The Stanley Hotel - The Story Of Room 217/237, Stephen King/Stanley Kubrick and 'The Shining'?

Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel

The Stanley Hotel

I came across the above video about the history of room 217 in the Stanley Hotel, which Stephen King stayed in one night and came up with the idea to write 'The Shining' after having a nightmare while sleeping in that room.

"The Shining is a horror novel by American author Stephen King. Published in 1977, it is King's third published novel and first hardback bestseller: the success of the book firmly established King as a preeminent author in the horror genre.

The setting and characters are influenced by King's personal experiences, including both his visit to The Stanley Hotel in 1974 and his recovery from alcoholism.

The novel was followed by a sequel, Doctor Sleep, published in 2013."

Ironically, Stanley Kubrick took Stephen King's novel which was written because of King's nightmare in room 217 of the Stanley Hotel and turned it into a movie, but changed the room number in the film to 237.

"The room number 217 has been changed to 237.

Timberline Lodge, located on Mt. Hood in Oregon, was used for the exterior shots of the fictional Overlook Hotel.

The Lodge requested that Kubrick not depict Room 217 (featured in the book) in The Shining, because future guests at the Lodge might be afraid to stay there, and a nonexistent room, 237, was substituted in the film. Contrary to the hotel's expectations, Room 217 is requested more often than any other room at Timberline."

"There are fringe analyses relating this number change to rumors that Kubrick faked the first moon landing, as there are approximately 237,000 miles between Earth and Moon and the movie is a subtle confession of his involvement.

Another theory is an obsession with the number 42 and its forms in the movie and the product of the digits in 237 is 42."

"Although Stephen King fans were critical of the novel's adaptation on the grounds that Kubrick altered and reduced the novel's themes, a defense of Kubrick's approach was made in Steve Biodrowski's review of the film.

He argues that as in earlier films, Kubrick stripped out the back story of the film, reducing it down to a "basic narrative line", making the characters more like archetypes.

His review of the film is one of the few to go into detailed comparison with the novel.

He writes, "The result ...[is] a brilliant, ambitious attempt to shoot a horror film without the Gothic trappings of shadows and cobwebs so often associated with the genre.""

The only reason I wrote this post was because I was watching a video of Jasun Horsley's about his new book, 'Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering, and the Psychology of Fragmentation' and the video had 217 views.

The character of Jack is pretty much the prisoner of infinity as well in Kubrick's movie 'The Shining'.

As is David Bowie's character in the 'Twin Peaks' series of David Lynch's.

But we ain't gonna talk about Judy here;-)

Is it an accident that a book on 'Christ' is in the background?

Bowie of course was the inspiration for PK Dick's Gnostic novel 'Valis' after Dick had seen Bowie in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'.

So, it's kind of interesting that Jasun released his book on Easter Sunday/April Fools'Day. 

Which is why I like synchromystism, so much, when it comes to the bigger picture;-)

Journey on!

As soon as I had thought I had come to the end of my journey with this post I saw that the above interview with Jeff Kripal (who Jasun refers to in his video) was just posted at the Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio site.

Unfortunately, I was 5 views too late with this video to get a 217 view count:-)