Chillingly, Stephen King based multiple stories on his own life, with personal looks at his struggles with addiction, but The Shining is a slightly different species.

The Shining novel was the basis for Stanley Kubrick's 1980 masterpiece film, and the horror movie introduced millions of viewers to the Overlook Hotel. While many aspects of The Shining's story are fantastical and fictional, the story told by Stephen King and adopted by Stanley Kubrick was partially inspired by real events. While the Overlook Hotel is not an existing location itself, the Stanley Hotel in Colorado has an eerie true story that's behind parts of The Shining.

The Shining’s Hotel Is Based On A Haunted Room At The Stanley Hotel, Colorado

The Overlook Hotel Was Inspired By A Real Haunting

Many elements in The Shining, including the hotel itself, were inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado. While The Shining true story doesn't involve a man named Jack Torrance losing his mind and killing his family, the locale of the book and Stanley Kubrick's movie do have a real-life counterpart. In 1974, King and his wife spent time at the isolated Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. When King stayed at The Shining's Overlook Hotel's inspiration, the Stanley Hotel, in the 'mid-70s, he and his wife were in room 217.

King claimed to have seen a young boy while going to his room, which wasn't possible considering he and his wife were the only confirmed guests.

That specific room has a haunted history involving the chief housekeeper, Elizabeth Wilson. In 1911, Wilson was injured in an explosion caused by lighting a lantern. Though she survived the event, it's said that she still wanders around the room, moving luggage and folding clothes. King claimed to have seen a young boy while going to his room, which wasn't possible considering he and his wife were the only confirmed guests. There have been several other s detailing unexplained noises, figures, and personal objects stolen or broken.

While roaming the real hotel, King felt inspired by the long corridors and the isolated feel. His experience instantly gave him the idea for the horror novel. The Stanley Hotel was built by Freelan Oscar Stanley of the Stanley Steamer fame, and opened in 1909. The 142-room resort was meant for wealthy vacationers and also served as a health retreat for those suffering from tuberculosis. The Stanley Hotel is still in operation and, with its panoramic views of the Rockies, remains a tourist destination. The hotel also has a very haunted history which has helped attract viewers and paranormal investigators.

King noted the eerie feeling of being in an empty hotel.

During the author and his wife's stay, the couple checked in just before the hotel was shutting down for the winter, and they were the only guests there. King noted the eerie feeling of being in an empty hotel. He states on his website, Stephen King,

"In late September of 1974, Tabby and I spent a night at a grand old hotel in Estes Park, the Stanley... Wandering through its corridors, I thought that it seemed the perfect—maybe the archetypical—setting for a ghost story. That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming... I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in the chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind."

This, the story of Elizabeth Wilson, and King's own experience of ghostly apparitions inspired The Shining's ominous Overlook Hotel, a location that has become an iconic landmark in pop culture from the Grady twins down the hall to the carpeting on the floor.

There's A Real Pet Cemetery At The Stanley Hotel

Did The Hotel Inspire Another Stephen King Novel?

According to Nightly Spirits, there is a pet cemetery on the grounds of the Stanley Hotel where the owners have traditionally buried their animals. The ghosts of two of these animals have been glimpsed by guests over the years. Cassie, the golden retriever, and Camanche, a fluffy white cat, have been seen wandering rooms and the surrounding grounds by surprised over-nighters.

Perhaps King sighted one of these animals during his stay, because nine years later, he wrote the novel Pet Sematary about a cursed animal burial ground that brings pets, and more, back from the dead.

The phrase "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy," can be found in Pet Sematary. It's a line made famous by Kubrick's The Shining adaptation but does not appear in King's novel.

Stephen King Doesn’t Think The Overlook Hotel Does The Shining’s Real Hotel Justice

The Author Of The Shining Has Notes On Kubrick's Version Of The Overlook

Kubrick's version of The Shining's Overlook Hotel doesn't match King's vision of the resort. Kubrick changed much of the layout and added the hedge maze at the front of the property. The infamous room was also changed from 217 to 237. Due to King's displeasure with Kubrick's The Shining adaptation, the author made his own TV miniseries based on the novel in 1997, with the Stanley Hotel being used as the filming location.

Due to The Shining's popularity, the Stanley Hotel has embraced the connection by hosting tours and events related to the story. In 2015, the so-called real The Shining hotel in Colorado added the hedge maze, which has been a hit with visitors.

Doctor Sleep Ruined The Shining’s Real-Life Mystery

The 2019 Sequel To The Shining Replaced The True Story With Fictional Lore

A key component of Stephen King's real-life experience at the Stanley Hotel and the rendition of the Overlook Hotel presented in Kubrick's The Shining movie is the location's sense of mystery, but The Shining's 2019 sequel Doctor Sleep compromises this. Throughout The Shining, as in King's own experience, it's never clear precisely what's going on.

One of the greatest strengths of The Shining's real-life and fictional story (and what makes it so genuinely terrifying) is how it consistently contradicts itself, never revealing whether the Overlook is possessed by ghosts, demons, or simply madness.

Doctor Sleep winds up ruining what made The Shining and Stephen King's original Stanley Hotel experience so chilling.

In direct opposition to this approach, Doctor Sleep attempts to explain many of its predecessor's purposeful mysteries; it chalks up The Shining's events to ghosts that wanted to extract energy from Danny's Shining. While it's an impressive feat to impose so much continuity onto a story propelled by the discomfort of the unknown, Doctor Sleep winds up ruining what made The Shining and Stephen King's original Stanley Hotel experience so chilling.

How The Events Of The Shining Compare To The Real Overlook Hotel Hauntings

Stephen King Used His Own Fears In The Story

Stephen King made sure to add many of the things that he feared the most about the Stanley Hotel when he designed his version of The Overlook Hotel in The Shining. King knew he had much to compete with for haunted house stories, since he respected Shirley Jackson's Hill House so much. As a result, he tried to make things more personal. He used the room he stayed in (#217) in the story, which made its way to the movie and added the long hallways that freaked him out so much as well.

King claimed he saw the young boy who couldn't have been there, which led to his creation of the two little girls Danny saw while riding through the halls. As for the actual haunting, a lot has been done to explore the mystical possibilities of the real-life hotel. One example of the real haunting brought to The Shining is the legend of the concert hall, where mysterious late-night musical concerts are said to come from there despite it being empty. This played into Jack's discovery of the room in the movie/book.

The fourth floor also has ghost sightings, and the story also has similar tones, especially in room 428. While the movie and book showed some disturbing ghosts, it seems the main one seen in real life was a cowboy, which was not how the movie portrayed the ghosts. As for Room 217, the real story didn't have a woman dying there, but Mrs. Elizabeth Wilson almost died. The explosion ties into the end of the book, as well as Doctor Sleep. As for The Shining, it mostly played with the legends rather than repeating them.