Stanley Hotel 'Ghost' Caught On Camera

"When I took it, I didn't notice anything."

A visitor to the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write "The Shining" has snapped a photo of what some believe is a ghost.

Henry Yau took a panoramic image of the lobby of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, this week.

When he snapped the photo, there was no one at the top of the staircase, he claims -- but when he took a look at it later, he saw a ghostly figure in what looks like period clothing coming down the stairs.

"When I took it, I didn't notice anything," Yau, director of public relations at the Children's Museum of Houston, told Click2Houston.com.

By golly! I think I may have captured a #ghost at #StanleyHotel. #EstesPark

A photo posted by Henry Yau (@ares415) on

One paranormal expert said the photo shows not one, but two spirits.

"When we blew up the picture, we immediately saw a second anomaly just to the left of the first figure," Kevin Sampron, a paranormal expert at SPIRIT Paranormal Investigations in Denver, told WUSA. "To us it looks like the first figure is a lady dressed in black and to the left of her it looks like a child."

"This could be a legitimate ghost, as far as we can tell," Sampron told the station.

Stephen King said that when he stayed at the hotel in 1974, "it seemed the perfect -- maybe the archetypical -- setting for a ghost story."

He writes on his official website:

"That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, 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 the 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 Stanley doesn't seem to mind the spooky links. In fact, the hotel is so proud of its haunted history that it even offers ghost tours.

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