A group of Hollywood actors and directors are among a consortium planning to transform the hotel that inspired The Shining into a horror film centre.

The Stanley Hotel in Colorado’s Estes Park would become a “year-round horror destination” - a horror museum, film archive and film production studio - if the plan goes ahead. Backers aim to raise the requisite money in state funds - $11.5m as part of a public-private partnership. The horror centre is expected to attract film students and fans from around the world.

Elijah Wood, George Romero and Simon Pegg are among those backing the venture.

"I would love to have a home for which we could constantly come year-round and celebrate with other fans from around the world," said Elijah Wood.

"There's really no better place for there to be a permanent home for the celebration of horror as an art form than the Stanley Hotel. It was practically built for it,” he added.

The facility would include a 500-seat auditorium and a 3,000 square foot soundstage, a 30,000 square foot interactive museum, classrooms, workshop spaces and post-production editing suites.

Image: Designs for the proposed horror film centre

"The Stanley Film Center is my chance to give back to the millions of horror fans around the world who have supported Estes Park and the hotel for so many years," said owner of the Stanley Hotel, John Cullen. 

Stephen King’s 1977 novel told the story of Jack Torrance, a frustrated novelist and recovering alcoholic who takes his family to an isolated hotel, where he is to work as caretaker over the winter. As winter snows pile high and the family is cut off from the outside world the hotel’s dark past begins to reveal itself to Jack and his family.

The book was a massive success and King’s first hardback bestseller, the 1980 film version directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall was originally savaged by critics but has long been regarded a classic of the genre. Its success has transformed the Stanley Hotel into a pilgrimage of sorts for film fans from around the world – so much so that they gave 81,000 guided tours of the grounds in 2012.

Watch: (unofficial) Trailer for The Shining

The dark inspiration of the Stanley Hotel

Stephen King’s first two novels – Salem’s Lot and Carrie – were set in his home state of Maine. As he prepared to write his third work he desired a change of scenery, and so in 1974 King and his wife Tabitha decided they would spend the next year in another part of America, to experience a new location and reap the inspiration. They headed for Boulder, Colorado, and spent one night in the Stanley Hotel, in the mountain resort of Estes Park. They were the only guests in the 155 room hotel, and stayed in room 217 – which they were informed was haunted with the spirit of Elisabeth Wilson, the hotel’s one time housekeeper. Room 217 would go on to become perhaps the most notorious room in King's fictional Overlook hotel.

On June 25, 1911 – Wilson lit a candle in room 2017, without realising there was a gas leak. Ten per cent of the hotel was destroyed, but somehow Wilson survived and lived until 1950. The hotel owners, and numerous guests over the years, insist her spirit remains in room 217. The hotel already runs thousands of tours each yea, and tour manager Walter Oglesby tells the story of Elisabeth Wilson each time he brings guests to room 217.

"She had such a strong emotional connection to the room; people still think she's there today," he told CBS.

"If you leave your luggage in the room, you might find that it's been folded when you get back. One person woke up and found someone made their bed around them while they were sleeping."

None of this deters would-be guests, quite the opposite in fact, with room 217 booked months in advance.

To go with the eerie air of room 217, King and Tabitha ate in the grand dining room of the hotel that evening as the only guests, served the solitary meat left available in the hotel and the silence of the echoing hall broken only by taped orchestral songs that were piped in.

After just one night King was sketching out plans for his new novel.

Image: The Stanley Hotel in February 2011 Credit: Wiki Commons

While the hotel in the novel and the 1980 film are The Overlook Hotel, the look of the real and fictional hotels is near identical, and both were built in 1909. 

The Stanley Hotel was not the location for Kubrick’s film, which was largely shot on a soundstage in London and whose exterior was the Alhwanee Hotel in Yosemite Park, California, over 1,000 miles away.

The Stanley’s dark side is said to be more than just the product fo King’s imagination, with ghost hunters regularly visiting the hotel to join in with the five times a month paranormal investigations that take place there.

"We've gotten a lot of EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) recordings," Oglesby said.

"People have seen things or had things move in the room on occasion. People will occasionally say they see things or hear someone."

Oglesby says life at the hotel has changed his views on the paranormal.

"I didn't believe in paranormal before I started, but I believe it now," he said.

"About one out of four guests say they've felt something or experienced something, based on what they tell the front desk when they check out," operations manager Anil Singh said.

"If you don't believe it you don't see it, but yes, one out of four."