What is the meaning of room 237 in The Shining?

This article contains references to suicide.

Mention “Room 237” to a horror fan; chances are they'll prick up their ears immediately. It's one of the focal points of Stephen King's novel. The brilliant and Stanley Kubrick's classic 1980 film adaptation. The ghost of a dead woman haunts the bathroom and haunts Danny Torrance even after he escapes from the Overlook Hotel, as told in the sequel, Doctor Sleep.

It's one of the most terrifying sequences in the book and the film, which helps The brilliant become a horror classic. Room 237 (or room 217, which is the number used in the novel) has a surprisingly detailed history. and a backstory involving the real-life hotels that replaced the Overlook. This applies to both its spectral occupant and the physical space itself.

Updated September 23, 2024 by Robert Vaux: Few locations in King's work have the eerie resonance of the Overlook, which remains one of the greatest haunted houses in all of literature. Much of that comes from its ghostly occupants, memorable and frightening no matter what version of the story they appear in, and Lorraine Massey is the best of the bunch. This article has been updated with additional information about Room 237's macabre permanent resident, and the formatting has been changed to meet current CBR guidelines.

Is there a room 237 at the Stanley Hotel?

The Overlook is famously based on the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, which was a major inspiration for The brilliant. Stephen King and his wife Tabitha stayed in room 217 on the night of October 30, 1974. Like the Overlook, the Stanley closed for the winter, and the two were the only guests booked that night. King says he spent a lot of time wandering the halls and having drinks at the bar with a bartender named Grady. That night, he had a bad dream in which his then-three-year-old son (horror author Joe Hill) was being chased down the hotel hallway by a fire hose. A variation of the dream made it into the novel (though Kubrick refused to include it in the film), and Room 217 became Mrs. Massey's haunting at the Overlook.

The room number change came with the film, which used the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon for exterior shots.. When production began, the hotel expressed concern that people would not want to stay in Room 217 if they associated it with a horror story. Kubrick changed the number to 237 since the Timberline does not have a Room 237. Ironically, the film's fame had the opposite effect, and the Timberline's website now states that more people want to stay in Room 217 than any other suite. The Stanley Hotel has since renamed its room 217 The Stephen King Suite in honor of the author. The 1997 TV miniseries version The brilliant was filmed at the Stanley and restored the room number to 217 in its plot.

Normality is the point in room 237

The hotel's environment was intended to serve as a break from the more traditional haunted houses, which helped give The brilliant its peculiarity. Hotels are a strange convergence of public and private spaces, where people can conduct business behind closed doors, only to leave that same space to a stranger the next night. Over the decades, the Overlook has become a repository for countless tragedies, including murders, suicides, and corruption of all kinds. Once the bodies are gone, the staff simply cleans up and rents the space out again. Over time, layers of history build up, some of it quite horrific, on perfectly ordinary hotels in the real world.

King—and eventually Kubrick—simply added literal ghosts to the equation. Room 237 is the most prominent manifestation of this in both the novel and the film. It is no different from any other room around, and over the course of the Overlook’s long history, it has likely hosted thousands of guests with no unpleasant experiences. This normalcy is a big part of why the room and its occupants have such power: they remind the audience that ghosts can appear anywhere.

What's happening in room 237?

Room 237 contains the ghost of a dead woman, who emerges from the bathroom and tries to strangle Danny Torrance when he dares to enter. Her father, Jack, later investigates her claims about the mysterious woman in the room. He sees signs of her in King's book but retreats before she can attack him. In the film, she appears as a beautiful young woman and Jack embraces her before she turns into a rotting corpse.

King uses this as a catalyst for Jack Torrance's alcoholism and rage, as his wife Wendy initially blames him for Danny's injuries. The author's build-up to the initial confrontation is equally powerful, with Danny comparing the room to the story of Bluebeard and his wives and believing the ghost can't hurt him until it wraps its hands around his throat. Kubrick heightens this with a nail-biting suspense sequence, as ominous music and a fake human heartbeat play over Jack's slow inspection of the room.

Color theory also plays a large part in the unsettling quality of the scene. The carpet is a Joker-esque combination of bright green and purple, with dull lavender furniture and a bathroom decorated in an Art Deco mint green. The unwelcome clash of colors is further accentuated by the famous burnt orange and umber hexagonal carpet in the hallway outside the room, which creates a sense of dread and unease despite its seemingly bright atmosphere.

Who is the woman in room 237?

The woman's name is Lorraine Massey and King tells her story through several cryptic passages in The brilliant AND Doctor Sleep. She is the most recent addition to the Overlook's collection of ghosts, which helps explain why she is so powerful. The wife of a New York lawyer, she came to the hotel to cheat on her husband with much younger men and quickly took to seducing young bellhops.

She hid a deep and persistent self-hatred that her money could not soothe. In July 1977, her lover checked out of the hotel and left her behind. Abandoned and alone, she spent the next day drinking at the Colorado Lounge, then went up to her room and slit her wrists. in the bathtub. Her spirit appears either as the beautiful woman she is or as the rotting corpse she becomes.

Mrs. Massey and Room 237 reveal a typical Stephen King trope

Massey's tragedy is rather banal, even sad, which makes his situation all the more worrying. Unlike other ghosts such as Horace Derwent, it features no occult elements or overt criminality.: is just a lonely person succumbing to despair. Her need for love and anger at being left alone drive the hostility and cruelty of the ghost she becomes. King's novels emphasize the normalcy of her tragedy and a reflection of the terrible things that have happened behind closed doors throughout the Overlook's history. This fits a common theme in King's work: how small, banal evils attract much larger, more terrifying evils.

The vampire Barlow in Salem's Lot, for example, he is attracted by the small-time scams and abuses of the city, as is His sinister clown Pennywise. Similarly, Carrie White’s telekinetic revenge is prompted by the depressingly normal acts of high school bullying. Mrs. Massey is cut from the same cloth, a sad soul whose quiet tragedy becomes monstrous within the confines of the Overlook. Her lair in Room 237 reflects this. There is nothing unusual about the room or the act, save for the terrible thing that happened there one night. That was enough to create a true horror.

What happened to Danny in room 237?

Dick Hallorann, the psychic chef at the Overlook Hotel, becomes aware of Mrs. Massey's ghost after a maid with a slight ability to glow reports seeing her in the tub. He does not believe she can harm anyone and is essentially just a shadow with no power to cause physical harm. However, he tells Danny to stay outside anyway rather than face the restless spirit. He is unaware of how powerful Danny's glow is and how it attracts the hotel's ghosts to him. Danny tries to stay away from room 237, but curiosity gets the better of him, and Mrs. Massey attacks him before he can escape. It further explains how Mrs. Massey may appear to Danny later in life.

Doctor Sleep (both the novel and the film) opens with her threatening the boy in the Torrances' new house in Florida. Hallorann's ghost teaches him how to imprison her in a mental box in his mind. In the film, he frees her and the other hotel ghosts who have been chasing him during the final battle with Rose the Hat. In the novel, Massey remains in his box and the ghost of the hotel's gangster owner, Horace Derwent, is freed. However, She resists despite the destruction of the Overlook.The film version of Doctor Sleep ends with her clinging to the young Abra Stone, whose powers are even stronger than Danny's. The film ends with Abra preparing to lock her in a mental box like Danny did.

Mrs. Massey resists in part because of Danny's experiences

More than any other ghost at the Overlook, Mrs. Massey terrifies Danny for obvious reasons. He conquers that fear when he “locks” her in, leaving her trapped in a prison in his mind for years. This is a fitting sign of how he can heal from the experience and move on with his life without being haunted by the experience of Room 237.

At the same time, however, Mrs. Massey never truly leaves, due to the trauma she has inflicted on him. Eventually he frees her and she moves to Abra, undiminished by her time in that purgatorial box. Sure, Abra will almost certainly rush her back there, and she may finally disappear forever afterward, with no one new to haunt. But the very fact that she sticks around after the Overlook itself has burned down tells how deeply he affected his young victim in Shining.

The Shining is currently streaming on Max. Doctor Sleep is currently streaming on Paramount+