Return to room 217. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Lee. And this is Ghost Town.

We ran out our month of hotels with one of the most spooky, inspiring, and maybe most infamous

hotels, maybe probably of all time, the Stanley Hotel. If you remember, we actually covered the

Stanley Hotel in episode 29. But now, after seeing it for myself, experiencing its creepiness,

and reporting it back to you, this episode has a little bit more of my thoughts, first-hand

accounts, and like, not just a bunch of internet resources like usual. Well, some internet

resources, but not much. Let's return to the Stanley Hotel just in time for Halloween.

Astie's Valley is this quiet, beautiful mountain valley, an hour from Denver, and about a half

an hour from Boulder, Colorado. It was mostly pretty chill, but changed forever in 1862, when the

Irish Lord Earl of Dunrave and the Fourth visited, coveting the wild beautiful lands home to

wandering tribes of Yut and Arapaho, into his own Sportsman's Paradise, a private hunting

preserve all his own, and kind of a wild west big game fantasy. In 1903, New York investor Freeman

Osper Stanley, he invented the Stanley Steam Engine, and a steam-powered horseless carriage,

came to the valley for a remote vacation, weak and gaunt from consumption. Stanley and his wife,

Flora, spent the summer in a tiny cabin. And to everyone's astonishment, after one summer,

Stanley's health was better than ever. From then on, Stanley came back to Astie's Park every summer

for the rest of his life. When he first committed to summers in Colorado, however, Stanley realized

that he needed a place to stay that was kind of a big deal. Fit for a genius of industry and maybe

a place where a couple of friends could stay comfortably too. So in the middle of the Colorado

wilderness, we have F.O. Stanley and his wife, Flora. They had just purchased a bunch of land from

Lord Dunraven to build the property that would become their home, and then the Stanley Hotel.

That's when Dunraven exits the story. Soon after, he was run out of the area for trying to

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