Texas woman Kim Kimberly was touring the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, last month when she captured a mysterious figure in one of her photographs, according to a report from CBS4 Denver.

An enlarged image of the mysterious figure captured on camera by Kimberly. (Kim Kimberly)

The Stanley Hotel was built in 1909 and has a reputation for being haunted that goes back decades. Reported activity includes everything from phantom housekeepers to vortexes of spiritual energy and the sounds of unseen children playing. Horror writer Stephen King even drew the inspiration for his novel The Shining from the reputedly haunted hotel. The hotel has since become a popular spot for paranormal investigation, hosting paranormal television shows like Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters, and even offering ghost tours for its guests.

“I decided to do one of the ghost tours of the hotel with my friends,” Kimberly told CBS4. “They tell you to take pictures so I took a ton, you can ask my family… I take at least two to three pictures in a row of the same thing.”

The photo in which the mysterious figure appears was taken at 9:03 p.m. on May 27th, said Kimberly, followed by another less than a minute later. At the time, she didn't notice anything unusual.

The two photographs of that section of the Stanley Hotel taken by Kimberly. (Kim Kimberly)

“…there was no one in the windows when I took those photos,” Kimberly said. “My friends were taking photos as well and they didn’t see it either—until I looked back at my photos.”

Skeptics might explain the image as a mannequin or pareidolia—the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.

Kimberly, however, thinks the figure looks like a woman or girl.

“Some people are saying curtain—the curtains are the exact same in every window, they are see-through…and if it was curtains, what is the dark area that looks like hair, and the skin tone color? That can’t be a shadow," she said. “If it was a mannequin, I would have seen it while taking the photo—and others would have got it on camera as well. Besides, I took a photo at 9:03 and 9:04—and it’s there in one and not the other.”

Enlarged photos of the window in which the figure appeared. (Kim Kimberly)

Kimberly also denied any deliberate hoaxing, such as tampering with the image through Photoshop.

“That’s not the case,” she said. “I have no idea how that even works.”

It’s unclear if anyone could have been in the room at the time that Kimberly took the photos, and Stanley Hotel Marketing Manager Kristina Rusch declined to comment on the photos in response to an inquiry by CBS4.

As for Kimberly, the eerie photo at least made for an interesting vacation, although, she said, “I don’t know if I could ever stay the night in [that room] because it is a creepy photo."

 

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