Shelter Mountain Inn is a location introduced in The Ring. A year-long open campsite, Shelter Mountain became the centrepoint of the creation of The Cursed Video Tape made by Samara Morgan who was murdered by her adoptive mother Anna Morgan. Shelter Mountain plays a pivotal role in the film.
Description[]
Shelter Mountain is not a mountain, but actually built on the coast near a cliff edge. Around the campsite is a large forest, and a large lake is shown to be hidden behind the Innkeeper's office where visitors can take canoes out onto the lake. An old well was built in the middle of a clearing not too far from the cliff, but it was built over with Cabin 12. Several cabins were constructed between 1978 and 2002. A Japanese maple tree stands on a hill overlooking where the well is built.
The Innkeeper[]
The campsite is run by an unnamed innkeeper. He is middle-aged, and has a cheery disposition, often seen playing with a deck of cards and challenging visitors to pick a card which he will correctly guess, although his guesswork is shown to be quite poor. He met Katie Embry, Josh Turnadot, Scott Conroy and Stacey Nyugen when they visit Shelter Mountain, but gets annoyed when they did not pay and complained about the television in Cabin 12, unaware that they discovered Samara's video tape within. Rachel Keller, Katie's aunt, visits him during her investigation of the tape and spots it on a shelf in his office, sneaking it into her bag when he looks away. She then decides to watch the tape in Cabin 12. In a deleted scene found on the film's DVD, it reveals Noah Clay goes to Shelter Mountain to investigate the tape's origins. He finds rotting food in the innkeeper's office, but then spots a canoe out on the lake. Reeling in the canoe, Noah finds the innkeeper within, dead with a deformed face, revealing he watched the video at some point, likely before Rachel watched it. It is likely that Samara climbed out of the television in his office due to puddles of water found by Noah, but fled out into the lake only to be killed by Samara.
The Well[]
An infamous image of The Ring franchise, the well is where Anna dropped Samara's body after knocking her out. A large circular well made from stone, the well is shown to be quite deep and has a cover to seal up the well. Anna knocked out Samara before dropping her down the well and sealing her in. Samara lasted seven days in the well but died via drowning. Eventually, the well was built over with Cabin 12, Samara's spirit presumably using her nensha powers to create the video tape. Rachel and Noah manage to locate the well and find Samara's corpse, handing it over to the authorities. The well is later revisited in different forms, including Samara's first escape of it to murder Noah, and then reappears in The Ring Two in the video tape's black and white world, Rachel trapping Samara in the well once again.
History[]
Shelter Mountain's founding remains unknown, but Richard Morgan and his wife Anna often visited the campsite every winter for vacation. In 1978, the two visited with their daughter Samara whose supernatural powers were driving Anna crazy. Whilst standing in front of the camp's well admiring the maple tree on the opposing hill, Samara is attacked from behind by Anna who suffocates her with a garbage bag and then pushes her down the well, sealing her in. Anna committed suicide moments later. Samara herself survived in the well for seven days, attempting to escape by scaling the walls but failed, breaking off her nails and fingertips in the process. She drowned on the seventh day. At some point, a series of rental cabins were constructed around the site, Cabin 12 being built over the well, hidden under the cabin's floorboards.
Years on, the camp is visited by Katie Embry and her friends Josh, Scott and Stacey for the weekend, but they end up discovering the cursed video tape and become the first victims of Samara's wrath a week later. The camp's innkeeper also watched the video at some point and died too. Beforehand, Rachel Keller visits the camp investigating the tape. She watches it in Cabin 12, and is cursed as a result. Noah Clay becomes involved, visiting the campsite only to find the innkeeper dead. Rachel and Noah later visit Cabin 12 one more time on Rachel's seventh day, the two finding the well hidden under the cabin's floorboards. They later find Samara's corpse at the bottom of the well, reporting it to the authorities who took Samara's body away. Shelter Mountain's status as a campsite remain unknown after the incident but thirties years of hidden history are finally laid to rest.