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Ghost Hunters

Shining Hotel

Season 2, Episode 24, Aired May 31, 2006

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TAPS travels to Estes Park, Colorado to investigate the Stanley Hotel made famous by the movie The Shining.

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Cast & Crew

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Grant Wilson (II)

Lead Investigator
Steve Gonsalves

Tech Manager
Brian Harnois

Investigator
Dave Tango

Investigator-In-Training
Jason Hawes

Lead Investigator
Donna LaCroix

Case Manager

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Fan Episode Reviews (4)

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This is not the Stanley Hotel you are thinking of....

8.9

"Great"

By rararar123, Jul 26, 2007

This is the hotel Stephen King stayed in with his wife and was the inspiration for the novel, "The Shining". Stanley Kubrick's most famous version, with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, was filmed somewhere in New Hampshire. The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado was the set for the 1997 TV Mini Series. They will tell you all of this if you visit the Stanley Hotel... But in the tours they don't really make a big deal at all about the place being haunted except for that the piano sometimes plays by itself... So I don't know where this all came from. It's still a pretty creepy place though. Like unattended ladders leading to small, dark holes in the ceiling... Really, no joke!moreless
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This is another episode destined to be a Ghost Hunters classic. The Hotel definately has something goin on, and now my wife wants to visit.

7.5

"Good"

By HogggWild999, Jun 22, 2007

After a rather long wait since the last unexplainable events were captured, the Stanley Hotel episode was another cool show. I hated the re-visit on the Holloween special, but the original is a good episode. Its not often that I cannot come up with a logical explanation for what TAPS caught during their investigation on a particular episode. This was one of those episodes. The part where Grant and Jason were in the accesway in the basement and heard the Hello was spine chilling, but not convincing as its too easy to fake that type of thing, and impossible to prove it wasn't, so we are dismissing that bit of evidence. For all of the nonsense Brian and Steve go through with hearing clicks and pianos playing and footsteps, nothing, and I mean NOTHING ever comes up on EVP, why is that??? Lets move on... The incident with the table jumping while Grant was swapping tapes in the camera was definately a good catch. I could not see where Grant could have bumped it up by himself without making it obvious he moved. The camera man was truly petrified, and screamed and made noises like someone who was truly scared. So this one is a keeper. The incident where the closet opens while Jason is sleeping is another good catch, but.... Here again is another BIG mistake made by Jason who should know better. He got out of bed and picked up the camera to move it to the night stand. He said the closet door opened by itself and that the glass broke. He should have stuck the camera into that closet to prove to us the viewer that it was empty. He did not, lost credibility for the event. Then we see the closet door close, allegedly by itself. Again Jason rolls over and said the door just closed and it soudns like a party going on inside there. OK, then pick up the camera and show us the inside of the closet!!!!! Just that little move would have removed any and all doubt that the door was not a trick with someone pulling it shut by fishing line then pulling it latched once the door would hide that move from the camera. These guys should know by now to cover all their bases. So overall I good show with a few very interesting events, but only one thats just not disproveable. The other two we have to hold at hands length because they cannot prove beyond a doubt that it was not staged.moreless
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Ghost Hunter's Finest Episode

9.4

"Superb"

By ERockaway90, Jun 17, 2006

I think that this episodes has the be one of the shows best episodes ever. When they showed that clip of athe door closing and that glass taht cracked out of nowhere i have to tell you that i was a littled bugged. Im embarrased to say this, kinda cause im a horror movie buff, but their experiences in that hotel did kinda creep me out. They def. chose the right place to go for their season finale. I totally can't wait until their third season, just because this season ended with such trip, its still on my tivo, and I watch the paranormal clips over and over again.moreless
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Second season ends with a bang!

8.0

"Great"

By entil2001, Jun 01, 2006

Well, here we are, the final episode of the second season. In technical terms, this series has aired more material in its second season than "Battlestar: Galactica" or any other original SFC series. Sure, it's a lot less expensive, but it's nice to know that the show has gained that much support and public awareness. (Though, honestly, can't we hear about a third season already?)

This time around, it's even a super-sized finale. I had no idea going in that it was 90 minutes, so it was like getting bonus footage! So I was a little surprised when the episode turned out to be relatively slim on the strong evidence. Even Jason had been talking it up just before the episode! (Then again, from his perspective, he was right there for the best stuff, so why wouldn't he say it was great?)

That said, I could watch unfiltered evidence for hours and still be happy, so I'm not going to complain very much! I found it cute that the season actually managed to have a dramatic arc! Brian's life issues over the second season made for a somewhat tortured and poorly conceived story. I'll give it to the editors for trying to put together a pseudo-storyline, but it's really not necessary. (Like the weird music, or the weird overdubbed noises, and everything else they add in post.)

So, onto the evidence:

I love the fact that the majority of the evidence was debunked: the banging, the reflections in the thermal footage, the shaking bed. That's the sort of thing they do very well, and it does make it a lot easier to accept items like the jumping table at face value. For me, that's still a hard sell, but only because of the camera angle. I'm not claiming fakery here (everyone knows me better than that by now), but what was shown will play right into the hands of those who believe Grant does fake things. (I also wonder if the editing wasn't done to make it seem questionable.)

The best evidence, of course, was the first night in Jason's room: the closet door and the broken glass. I'm sure the skeptics will find ways to explain the closet door, even though you can clearly see Jason is alone in the room and still on the bed when the door closes. But the glass is a more interesting situation. I really don't see how that could have broken as it did, and it actually sounds like the piece of glass fell off before the sound of the glass breaking was heard. Very strange!

This is the part where I would usually launch into a discussion about the season as a whole, but I'm doing things a little differently moving forward. The "Ghost Hunters" post-mortem (so to speak) will be the main focus of an upcoming episode of "Dispatches from Tuzenor", a new podcast started as an expansion to the written reviews conducted every season. That episode should be up relatively soon, and it will include some comments from the weekend I'm spending in Warwick with some TAPS members and fellow fans! So I invite anyone interested to drop by the archive site (www.entil2001.com) and click on the link. (It's also available on iTunes.)
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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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TRIVIA (5)
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- According to the date embedded in the thermal camera's footage, this investigation took place on February 21-23, 2006.
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- Also Appearing: Investigation: The Stanley Hotel - Estes Park, Colorado Billy Ward - Concierge Sandy Murphy - Food and Beverage Director Krishanthi Fernando - Night Auditor Nancy Baker - Controller
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- The Stanley Hotel is the first location in which TAPS investigated for more than one night. The team also stayed in some of the allegedly haunted rooms, and were thus able to continue investigating even after they went to sleep.
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- The cameraman who witnesses the table and chair move next to Grant is Kendall Whelpton.
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- When Jason's glass shatters, the entire lips breaks away from the rest of the glass, as well as having a chip knock out. The separation of the top of the glass from the bottom is consistent with the kind of breakage that occurs when it undergoes an extreme temperature differential- for example, when a glass is removed from a dishwasher it will be over 170 F and then if immediately filled with ice, taking it to 32 F, they often break in that way. Chips like the one that fell out of the glass onto the table are not common, but if the glass had a flaw in that area, it's possible it could have resulted in a chip of that kind. How such a temperature differential could have happened to the glass is unclear, however.
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QUOTES (8)
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- Donna: So you guys will actually be going to the hotel in the same conditions that they were in the movie. Grant: Yeah, fantastic. As long as Jay doesn't get crazy with an axe and start running around.
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- Brian: Jason doesn't trust me or anything, which is fine. I don't blame him for that. It'd be nice to get back to where I was, but I probably never will. So I just gotta take it one day at a time.
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- Brian: This place is spooky! Can't complain, it's what I do for a living. But when you're by yourself, it pretty much freaks you out.
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- Jason: (trying to communicate with the spirit of a homeless woman) Hello, Miss Homeless Lady? Grant: It's nice and warm in here. Jason: Toasty. Grant: Cold outside. Jason: Brought you a cracker.
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- Jason: (wielding an axe) We're gonna hunt some ghosts. Grant: Geez, I'd hate to be a ghost right about now!
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- Jason: You know, I'll be honest with you; every part of me didn't want to see you come back. But then this has been your passion when you've got your head screwed on straight. I know this is what you love doing. Brian: It is, this is what I live for. It's my dream to do this stuff with you guys.
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- Brian: (to Jason) It really sunk in, when I came back, it was an opportunity that wasn't supposed to be there. You know, you didn't have to do that, you know what I mean? And now I know I was at the bottom of the barrel and I don't ever want to get back down there.
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- Grant: Of course it's disappointing that the moment you catch something amazing is the moment that your guard is down. But it does happen. This field is unpredictable, sometimes chaotic. The only way you can increase your odds of catching something is to try and try again.
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NOTES (4)
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- This episode is listed under the title "The Stanley Hotel" at the official Ghost Hunters website.
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- The team is told a story about a young woman who stayed in room 412 who suddenly began acting strangely, claiming that something was attempting to possess her, and was violent with those who attempted to aid her, despite having no alcohol or drugs in her system. When TAPS revisits the location for their "Live Halloween Special", Donna adds another interesting detail to the story- the supposed "possession" occurred on Halloween night of 2005, and the woman had left the Hotel's Halloween party (which is themed to pay tribute to The Shining every year) a half an hour before it took place. A parapsychologist would undoubtedly note that the power of suggestion of a supposed haunted location coupled with a party dedicated to celebrating the supernatural would be very strong, and if a person was highly suggestible, they might feel something that they attributed to a paranormal source, and hysteria could do the rest.
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- The Stanley Hotel has been the subject of a number of other TV show ghost investigations. It's been investigated by TAPS on Ghost Hunters a number of times, including the third season Live episode "Live From The Stanley" and the follow-up "Best Of The Stanley Hotel". It was also used by the TAPS spin-off show Ghost Hunters Academy for the final episode of the second of cadets "Finals At The Stanley". It has also been featured on the British paranormal TV show Most Haunted in its eleventh season episode "The Stanley Hotel". Later, it was investigated by the Ghost Adventures Crew for their fourth season episode "Stanley Hotel".
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- This episode ran 90 minutes when it was first aired on the Sci-Fi Channel.
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ALLUSIONS (1)
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- Jason: (brandishing an axe) Here's Jason! The Stanley Hotel, being the site which inspired Stephen King's book The Shining, is frequently alluded to by various TAPS members. Here Jason is reenacting a scene from the movie in which Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson), driven insane by the hotel's evil spirits, goes on a rampage wielding an axe. As he does so he says, "Here's Johnny!", which is in itself a reference to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson Show, which introduced Carson with that catchphrase.
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