ESTES PARK, Colo. — When a young Stephen King checked into the Stanley Hotel here in 1974, he had a nightmare that inspired him to write “The Shining,” the novel that went on to become Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cult classic film.

For years, operators of the Stanley Hotel have used “The Shining” and its paranormal plot as pure marketing gold: The resort retains an in-house psychic, offers ghost tours to tens of thousands of visitors a year, and hosts a film festival at which townspeople dress up as zombies and eat “brains.” Mr. Kubrick’s movie plays on a loop in hotel rooms, and the property’s owner, John W. Cullen, said the story had helped him turn the Stanley — which, aside from the horror tie-in, has amazing views of Rocky Mountain National Park — into an “economic fortress.”

Missing from the experience, however, has been the hedge maze that Mr. Kubrick used as the setting for the film’s climax, in which the crazed winter caretaker of the hotel — played by a demonic-looking Jack Nicholson — chases his young son, Danny, with an ax. Danny, who has been having visions of ghosts, famously writes “Redrum” on the wall (read it backward if you have not seen the movie).

Image Credit... The New York Times

But generations of real-life visitors to the Stanley have been let down to find that the fictional labyrinth is just that. “People kept on looking for the maze,” Mr. Cullen said.