It’s the kind of souvenir you don’t really plan for: a supernatural entity appearing in one of your vacation photos.
Tourist Henry Yau visited Colorado’s Stanley Hotel, which was the main setting for 1980 horror movie The Shining, earlier this week. He snapped a photo of the hotel lobby’s creepy staircase, and an apparition in period clothing somehow appeared at the top of the stairs in one of his pictures. Yau insists the staircase was totally empty when he took the photo.
“When I took it, I didn’t notice anything,” Yau, director of public relations at the Children’s Museum of Houston, told Click2Houston.com.
According a paranormal expert consulted by the publication, there are actually two ghosts in the photo: The woman in black on the stairs and a barely visible child, to her left.
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This isn’t the first time someone has reported a paranormal sighting at Stanley Hotel. The hotel’s website even has a dedicated section to its Ghost Adventure Package, and it has a separate section recounting the hotel’s haunted history.
“After a century of collecting spirits, the hotel has become renowned by specialists and experts in the field of paranormal investigation as one of the nation’s most active sites,” boasts the site.
A Twitter user posted a photo allegedly taken while on a haunted tour of the hotel — capturing another unidentified figure on the stairs.
The Shining was originally based on the works of horror mastermind Stephen King, who was initially inspired by the creepiness of the hotel. King stayed there in the late fall of 1974.
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