You really can’t even make this stuff up.
Bears and The Overlook Hotel go hand-in-hand, with a man in a bear suit being one of the most memorably bizarre images from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, so it seems fitting that an actual bear just made its way into the actual Overlook for a late night stroll this week.
Located in Estes Park, Colorado, The Stanley Hotel is the real-life hotel that inspired Stephen King to create The Overlook Hotel for The Shining, and the hotel’s Facebook page just shared video of the bear’s stroll that has gone viral. They write, “Late night visitor from the wildside visits our hotel lobby. We’ll make an exception to the rule about jumping on the furniture.”
Thankfully, no guests were in the lobby at the time, and the bear exited as quickly as he entered. “It’s part of being in the Rocky Mountains, we do have a hotel next to a National Park… wildlife is part of the gig,” general manager Reed Rowley told CBS Denver. “The bears up here are super clever and once in a while they do figure out a way to poke their heads in.”
It was during an October 1974 stay at The Stanley Hotel that King was inspired to write The Shining, but Kubrick’s movie didn’t film there. The 1997 mini-series did, however.
