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Hotel Apparition? Was A Ghost Photographed At The Stanley Hotel? [Video]

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 09:42 PST, Apr 18, 2016

Was a guest at the infamous Stanley Hotel in Colorado photobombed by a ghostly apparition? That’s the claim being made by Henry Yau, who stayed at the hotel that inspired the Stephen King classic The Shining about the goings-on at the haunted Overlook Hotel. Oregon Live reports that the hotel apparition mysteriously appeared in a panorama photograph taken by Yau about a week ago. The hotel guest was attempting to capture a photograph of the entirety of the Stanley Hotel’s famous lobby, including the notoriously creepy grand stairwell.

According to Yau, no one was standing on the hotel staircase while he was capturing the image, something he was sure of because he doesn’t like people in his photographs. In fact, according to the video below, the amateur photographer didn’t notice anything amiss with the shot he’d gotten at first.

As Inside Edition reports, the hotel apparition wasn’t spotted by Yau until he reviewed the image the next morning, following a night of feeling inexplicably sick to his stomach. Stomach symptoms are sometimes associated with ghostly contact or the presence of spirits or apparitions.

“Overnight, I felt queasy and had stomach problems.”

This isn’t the first time the Stanley Hotel has boasted a ghostly apparition or two. According to the hotel’s website, it has an apparition-filled history stretching back to 1872, when the hotel reportedly started to “collect spirits.” It was during that year that the land was grabbed from disputing Native American tribes by the Earl of Dunraven. In 1909, the original hotel was converted into a “luxury hotel,” and its reputation for being haunted began almost immediately.

It was this haunted history that reportedly convinced Henry Yau, a publicist from Houston by trade, to book a stay at the notorious Stanley Hotel. When he planned his visit, he couldn’t possibly have known he’d personally capture the image of an apparition himself.

The Stanley Hotel, though, is arguably most famous for inspiring The Shining, which was published in 1977 and made into a film starring Jack Nicholson in 1980. The classic tale of madness developing among the apparitions of an isolated, haunted hotel reportedly resulted from King staying in room 217. In the novel The Shining, room 217 in the hotel is also where Danny Torrence has his first of many visions.

Yau didn’t stay in room 217, but it was close. Rather, the unlikely spirit photographer spent his time at the Stanley Hotel being lodged in room 216.

Because the hotel is no stranger to ghostly apparitions and well-documented hauntings, the Stanley Hotel offers amenities to its guests that include everything from a 90-minute ghost tour to an in-house psychic to consult with curious or freaked-out patrons.

According to Henry Yau, his upbringing was very spiritual and superstitious in nature, reports The Denver Post. Yau’s mother is Chinese and Buddhist, he told the publication, and he was born and raised in Venezuela. He says that he is “terrified of ghosts,” but “never imagined” he would capture a picture of an apparition at the hotel.

However, he has no doubt that the hotel apparition is, in fact, a ghost.

The picture of the apparition in the hotel has now gone viral, and many agree that it does appear that the ghostly apparition is a woman dressed in period clothing in the corner of the grand stairwell. One ghost expert believes that that Yau may have captured more than a single apparition in the creepy photograph; they see a woman in black on the stairs accompanied by the apparition of a child directly to her left.

Of course, despite Yau’s certainty that the apparition in the image he captured is a spirit or ghost, there’s no way to know, and the debate will surely go on. What do you think? What did Henry Yau catch on camera? Is it a reflection? A shadow? Someone passing by? Or could he have photographed an actual ghostly apparition at the legendary, rumored-to-be-haunted Stanley Hotel?

[Image Courtesy Of Henry Yau/Instagram]

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