The Stanley Hotel is no stranger to spooky experiences. The Colorado mountain resort is best known as the key locale in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie, The Shining, where ghosts and a murderously unhinged Jack Nicholson haunted its halls. Starting in 2014, however, Aiden Sinclair began performing his own unearthly magic show there in various venue spaces on the property.
“On some nights, we’d be in a room that sat 300 people, and we would sell that out, and then the next night, we might be in a room that had only 20 seats in capacity, and we would sell that out,” Aiden told Genii. “The question got asked: ‘Why are you making so much money on this night and not so much money on the next night?’ And when we explained that it had to do with the availability of the venue, it became really clear that we needed a dedicated space.”
To that end, The Stanley broke ground in 2018 on a subterranean theater found beneath the hotel’s carriage house, which was built in 1909 and is the last original structure found on the resort’s campus. The theater is also mysteriously hidden behind a bookcase, and opened in 2020 as Aiden Sinclair’s Underground, or The Underground for short.
Parlor Magic in a Speakeasy Setting
The theater is a cabaret design that accommodates 75 guests on three tiers of seating, replete with small tables where patrons can place their drinks while watching the show. “The vibe of the room is very industrial, with a speakeasy feel to it,” said Aiden. “All of the walls and the fixtures in the building are historic wood that was on property at The Stanley Hotel since 1907, and was part of the original carriage house structure.”
In the same room as the theater, there are exhibits of magic and paranormal-adjacent artifacts, including reportedly haunted items from The Titanic, The Queen Mary, and the Winchester Mystery House. Guests can also examine items previously owned by occultist Aleister Crowley and spiritualist Anna Eva Fay, as well as a pair of Houdini’s handcuffs.
TOP: Aiden SInclair is the resident performer at The Underground LEFT: Jared Koff entertains audiences in the intimate parlour setting RIGHT: Nick Wallace of Canada presents some mind-melting magic
About 70 percent of patrons to The Underground are staying at the hotel, with the remainder made up of locals and tourists staying elsewhere in the area. Many start off their night dining at The Post, a restaurant in the aforementioned carriage house of The Stanley, and then grab a drink and head down a set of stairs to what feels like a library. There, they’re greeted by a host and ushered through a hidden bookcase door into the theater for the show.
Theatrical Magic
The venue brings in outside acts during their peak season, usually for about two weeks at a time. When booking, Aiden looks for magicians with a specific style. “Everything we do at The Underground is story- and narrative-driven,” he said. “We want our guests to experience a 70- to 90-minute narrative-style show. So the shows are long form. We don’t really book comedy acts, and we don’t really book magicians that follow the format of like, ‘Let me show you a trick, and another trick, and another trick.’ It’s really not about the tricks for us. It’s about the narrative and the story being told… the magic punctuates the story, not the other way around.” In that vein, previous performers at The Underground include Christian Cagigal, Billy Kidd, Jared Kopf, and Zabrecky.
The Underground runs seven days a week from the first week of May to the last week of October. The rest of the year, there are shows on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, which Aiden usually performs. Since 2022, there has also been another magic venue in The Stanley: a 13-seat séance show presented by Hannibal, which runs Wednesdays through Sundays year-round. With these two venues, The Stanley will remain a place full of otherworldly experiences.
Photos courtesy of Aiden Sinclair
Aiden Sinclair's Underground
A magical speakeasy lounge at The Stanley Hotel where the world-class illusionists perform in an intimate parlor seetting.