Well, I was talking about the cumulative weight of millions of events in the human experience considered for quality, quantity and consistency.
A sceptic can argue any one case like the Stanley Hotel into infinity but my position is based on my judgment of the entire phenomena. So many uncelebrated real-world cases even with physical phenomena, multiple witnesses, etc..
Sure, most are fake or explainable. Few could be real, but it isn't incontrovertible proof. Better to keep an open mind and look at each separately. The Stanley Hotel capitalizes on its reputation with tours and such so they make money off the publicity.
There is the story of room 217 and the story of an explosion that happened there.
"In 1911, Room 217 was the Presidential Suite, said Jesse Freitas, the hotel's archivist: an L-shaped room that took up the space that now houses two rooms: 217 and 215. On the evening of June 25 of that year, a thunderstorm cut the power and all of the hotel's guests were taken down to the lobby while staff was charged with lighting the back-up acetylene gas lamps. There was an unknown gas leak when chambermaid Elizabeth Wilson entered Room 217 with a lit candle.
"The gas didn't have an odor in that time period," said Freitas, "so she couldn't smell anything. As soon as she entered the room, there was an instant explosion." The massive blast destroyed about 10% of the nearly 70,000 square-foot hotel, it's entire west wing. "It was a compression explosion," Freitas explained, "so it actually put out its own fire, otherwise it would have burned down the hotel because it is mostly wood, a timber-frame structure." The force of the explosion sent Wilson crashing into the MacGregor Dining Room located directly under Room 217. She suffered two broken ankles, but recovered from her injuries. Stanley paid her all her medical bills and after she recuperated, Wilson was made head chambermaid and worked at the hotel until her death in the 1950s. After her death, she purportedly began to haunt the room, sometimes by folding guests' clothing and putting them away. If an unmarried couple is occupying the room, Freitas said, the very proper Mrs. Wilson's ghost may climb into bed with them and try to force them apart.
That's the official story as told by Freitas, the one that is generally accepted as what really happened. But any good ghost story also contains quite a bit of mystery. Five different Colorado news accounts of the incident reported five different - sometimes vastly different - stories. The Denver Times reported just a day later that the chambermaid's name was Elizabeth Lambert and that she was fatally injured. The same report said that she was joined on the second floor by another maid, Eva Colbern, who was "thrown through a wall onto the hotel porch.. but she was merely stunned.
This is the most paranormal story we tell because it's such a mystery," said Freitas. No employee records from the time period are still at the hotel, and no photograph of Elizabeth-Lizzie-Wilson-Lambert-Leitenbergher of Lancaster, PA, can be found."
...
However, the news accounts of what happened are all different.
"Five different Colorado news accounts of the incident reported five different - sometimes vastly different - stories. The Denver Times reported just a day later that the chambermaid's name was Elizabeth Lambert and that she was fatally injured. The same report said that she was joined on the second floor by another maid, Eva Colbern, who was "thrown through a wall onto the hotel porch.. but she was merely stunned."
The Denver Post also reported Elizabeth "Lambert" was fatally injured during her fall into the dining room "just as a fashionable throng of guests was finishing dinner." Somehow all of the guests narrowly escaped injury as Room 217 fell into their laps. But this account describes a fire that "added to the damage" which was heroically put out by Miss Colburn after she had been "blown through a hole in the wall, onto the porch." She then grabbed a fire extinguisher and began fighting the flames. A third maid, Mary Donaldson, was also caught in the explosion (according to the Post), and she too found an extinguisher and began to put out the fire.
The Colorado Springs Gazette reported a story close to what is accepted as the truth, but added that an addition seven people were injured. The report further identified the broken-ankle victim as head chambermaid, Elizabeth Wilson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
A report that ran in the Rocky Mountain News was a submitted story, the byline read "special to the News." It reported the accepted true version of Wilson sustaining two broken ankles, but further reported Alfred Lamborn, general manager of the hotel, and wife and daughter were having dinner in the room below. "A large steel girder from the second floor crashed down, landing between the three, smashing the table," stated the News, "The party escaped with bruises." This report also said that the incident started while testing the acetelyne gas system and a small explosion had occurred about an hour prior to the big one. Then, the door to Room 217 blew off. "Employees then went in search of the leak to the room on second floor. A moment later, a terrific detonation startled the guests of the hotel."
And finally, the Fort Collins Weekly Courier reported that the acetelyne gas explosion was a result of unknown circumstances, since the gaslights were not in operation at the time. This report claimed that guests had been saved because "a late dinner was to be served" that evening. Curiously, in the Fort Collins report the victim is named Lizzie Leitenbergher.
None of the reports mentioned a thunderstorm, and all of the reports said the victim(s) were taken to Longmont Hospital. Also, all the stories agree the explosion occurred at around 8 pm."
I can accept differing accounts from eyewitnesses, but five different ones from newspapers of that period is mysterious. And what happened to the records? I don't think the hotel was trying to give misleading or different information on purpose. Maybe the employees or people who were there had differing accounts to tell in their shock and confusion. Investigating something and not having a logical explanation for it can be a bit scary.
