Written by Andrew K. Arnett

There is a lot of magick embedded in The Shining, the horror classic by freak genius auteur Stanley Kubrick. Perhaps he meant to give us a cinematic Rubik’s Cube, a multi-layered touchstone for opening portals into other dimensions. I say this with the least poetic intention possible. There is a creeping weirdness here that affects the viewer; a black hole in the time-space continuum. It all began of course with Stephen King who spent a night in room 217 of the Stanley Hotel. A dream he had that night inspired him to write The Shining. Room 217 turns up in King’s novel, but the room number does not turn up in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and there are certain theories regarding why this may be. 

For the movie, Kubrick changed the room number 217 to 237 and the official reason noted for this change is to prevent guests from being scared of staying in room 217. But there’s a conspiracy theory that gives another reason. According to John Holland, the Kubrick film The Shining is a “ghost film,” about things in-between that are unseen. The difference between room 217 and 237 isn’t necessarily the room itself but rather, the numbers. If you add the sum of 2+1+7 you get 10. The sum of 2+3+7 is 12. There you have 10 and 12. In between these two numbers is the number 11. This 11 represents the in-between number, the “ghost number.” Coincidently, The Shining is Kubrick’s eleventh cinematic film. Some researchers suggest that the movie is a cinematic rendering of the number itself.

If this is the case, then it opens up a helluva lot of possibilities for interpretation. The first thing I notice is that the number 11 is a double number, in that there are two identical digits: 1+1. If we look at the film from this perspective, that is, the motif of “doubles,” then a plethora of items pop out. First and foremost there is the striking image of the Twins. Two sisters who are identical twins standing in the hallway as Danny rides his Big Wheel through the empty hallways of the hotel. This is juxtaposed with an image of the two girls lying bloody and massacred by an axe. It is a horrific vision that Danny has and he stops to try to clear the image out of his mind. Surely it is one of the most striking images of the movie.

This motif of the double as it applies to The Shining is so prolific that it appears to go on forever, duplicating itself not only in the art forms of the novel and cinema but bleeds into real life as well. Here is one example: the founder of the Stanley Hotel, in real life, was a man named F.O. Stanley. The director of the movie is named, of course, Stanley Kubrick. An interesting doubling up of the name right there. Here is another: the movie is connected to not one hotel but rather two hotels—The Stanley Hotel in Colorado and the Timberline Lodge in Oregon whose exterior is used in the movie. Two hotels for the price of one movie. Not a bad deal.

Andrew K. Arnett is a writer for New Dawn Magazine and author of the book The Crowley Conspiracy available on Amazon.