can only assume he went to stay somewhere else. He's never spoken publicly about what happened that night,
Speaker 3:Carrie, really, for some insane asinine reason. He's an authority I trust.
Speaker 2:He knew that I knew, and I knew you would react that way, which is why I was so excited to tell you about it. All right. Looks like we got to go there. The hotel staff admit that a lot of the reports of creaking and noises from the guests are just the sounds of a mountain, top hotel settling. Right? So come on
Speaker 3:Jim Carrey, must've known what room he was,
Speaker 2:Maybe. I mean, they gave him the, that room because that was the presidential suite. That was the nicest. So of course they gave it to the star. I see.
Speaker 3:Okay. So there's, that's why
Speaker 2:The King stayed there because no one else was staying there. And it's the nicest room,
Speaker 3:This room there's only one, one in the entire hotel. Right. Okay.
Speaker 2:So again, I, I was just bringing up the creaking cause it's to say that I'm sure there are a lot of false reports because the hotel is built on top of this mountain and there's a lot of movement and creaking and wind and definitely animals and whatever else.
Speaker 3:But that, that's why I was asking because like any time people are aware of the history, third, they're going to be looking for it, you know, and you know, w you and I have both experienced when we're in a place that we think is going to be creepy. And it just makes, sounds, sounds that are perfectly normal to an old house, you know? Yeah. You get a little freaked out, you know, houses, settle houses, Creek, if sounds like there are like footsteps, but it's just kind of like expansion contraction, you know?
Speaker 2:Okay. So I know we talked about the shining at the beginning, but let's round this out again and revisit now that we have renewed understanding of the history and vigor, Stephen King's, the shining hit stores in January of 1977 Kubrick's movie adaptation was released three years later in 1980, Stephen King actually wrote an entire screenplay draft of the shining, which Kubrick never read and said he spent 11 weeks working on a new screenplay with author, Diane Johnson.
Speaker 3:So fun fact about Stephen King and all of the movie adaptations. He hates every single one. Well, we're going to get into it. Oh, okay. Right. Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Kubrick was also known for calling King's writing week
Speaker 3:With, uh, with a very, uh, pronounceable w of who
Speaker 2:Week despite his harsh criticism though Cooper called King during the writing process at seven in the morning. Now at book signings here at ports that Cooper asked him and quote, I think stories of the supernatural are fundamentally optimistic. Don't you? If the ghosts, if there are ghosts, then that means we survived death King countered that it isn't optimistic. If you think about hell and Kubrick simply responded that he didn't believe in hell. And that's like, that's like a story that, that Stephen King tells that book signings. And of course, Stephen King wasn't wowed with the Kubrick version. Once it was released in a 1983 interview with Playboy King said I'd admired Kubrick for a long time and had great expectations for the project that I was deeply disappointed in the end result, parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentless claustrophobic terror, but others fell flat. He specifically took issue with the casting Jack Nicholson though, a fine act. This is quoting Jack Nicholson though. A fine actor was all wrong for the part. King said his law quoting again. His last big role had been one flew over the Cuckoo's nest in between that and between that and the manic grin, the audience automatically identified him as a loonie from the first scene. But the book is about Jack Torrance's gradual descent into madness through the malign influence of the overlook. That's fair. If the guy is nuts to begin with, and the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted.
Speaker 3:Okay. Quick, quick movie challenge, name one Jack Nicholson movie, where he's not nuts.
Speaker 2:Something's got to give from 2003. Well, you know what? You haven't seen that one.
Speaker 3:I haven't seen that one. Okay. Have you? Yes. Several times. Is he nuts?
Speaker 2:I mean, no. I mean, I don't know. Not any more than anyone. Else's he's like an old guy who wants love. Is he crazy in love? I don't know. Should we watch it movie club? So of course these two versions are super different in King's version. Jack is sympathetic, but in Kubrick's version, he becomes a full fledged movie felon.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, in all fairness, these are two storytellers that had different visions for their protagonist. I I'm, you know, not having read the book. Um, but I don't think one is necessarily more correct than the other.
Speaker 2:No, I always say that movies and books are two totally different mediums usually. Yes. And so I don't mind that they're two different versions of a story. I think Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick are both geniuses in their own. Right. They both have flaws and they both have done really amazing things. So I think it's great that they both took a stab at a story and we have two really strong representations of it. Of course, I understand King feeling the way he does. I'm sure it feels, you feel gutted when someone throws your script away and just steals your ideas and becomes like the iconic forefront for it. Sure. Like I, you know, I get, I get the hesitation there, but I don't think it means the movies. I, I liked the movie a lot. Absolutely. You may be wondering why the book version and of course, based on the real life version, we see the room two 17 as the most haunted room in the hotel. But the movie version calls it room two 37 and he guesses why God, this is because the movie with the exterior scenes for the movie were shot at the Timberland lodge in Oregon. And the hotel actually had a room two 17 and they didn't want it to scare. They didn't want guests to be scared to stay there. So they picked two 37 because that room doesn't actually exist in that typical. So I have one weird, really weird final thing to say, it's, it's very dark.
Speaker 3:We're going even further off the rails.
Speaker 2:This is really off the rails. But in my research I found, I kind of got sucked into a little bit of a rabbit hole, not a big one, but a little one. So there's actually quite a few conspiracy theories about the shining, which I had no idea. And this one is, is like a little bit heavy or are very heavy. So content warning here. But one theory is that the film is actually about totally putting aside the book, right? The source material that the film is actually about Jack sexually abusing his son and his wife refusing to acknowledge this until the end. What, and this, I know this, I found this on a Reddit thread, which seems totally insane, but there's an entire dedicated to this theory. And so there's these Easter eggs that are throughout the movie that backup this theory. Okay. One of them is the fact that when Jack is waiting at the very beginning of the movie, he's reading a play girl magazine with a cover article about incest, which could just be Stanley Kubrick, like pulling a weird magazine from a thrift store. You know what I mean? It might not have
Speaker 3:The with your audience, you know, but anyway,
Speaker 2:Just to say, there's all of these websites out there about, and I'm sure about all of his movies, but what about the shining and trying to like infuse all of these other elements of meaning and like allegory and metaphor metaphors into them, right?
Speaker 3:I mean, this is film schools, subtext. Yeah. Prime. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you can find those pretty easily on Reddit. If you just search for like shining conspiracy theories, if you're into that kind of thing, a few final, quick facts to round us out. Okay. Jack Nicholson actually improvised the film's iconic line. Here's Shawnee. This was the only film that Danny Lloyd was ever in. And at the time he did not realize he was filming a horror movie, which is the boy I've heard this. And final fun fact, the final snow scene, the filmmakers used 900 tons of salt. The end
Speaker 3:For what? For the snow. They make snow at assault. Yes. That's when
Speaker 2:I think, because he like, trudges through it. It's really deep. And he spends so much time. There's like a huge sequence in it. That may be anything else would have been melted because let's it really like it's up to his knees at some point. Like they're really trudging through it.
Speaker 3:So, um, when snow is falling, yeah. When you actually see snowing fall snow falling through the air, that's actually soap little S little soap particles falling
Speaker 2:For your hands, the Stanley hotel. And I thought I was haunted hotels
Speaker 3:It, after all this, it does seem to have a strong, if the, out of all the places we've discussed, which at this point, abundant, dare I say, this has the most going for it.
Speaker 2:I will say too. I didn't talk about this is the first time in an recording that I haven't talked about. A lot of my research because this episode is going so long and there are so many examples of hauntings. And again, in, just in my research, it's the tip of the iceberg for what's been reported. I tried to like pull out the most authentic things I could find, but I'm sure I've missed. Thank you. But I'm sure I've missed big bits of history or big moments, you know, and that's,
Speaker 3:But I'm just saying that for all the fact checkers out
Speaker 2:Expectance podcasts, but it is also to say, it's just, you think this podcast is incredibly enthusiastic, wildly inaccurate and such true. It's not true, but it is just me trying my best. So sometimes I miss things. Now it is time for a haunted hotel story. Oh my God. I totally forgot. We had a story, not just a story, a story that our friends, Michael and PLR, really voice acted, and also created music and ambience and Foley for, Oh, I can't, I cannot wait to hear version two point. Oh yeah. So if first of all, Michael and PLR are both part of Jollyville radio, which is an awesome podcast that we've collaborated with before. So check out Jollyville radio on Instagram, check them out anywhere. You can listen to podcasts. If you're looking for something totally different from this podcast, something happier, more light and put on by some really, really cool people. They also do a community beat section where they try to spread good cheer and people doing good things. So it's a great show. Or even if you really love this podcast and think, you know what? I want something that's just like this. Still give it a shot. It might be for you. It might be. Sometimes they talk about, they've talked about Lizzie Borden before. So sometimes there's overlap. So bottom line, if you like this, or if you don't like this doesn't matter. Jollyville is for you. It's for everybody. That should be their tagline. Yeah. For everyone. Yep. Okay. Anyway, for everyone, not for nobody. Not for nobody. All right, here we go. Here's the story,
Speaker 4:Uh, uh, uh, written by Abby breaker, read by Michael crows song. Keppra,
Speaker 5:William liked the noise elevator. Great made. When you slid it shut. He was an elevator operator at the Clementine hotel. He worked the night shift, which he preferred. He slept in late during the day and got to see the underbelly of the city come to life at night. William had started life on a dairy farm in Nebraska. So being on a first name basis with some of the most prominent sex workers and politicians, and one of the country's most bustling cities was a thrill. He loved the elevator itself. There was only one in the lobby. It felt rich. Everything was covered in gold, beautiful marble tiles pattern, the floor, deep mahogany wood line, the walls, and a crisp gray slate during the ceiling. Sometimes he pretended that he was one of the social elite riding the elevator, not just the boy operating it today was the first day that felt like winter temperatures had dropped dramatically and he could see the deep red slip peaking out beneath her dramatic fur coat. She winked at him as she boarded the elevator, which floor today, Ms. William grinned seven, please. Willie. She returned to smile. William blushed. As he slid the door shut, he thought Josee was just the most beautiful woman you'd ever seen. She was kind and confident. She was open about her profession and proud of the life she'd built for herself. Sometimes she would tell him stories of her encounters. He loved when she lingered in the hallway with him, not in a voyeuristic way, but in a human connection way. He thought of her as his confident, no one had ever trusted him with secrets in Nebraska. He hadn't known about the complexities of human relationships and needs growing up. He had known that his parents were unhappily married, but they never did anything about it. Now, living in this city and watching the comings and goings and the secret trysts and the passionate romances and exchanges, he realized that there are many ways to live in love. Josie stepped out on the seventh floor, leaving him alone with the grainy crackling elevator music. He never knew if he should call as she left, or if that was in bad taste. So he silently tipped his hat to her. Then something happened that had never happened before the button for the 10th floor
Speaker 1:Glowed red. The color is very out of place in the ornate elevator. The keypad was framed in gold leaf and the buttons were pure white with black numbers. There was no illumination behind any of the buttons, which
Speaker 5:The glowing red digits stand out. Even more William squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He was convinced he had one too many late nights and it was starting to catch up with him. But when he stole another glance, the buttons still glowed red. What else could he do? He pushed it. The elevator started to ascend. The door opened on 10. And for a moment, the 10th floor looked as expected. The familiar hotel hallway stretched before him. Then the lights flickered, before you could react the button for the second floor started to glow. He ignored it, popping his head out of the elevator and into the hallway. What felt like a gust of wind rushed past him with enough force to knock him back inside the elevator. It cackled at him from the hallway. He pushed the button for the second floor, eight floors below. He peered out into the second floor passageway. He knew something was wrong. The lights were out. He could barely see
Speaker 1:Squinted, a Cho crept up his spine. Where were all the guests he knew? The second floor was totally booked up. It was oddly quiet.
Speaker 5:If the lights were out in the hotel, the guests would be panicking or yelling for help. This had to be a dream. He backed up into the elevator and pinched his arm. Nothing. He reached for the lobby button, but the seventh floor started to blink red Josie. He should make sure that she was all right. He pressed it. A piercing scream, greeted him. When he landed on the seventh floor, he stumbled out into the hallway. The scream echoed around him, but he wasn't sure which direction it was coming from. The lights flickered. Every few seconds, his heart was racing. He was terrified as he ran blindly down hallway. Josie
Speaker 1:Is that you, he called into the darkness. He passed a small girl, peeking out of a door on the right. He knew, knew children were checked in the hotel. Clementine was not usually a family destination. Something felt really off. Hey, are you all right? Are your parents in there? He bent down to try to get closer to her. He wanted to comfort her. The girl looked at him with a wide, deep smile spread across her face. Her pigtails. Bob does. She shook her head and slammed the door closed in his face. He kept moving. He was sure he was hallucinating, but he felt compelled to keep going Josie. Hello? He caught his reflection in a mirror on the wall and jumped a red cross blood behind him. He turned on his heel and saw the red glow out of the hotel window. How had he not noticed it before? It had to be at least 20 feet tall. Was it on a building you couldn't tell. Then he realized the rest of the city was dark. No streetlights windows or even cars were eliminated. It must have been a blackout, but the red cross glowed brightly casting, a Crimson Hugh across the silent city, something tapped in politely on his back. He turned to see the little girl who had slammed the door in his face. Oh, hello. There. I think there's a blackout. William said, as he bent down closer to talk to her, she giggled. What do you mean? William felt the heaviness of her response. It's always dark. You you're on the other side. Now she looked joyful. Like she was playing with him. The other side of what? He tried to understand the elevator. The girl turned to leave. Wait, what, what are you saying? How do I get back? He called after her, she giggled harder. Her eyes flashed a bright, deep red. And she ran off down the hall and disappeared. He spread it back towards the elevator. It was covered in caution tape and cobwebs. It looked like it hadn't been used in 50 years. He frantically hit the call button, but nothing moved or shifted. It was as if there was no electricity in this entire city, except the vibrant neon cross panic was bubbling over inside of him. As he fought to get back to where he was from, he tried to pry open the door to the chef, but it wouldn't budge. His fingers bled from the effort, nothing. His heartbeat continued to rise. He banged against the middle doors, screaming for help. He didn't care who heard him? Just anyone. He wanted anyone to hear him, please, please help me. His calls went unanswered. His hands were shaking with fear. Blood continued to drop from his raw fingers. Eventually set defeated. He leaned his back against the elevator doors. Trying to remember what his life was like only an hour ago, trying to wake up from this nightmare. You sat for a very long time racking his brain for an escape plan, something, anything he hadn't thought of yet there had to be a way out, but no brilliant epiphany struck him. No aha moments. One moment. He had been in the elevator with Josie and the next he was very, very alone. He sat there hoping and praying for a long time, trying to block out the sporadic giggles and screams that surrounded him for the rest of eternity.[inaudible] that was wonderful.
Speaker 2:It was wasn't it, it was delightful.
Speaker 3:If only Jollyville had Pete as one of the cast members, I feel like the whole circle would be complete.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I feel like P so Pete was our friend who originally read night elevator very early on. I feel like P and Michael would be like excellent in a game
Speaker 3:Group together. Oh yeah. Pete's great. Yeah.
Speaker 2:In a game group, but yeah, they did a really great job reading it also again, major shout out to PLR because she designed our logo and all of the great new merch that we have.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And a shout out to the metal beast, um, who streams on Twitch quite regularly. Uh, if you want to listen to the original reading of the night elevator. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes. Very good. While my friends, I believe that's all we have to say. You can follow us at the lunatics project on Instagram. You can also join our Patrion for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get access to bonus episodes, uh, of horror movie club. You will also get access to our biannual horror magazine and all kinds of other cool perks. And please consider rating the show on Apple podcasts, wherever you listen. It really, really helps us
Speaker 3:Ratings go such a far away, especially with small podcasts like this. And even as you take a few minutes just to leave a few stars, that means so much. So please leave a rating. Uh, leave a comment, check out. Jollyville check out the metal beast. These are all things that are small details that go for such a long way. Um, if you're traveling, please check out the Stanley hotel who knows what you'll encounter. We know that we will love to check out ourselves, especially once traveling is acceptable. Again, it is on the radar, um, until next time until
Speaker 2:Next time and write us if you've ever stayed there.
Speaker 1:Bye.