Episode 10: Steam & Gas

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Ask any group of people where they feel the most safe, and the answer is almost universal.

Their own house.

It's a place they know well, where they've built a life and crafted wonderful memories.

Home Sweet Home is for many people, an immutable law.

But what happens when we leave the safety of our homes and travel?

Once outside our comfortable safe haven, we often find ourselves exposed to what awaits us.

Some people are more courageous than others, of course, but travel can be a source of fear for many.

Hodophobia is the fear of travel, and while the vast majority of people don't necessarily suffer from a clinical fear of leaving their homes, Many do struggle with strange places.

And no place can feel more foreign and strange to a a traveler, in my opinion at least, than the places where thousands upon thousands of guests have stayed.

Perhaps it's the well-worn carpets, or the imperfect walls and ceilings, that make us feel uneasy.

Noisy plumbing, finicky lights, and the sounds of a settling structure can leave even the best of us feeling a bit out of our element.

No other place in the United States can cause that uneasy feeling more than the often forgotten mountain lodge built over a century ago in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains.

But despite its classic architecture and lavish decor, there is very little inside that feels safe.

And I'd like to take you there.

I'm Erin Mankey, and this is Lore.

They were twin wonders.

Freeland and Francis Stanley were born in Maine in 1849.

They had five other siblings, two of whom were also twins.

But something was different about Freeland and his brother.

They were exceptional students, quick learners, and gifted with an unusual mechanical aptitude.

As nine-year-olds, they were using their father's lathe to craft wooden tops, which they sold to their classmates.

At the age of 10, they were taught how to make violins by their paternal grandfather.

It was said that those instruments were concert quality.

Those early experiments helped fuel a lifelong passion for building things.

After a short career as a teacher and principal, Freeland Stanley went into business with his brother.

refining and marketing a photographic process known as dry plating.

It was a revolutionary change, allowing even amateur photographers to take quality images.

So revolutionary, in fact, that the Eastman Kodak Company purchased the technology in the late 1800s, making the brothers very, very wealthy.

From there, the Wonder Twins moved into the world of motor cars.

Their first automobile was built in 1897, and by 1899, it was the best-selling motor car in the country.

Because of its unique steam-powered engine, the automobile was called the Stanley Steamer.

It was the steamer, along with a few other smaller businesses, that helped turn the twins into tycoons in their own right.

In 1903, Freeland was diagnosed with tuberculosis, sometimes referred to as the wasting sickness.

At the age of 53, he had dropped to just 118 pounds, and his doctors told him that he had six months to live at the most.

So, like many people of that era, Stanley traveled west to the clean mountain air of Colorado.

And that's where he discovered Estes Park.

Freelan and his wife Flora fell in love with the setting.

They built a home there almost immediately, and after somehow shaking the tuberculosis, the couple returned every summer thereafter, he in his tailored suits and pointy gray beard, she in her high-collared floral gowns.

But it was another building they constructed there, a massive grand hotel that has left the most lasting mark.

Built to the tune of nearly half a million dollars, the Stanley Hotel opened its doors in 1909 and has been serving guests ever since.

The Stanley Hotel was a modern marvel in its day.

It featured a hydraulic elevator, electricity throughout, running water, telephones, and even a fleet of Stanley's own steam-powered mountain wagons to ferry guests straight from the train station to the front door of the hotel.

It had nearly 300 rooms, 466 windows, a music room with a grand piano, a billiard room, restaurant, ballroom, and three floors of guest rooms.

And that's just inside the hotel.

Outside and scattered around the property were staff dormitories, a concert hall, the ice house, carriage house, manager's home, and many others.

A private airstrip was even built on the property at some point, although it's been abandoned for decades.

Over the years, the Stanley Hotel has played host to a number of famous guests.

John Phillips Souza, the famous conductor, not only stayed there frequently, but he would tune the piano in the music room and record the dates inside the lid.

Other guests have checked in there as well, including Titanic survivor Molly Brown, President Theodore Roosevelt, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Barbara Streisand.

And Freeland Stanley?

The tuberculosis never got him.

He died in 1940 at the age of 91, just a year after his wife Flora passed away.

But while the couple was no longer there to oversee the hotel's day-to-day business, one thing has been very clear to those who work there today.

The Stanleys, it seems,

never checked out.

In July of 2009, a tourist in the lobby of the hotel approached her friends with complete shock.

She had been shopping for postcards in the gift shop and had exited the store while reading the backs of the ones she had purchased.

According to her story, she had her head down when a pair of pant legs came into view.

She did the polite thing and stepped to the side to allow the man to pass, but when she did, she claims the legs moved to block her new path.

Taken aback, She raised her head to scold the man for his rudeness, but stopped when a wave of cold air rushed over her.

The man, according to her, was dressed in clothing that seemed out of place, and his pointy beard had an old-fashioned look to it.

She then watched as the man walked away toward the lobby fireplace, where he vanished out of sight.

After rushing over to her friends to tell them what had happened, she was approached by another woman who happened to overhear their conversation.

This woman led the tourist toward the antique Stanley steamer automobile that sits in the hotel lobby and pointed toward the photo of Freeland Stanley on the wall behind it.

The tourist was astonished.

The man she had just seen with her own eyes had been dead for over 60 years.

Mr.

Stanley has also been seen in the billiard room, a favorite location of his during his time at the hotel.

According to one report, a group of tourists were once being led through that room when a vision of Stanley appeared behind one of them.

Mr.

Stanley also seems to have a soft spot for his beloved rocking chair on the front porch.

Visible from the front desk through the large lobby windows, it has been witnessed by many to be rocking on its own volition.

But if Mr.

Stanley really has remained behind in the hotel after a death, then he is apparently not alone.

In February of 1984, The night Bellman was working the front desk when he heard footsteps coming from the direction of the hotel bar, known as the Cascades.

The Bellman leaned over the counter to peer around the corner, and in the reflection of the lobby windows, he was able to see the figure of a woman.

She wore a pale gown that he described as off-the-shoulder, in a southern bell style.

The Bellman quickly exited the front desk area through a back doorway, but when he arrived in the side hall near the windows, no one was there.

During an overnight shift in 1976, the clerk at the front desk reported hearing piano music.

She left the desk and entered the music room where the sound was coming from, but found it empty.

According to her, however, the piano keys were still moving on their own.

In 1994, a guest heard similar music from the direction of the music room and stepped inside.

He claimed to see a young woman sitting at the piano, then he approached so he could watch and listen while she played.

As he walked across the room, though, the girl transformed into an elderly woman, before completely disappearing.

The Stanleys have frequently been sighted on the main staircase in formal attire, and even in the elevator.

The encounters are never violent or malevolent, but they frighten guests and staff nonetheless.

Bartenders there in the cascades claim they have even seen the deceased owner strolling through the bar.

Some have even given chase.

only to lose sight of his ghost as it vanished into the walls.

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the frequency of the reports is enough to make you wonder.

From glowing orbs caught on film to the faint sound of piano music drifting into the lobby, there seems to be no lack of fuel for the legends that fill those halls.

But it's not just the Stanleys who haunt the hotel.

Sightings have been reported throughout the structure's four stories, with the vast majority of them occurring in the most unwelcome of places: the guest rooms.

In the early 1900s, many visitors to the Stanley Hotel would stay for more than a weekend.

In many cases, guests would stay through the summer, and that meant arriving equipped for months of living abroad.

Those of us who have spent the past few years watching the British television show Downton Abbey might be familiar with the process.

The gentlemen and ladies would arrive by carriage, in this case steam-powered, of course, along with a caravan of servants and luggage.

And while the wealthy guests had access to the many finely appointed rooms of the hotel, the servants and children were relegated to the fourth floor.

This was an era when children were expected to be seen, but not heard, and so they played in the rooms and halls far above the heads of the other guests.

They slept there, they played there, and even ate there in a small, windowless corner of the upstairs kitchen.

These days, the fourth floor is just one more level of guest rooms.

According to many accounts, however, that doesn't mean the children are gone.

Many of these stories center around room 418.

There have been reports of the sound of balls bouncing in the dark, of high, childlike voices laughing and talking in the hall outside the room, of metal jacks on wooden flooring, and the pounding of little feet.

Guests have been startled out of their sleep by voices and sounds, some of which have even been captured on video.

Even the staff have had experiences.

The cleaning staff always enter the room with a bit of fear due to the many odd things they have witnessed inside room 418.

The television has been known to turn on and off on its own, and on at least one occasion, a housekeeper has turned to see that the bed she has just made up now has the deep impression of a body in the bedspread.

The room with the most activity though is on the second floor, and there are legends as to why.

It is said that in 1911, a thunderstorm caused a power outage in the hotel, sending the building into complete darkness.

It was dinner time, and thankfully most of the guests were downstairs in the McGregor ballroom, but the staff still needed to provide a temporary fix for the lack of light.

Because the Stanley Hotel was built at a time of transition between gas and electric lamps, the fixtures throughout the hotel were equipped to do both.

With the building in darkness, staff were sent from room to room with candles to light each acetylene gas lamp.

But when one of the chambermaids, a woman named Elizabeth Wilson, entered room 217,

something happened.

It should be said that this room was the presidential suite.

It was enormous and elegantly decorated in the style most beloved by Flora Stanley herself.

Bright floral wallpaper with reds and pinks and greens covered the walls, and the carpet was the color of grass with accents of red and blue.

It was the jewel of the hotel.

According to the legend, the light fixture in that room had a hidden leak and the room had filled with gas.

When Mrs.

Wilson opened the door with her lit candle in hand, the gas ignited, setting off an explosion that destroyed nearly 10% of the hotel along the western wing.

Part of the floor gave way and several steel girders fell on tables in the ballroom below, thankfully missing the guests.

Mrs.

Wilson, though, was not so lucky.

She fell through the floor, breaking both of her ankles in the fall.

It's a good story, but there are many versions of it.

Five separate Colorado newspapers carried the story, but details varied wildly.

One paper listed the chambermaid as Eva Colburn and said that she was thrown through a wall onto the porch with no injuries.

In another, she was Elizabeth Lambert, who died in the fall.

Still another report claimed that the chambermaid was a woman named Lizzie Leitzenberger.

All of the stories did agree that the explosion happened at 8 p.m., but none of them mentioned the thunderstorm.

There are other glitches in the story as well.

No employee records exist from this period in the hotel's history.

Among the many photographs of hotel staff over the past century, there are no pictures of anyone named Elizabeth Wilson or Lambert.

or Leitzenberger.

All of it has the smell of window dressing, designed to lend some credibility to the odd experiences that guests have had in room 217.

Just what experiences am I referring to?

Well, according to first-hand accounts, the ghost of Mrs.

Wilson has been known to unpack the suitcases of guests, to toss their clothing on the floor and rearrange the bed linens.

Another common report is that some guests and staff have seen a mysterious black hole in the floor, said to be the location of her fall after the explosion.

The faucet in in the bathtub has been known to turn on and off on its own, and the maids have even seen doors in the room open and close.

In 1974, a man and his wife arrived at the hotel at the end of the season.

According to his story, they were the only guests in the entire hotel.

After dinner that first night, the couple retired to bed where the husband had a horrible nightmare.

I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, he later said.

The boy was looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming.

He was being chased by a fire hose.

I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed.

I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a 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.

The man was Stephen King, and the book, of course, would later become The Shining.

Some folklore is historical.

We tell the tales because they happened, at least to some degree.

There's a grain of truth at the core of many myths and legends.

A real-life event or fear that caused people to remember, to retell, and to eventually immortalize.

Other legends, however, lack that core truth.

They work backwards instead, creating a unique story to explain the unexplainable.

Oftentimes these stories lean on the past and mine it for hints of validity, but in the end we're still left with stories that have no roots.

And the reason people do that isn't really a mystery.

A story, you see, helps keep us grounded.

It helps provide us with bearings as we navigate life, like a landmark we can all point toward.

And when something odd or unexplainable happens, I think it's only human nature to look for those landmarks.

When we can't find them, oftentimes we simply invent our own.

Perhaps the original events that led to the unusual activity at the Stanley Hotel have simply been lost in the past.

It would be reasonable to assume that at least some of the stories have a foundation in reality rather than just the narrative of a hotel with a supernatural reputation to keep.

That's not my decision to make, I'll leave that up to you.

But sometimes we're reminded that stories can evolve, that the unknown can suddenly become a bit more knowable.

In 2014, while doing maintenance in a service tunnel beneath the hotel, workers found debris.

Specifically, they found pieces of drywall, covered in pink and green wallpaper.

Carpet fragments were also discovered there, still pale green with red and blue details.

It turns out the explosion really did happen.

And if we can find the truth at the center of one of the stories, even a century later, how much more truth is out there to be found?

I'll leave you with one last story from room 217.

According to a previous guest who was preparing to go to bed, He opened one of the windows to let in some of the cool Colorado air.

Later, after having been asleep for some time, he felt his wife climb out of bed and quietly walk across the room toward the window.

The man said that he opened his eyes, and after glancing at the glowing face of the alarm clock, he looked to find her standing at the window, face pressed against the screen.

You have to see this, she whispered to him.

There's a family of elk outside.

The guest didn't move.

He just smiled and watched his wife for a long time, noticing how her hair moved in the breeze.

It's hard to blame him, after all.

She'd been dead for over five years.

This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey.

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Lore is much more than a podcast.

There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.

Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash

And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

When you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.