Ghosts of the Stanley Hotel
Ghost stories come alive
Artist pens new collection of tales from museum, Stanley Hotel
6/13/2005
By Ann Depperschmidt
The Daily Reporter-Herald
ESTES PARK — One of the employees at the relocated Stanley Museum in Estes Park
noticed some books had fallen off the shelf.
She walked over and put them back up, but the books fell off again.
Thinking she had leaned them funny on the shelf, she moved the books to another
spot.
Where they fell again.
Just then a woman walked into the museum and asked the employee about the Stanley
ghosts — specifically, the one the visitor had just seen walking through the door.
“I still haven’t personally experienced (a ghost sighting),” said Susan Davis, president
and chief executive officer of the Stanley Museums in Estes Park and Maine.
“But I absolutely respect that they’re there,” she said. “I just don’t have that sixth
sense.”
Davis has written a book called “Stanley Ghost Stories,” due out in July. She collected
about 50 stories from people who have seen, heard or felt something inexplicable —
including the mysterious visitor and the tumbling books.
And the color of the book’s cover is the original shade of the outside of the Stanley
Hotel — mustard yellow.
Mark Lorenz worked as a bellman in the Stanley Hotel in the 1980s.
“I’m kind of a skeptic about ghosts,” he said. But there’s always that one time.
Lorenz had just finished his shift and was walking through a room with swinging doors
leading to a hallway.
He tried to pass through the right swinging door, but it only opened about 6 inches
before it stopped like he had just hit someone on the other side.
“I assumed someone was standing there,” he said.
But nothing happened.
So he went through the left door to see if the hinges on the right side were broken.
When he stepped through the door, he hit a wave of heat — a temperature more like
the Bahamas than an Estes Park winter in a poorly heated hallway.
Lorenz stepped to the side and said the temperature dropped by about 20 degrees.
“I raised my arm to see if I could feel that warm space,” he said. Then suddenly the
door swung open like someone had just walked out.
“Right away, the hair on the back of my neck stood up,” Lorenz said. “It was the only
time I immediately knew that I saw a ghost.”
Interested?
What: “Stanley Ghost Stories” book by Susan Davis
Due out: July 1
Sold at: The Stanley Museum, 517 Big Thompson Ave., Estes Park (in the Stanley
Village Shopping Center)
Cost: $10.95
http://www.lovelandfyi.com
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