11 November 2019 | Haunted locations, Your Stories, Your True Encounters
Sometime in 1981, I was leaving Seoul, Korea, where I was stationed with the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion and coming home for a brief vacation with my parents in Sacramento. After this vacation, I would be leaving for an OPFOR (Opposing Forces) unit in Fort Knox, Kentucky. During this small vacation, I hooked up with an Army buddy of mine named Wayne Johnson and we headed up to Mount Hood, Oregon. We were both fans of Stanley Kubrick/Stephen King’s The Shining. In case you don’t know it yet, the exterior of the Overlook Hotel was filmed at the Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood in Oregon for the Stanley Kubrick’s film adaption of The Shining. The hotel is majestic and it is fit for a King and his royal court. The fictional Overlook Hotel had to look omnious and Stanley Kubrick picked the Timberline Lodge for that purpose and even brought Stephen King to look over the lodge to make sure he gave it a seal of approval.
The Timberline Lodge was built sometime in the 1930s. It’s a National Historic Landmark. When we visited the Timberline Lodge, it was Summer time, so we did not see the beauty of when this lodge is outlined by the snow, with it’s snowy mountain top scenery. The lodge has exquisite stone masonry. The beams of the lodge are hand carved. The lodge has beautiful rooms with handmade furniture. The bar is called the Blue Ox near the main lobby, but sort of secretly hidden away. When visiting, you will probably spend a lot of time looking for the hedge maze. Unfortunately, that does not exist, it only exists in the movie The Shining.
When I visited the lodge with my friend, I wasn’t a ghost hunter yet, but as I explored the hotel, I did feel an ominous feeling on the 2nd floor and I thought I saw a darting shadow go into another room. In fact Wayne Johnson, my friend felt vertigo on the 2nd floor. Wayne said that he felt fine as he was going down the hallway, then felt like he went through a doorway into another dimension and the vertigo started. When we got back to the lobby, everything was back to normal. For paranormal investigators that make a stop at the lodge, they will gravitate towards Room 217, because of its notoriety in Stephen King’s book. The lodge asked Stanley Kubrick not to feature Room 217 in the movie, because they did not want to frighten their guests. Stanley agreed and created a non-existent room. Room 237. Some ghost hunters claim they hear whispers on the 2nd floor and also hear disembodied footsteps walking down the hallway.
Many horror movies are known to have curses placed upon them, due to the fact that when the producer, director, actors and actresses are playing up a role, they throw in a lot of negative energy which can manifest negative energy causing accidents, deaths and technical malfunctions. For an example we have the movie Poltergeist, I was involved with the TV show – Case Closed with AJ Benza in regard to the Poltergeist movie curse. Other cursed movies, The Exorcist, Omen and many others. When you deal with supernatural evil, even if you are acting, you may have the tendency of conjuring up real evil energy on a movie set. After the filming of The Shining, real evil may have manifested. Director Boris Sagal was killed in an accident on the third day of filming the NBC-TV miniseries World War III (1982), when he walked into the tail rotor blades of a helicopter in Timberline Lodge’s parking lot. Is it possible that Boris Sagal experienced a temporary curse placed upon the lodge, because of the movie The Shining? The reason why I say it’s a temporary curse, because other films have been prominent at the lodge and no deaths or accidents have happened. Most recently, Timberline Lodge was a location for the 2014 feature film, Wild. With the filming of Wild, everything was normal on the set. Could perhaps the curse come again, with the now recent movie Doctor Sleep? See trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOzFZxB-8cw Only time will tell.
With the paranormal hotline, I do have one report of the Timberline Lodge. Donny Fuginetti of Seattle, Washington says that in 1997, he visited the lodge with his wife and as they explored the lodge, the 2nd floor caused his wife, a sensitive to become nauseated. She got so nauseated, that she had to throw up in the restroom. When she looked in the bathroom mirror, she saw a disfigured woman behind her. The disfigured woman stuck out her tongue and moved it back and forth with a smirk on her face. Donny’s wife looked back and the disfigured woman was gone. Donny’s wife passed out. Donny took his wife outside of the lodge immediately and got her into the car, as they drove away, Donny’s wife was back to normal again. Donny says the lodge is definitely haunted and that there are evil entities at this lodge.
Special Note: Three hotels have a connection to Stephen King’s The Shining, they are: 1. Timberline Lodge for the original The Shining movie. Exteriors of the Timberline Lodge were used to depict the Overlook Hotel. 2. Ahwahnee Hotel interiors were used for the Overlook Hotel. The lobby, elevators and Great Lounge were used for the interiors of the Overlook Hotel. 3. Stanley Hotel in Colorado was the true inspiration for Stephen King. Stephen and his wife Tabitha stayed one night in this hotel. Stephen was suffering with writer’s block for his The Shining novel and the Stanley Hotel caused Stephen King’s writing juices to start flowing again. Warner Brothers when filming the TV adaption of the Shining, filmed at the exteriors of the Stanley Hotel. They say that the Stanley Hotel is very haunted. One day, I would like to investigate the Stanley Hotel.
By Paul Dale Roberts, HPI’s Fortean Sleuth
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