Characters / The Shining

This is the character page for The Shining, encompassing its adaptations, and its sequel Doctor Sleep.

The Torrance Family

Danny

Daniel Anthony "Danny" Torrance

Played by: Danny Lloyd (1980 film); Courtland Mead (child) and Wil Horneff (adult) (1997 miniseries); Roger Dale Floyd (child) and Ewan McGregor (adult) (Doctor Sleep)

"Do you really want to go and live in that hotel for the winter?"

A five-year old boy and the only child of Jack and Wendy Torrance. Danny is a "Shiner", a person with psychic abilities, and one of the strongest born in recent memory, with access to telepathic and clairvoyant powers that have only begun to grow. However, because of his youth, Danny has difficulties controlling his abilities, and though he doesn't know it yet, he comes with some very dangerous drawbacks...

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• Adorably Precocious Child: In the novel, he is described as extraordinary and quite self reliant for a five-year-old.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: A relatively minor case. As an adult, Dan is described in Doctor Sleep as being attractive, but rough and hard-worn. In the film adaptation, he's played by the supremely gentlemanly Ewan McGregor.
• Affectionate Nickname: Danny's parents call him "Doc" sometimes.
• The Alcoholic: Like father, like son. Dan spirals headlong into alcoholism in the years following his time at the Overlook, with Doctor Sleep following his efforts to stay sober.
• Almighty Janitor: Dan becomes an Almighty Orderly, specifically, in his older years, using his telepathic powers to soothe dying hospice patients in their final moments and help them die peacefully.
• And Your Reward Is Infancy: He turns back into a child when he dies in the second movie and has a Ghost Reunion Ending with his mother. He's later seen as an adult talking to Abra.
• The Atoner: Dan spends Doctor Sleep trying to atone for his "bottom" as an alcoholic: stealing all of a single mother's money and knowingly leaving her and her toddler to fend for themselves in an abusive household.
• Beard of Sorrow: Wears one of these in the sequel before the eight-year Time Skip in which he regains his sobriety.
• Blessed with Suck: Is gifted with the Shining but while he can do neat tricks with it in the sequel, the experience at the Overlook and the fact that he could perceive his mother's impending death as a swarm of flies covering her face means that he's mostly has had bad experiences because of it.
• Break the Cutie: Undergoes immense trauma because of the Overlook, and eventually slides into alcoholism and drug abuse as an adult as a way to forget. The movie version actually has it even worse, as not only does he suffer through the Overlooks horror, he's also forced to psychically witness Halloran's death at Jack's hands, and thus, also doesn't have Halloran's support in the aftermath, which let the novel version regain some semblance of a normal life. As a result, movie Danny is so traumatized by his experiences that he regresses mentally and stops talking. It's not until he's visited by Hallorans spirit, who shows him how to seal away the ghosts of the Overlook when they begin haunting him, that he begins to heal a little. On the plus side, his experiences inspired him to mute his Shining enough that he was undetected by the True Knot and spared a potentially gruesome death in his youth; this allowed him to work with Abra and help slay members of the True Knot without them knowing positively of his existence, until the end when he confronts Rose.
• Children Are Innocent: Despite his great powers, Danny is too young to make sense of most of what he sees, such as adults lusting after each other.
• Compelling Voice: The title Doctor Sleep shows Dan being called "Doc", and working in hospice care. He helps patients pass on, by telling them to go to sleep. "Doctor Sleep."
• Cool Uncle: To Abra, when it is revealed Jack is her real grandfather. He's not in the movie, but Abra calls him 'Uncle Dan' so they can keep meeting each other in order to protect each other and fight the True Knot.
• Death by Adaptation: Is killed in a boiler explosion in the second movie when he survives the book.
• The Determinator: Despite all he endures and being seriously tempted, he never breaks his sobriety.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In the Doctor Sleep novel, he's able to make peace with the demons of his past, and ends the book celebrating both his 15 years of sobriety and Abra's 15th birthday, having been accepted by the Stones as a member of the family.
• The Empath: He can read people's minds at will, and even when not trying can pick up the emotions or strong thoughts going on through their minds.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He's not a villain but Dan is undeniably a seriously troubled man with Jack's same isues. However, he dearly loved his mother, especially after the two survived Jack's rampage, and her death is heavily implied to have played a major role in his decline.
• Fainting Seer: His visions occasionally overwhelm him, much to the concern of his parents.
• Freudian Excuse: Given all he went through, it's hardly surprising he grew up to be a seriously troubled man.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: In his later years, Dan's temper is just as bad as his father's, if not worse. Unlike Jack, he's actually been in trouble with the law for it.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: Starts out with a very rough appearance due to his alcoholism and violent brawls and looks considerably better and more dashing after the eight year jump ahead.
• The Hero Dies: In the Doctor Sleep movie, the main protagonist of the Shining duology bites it at the end of the film.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the Doctor Sleep movie, he blows up the Overlook with him inside it to destroy the spirits inhabiting it.
• I Am Not My Father: Dan takes pains in his later years to differentiate himself from Jack. This is perhaps best encapsulated by what he screams into Rose's head when she tries to telepathically force him to strangle Abra.
  Rose: Your father knew how to deal with stupid, disobedient women, and his father before him. Sometimes a woman just needs to take her medicine. She needs—
  Dan: MY FATHER KNEW NOTHING!
• I See Dead People: He has the power to see ghosts—both the incredibly malicious, lingering spirits kind and the kind that are echoes of past events.
• Informed Attribute: In the Kubrick film, he actually almost never gets called "Doc" by his parents beyond the scene with Wendy and Halloran about the matter, unlike other versions where they actually do. It appears this bit is only present in the film to give something that would establish Danny and Halloran's Shining connection.
• It's All My Fault: In stark contrast with his father, as an adult and sober Dan is far more willing to accept personal responsibility for his actions and their consequences.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As an adult, Dan is rough around the edges, possessed of a vile temper, and haunted by some fairly foul things he did as an alcoholic, but is nevertheless just as empathetic and compassionate as he was in his childhood.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: While he inherits Jack's flaws, Danny stands apart from him by genuinely taking responsibility and trying to get better and maintaining his sobriety as well as showing sincere kindness and selflessness that Jack never did.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: He eventually lost contact with Halloran as he grew up and succumbed to alcoholism. By the time he looks him up in Doctor Sleep, hoping that Halloran might still be alive, he finds out that the old man died in 1999, invoking this trope.
• Nighttime Bathroom Phobia: At the beginning of the book, Danny is still terrified of what he experienced at the Overlook, and refuses to use the bathroom at night because he sees Mrs. Massey in the bathtub and is scared she will hurt him.
• Only Friend: Becomes this for Abra in the film version of the sequel since kids her own age shun her because they think she's weird (she’s shown to have friends she spends time with in the book). Plus, he's the only other person she's met who has the same psychic abilities she does.

• Psychic Powers: Danny has an Imaginary Friend named Tony (in the novel its eventually revealed that Tony is just a secondary personality Danny subconsciously created to help deal with his powers) who shows him visions of the future. He's also telepathic and can read minds, though mostly feelings and loud thoughts.
• Recovered Addict: He achieves eight years of sobriety and unlike Jack, he doesn't fall off the wagon when tempted.
• Spanner in the Works: The True Knot is well aware of Abra and the sheer strength of her abilities, with Rose in particular considering her something of an Arch-Enemy due to the number of times Abra defeats and humiliates her. However, none of them know a damn thing about Danny Torrance, to the point that they aren't even aware he exists. This allows Danny to wipe out the entire clan in one fell swoop, and he unleashes the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel from his mind to finish off Rose once and for all. Rose even lampshades this trope near the end of the movie.
  Rose: How the hell did we miss you?!
• Spirit Advisor: At the end of the second movie, he advises Abra to use her abilities rather than hiding them.
• Split-Personality Takeover: One choice point in the movie where it seems like Tony has overtaken Danny, with him saying that Danny's gone away to Wendy, as well as Tony/Danny's chanting of "redrum" as he draws the word on the door.
• Still Sucks Thumb: We see him doing this in the sequel after getting scared by ghosts.
• Student–Master Team: With Abra.
• Summon Bigger Fish: In the Doctor Sleep film, his plan to defeat Rose the Hat is to lure her to the Overlook Hotel, wherein he unleashes all of the spirits he's sealed up over the years to devour her.
• Talking to Themself: "Tony" is an aspect of Danny's personality with whom he converses.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Is far more mature and solemn than you'd expect a 5-year old to be. Perhaps justified because of his Psychic Powers.

Jack

John Daniel "Jack" Torrance

"All work and no play make Jack a dull boy."

"So tell me, pup... Are you gonna take your medicine?"

Played by: Jack Nicholson (1980 film), Steven Weber (1997 miniseries), and Henry Thomas (Doctor Sleep)

Dubbed by: Jean-Louis Trintignant (European French, The Shining)

"Here's Johnny!"

An aspiring writer who's career has stalled because of his anger issues and his alcoholism, Jack Torrance is torn between the love of his family, and the resentment he feels against them, which he's been trying to bury rather than deal with. One fall, he accepts the job as caretaker at the legendary Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to use the winter isolation to focus on his writing...

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• Abusive Parents:
  • Jack broke Danny's arm in a drunken rage before the action of the story starts. Though the narrative makes it clear that Jack feels tremendous remorse for injuring Danny, it's also slowly and subtly implied over the course of The Shining that breaking his son's arm was exactly what Jack intended to do.
  • Jack's own father was a drunken, abusive monster who beat his family mercilessly, often for no reason.
• Adaptational Heroism: The final time we see Jack break free of the Overlook in the novel is him telling Danny to get out as fast as he can, and the boiler explodes (along with the hotel) not long after. In the miniseries, Jack is able to maintain control long enough to deliberately cause the boiler to explode, destroying the Overlook and himself in a Heroic Sacrifice. Something similar happens in the operatic adaptation where after the hotel reproaches Jack for not killing Danny and warning him that the boiler would explode, Jack maintains control long enough to enable his wife and son to escape and allows the boiler to explode, thus redeeming himself by dying in a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • The movie, compared to the book. While he loses himself and goes after his family in both, the movie downplays his sympathetic qualities (such as his intense guilt over hurting his family and struggle to do right by them) to the point that he seems more concerned about his own self-image than actually becoming a better man, while playing out some things he does unintentionally in the book as malicious (e.g. in the book Jack destroys the radio in a blind panic when hearing it tell him to kill Wendy and Danny, whereas in the movie he does it deliberately to keep them stranded). He also outright kills Dick in the movie whereas he only injured him in the book. Furthermore, unlike in the book where he redeems himself, the film has him remain murderous and insane to the end.
  • This extends to his appearance in the movie version of Doctor Sleep, where Jack’s ghost more or less admits that he always hated his family and the alcohol was his way of escaping from them. Then, when Dan refuses to fall off the wagon like he did, Jack responds in anger to his son being a better man than he ever was.
• The Alcoholic: Very pronounced in the book, where his addiction, recovery, and struggle to stay sober are detailed in great length. Hinted at more obliquely in the movie, although he at one point says out loud that "I'd give my goddamned soul for just a glass of beer." And so appears Lloyd...
• Alcoholic Parent: He is an alcoholic and once broke his son's arm in a drunken rage.
• Age Lift: Jack is 31 in the book, but is played by Jack Nicholson, who was 43-year old at the time of the film.
• Anti-Villain: Depending on how much the audience sees him as a bad person to begin with or a good man who was broken by the hotel's influence. Averted in the movie, where his redeeming traits are mostly excised.
• Author Avatar: A darker version than many of Stephen King's other writer protagonists like Bill Denbrough - while writers like Bill mirror a lot of King's career and seemingly even write similar novels, the novel version of Jack embodies all of King's worst impulses and vices, such as drug addiction and - at least once - a surge of resentment while King was holding his own child, which horrified him. King didn't realize until years afterward that he was writing about himself in Jack.
• Ax-Crazy: At the climax of his mental breakdown, he goes on a murderous rampage. In the Kubrick film, he does so with an actual axe, no less.
• Backup from Otherworld: In the climax of the Doctor Sleep book, he appears to help Danny and co. finish off Rose.
• The Bartender: In the Doctor Sleep movie, he appears as the Overlook's bartender to Dan.
• Beard of Evil: In the film, he goes from clean shaven to sporting a five o clock shadow as he becomes more insane.
• Berserk Button: Jack is volatile at the best of times but he gets especially angry at any perceived condescension or what he sees as people lording their authority or better fortune over him.
• Character Tics: In the novel and in the mini-series, Jack has the habit of wiping his mouth when he wants a drink.
• The Corruptible: Particularly in the original novel. He starts off as a well-meaning yet flawed figure, but is ultimately corrupted by the Overlook's malevolent influence and has to be put down.
• Death Equals Redemption: An unusually literal version, as a ghostly, supernatural Jack atones for his rampage in The Shining by helping Dan and Abra when he throws Rose to her death in the following book, saving their lives.
• Evil Eyebrows: Jack Nicholson's portrayal. One of the reasons why King objected to him being cast in the role is those distinctive eyebrows.
• Face–Heel Turn: Both book and movie have Jack going from swearing he would never hurt Danny to out-and-out attempting to murder him. The Overlook is the cause, but only really takes Jack's underlying resentment and magnifies it a hundredfold while suppressing his love for his family.
• Fatal Flaw: His alcoholism and his violent temper as well as his general sense that the world is out to get him and his resentment at his circumstances and what he sees as the good fortune of others, all of which make him easy prey for the Overlook.
• Faux Affably Evil: After he finally snaps, most notably in his famous "Here's Johnny!" line.
• Freudian Excuse: His own father was violently abusive and left Jack with some serious anger issues and difficulty with authority which the Overlook mercilessly exploits.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Going hand in hand with his resentment, Jack has a serious issue with envy, feeling bitter anger at what he sees as others achieving what he feels owed.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: In spite of all of his virtues, Jack is a violent man who angers easily. Booze makes it worse, of course, but Jack has hurt people — once brutally, in the case of George Hatfield — even while stone-cold sober.
• Hannibal Lecture: Jack's (or the hotel's, depending on your interpretation) speech to Danny in the film version of Doctor Sleep, trying to convince him to fall off the wagon:
  Jack: Medicine. Medicine is what [alcohol] is. A bona fide cure-all. Depression, stress, remorse, failure — wipes it all away. The mind is a blackboard, and this is the eraser. A man tries. He provides. And he's surrounded by mouths that eat and scream and cry and nag. So he asks for one thing, just one thing, for him. To warm him up, to take the sting out of those days of the mouths eating and eating and eating everything he makes, everything he has. And that family — a wife, a kid — those mouths eat time. They eat your days on Earth. Just gobble them up. It's enough to make a man sick. And this, this is the medicine. So tell me, pup... are you gonna take your medicine?
  Danny: I'm not.
• Hate Sink: Unlike his literary counterpart, the film reimagines him as a self-centered, abusive father and husband. He views his wife as only being good enough to have his child, and he was also dismissive towards his son Danny. When the hotel starts to corrupt him, Jack deliberately destroys the radio to strand his family in the hotel before trying to kill them.
• In the Blood: Heavily implied, both Jack's temper and alcoholism comes from his father, and is inherited by Danny.
• It's All About Me: While not as bad as most examples, especially before the Overlook began working on him, Jack had an inclination for self-pity and thinking that the world was out to get him. The Overlook uses his inner resentment and feelings of entitlement to slowly unravel his mind and make him believe that if he killed his family he would become important in the hotel’s hierarchy.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the book. Like Movie!Jack, he's a bitter, violent, spiteful alcoholic with a Hair-Trigger Temper and Never My Fault tendencies, but he also loves his family and is genuinely trying to change himself for the better.
• Jerkass: In the film, thanks to his redeeming qualities being excised, Jack is just a hateful, selfish, abusive, possibly unstable jackass unable to take responsibility for his actions, and that's before the Overlook starts corrupting him.
• Kubrick Stare: Jack Nicholson's portrayal is a classic example, as he's quite prone to making these. He gives an especially unsettling one as he stares out the window.
• Legacy Character: In the second movie, his ghost appears to have become the new Lloyd, though it's left ambiguous if it is him or if the hotel has taken his form to taunt Danny.
• Large Ham: In the movie. Jack Nicholson's eyebrows deserve an Oscar category all their own.
• Loss of Identity: One interpretation of his ghost’s appearance in the second movie is that the Overlook has stripped him of everything except his violence and alcoholism.
• Meaningful Name: His first and middle name is Jack Daniel and he's an alcoholic. The first drink he has in both the movie and miniseries is Jack Daniels.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Jack ostensibly takes the job because it will give him time to work on his writing; although the real reason is that his alcoholism and violent temper have cost him his previous job as a teacher.
• Never My Fault: Constantly refuses to take responsibility for his bad decisions, which is an absolute must for a recovering alcoholic.
• Parental Favoritism: Jack was his father's favorite, though he still beat him regularly. Jack still loved him as best he could, even when the rest of the family began to hate him.
• Parents as People: In the novel and miniseries. Jack is a violent alcoholic, but he does love his son and feels intense regret for his behaviour.
• Peaceful in Death: In both the novel and the miniseries. In the latter, he appears as a ghost congratulating a young adult graduate Danny and says that he loves him.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: In the film only, it's implied that Jack is a racist; he doesn't hesitate in parroting Grady's use of the n-word and is possibly even convinced to attack his family specifically because Danny called upon the black Halloran for aid. He uses the word in his inner monologue in the book too, but it happens well after the hotel has done its work on him. He is also heavily implied in both versions to be incredibly sexist, derisively referring to Wendy as "the old sperm bank" with the book attributing his attitude to his troubled relationship with his own mother, who he resented for staying with Jack's abusive father and being too weak to stand up to him, a trait he now sees (inaccurately) in Wendy.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Moreso in the book—he's not the sole viewpoint character but he is the main one, starting out a guilt-ridden man trying to straighten up his life and ending it a psychopath hell-bent on hurting the people he loves.
• Psychic Powers: Has a bit of "shining", albeit much weaker than Danny's, which the Overlook is able to use against him.
• The Resenter: What the hotel preys on to corrupt Jack, his resentment streak against what he perceives to be slights made against him (mostly imaginary or exaggerated). For example, in the novel, he resents his friend Al Shockley for what he feels is Al lording his wealth over him, despite the fact that all he's ever done is help Jack. This is likely delusions from his damaged mind struggling with alcoholism.
• Sanity Slippage: In the movie, he starts going from throwing a tennis ball around the hotel in boredom to just staring creepily out the window and losing his temper over the smallest things. In the book, it's represented by his drinking symptoms starting to resurface without the alcohol. In both cases, he begins to see more and more of the supernatural elements of the hotel as he falls under its thrall.
• Slasher Smile: Pick one.
• Split-Personality Takeover: Again, depending on interpretation of whether the hotel infects Jack with his madness or just amplifies what's already there.
• Tragic Villain: More so in the book, but still the case in both.
• Troubled Abuser: Jack's father was a violent Domestic Abuser, who also beat up his kids regularly. Jack himself also accidentally broke Danny's arm — while trying to spank him for misbehaving. Unlike his father, Jack loathes himself for what he did.
• Unreliable Narrator: See Never My Fault above. Jack sometimes straight-up lies, as when he spends about a page and a half insisting he did not set George Hatfield's timer incorrectly in order to create a reason to cut the kid from the debate team, and then later admits that he actually did. It is fairly clear from this, from the way he mocks George's stutter, and the later change in plot of his play (from "cruel headmaster persecutes bright student" to "unfairly maligned headmaster persecuted by monstrous teen"), that despite his insistence to the contrary, he did have a personal vendetta towards George.
• Villain Protagonist: It isn't clear immediately, but the book gradually slots Jack into this role. Even though he makes an effort to be a good family man, Jack at his core is a bitter, hateful, resentful alcoholic with abusive tendencies even before the Overlook starts destroying his sanity, and the hotel only brings those things out in force.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the Kubrick film, when he gets lost in the maze and is unable to find Danny, he has gone completely deranged and is reduced to moaning, panting, and shouting his wife and kid's names in a way that gets more slurred and unintelligible the more faitgue sets in. These are his final moments before he freezes to death.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He's portrayed sympathetically in the novel: his turn to crazed (attempted) homicide is tragic AND terrifying. In the movie, however, he's already a selfish, hateful man, and it's only a matter of time before he'll violently lash out at his family; Overlook merely accelerates the process.
• Would Hurt a Child: Aside from his attempt to murder Danny in the finale, he is also mentioned as having lost his teaching job for brutally beating up a student he found trying to slash his tires in retaliation for Jack cutting him from the debate team.

Wendy

Winifred "Wendy" Torrance

Played by: Shelley Duvall (1980 film), Rebecca De Mornay (1997 miniseries), and Alex Essoe (Doctor Sleep)

Dubbed by: Maryana Spivak (The Shining, 2014 Russian dub)

'"Well, let's just wait and see. We're all going to have a real good time."

The wife of Jack and mother of Danny, Wendy Torrance has struggled for years with her failing marriage, and her own emotional issues. As the family seems to have begun mending itself, she agrees to stay with Jack at the Overlook for the winter, hoping that it will give them time to heal and rebuild their lives.

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• Abusive Parents: Not Wendy herself, but her own verbally and emotionally abusive mother. The thought of being forced to stay with her is what kept Wendy from divorcing Jack on the grounds of his alcoholism, as well as what eventually convinces her to stay at the Overlook in spite of her reservations.
• Action Survivor: She manages to survive everything the Overlook throws at her, including escaping with Danny in tow, though in the novel she's badly injured by Jack attacking her with a roque mallet.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Wendy is described as being conventionally attractive in the book, whereas in the film she's portrayed by Shelley Duvall, who is more waif-like and fragile-looking than her novel counterpart. This was a deliberate choice on Stanley Kubrick's part, as Wendy was supposed to be progressively beaten down over the course of the story, and he felt that casting a more plain-looking actress in the role made it easier to sell that part of the character as the story went on.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Wendy is blonde in the novel, but has black hair in the movie.
• Break the Cutie: Poor Wendy.
• Broken Bird: Wendy shows the beginnings of this early on in the film, likely due to Jack's alcoholism. By the end, she's been to hell and back, appearing on the verge of a mental breakdown.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: She has trouble lighting her cigarette while talking to the doctor after Danny's first vision.
• Daddy's Girl: In the book. She had a very close relationship with her father—her mother told her that this drove a wedge into their marriage as part of her emotional abuse.
• Parents as People: Wendy loves Danny, but that doesn't stop her from being deeply insecure about whether she deserves to be his mother. Because of her own abusive childhood, she finds it difficult to handle the idea that Danny will someday grow up, believing that they will become unable to understand each other the way they do now.
• The Resenter: Downplayed, but there (novel only). She resents Jack and Danny's close relationship, often feeling left out, and feels enormously guilty over it because that's what her own mother felt about her and her father.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Wendy dies in the 35-year gap between The Shining and Doctor Sleep, contracting and subsequently succumbing to lung cancer at some point in the Nineties. Without her, Dan ends up spiraling into alcoholism just like Jack.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Kubrick's film, Wendy covers for Jack's abuse of Danny to the doctor and meekly accepts his tirades. After finally uncovering definitive proof of Jack's madness, and the Hotel itself, she in short succession knocks him unconscious, locks him in the pantry, resists his guilt trips to let him out, and slashes his hand with a knife when he tries to break into to her hiding place.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Her reaction to the wave of blood and the man in a bear suit performing oral sex on another man.

Tony

Tony

"Danny isn't here, Mrs. Torrance."

A mysterious entity who only Danny can see or interact with. While his parents believe Tony to simply be an imaginary friend, Danny knows subconsciously that Tony is something far more, though he can not put it into words.

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• Ambiguously Evil: At first it seems like half the time Tony is trying to get Danny is trouble by making him pass out and freak out Danny's parents, and doesn't explain Danny's visions properly. In the end, he helps Danny out, showing him to be good.
• The Faceless: Tony always appears shadowed, and Danny can never get close enough to see his face.
• For Your Own Good: In the movie Tony is reluctant to tell Danny just why he doesn't want to move into the Overlook. When Danny badgers him into telling, he ends up blacking out from terror.
• Future Badass: Tony turns out to be Danny when he's fifteen years old, or at least looks like him.
• Imaginary Friend: Danny's imaginary friend, who only shows up during his precognitive visions. 35 years later, he serves this very same role to Dan's niece, Abra.

Overlook Hotel

The Overlook Hotel

The Overlook Hotel

Played by: Timberline Lodge (exterior, 1980 film and Doctor Sleep), Stanley Hotel (1997 miniseries)

"Good. I want you to like it here. I wish we could stay here forever... and ever... and ever."

—Jack Torrance

An old and luxurious resort found high up in the Rocky Mountains, which houses a monstrous, otherworldly intelligence living inside its walls. No one knows what it really is, but it's implied to have been a part of the building since the day it was built (if not older). Whatever it is, all the Overlook Hotel desires to accomplish is to corrupt and drive innocent people into madness and suffering for its own amusement.

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• Abandoned Area: What it becomes after Jack's rampage in the film and remains as such for decades afterwards.
• Achilles' Heel: The film version of Doctor Sleep implies that when left to its lonesome, the Genius Loci in the hotel is almost harmless, and it requires people with a sufficient level of Shining to inhabit its premises long enough for it to be able to actually warp both reality and people's minds to its will.
• Alien Geometries: It's rather subtle and easy to miss on one's first viewing, but the layout of the Overlook Hotel in the film makes absolutely no sense. Room doors are stuck closely together while their interiors are spacious apartments, the freezer flips sides of a hall between shots (hidden by clever camera work), Ullman's office has a window with sunlight streaming in in the middle of the building, the inside doesn't correspond to the outside, the Colorado Lounge has floor-to-ceiling windows with a hallway behind them, the hotel's establishing shot conspicuously lacks the hedge maze (which itself has an inconsistent layout), there's no indication of how the Gold Room connects to the rest of the hotel, and so on. Knowing Stanley Kubrick, this was probably an intentional attempt to unsettle the viewer.
• Animal Motif: In the novel only, wasps. This is subtly alluded to in the films through the hexagonal floor pattern seen in the hallway carpeting, evoking the image of a wasp or bee hive.
• Asshole Victim: In all adaptations, the hotel is eventually burned down and variably purified, implicitly killing the Genius Loci. Considering all the havoc the place has caused to people and families and how depraved the intelligence is, the destruction is unlikely to be mourned.
• Big Bad: It's the one causing all the problems in the first book and film, using Jack as The Heavy. It also serves as the Final Boss of the film adaptation of Doctor Sleep, upstaging Rose The Hat (and by extension, the rest of the True Knot) in the process.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: When it fully possesses Jack, Danny recognizes it's no longer his father and stops being afraid of it. It also gets a lot more theatrical in its dialogue.
• Eldritch Location: The Overlook isn't merely a vessel for evil, but a sinister, sentient, borderline-Lovecraftian entity all to its own. In Doctor Sleep, it's revealed that the location itself is saturated with supernatural energy, which makes it a prime location for ghosts to manifest, but the explicit cause is never revealed.
• Evil Is Petty: It encourages racism and other petty forms of bigotry in those it possesses/influences out of nothing more than it simply seems to enjoy doing so.
• Evil Plan: It wants to consume people with the Shine (such as Danny and Abra) so it can spread its corrupting influence beyond its grounds. The events of Doctor Sleep also heavily imply that it naturally hunts after those with the Shine for sustenance, and it's particularly interested in Danny since his Shine is so vast in power that it could basically torture the entire state of Colorado without going hungry.
• Faux Affably Evil: It initially is mostly static, and politely manipulates Jack at several points, but it is a purely malevolent and heartless intelligence. Heck, it's even noted that it's only "actively" evil when there's few people around it, meaning that for the rest of the time it's assuming a façade of civility through not attacking its staff and guests.
• For the Evulz: There doesn't seem to be any reason why it drives people insane and murders them, it just does. In the Kubrick film continuity, the Overlook is explicitly interested in harvesting Steam just like the True Knot are, presumably making people attack one another to this end, but even then this is implied to be only part of its ultimate plan to ensure further suffering and misery.
• Genius Loci: The hotel isn't haunted by evil ghosts, the hotel is evil and keeps the ghosts around. Or it might be both. It's pretty vague, especially in the movies, but said films show the hotel is also interested in harvesting Steam.
• Hate Sink: A rare case of a building falling into this trope, but the Overlook Hotel is shown in all of the franchise's associated media to be a monstrous and despicable Genius Loci. It drives its inhabitants to murderous insanity ending with the deaths of the caretakers and their families, and also psychologically tortures anyone who stays too close to it for too long. In the first film, it compels Jack Torrance into attempting to kill Danny and Wendy and in the sequel, possesses a grownup Danny to force him into going after Abra. It's also worth noting that it inspires those its possesses and corrupts into childish bigotry (i.e., Jack Torrance and Lloyd's racist remarks in the first film).
• Hell Hotel: The Overlook Hotel is easily one of the most iconic examples of this trope in the history of fiction (right alongside the Bates Motel and the titular room featured in 1408), and one of the primary Trope Codifiers for the entirety of film. Interestingly, though, the Overlook seems to only show its true horrific nature in the off-season, especially if any of them has the "Shine". When the hotel is regularly populated by guests during its on-season, it seems to function normally with virtually no supernatural activity ever occurring and almost no one the wiser.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the film continuity, its corruption of Jack Torrance means it ends up closed down and condemned, abandoned for decades.
• Humanoid Abomination: Once it fully takes over Jack's body in the book. It still looks like Jack's body, but can walk around with a knife in its back and its face doesn't clearly resemble anyone. That's when the story stops referring to Jack as Jack and starts referring to him as "It". Similarly, when it possesses Dan in the film adaptation of Doctor Sleep, poor Dan looks awful, only able to hobble around thanks to the axe wound he got in his leg from Rose The Hat, one of his eyes being blinded and his skin turning pale; it gets to the point where he looks more like a walking corpse than anything else.
• Indian Burial Ground: What the Overlook Hotel is built on top of (in the films at least). It's implied the bad mojo from this act is how the hotel became supernaturally active. Some also view this as a layer of the film's allegory to the genocide of the Native American peoples.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After escaping its fate in Kubrick's take on the novel, the Overlook meets its demise in Doctor Sleep when Danny overloads the boiler causing it to explode.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The film adaptation of Doctor Sleep reveals that its corruption of Jack Torrance (and resultant murder of Hallorann) drove the Overlook out of business through the resulting controversy, leaving it with nothing to feed on. Additionally, it's quite fitting that it's ultimately burned to the ground by the child (now grown up) who it had previously tried to first brutally murder and later possess into a murder-suicide.
• Logical Weakness: As a building, it can't affect people beyond its grounds. Unless it consumes Danny and/or Abra and gains their power.... It can also be destroyed like any other building or simply abandoned as it was after Jack's rampage.
• Manipulative Bastard: It viciously plays on Jack's anger, alcoholism and feelings of victimhood. It attempts to do the same with Dan's alcoholism and self-hatred when he comes back in Doctor Sleep, but thanks to his Heroic Willpower, it's not nearly as successful.
• Meaningful Name: The name itself, in-universe, may refer to the hotel overlooking the beautiful scenery of the Rocky Mountains. However, it mainly refers to how the hotel overlooks the horrific, unthinkable tragedies that have occurred throughout its history and how both its human staff and resident spirits are trying to sweep these nightmarish events under the rug.
• Mouth of Sauron: What the job of "caretaker" seems to entail in the end.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Not only is it a malevolent murderous building, but also uses a lot of racist and sexist insults in its psychic assaults, which serves to add to the Eldritch Location's depravity. Considering how the place is mentioned as having been built on an Indian Burial Ground in the films, From a Certain Point of View this makes the Overlook a dark reflection of white entitlement during the westward expansion of the United States.
• Pragmatic Villainy: It seemingly went years without turning any other winter caretakers mad like it did Grady and Jack (most likely because none of them had the Shine and/or had family members who had the Shine and so weren’t worth the effort to try and "eat"), and it never carries out supernatural activities during the regular season so as to avoid suspicion.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Despite being closed down for forty years, it's still in pristine condition as if it's still in use when Dan returns in Doctor Sleep with its electricity and boilers working perfectly and areas like the ballroom not having changed in decades. Likely justified by its supernatural nature.
• Sadist: Its only motive for what it does seems to be causing carnage and death for its own enjoyment. Doctor Sleep brings up the possibility of it feeding on people with the Shine for its continued survival like with the True Knot, but even then it's suggested to be more for the opportunity of getting to spread its depravity beyond its grounds.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The hotel is still up by the end of Stanley Kubrick's movie and the film version of Doctor Sleep. Well, until Dan burns it down.
• Villainous Breakdown: It repossesses Dan as a feeble attempt of saving itself from destruction towards the end of Doctor Sleep, and is visibly freaking out when Dan starts Fighting from the Inside and eventually succeeds in burning to the ground.
• Villain with Good Publicity: In a sense. It's smart enough not to have any supernatural activity happen when it has many guests and only seems to prey on caretakers during winter. As far as the world is concerned, it's nothing more than a fancy hotel in a beautiful, scenic location.
• Voice of the Legion: In the film version of Doctor Sleep, when it possesses Dan and tries to kill Abra, the Overlook speaks through Dan with all of the voices of its ghosts.

Dick Hallorann

Richard "Dick" Hallorann

Played by: Scatman Crothers (1980 film), Melvin Van Peebles (1997 miniseries), and Carl Lumbly (Doctor Sleep)

"Some places are like people: some shine and some don't."

A former army cook, and currently the head chef of The Overlook, Dick Halloran is the first person Danny meets who possesses mental abilities like his own, and introduces him to the concept of "Shining", something Halloran himself was taught by his grandmother.

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• Abusive Parents: Was molested and abused by his monstrous grandfather Andy. His parents knew about it, but were too afraid to stop it, not to mention they hoped to inherit the old man's money. This isn't mentioned in the films but in Doctor Sleep, he references his grandfather being a violently abusive man who Dick hated so much he celebrated when he died, and had no problem sealing away his ghost forever.
• Age Lift: He's fifty-seven in the book and played by a seventy-year old actor in the film.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the book. In the movie, this is subverted, as he gets killed by Jack almost the minute he arrives, but in either scenario his arrival is what allows Wendy and Danny to escape.
• Black Dude Dies First: Dies the first death of the film with an axe to the chest courtesy of Jack.
• Canon Immigrant: While most of Stephen King's novels are connected in some way, he shows up in a flashback of It, as a soldier that serves as a cook in a black nightclub. His shining, though not specifically mentioned, saves several people when the Legion of White Decency burns the place down.
• Cool Car: His prized Mercedes, a classic muscle car from the 1950s. He still has it in the prologue of Doctor Sleep, at which point it's nearly an antique.
• Cool Old Guy: Is already well into his 60's by the time the story starts and a friendly, charming man who gets along great with Danny and Wendy. He's still this even in death.
• Death by Adaptation: Is killed by Jack in the film. In the book, he survives and lives to a ripe old age.
• Dirty Old Man: In the movie, he's about seventy, and has a couple of naked lady posters in his room.
• Foil: To Jack. Both grew up in horrifically abusive households and both have resentment issues due to bad experiences, Jack with bad authority figures and Dick due to having dealt with abuse and racism his whole life. Both are aware of the supernatural aspects of the hotel but Dick has managed to resist the sway while Jack is completely overtaken by it. To put it simply, both men have good reasons to hate the world but while Dick has been able to keep his anger and resentment in check and made an effort to be a good person, Jack has let his bitterness and rage completely overtake him, making him easy prey for the hotel.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Takes an ax in the chest in the movie.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Dick is a kind, sincere man who goes out of his way to help others while his grandfather was a truly rotten bastard who horrifically abused him and his grandmother.
• Magical Negro: Subverted. Danny's powers are his own, but befriending Dick helps him feel a little more confident about it.
• The Mentor: To Danny, first explaining the Shining to him and later helping him seal away the remaining malevolent spirits of the Overlook. Hallorann himself acknowledges this during the prologue of Doctor Sleep:
  "When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear."
• Mundane Utility: Mentions to Danny that he's sometimes used his Shine to win at horse race betting, but because he can't control when or how his psychic visions happen, and the visions don't always come true, his win-fail rate is about 50-50.
• Nice Guy: He's very friendly towards the Overlook's employees and the Torrance family. He even comes all the way back to the Overlook in order to make sure they're alright.
• Parental Substitute: After Jack's breakdown and death, Dick steps in as Danny's main father figure. He even acts as a guide after his death in both the novel and film continuities.
• Passed in Their Sleep: Doctor Sleep reveals that Halloran died in his sleep from a heart attack in 1999.
• Posthumous Character: Manages to help out even after his death, briefly commandeering the body of one of Dan's patients to advise him on dealing with the True Knot.
• Psychic Powers: Same as Danny. They can communicate even without talking simply by thoughts.
• The Resenter: Like Wendy and Jack, Hallorann has a subtle resentful streak that the Overlook tries to exploit in a last-ditch effort to kill Wendy and Danny; in Halloran's case, it's his lingering resentment toward having spent his whole life being bossed around by white people.
• So Proud of You: When he reunites with adult Dan eight years on, he is clearly proud at how he has managed to keep his sobriety and worked to overcome his demons. His last words are even telling Dan that he "grew up fine".
• Spirit Advisor: Since Hallorann is already dead in this version, he teaches Danny how to seal the ghosts of the Overlook inside his mind this way.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Dies of old age in the three-and-a-half-decade gap between novels. But unlike Wendy, he gets to make a brief return as a spirit.
• Supreme Chef: Implied, despite his humble beginnings as an army cook, Dick has his pick of jobs at upscale resorts and restaurants in his old age, and switches between working in Florida and New England depending on the season.

Stuart Ullman

Stuart Ullman

Played by: Barry Nelson (1980 film) and Elliott Gould (1997 miniseries)

" I don't suppose they told you anything in Denver about the tragedy we had in the Winter of 1970."

The manager of the Overlook, a somewhat tyrannical little man who nontheless is the first manager in the Overlook's 70-year history to run the hotel profitably.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the novel, Ullman is described as being short and pudgy. In both adaptations, he is portrayed by actors who are tall and trim.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Ullman in the film was more polite and less dickish than Ullman in the book. In the film, he states he wholeheartedly agrees with his bosses' recommendation to hire Jack, while in the book he makes it clear he wouldn't have hired Jack if the decision was left to him owing to Jack's past alcoholism.
• Adaptational Villainy: However, in the deleted ending, Ullman handing Jack's tennis ball to Danny implied that he was somehow involved with the supernatural forces in the hotel.
• Bad Boss: Played with, working under him sure as hell isn't fun, but it's not out of ego or sadism like this trope usually is, but because Ullman is dedicated to running the Overlook smoothly at the cost of everything else.
• Invisible to Normals: Like Watson, Ullman either has no Shining at all, or it's so minuscule the Hotel can't affect him. It's ambiguous whether or not his attachment to the hotel is influenced by its supernatural nature, but it's entirerly possible it's just a psychological attachment considering how much work he's put into running it, rather than the hotel itself making him obsessed like it does with Jack. At any rate, he can leave at the end of the season, even if he's not really happy to do so, as he hates the hotel he manages during the winter.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all his dickishness, he does care deeply about the hotel and wants to make it as successful as he can and he's perfectly capable of being nice outside of his role, making an effort to be very welcoming to Wendy and Danny.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Mr. Ullman, the hotel manager, may be an "officious little prick," but he is quite right that hiring Jack Torrance, an abusive alcoholic, as the winter caretaker is a bad idea.
  • For all Jack's loathing of him, Ullman is very good at his job, including cleaning up the messes and keeping the hotel in the black. Even Watson, who despises Ullman admits this.
• The Napoleon: Very much subverted. Ullman is a short man who acts like a smarmy bully with Jack and lords over his employees with an iron fist. He is actually a decent enough man who deeply loves the hotel and wants to do what is best for it. He knows that his employees don't like him, and doesn't care, because he feels that "one has to be a bit of a bastard" in order to effectively manage a world-class resort hotel. Considering that he is the only manager in the 70-year history of the hotel to run the hotel profitably, he's probably right.
• Pet the Dog: He treats Jack like crap, and isn't any nicer to his other employees, but he's perfectly cordial to Wendy, and even nicer to Danny.

Delbert Grady

Delbert Grady

Played by: Phillip Stone (1980 film) and Stanley Anderson (1997 miniseries)

"Perhaps they need a good talking to, if you don't mind my saying so. Perhaps a bit more. My girls, sir, they didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches and tried to burn it down. But I "corrected" them sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I "corrected" her."

A former caretaker of the Overlook, an abusive drunkard who's horrific actions is the reason Ullman is reluctant to hire Jack for the position.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Philip Stone is considerably neater and more pleasant-looking than the thuggish, almost troll-like Grady described in the novel.
• The Alcoholic: Like Jack, Grady was a heavy drinker. Ullman reveals that he'd brought a large supply of cheap whiskey with him to the hotel, and was apparently drunk off his ass when he killed his family.
• Composite Character: In both the movie and the 1997 miniseries.
  • Due to Horace Derwent, with whom Grady works together in the book, being reduced to a short scene in the movie, most of his dialogue and influence are given to Grady.
  • Due to Lloyd being Adapted Out of the miniseries, Grady inherits his role as the "Bartender Ghost".
• Creepy Monotone: "My girls, sir, they didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches and tried to burn it down. But I corrected them, sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I corrected her."
• Deadly Euphemism: He never states that he murdered his wife and daughters, merely that he "corrected" them.
• Driven to Suicide: After killing his family he put a shotgun in his mouth.
• Evil Brit: Yup!
• Face–Heel Turn: By all accounts, he was a perfectly normal man before coming to the Overlook, after which he gradually became homicidal.
• Family Annihilator: He killed his wife and children. Not content just with that, Grady follows up by attempting, from beyond the grave, to talk Jack into murdering his own family.
• Faux Affably Evil: Incredibly polite, charming, and personable. All in spite of brutally murdering his entire family and then killing himself. He drops the act when he convinces Jack to kill his family.
• The Heavy: The Overlook might be the actual Big Bad of the story, with Derwent serving as its central form, but Grady is the spirit that influences Jack directly.
• It's All About Me: From his creepy dialogue, he killed his family because they didn't understand the importance of his job as caretaker.
• The Jeeves: Starts off as this. Then his identity is revealed.
• Offing the Offspring: He "corrected" his two daughters when they tried to burn down the hotel.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He is a vile racist and misogynist because being a murderer apparently wasn't evil enough. Whether he was already that way when he was alive or due to the influence of the hotel is anyone's guess.

The Grady Twins

The Grady Twins

"...and ever."

Played by: Lisa/Louise Burns (1980 film) and Sadie/KK Heim (Doctor Sleep)

"Come play with us, Danny. Forever and ever and ever..."

The twin daughters of Delbert Grady, who now haunt the hallways of the Overlook along with their father.

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• Art Imitates Art: The twins are based on the Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967 by Diane Arbus.
• Ascended Extras: Grady's daughters are only mentioned in passing in the novel, and the only child ghost that appears there is the unseen presence Danny encounters in the playground pipe, which he may just have imagined. In the film, they're one of the most recognizable ghosts. They also appear in the sequel front and centre in the finale and were included in the film's second trailer.
• Breakout Character: In the novel, Grady's daughters are minor characters that are barely mentioned in passing, and are definitely not twins. This contrasts with the films, where they are by far the most famous and iconic ghosts that haunt the Overlook Hotel. They even appear in the sequel, front and center among the other Overlook ghosts and saying their iconic line again which was also included in the film's second trailer.
• Creepy Children: It's unknown what they were like in life, but they're certainly this trope now.
• Creepy Monotone: Their style of speaking. It's seriously unnerving.
• Creepy Twins: Possibly one of the most iconic examples in all of horror cinema, or maybe even cinema as a whole. Funnily enough, they are explicitly mentioned as not being twins, being two years apart according to Ullman, but the two actresses who played them were so they are often deemed as such.
• Evil Brit: They are British like their father and seriously creepy.
• Faux Affably Evil: Their polite greeting and invitation to Danny to play with them is this trope incarnate.
• "Join Us" Drones: A variation with their signature line.
• Kill It with Fire: One of them tried to burn the Overlook down.
• No Name Given: Their first names are never revealed, only that they are Delbert Grady's daughters.
• Speak in Unison: How they try to invite Danny to play with them. It's haunting, to say the least.
• Strong Family Resemblance: As a side effect of being played by identical twins despite being mentioned as being two years apart. This has led many to believe they are also twins despite the explicitly mentioned age gap.
• Undead Children: A pair of ghostly children that haunt the Overlook.

Horace Derwent

Horace Derwent

Played by: Brian V. Towns (1980 film), John Durbin (1997 miniseries), and Hugh Maguire (Doctor Sleep)

An eccentric millionaire who made his fortune in aviation during the interwar period and World War II, designing planes for the U.S. government, Derwent is one of many who have attempted to use the Overlook as an investment, but his tenure as owner was controversial and fraught with rumors about connections to organized crime.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: The True Knot might be powerful psychics, but they are still of this world. Derwent... is not.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • He and Roger appear for one scene in the movie with no explanation of who they are. Because of this, the majority of his role is given to Delbert Grady, who works with Derwent in the book.
  • The same thing happens to him in the film adaptation of Doctor Sleep, where he's demoted to another cameo near the end, though Danny reveals that Derwent was the final ghost from the Overlook to be imprisoned in his mind.
• Depraved Bisexual: Shown in his relationship with the besotted, dog-costumed Roger, to whom he's verbally and emotionally abusive.
• Enemy Mine: Just as evil and cruel as he's always been, but Danny has nothing against using him against a much worse foe.
• The Ghost: While the Overlook has many ghosts, Jack is obsessed with Derwent and considering writing a book. Part of his way of taunting Ullmann is to ask if Derwent is somehow still involved with the Overlook.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Thanks to his almost ubiquitous involvement with, and influence in, the Overlook's history - as well as the fact that he's the only spirit still alive in Dan's memory by the end of Doctor Sleep - Derwent is the closest thing the Overlook has to a central, antagonistic form.
• Howard Hughes Homage: Like Hughes, Derwent is an eccentric millionaire who is interested in aviation and produced films that pushed the limits of the The Hays Code. However, he’s far more evil than the real Hughes probably was.
• Posthumous Character: Is dead by the time the story takes place, leaving his ghost an inhabitant of the Hotel, despite having died nowhere near it. Strangely, the exact circumstances of his death are never mentioned and no one seems to know exactly what happened to him. Jack even viciously asks Ullman if Derwent is still somehow involved in the hotel.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Reportedly had ties to the mob, and one of the Overlook's iterations included his ex-wife (possibly) running a brothel out of the place.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: "Survived" the destruction of the Overlook, only to be imprisoned in the mind of a now 12-year-old Danny. He remains there for decades, only to be released by Danny during the final battle against the True Knot.
• Shout-Out: His Pre-Mortem One-Liner to Sarey:
  Derwent: Great party, isn't it?
• Villainous Rescue: In the Novel. When Rose gives the signal to Silent Sarey to launch her surpise attack from the shed while Dan is distracted and unaware of her during the final battle, the recently released Derwent grabs her by the wrist, shuts the door and strangles her to death.

Lorraine Massey

Lorraine Massey, the Woman in 217

Played by: Lia Beldam (young) & Billie Gibson (old) (1980 film); Cynthia Garris (1997 miniseries), and Sallye Hooks (Doctor Sleep)

A horrific, malevolent ghost that haunts Room 217, the room where she once died in.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the novel, she's old and described as both fat and ugly even before she killed herself. In the movie and miniseries, she's quite attractive before switching to her "rotten ghoul" form. Although given that her "rotten ghoul" form also looks considerably older than the attractive appearance she initially appears in, it is possible the attractive form was just a disguise to lure Jack closer.
  • Downplayed post-death in the miniseries, where she's much younger than she was in the book and film, but is still dead and rotting.
• Adaptation Name Change: Not to her, but rather her room number, in the novel it's 217 while in the film makes it 237. Supposedly, this was because the Timberline Lodge which provided the Overlook's exterior, didn't want to frighten guests away from room 217 or the hotel at all and instead set it with a non-existent room 237. Funny enough though, because of the movie's popularity, "room 237" actually became the most requested room at the Lodge.
• Body Horror: Jack looking into the bathroom mirror reveals her true form: a zombie-like elderly woman with greenish, sagging, rotting skin.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The second movie ends with her appearing in Abra's bath and Abra confidently walking in and closing the door. Implying she's going to trap her in a mental box like Danny did.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In the Kubrick film continuity, she began as a minor character in The Shining and returns in Doctor Sleep as one of the haunts that follow Danny around until she's locked away. In the final act, Massey is the ghost that restrains Rose the Hat and allows her cronies to help drain Rose of steam with fatal results. Massey is still at large near the end until Abra locks her away for another time.
• Dirty Old Woman: In the novel, she was roughly 60 years old, yet had an affair with a 17-year old boy.
• Driven to Suicide: Killed herself after her underage lover finally gets sick of her and abandons her.
• Dual Age Modes: Lures Jack by appearing as a young, attractive woman before turning into an old, laughing crone.
• Evil Laugh: The first thing she does when Jack discovers her true form is to cackle cruelly at his expense.
• Fan Disservice: She starts out as a nude, attractive young woman when Jack finds her, but everything goes downhill when Jack looks into the mirror behind her and discovers that she's really a disgusting old hag.
• Gonk: Even before she died, she was described as pretty ugly.
• Horrifying the Horror: After Dick teaches Danny to trap the Overlook's ghosts in mental lockboxes, she actually screams when Danny manages to trap her.
• Ms. Fanservice: Subverted in an infamous scene of the film (pictured). When Jack investigates room 237 after hearing Danny was attacked by the occupant, he finds a beautiful, nude woman in the bathroom. After making out with her, he's shown her true form as an old, decrepit, cackling, corpse.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: She's the center of one of the most disturbing parts of the movie.
• Laughing Mad: After tricking Jack into kissing her, she cracks up into demented, uncontrollable laughter.
• No Name Given: In the film, her name is never revealed and she's only ever referred to as "The Woman in room 237". In the book and miniseries, her name is given as Lorraine Massey.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Subverted. In the book and the miniseries, Danny finds her this way when he pulls back the shower curtain in the bathroom of Room 217. She's not a corpse, though. She's an evil spirit that took on the appearance of her body by the time it was discovered.
• Really Gets Around. Implied.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Like Derwent, she reappears in Doctor Sleep. Unlike Derwent, Danny permanently seals her away, effectively killing her. Averted in the film continuity, where she's a key player in the final battle against Rose the Hat, and Abra locks her away with an ambiguious fate at the end.
• The Voiceless: She never utters a single word in both films, but only laughs and screams in horror when Danny traps her in a mental lockbox in the sequel.
  • Averted in the miniseries.
• Would Hurt a Child: She attacks Danny and tries to strangle him.
• Zombie Gait: She staggers this way when chasing Jack out of her room, fitting her deathly appearance.

Roger

Roger The Dog Man

Played by: Eddie O'Dea (1980 film) and Roger Barker (1997 miniseries)

"Roll over, doggie! Let's go, boy!

—Horace Derwent

A ghost dressed in a dog costume, who haunts the hotel alongside his former lover Horace Derwent.

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• Adaptation Name Change: In King's unpublished prologue, his name was "Louis Toner", while in the actual novel, it's Roger.
  • The miniseries credits him as "Rover the Dog Man".
• Adaptation Species Change: Well, his costume got one. He wears a dog costume in the book and miniseries, but in the Kubrick movie, it's a bear suit, and a rather cheaply made one at that.
• All There in the Manual: Before The Play fleshes out his character a lot more and gives context to his relationship with Derwent.
• Demoted to Extra: Didn't have a very big role to start with, but in the movie, he's reduced entirerly to the one-shot scene with Derwent in the hotel room.
• Depraved Homosexual: Was gay in life, and is now just as evil as the other ghosts of the Overlook.
• Driven to Suicide: Before The Play reveals that he killed himself after Derwent abused and humiliated him during the costume ball.
• Would Hurt a Child: Threatens Danny and makes several creepy sexual remarks when the boy sees him in the hallway.

Lloyd

Lloyd, the Bartender

Played by: Joe Turkel (1980 film) and Henry Thomas (Doctor Sleep)

"I like you, Lloyd. I always liked you. You were always the best of them. Best goddamned bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine. Or Portland, Oregon, for that matter."

—Jack Torrance

A mysterious bartender who mans the bar in the Overlook's grand ballroom, even though the only current customer in the hotel is Jack...

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• Adapted Out: Lloyd is absent in the 1997 miniseries, with some of his aspects given to Delbert Grady.
• Affably Evil: Courteous to Jack upon meeting him though he's still part of the hotel's malevolent, supernatural force.
• Ambiguously Human: It's implied that Lloyd is the physical embodiment of the Overlook Hotel itself, rather than the spirit of a real person. This is supported by the fact that he is the only "ghost" that never left the Overlook and that Danny was never forced to imprison in his mind.
• The Bartender: Self-explanatory. This role is his entire existence.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Somewhat soft-spoken, but is likely someone mortals shouldn't mess with.
• Faux Affably Evil: If he really is the personification of the Overlook, it certainly makes his polite demeanor this.
• Legacy Character: Jack takes his job in the second movie.
• Mouth of Sauron: Like Grady, he serves as the voice of The Overlook, especially in the movie.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Is a rather eerie figure.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Always speaks in a calm tone as he helps to pull Jack into the hotel's evil.
• The Voiceless: Early in the novel. It's one of the most unsettling things about him - Lloyd has no dialogue in response to Jack in an early appearance, only sentences that imply Lloyd is responding somehow.

Topiary Menagerie

The Hedge Animals

"The thing was, you couldn't look at all of them... not at the same time..."

—Jack Torrance

A group of topiary animals in the Overlook's garden, consisting of a rabbit, a dog, a bison, and most famously, a pair of lions. Having been part of the hotel since it was built, as revealed in Before The Play, the hedge animals are one of the hotels most iconic features in-universe, but unbeknownst to most visitors, they are not nearly as harmless as they seem...

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• Adapted Out: Despite being one of the signature scenes from the novel, Kubrick replaced them entirely, removing them in favor of the now-iconic hedge maze. According to Word of Godinvoked, this was due to the special effects at the time not being up to the task of making the animals believable.
• Can't Move While Being Watched: The animals can't move while they're being watched, but the thing is, they're spread out across the garden in such a way that it's impossible to keep an eye on all of them at the same time, letting them advance.
• Cats Are Mean: All the animals are dangerous, but the lions are by far the most aggressive and predatory.
• Garden of Evil: The garden is one of the most dangerous areas of the Overlook, owing mostly to the topiary once they become hostile.
• Would Hurt a Child: They begin stalking Danny while he's playing in the snow, and almost manages to catch him before he makes it back to the hotel stairs, one of the lions clawing his jacket in the process.

Watson

Watson, The Caretaker

Played By: Barry Dennen (1980 film) and Pat Hingle (1997 miniseries)

"Keep an eye on the pressure, or mark my words, you and your family will wake up on the fucking moon..."

The caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, and the grandson of the man who once built it.

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• Almighty Janitor: Downplayed, he knows just about everything about the workings of the hotel, including how to handle the aging equipment, but since he doesn't have any Shine, he doesn't even believe in the supernatural nature of the building, much less know anything useful about it.
• Demoted to Extra: His role is a bit smaller in the Kubrick version, he still gives Jack the rundown of the hotel, but most of the exposition is cut.
• Invisible to Normals: Like Ullman, Watson doesn't have any Shine potential, and thus, the hotel has no power over him. As a result, he considers the ghostly stories about the Overlook to be nonsense since he's worked there most of his life without so much as a cold breeze.
• Mr. Exposition: As the regular caretaker, he's the one who explains to Jack about the history of the hotel and its inner workings.
• Noble Bigot: He's hard-working and nice enough for the most part, but doesn't think much of homosexuals, which admittedly is not exactly a rare opinion to have in 1980.
• Riches to Rags: Not him personally, but his grandfather was the original builder of the hotel, and sunk the entire family fortune into the project, ruining him. The family was kept on as caretakers after the hotel was sold, and both they and Watson himself have worked at the hotel through dozens of owners.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: He has quite a filthy mouth. When Al Shockley can't remember Watson's name, he refers to Watson as "that guy who swears all the time".

The Stone Family

Abra

Abra Rafaella Stone

Played By: Kyleigh Curran

• Astral Projection: Is capable of this near the end.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Abra is a sweet kid but she is definitely not someone to be taken lightly.
• Blessed with Suck: At one point in the story, she experiences the Baseball Boy's Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of the True Knot and is nearly rendered insane.
• Child Prodigy: Can be described as when it comes to the Shine. She's far more powerful than Dan or any other psychic seen, her powers thus making her a prime target for the True Knot especially since they've not encountered someone like her in a very long time.^note It's mentioned that psychics used to be more powerful but something has caused them to become weaker with each generation, to the point where the True Knot are essentially slowly starving to death.
• Deuteragonist: For Doctor Sleep. The plots of both the film and novel are just as much a Coming of Age Story for her as it is a story of Dan recovering from his alcoholism and depression.
• Fangirl: In the movie, she has several RWBY posters on the walls of her room and an Emerald Sustrai figurine by her bed. And when Rose tries to invade her mind, she projects herself with Emerald's hair.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: A trait she shares with Jack and Dan, her grandfather and uncle respectively. It comes out during the main stretch of the novel, as Abra deals more and more with the murderous True Knot, and keeps getting worse as she gets older. In the film adaptation, her enjoyment of Pay Evil unto Evil is emphasized instead, as her family tree isn't mentioned in this continuity.
• Little Miss Badass: Abra is host to perhaps the most powerful Shining in history, dwarfing Dick Hallorann's powers and even making Dan's look pretty unimpressive. The epilogue of Doctor Sleep — which takes place three years after the events of the story proper — discloses that, even at fifteen years old, Abra still hasn't reached her full power as a Shiner. In short, you don’t want to get on her bad side — it’s a dangerous place to be.
• Macguffin Super Person: The True Knot need her to keep from dying out, with Rose planning on keeping Abra captive as a stable long-term food source (Rose explicitly describes it as akin to keeping a cow alive to get milk for decades compared to butchering a cow to have a few meals of steak once).
• Madness Mantra: The poor girl can only half-hysterically sob "They killed him!" to her parents after she experiences the horrific torture and death of Baseball Boy at the hands of the True Knot.
• Meaningful Name: Abra is the most powerful Shiner in the entire franchise, and has a name reminiscent of "abracadabra" (a word popularly associated with stage magic).
• Pay Evil unto Evil: She takes great pleasure in hurting and killing the True Knot. When Crow Daddy is slowly dying from his injuries in the film, Abra literally kneels right next to him, smirks, and whispers to him "I hope that hurts." Of course, given that the True Knot are a bunch of child-killing vampires, they really have it coming.
• Psychic Powers: Has the most powerful Shining ever seen.
• Race Lift: Abra is a white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes in the book, but she's black (albeit mixed-race) in the movie. Consequently, her father Dave is also black in the film while he was white in the book.
• Psychometry: Touching Bradley Trevor's baseball glove helps her Shine the location of the True Knot.
• Student–Master Team: With Dan.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: She's no longer the niece of Dan and granddaughter of Jack in the film, though she still calls Dan "Uncle Dan" both out of affection and as a Mythology Gag.
• World's Best Warrior: She's all but stated to have the most powerful Shining talent in history. Rose the Hat is visibly stunned when she realizes that Abra is inadvertently shining on her and the True Knot killing the Baseball Boy in Nebraska in her sleep and from all the way in eastern Massachusetts — over a thousand miles away.

Lucy

Lucia "Lucy" Stone

Played by: Jocelin Donahue

• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Her being Dan's half-sister is left out of the film.
• Mama Bear: Ferociously protective of Abra, as one would expect from any great mother, and brooks no nonsense at all when it comes to her daughter's safety.

David

David Stone

Played by: Zachary Mohmoh

• Death by Adaptation: Crow Daddy stabs him in the heart in the movie.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: When he learns about the cult of child-murdering vampires that have targeted his daughter, he responds by pouring himself a couple of glasses of scotch.
• Papa Wolf: Will do anything to protect his daughter, including gunning down monstrous cannibals like the True Knot.
• Race Lift: White in the book, black in the movie, just like his daughter.
• Supernatural-Proof Father: Zig-zagged. He is willing to admit his daughter's Psychic Powers when confronted to the evidence. Yet he'd rather consider the possibility of an earthquake in New Hampshire than a telekinetic manifestation of Abra's power.

Concetta

Concetta Reynolds

• Adapted Out: She has an important supporting role in the novel, but is completely removed from the film.
• Cool Old Lady: A poet, philosopher, and razor-sharp wit right up into her late nineties.
• Deadpan Snarker: Concetta is a great sharp-tongued granny for the ages, as her grandson-in-law repeatedly experiences.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Like Jack, the recently-passed ghost of Concetta plays a vital role in destroying the True Knot.
• Never Mess with Granny: Through Dan, Concetta passes her cancerous, terminal Steam on to the True Knot, killing nearly all of them in one fell swoop and permanently preventing them from ever harming Abra.

The True Knot

In General

A group of sadistic and semi-immortal psychic vampires, who extend their lives and rejuvinate themselves by torturing psychic children to death and feeding on their Shine. They live in groups as vagabonds and drifters, always searching for their next victims.

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• Achilles' Heel: One sure way to defeat the True Knot is to deprive them of their Steam. Failing that, firearms or luring them to dangerously haunted sites are suitable alternatives.
• Adaptational Badass: The film version of the True Knot is considerably more intimidating, competent and dangerous than their book counterparts; not only are they taken out solely through combat over the film's course (whereas most of them are killed through measles in the book), but they also all get higher kill counts (i.e., Crow Daddy killing Abra's father Dave and Snakebite Andi making Dan's friend Billy shoot himself) and are harder to trick/defeat.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: The True Knot as a whole. In the novel, while they usually appear human, their true form is a monstrous kind of Humanoid Abomination with elongated mouths, which they turn into when they feed. The movie shows them as being more conventionally attractive (with the exception of Rose, who's still beautiful), and considerably younger than their book counterparts. King even initially conceived of the True Knot in the book as a group of retirees traveling the country in RVs looking for prey, whereas here they come across more like a mix of New Age Retro Hippies and somewhat wealthy homeless people.
• A God Am I: Several members of the True Knot consider themselves gods, with Crow in particular calling himself one.
• Big Bad Wannabe: What the True Knot ultimately are, especially in the book: a bunch of thoroughly depraved assholes that have a hard time doing anything beyond preying on defenseless children. And they never, ever stop boasting how great they are, even while being handled. A good example of this in action is when Danny lures Rose to the Overlook Hotel and unlocks the hotel spirits he kept locked in his mind, and she is hopelessly outclassed and dead in seconds.
• Devoured by the Horde: They befall their prey like zombies or hyenas. A prime example is them jumping Grampa Flick after he dies.
• Emotion Eater: They devour feelings along with "Steam", the essence of a person's Shine. People who know what the Shining is and can use its powers have quite a bit more Steam than other people, so the True Knot focuses on them first and foremost. Fear and pain particularly flavour the steam to the True Knot's liking, which is why they inflict Cold-Blooded Torture on their victims to prolong the suffering as much as possible.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: They call themselves the True Knot because they're "knotted together" like a family, and indeed, they show a great deal of kindness and compassion towards each other (just not anyone else). But they also see nothing wrong with devouring whatever steam is left once one of them dies.
• Faux Affably Evil: They're all fairly polite and skilled at luring in people but it's a complete façade.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: While they may be a nasty bunch of semi-immortal child murderers, they're mostly outmatched pretty thoroughly by Abra and her adult protectors when push comes to shove. Partially lampshaded by more than one character, noting that their usual targets are unsuspecting children, and thus victims who can't fight back.
• Hate Sink: They are a clan of sadistic quasi-immortal beings responsible for several homicides. However, of them all, two stand out as especially deplorable:
  • Barry the Chunk lures a young boy named Bradley by offering him a ride only to sadistically mock him when he and the other True Knot torture him to death for his steam.
  • Snakebite Andi, a "pusher," joins the True Knot of her own volition after making a habit out of leaving markings on those she compels with her voice. Despite despising people who harm children, Snakebite Andi joins the True Knot while fully understanding it entails torturing children to consume their steam. Before succumbing to her wounds, she forces Billy into killing himself out of spite. This act nearly drives Danny into drinking again.
• Humanoid Abomination: Their true forms having jaws with a single tusk inside. Walnut also hypothesizes about their condition, believing them to still have DNA but to have a changed nervous system, the latter of which causes the True to react badly to flying.
• Immortality Hurts: Steam may make them live forever, but if they get killed, they "cycle" which is basically fading in and out of existence several times before disappearing, and feeling it all.
• Informed Attribute: Dan counters the suggestion of calling the authorities to deal with the True Knot by saying that they are rich and connected, while not caring much about authorities. Crow Daddy makes a reference to an asset in the NSA getting him the knockout drug, but otherwise they display none of their alleged resources over the course of the movie.
• Karmic Death: They survived for so long by consuming children who could not fight back. So it’s only appropriate when they contract the measles from one of their meals and are then picked off by a child and her family who they severely underestimated.
• Life Drinker: But only of people with the Shining. They hunt down children with it as adults lose power and flavour, but they also spectate disasters such as 9/11 to drink in the essence of any shiners that may have lost their lives (and the pain of others).
• Meaningful Rename: Each member of the True Knot takes on a new name typically based on some part of either their personality or physical appearance after joining (i.e., "Rose the Hat" and "Snakebite Andi").
• No Body Left Behind: Their bodies dissolve into steam and only leave behind Empty Piles of Clothing, which is very convenient when you've got to kill them.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The True Knot are basically psychic vampires, being former humans that feed off of the Shine of psychic humans so as to stay eternally young along with enhancing their own Psychic Powers. Abra even calls Rose a vampire at one point.
• Proportional Aging: So long as they feed regularly on steam, the members of the True Knot live for an extraordinarily long time. However, they do still age, just at a far slower pace than normal people. From Rose's pitch to Andi before turning her, it can be inferred that they roughly age one year for every fifty chronological ones, as she tells the 15-year-old Andi that in a century she will "maybe" be 17. However, Rose also says that long-lived does not mean immortal, as Grampa Flick dies after having lived what is implied to be well over two thousand years after he doesn't get enough Steam.
• Really 700 Years Old: Excluding Snakebite Andi (who joined in 2011), all of the True Knot are several hundred years old. Special mention must be given to Grampa Flick, who's old enough to remember Europeans first discovering the New World and is even implied to have fed on Roman emperors.
• Revenant Zombie: Outwardly appear to be regular humans, but joining the True Knott turns them into undead who retain all of their personality and who need "Steam" for their long life. Transforming into this revenant form is also like "dying" and returning to life.
• Smug Snake: They treat everyone other than them with contempt, refusing to refer to normal people as anything other than "rubes". But as Abra points out, they're nothing more than arrogant vultures who hunt down children. As such they massively underestimate Abra's intelligence, resourcefulness and potential allies.
• Squishy Wizard: They're played up as very powerful psychics and have some extra strength over regular people, but they are still vulnerable to blunt force trauma such as vehicle accidents, and hunting rifles are just as devastating on them as a regular person. Their reliance upon Steam also means they weaken and eventually die when starved. They are also defenseless or woefully unprepared against a sufficiently hostile and powerful Genius Loci such as the Overlook Hotel.
• Vampires Are Rich: The True Knot are quasi-vampires who feed on a person's magic and are said to be vastly rich.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Most look like late middle-aged to elderly tourists.
• Vampiric Draining: They extend their lives by sucking the life force out of innocent people.
• Was Once a Man: They used to be normal people once, and although they can look normal, their distorted forms when feeding show that their humanity is long gone.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Despite how they're played up as very dangerous foes, they die to getting shot with sniper rifles, same as any regular human. Albeit, with the caveat that hits to the extremities can be survived. Billy and Dan utterly humiliate most of the True Knot's members when a group is sent to Abra's fake projection. From Rose feeling everyone's pain, it hurts a lot as well; rather then being an instant knock-out death where they don't know what hit them, being shot appears to be a slower, painful death.
• Would Hurt a Child: They specifically hunt down children with psychic powers (which they call "Steam") because their power is much tastier to them. Moreover, fear and pain purify the taste so they take joy in torturing them and sucking their soul dry before leaving their corpses in shallow graves.

Rose the Hat

Rose the Hat (Rose O'Hara)

Played By: Rebecca Ferguson

"Well, hi there."

• Adaptational Badass: In the film, Rose is much less easily provoked and manipulated and mostly reacts with Tranquil Fury to the deaths of her comrades. In the final showdown, she effortlessly brushes aside all of Dan and Abra's attempts at tricking or capturing her, corners Dan on the stairs in the same way his father did his mother in the book and while in the book she was taken down by the combined efforts of Dan, Abra and Jack Torrance, in this, Dan is forced to unleash all of the monsters of the Overlook Hotel from their prison in his mind, and it's a pretty Pyrrhic Victory since immediately following her being Devoured by the Horde, the hungry spirits turn their attention to Dan.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the book, Rose the Hat is part of a polyamorous romance with both Crow Daddy and Snakebite Andi. In the film, while Rose and Crow are still romantically linked, Rose has more of a "mentor/pupil" dynamic regarding Andi so as to reflect the similar relationship between Dan and Abra.
• Arch-Enemy: Of Danny Torrance and Abra.
• Asshole Victim: Her death in both the novel and the film is extremely satisfying.
• Astral Projection: The psychic ability she is shown to be using the most in both the film and book.
• Berserk Button: Don't damage her hat. Just don't. And don't ever call her a coward.
• Big Bad: Of Doctor Sleep, both the book and film.
• Break the Haughty: Rose learns the horror of becoming the hunted from Abra's superior tactics in her astral mind world. Rose is lured into a trap so Abra can learn all of the secrets of the True Knot and is forced to flee in terror with real injuries to boot. After this, Rose loses some rationality and takes things personally, ultimately being suckered into the Overlook Hotel. Here, she meets her terrorized demise from Dan's trapped ghosts.
• Compelling Voice: She can use her voice to force people to obey her, as shown by Snakebite Andi.
• Creepy Souvenir: Many of Rose's accessories are trinkets from various children she has killed, including bracelets, hairbands, toys, and even a bicycle chain (woven into her hair).
• Cruel and Unusual Death: She gets an agonizingly painful death when Dan unleashes the Overlook ghosts upon her who proceed to devour her essence. Special mention should be given to how the spirits are shown to be reaching their fingers right under her skin to draw out more Steam.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: As powerful as she is, she's nothing compared to the Overlook Hotel, who (after Danny gives it back its ghosts) proceeds to take her down in seconds.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Her Battle in the Center of the Mind with Dan and Abra followed by her one-on-one fight with Dan in the Colorado Lounge. Abra does succeed in slashing at her ankles a few times and Dan almost seals her away in his mind with his suitcase method, but Rose quickly realizes she's being tricked and proceeds to basically plow through any defense the two can throw at her until Dan is forced to unleash the ghosts of the Overlook upon her.
• Death by Irony: Rose becomes extremely curious when she reads Danny's mind and finds the lock boxes in his mind. Dan is all too happy to let her have the spirits locked inside, and is first tackled suggestively by Mrs. Massey like a parody of Rose's close relationship with Snakebite Andi.
• Depraved Bisexual: Played with. She's evil and she's bisexual while engaging in a twin-gendered polyamorous romance, but her genuine care for her romantic partners is her largest redeeming quality.
• The Determinator: Once she has her mindset on getting her hands on Abra, nobody can talk her out of it, and anything Abra and Dan do to stop her only makes her more determined.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the novel, she is thrown from an observation tower by Dan, Abra and the spirit of Jack Torrance, giving her a fatal Neck Snap when she hits the ground. In the film, she is tackled to the ground and Devoured by the Horde of the Overlook Hotel's ghosts after Dan finally unleashes them from his mental prisons.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Rose is the main villain of the movie until the last 15 minutes when she is killed by the Overlook Hotel, which becomes the Final Boss of the film.
• Disney Villain Death: In the book, Dan, Abra, and the ghost of Jack combine their powers to push her off an observation tower, snapping her neck when she hits the ground.
• Does Not Like Shoes: Tends to go around barefoot for a duration of her screen time. The only moments where she doesn't are when she goes shopping at a grocery store and is lured to the Overlook Hotel.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The only good thing you can say about her is that she truly cares about the True Knot, particularly Crow Daddy. When Dan and Billy (and later Abra with Danny's help) kill them, she doesn't take it well.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Rose is so seated in her ways and hooked on her pseudo-immortality that she can't comprehend why Abra & Dan would have a problem with torturing Shining children to death to extend their own lives.
• Expy: invoked Stephen King clearly took a lot of inspiration from Count Dracula when writing her character; Both Dracula and Rose are deceptively intelligent and powerful queer-coded vampiric sorcerers of Romani descent ultimately undone by their hubris and inability to consider basic empathy or humanity from their foes, and mostly hunt after the defenseless dreggs at the bottom of society in their quest to preserve their own immortality. The main difference between the two is that Dracula in Bram Stoker's original novel is actually described as looking absolutely hideous, whereas Rose the Hat is more reminiscent of the reinventions of Dracula given by modern pop culture in being a significant example of Evil Is Sexy.
• Fatal Flaw: Vanity; In the film, she is so overconfident from her memories and pseudo immortality, that Abra and Dan are able to lure her into the Overlook Hotel. It doesn't occur to her that the duo have suckered her into a supernatural trap, despite the warning signs she perceives walking through the hotel. She is also fatally blind-sided by Dan's ability to lock-up Steam-hungry ghosts to use against her, having no idea what Dan has hidden when she finds the lock boxes in Dan's mental world.
• Faux Affably Evil: She's exceptionally charismatic and always speaks in a polite tone but is pure evil underneath.
• Fighting Irish: It's mentioned she was an Irish immigrant around the time of the Wild West.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the movie, her storing up on the Shining she had taken from children ends up being her undoing, as Dan manages to lure her to the Overlook Hotel and then unleashes all the ghosts he'd trapped in his mind on her.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Is implied to be Romani, given that Dick says that her kind is "always on the lam," used to ride camels in the desert (possibly referencing the Romani's descent from India), and later rode caravans in Eastern Europe. Rose wears a top hat and a lot of jewelry, which is true to typical representations of Romani in Western media. And of course, being played by Rebecca Ferguson, she's beautiful, as she herself brags about.
• Immune to Mind Control: As a result of having a Compelling Voice herself, Rose can recognize when Snakebite Andi is trying to compel her to act and prevent it from working.
• Ironic Name: A metatextual case; Roses are an important Arc Symbol in the greater cosmology of the Stephen King multiverse, serving as subtle reflections of the Dark Tower, "the axis on which all worlds spin". Rose the Hat, meanwhile, devours innocent children with the Shine and spreads nothing but needless pain and suffering in her wake, meaning that she is basically everything that the Dark Tower stands against.
• Karmic Death: Rose has spent hundreds of years feeding on children who couldn’t fight back just to live longer and feeling like she is above regular humans. In the movie, she ends up being eaten by the ghosts of the Overlook that make her and the True Knot seem like children. In an extra bit of irony, they consume her the same way she and the True Knot did with the baseball boy.
• Might Makes Right: Part of Rose's entire ethos. She believes that ordinary people (a.k.a. "rubes") are completely inconsequential, and anyone else who has the Shining that isn't part of her "family" deserves to be treated like a cattle fit for slaughter simply because until Dan and Abra come along, no one else she hunts is strong enough to effectively fight back.
• More than Mind Control: She can do the straight version through a Compelling Voice, but has an insidious way of sniffing out and targeting multiple characters' weaknesses and fears (most notably Snakebite Andi).
• A Mother to Her Men: Her only redeeming feature is her loyalty to her minions. When the majority of the True Knot are being shot to death by Dan and Billy, her agonized screams are implied to be just as much from her emotional turmoil over her proverbial "family" essentially dying right in front of her as they are from her sharing their pain through the True Knot's Psychic Link.
• Ms. Fanservice: Explicitly described as the most beautiful woman most people have ever met, and she knows it. Of course, Beauty Is Bad; she likely got that way because of how much Steam she's eaten.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: A case that's likely thanks to her Shining ability. When she confronts Dan in the Overlook Hotel's Colorado Lounge, she catches his fire axe one-handed as he swings it down at her, elbows him to the floor, and then swings the same axe right into his leg all in one fluid motion. Keep in mind that Rebecca Ferguson is a good five inches shorter than Ewan McGregor.
• One-Winged Angel: After the rest of the True Knot have been killed, Rose consumes all of their remaining supply of Shining, giving her more than enough power to take on both Danny and Abra. Of course, this also ends up backfiring big time, as all that Shining just makes Rose all the more appetizing to the residents of the Overlook.
• Poke in the Third Eye: She is capable of this when someone attempts to spy upon her with remote viewing, as Abra finds out when she looks through Rose's eyes. However, this is Inverted when Abra rebukes Rose's grip upon her mind, and send Rose flying a considerable distance. When Rose later uses Astral Projection to go to Abra's home and attempt to leaf through her mental file cabinets, she springs a trap that Abra left and has her mind read instead while Rose is helpless with her hand painfully stuck in the cabinet she tried to open.
• Rule of Symbolism: Her Signature Headgear being a lovely pork pie hat evokes the image of a stage magician, which is quite appropriate for the Big Bad of a Urban Fantasy book series based around Psychic Powers.
• Signature Headgear: As made clear by the name "Rose the Hat", she wears a nice pork pie hat that she almost never takes off. It's even the last part of her to remain after the ghosts of the Overlook devour her.
• Vain Sorceress: Her personality, especially as far as Abra is concerned, has shades of this. One gets the implication that Rose is basically what would happen if the Evil Queen from Snow White had managed to live into the modern day.
• Villainous Breakdown: Has several over the course of the book, the biggest being when Crow is killed. In the film adaptation, she has her last breakdown once Danny frees up the ghosts from inside his mind-boxes, displaying denial and horror once she sees the horde advancing upon her, before they painfully and fatally extract her Steam.

Crow Daddy

Crow Daddy (Henry Rothman)

Played By: Zahn McClarnon

• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the book, he's explicitly stated to be a former lawyer, having graduated from Harvard in the Class of 1938. In the film, however, his pistol holster (specifically, a Union Army Cavalry officer's for a Colt Model 1860 revolver) strongly implies that he used to be a former tracker for the Union Army during the American Civil War.
• Adaptational Badass: He's noticeably more competent in the film than he was in the novel through having a leveler head and generally being more intelligent; in order to kill him off, he has to be catapulted through a windscreen and into a tree, rather than being forced to turn a gun on himself by Abra's superior mental powers. Furthermore, he is implied to have a Shining talent of being able to track people in the film, whereas his novel counterpart lacked any Shining ability at all.
• Amoral Attorney: He was a lawyer prior to becoming a member of the True Knot.
• Asshole Victim: He killed Abra's father David Stone so he gets to enjoy a Psychic-Assisted Suicide in return.
• Ate His Gun: But not by choice, with Abra forcing him to do so in the book.
• Composite Character: The film version of Crow Daddy combines the job of tracking targets from Barry the Chink and serving as Rose's Number Two in the original novel.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, Abra makes him shoot himself. In the film, Dan kills him by willingly possessing Abra and using her telekinesis to crash his car, catapulting him out of the vehicle and letting him get impaled on a tree branch.
• The Dragon: For Rose. She trusts him completely and relies on him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the movie. Crow Daddy's arrogance in his own immortality causes him to pick up the habit of not buckling himself in while driving. Dan, while possessing Abra, takes full advantage of this by crashing the car and sending him through the window.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Danny-through-Abra manages to trick him into crashing the van into a tree and impale himself to death, as revenge for his murder of Abra's father.
• Ivy League for Everyone: He's a Harvard-educated lawyer, class of 1938.
• Number Two: Explicitly described as this.
• Mouth of Sauron: One of his most important jobs is negotiating for the True Knot, representing them in deals with 'rubes'.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: In the movie, Dan willingly possesses Abra and forces him to crash his car, killing him. It's also the case in the book, where Abra forces him to shoot himself with his own gun.
• Race Lift: His novel counterpart is implied to be a white man, whereas his film counterpart is Native American because of him being portrayed by Zahn McClarnon.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: When negotiating for the True Knot.

Snakebite Andi

Snakebite Andi (Andrea Steiner)

Played By: Emily Alyn Lind

• Age Lift: She's already an adult when introduced in the novel, but is only a teenager in the film.
• Adaptational Badass: In the film, rather than screaming the name of her abusive father as she is tortured to death, manages to pull a Taking You with Me regarding Billy and goes out while smugly cackling to herself.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the movie, Andi is not shown to have been sexually abused by her pedophile father. This makes her far less sympathetic than her book counterpart, and makes her acts against men who try to "date" her seem like the cruel vendetta of a teenage runaway without a cause. Then again, her "dates" are still pedophiles who wanted to sleep with a girl who's fifteen.
  • The Director's Cut does add a line during the conversation where Rose invites her to the True Knot that does imply that someone molested her, though it's not explicitly stated to be her father.
• Adaptational Sexuality: The film leaves out her sexual encounter with Rose and her relationship with Sarey, giving no indication she's interested in women beyond calling Rose "the most beautiful woman she's ever seen".
• Abusive Parents: Andi's father was a repulsive pedophile who began raping her when she was only eight. The abuse continued until she put a knitting needle through his eye-socket, after using it on his testicles.
• Asshole Victim: Due to becoming a hypocrite and helping to torture-murder children.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: She starts out as someone who seeks vengeance against pedophiles who prey upon children, but then becomes someone who lures children into a van to their grisly deaths at the hands of her and her companions.
• Compelling Voice: Her power in a nutshell. She can influence anyone with her voice, for instance, tell them they feel sleepy to put them to sleep, give them orders while asleep, or even order Billy to kill himself. The ability is common enough for the True Knot to have a term for it: "pusher".
• Decoy Protagonist: The first few scenes make it looks like the story is gonna revolve around her, but she quickly becomes a side antagonist after being turned.
• Die Laughing: In the movie, she cackles psychotically after forcing Billy to kill himself while she disintegrates to death.
• Does Not Like Men: She's generally distrustful of all men, assuming them to be rapist monsters due to how horribly she was abused by her own father.
• Eye Scream: How she killed her father.
• Forced Sleep: Her special power.
• Freudian Excuse: After being raped by her father multiple times from the age of eight, she has a hatred for men.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Andi" is typically a male name.
• Go Out with a Smile: A very creepy example in the film, where she starts to laugh hysterically in satisfaction over having made Dan suffer by making Billy kill himself.
• Groin Attack: She used a knitting needle on her rapist father's balls, before putting the same needle through his left eye.
• Hate Sink: She joins the True Knot of her own volition after making a habit out of leaving markings on those she compels with her voice. Despite despising people who harm children, she joins understanding it entails torturing children to consume their steam. And before succumbing to her wounds in the movie, she forces Billy into killing himself out of spite. This act nearly drives Danny into drinking again.
• Hypocrite:
  • Was raped and abused by her father as a child, something that traumatized her to the point where during her death she called Dan "Daddy". Yet as soon as she joined the True Knot, she has no qualms against torturing and eating children.
  • She claims that the True Knot have no choice over what they do, and are only following their nature. This ignores that all members of the True Knot do actually have to choose to join.
• Laughing Mad: In the movie, when just as she's about to die, Andi tells Billy to shoot himself. So when he does just that right in front of Danny, she's laughing her ass off even as she disintegrates.
• Psycho Lesbian:
  • Subverted. She is a vicious, paranoid misandrist who likes the ladies, but before she was a True Knot, she wasn't actually a killer, just a thief who had a tendency to humiliate the men she conned. Discovering her sexuality with Rose, of all people, actually caused her to become a little less ruthless and distrusting (though of course, she's now a willing accomplice to child murder for the sake of her eternal life-so take with a grain of salt).
  • Similarly to Rose, her genuine love for Silent Sarey is arguably her most redeeming quality.
• Rape as Backstory: By her father, as a child.
• Taking You with Me: In the movie, as one last act of spite, she forces Billy to kill himself.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the movie, her last moments involve her laughing like a lunatic after forcing Billy to kill himself. A rare case of a breakdown following something going right for the villain.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: She was sexually abused by her pedophile father, feeding into her current psychosis.

Jimmy Numbers

Jimmy Numbers

• The Smart Guy: He's the True Knot's accountant.

Barry the Chink

Barry the Chink (Barry Smith)

Played by: Robert Longstreet

• Adaptation Name Change: His name is changed to "Barry the Chunk" in the film adaptation, perhaps regarding how he is out of shape.
• Decomposite Character: His job as a tracker in the novel is given to Crow Daddy in the film.
• Kick the Dog: He lures a young boy named Bradley by offering him a ride only to sadistically mock him when he and the other True Knot torture him to death for his Steam.
• Non-Indicative Name: He's not actually Chinese, as his nickname implies; he's a Caucasian with slightly slanted eyes.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Gives every indication he thought of his racist nickname himself.

Walnut

Walnut (Peter Wallis)

• The Medic: He serves as the True Knot's resident doctor.

Grampa Flick

Grampa Flick (Jonas Flick)

Played By: Carel Struycken

• Alas, Poor Villain: Just before dying, he freely admits to Rose that he's scared to go.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, he's killed (along with the majority of the True Knot) by contracting measles. In the film, he dies of old age after not consuming enough Steam.
• Elderly Immortal: Looks very old physically. Even after taking Steam, his hair is iron grey.
• The Older Immortal: Oldest of the True Knot. It's mentioned that he remembers when Europeans worshiped trees. Even his considerably younger film version is mentioned as having "fed on Roman emperors".
• Old Soldier: His cover when among rubes is an old veteran, and he keeps updating which war he fought in as time goes by. He's a military history buff, so he can play the part fairly convincingly.
• Killed Off for Real: The first of the True Knot to die.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Very rude and uncouth in the book.
• Time Abyss: In the book, it's mentioned that he remembers back to when Europeans worshipped trees, which would make him somewhere in the ballpark of seven millennia old.

Other Characters

John Dalton

Dr John Dalton

Played by: Bruce Greenwood

The Stones' family doctor and Dan's closest friend.

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• Cool Old Guy: In his sixties and a kind, charming man who cares about his patients and helping other addicts deal with their demons.
• Deadpan Snarker: He has his moments.
• Demoted to Extra: In the novel, he's a friend of the Stone family and helps Dan, Billy, and David to rescue Abra in the climax. In the film, he simply appears to help set Dan on his path to recovery.
• Nice Guy: He's a kind, humble man who helps Dan and never judges him for his mistakes.
• Recovered Addict: He is an AA member.

Billy Freeman

Billy Freeman

Played by: Cliff Curtis

The aging town maintenance man in Frazier, who works in Teeny Town running the train.

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• Ate His Gun: In the movie, Andi forces him to commit suicide this way.
• Badass Normal: Billy's marksmanship proves more than adequate to take on the advanced psychics in the True Knot in a gunfight.
• Big Damn Heroes: He shoots Andi just before she tries to kill Danny.
• Death by Adaptation: Andi forces him to kill himself with her powers in the movie.
• Nice Guy: He gives Danny a place to live and a job just because Dan looked like he needed them and later helps him join AA.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: In the movie, Andi uses her shine to compel him to kill himself when he gets too close to her as she's dying.
• Recovered Addict: Like Dan, he's a recovering alcoholic and regularly attends AA meetings.
• Stress Vomit: When he and Dan discover Bradley's corpse, he pukes his guts out.

Casey Kingsley

Casey Kingsley

Frazier's municipal works supervisor.

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• Reasonable Authority Figure: In his first meeting with Daniel, he appears to be an annoying busybody and overzealous teetotaler. Actually, he offers Dan a job just based on Billy's recommendation, and later becomes his sponsor at AA.
• Recovered Addict: Used to be an alcoholic.

Andy Halloran

The paternal grandfather of Dick Halloran, and one of the most horrible people in a series of novels featuring evil ghosts, a murderous Genius Loci, and child-murdering psychic vampires.

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• Abusive Parents: Was not only abusive and sadistic, he also repeatedly molested Dick as a child. It's never stated if he did the same to Dick's father, but Andy shows open contempt towards him, calling him "yella'" for not having the guts to stand up to him. Dick describes him as being "dark" like Jack was.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Heavily downplayed, but he isn't stated to have molested Dick Halloran in the films like he did in the novels.
• And I Must Scream: His final, and extremely well-deserved fate; Dick's (maternal) grandmother taught him how to seal Andy's ghost inside his mind, trapping him forever.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He knew full what a sadistic monster he was and was utterly unashamed of it.
• Creepy Mortician: Was one in life and ran his own successful funeral parlor, which allowed him to earn far more wealth than most black men could have ever dreamed of in the Jim Crow-era South.
• Denied Food as Punishment: One of his many acts of cruelty against Dick was to do this to him. Other times, he'd give him food that he'd put cigarettes out in and force him to eat them.
• Domestic Abuse: He was violently abusive to his wife as well as Dick.
• The Dreaded: He was this to his family who all lived in fear of his cruelty and abuse, especially Dick.
• Evil Old Folks: He was old enough to have a grandson and a vile, abusive monster who Dick absolutely and rightfully hated.
• Faux Affably Evil: He was the image of good manners in public and a monster behind closed doors, often keeping the same mocking politeness to drive his abuse home further.
• Financial Abuse: Used his wealth to further hurt his family, knowing they couldn't stop him.
• For the Evulz: He doesn't seem to have any motive for his actions beyond sheer cruelty.
• Gruesome Grandparent: He was Dick's grandfather and a repulsive sadist who delighted in abusing him every way he could.
• Hate Sink: Given everything we learn about him, he may well be the most loathsome character in the two books which is saying a lot. Hell, he practically makes Jack, who at least had a sympathetic background due to being a victim of abuse himself and was entirely aware and ashamed of his behavior, look like a saint as Andy knew exactly what a vile person he was and revelled in it.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: It's telling that even compared to the ghosts of the Overlook or the vampires of the True Knot, Andy stands out. There's no supernatural reason for his monstrous behavior nor is there even implied to be some sympathetic explanation for why he is the way he is like Jack had, he's just evil and has always been that way.
• Kick the Dog: He seemingly lived for this trope, taking immense pleasure in the physical, emotional and sexual abuse he inflicted on his family, especially Dick. He even tries to keep doing so from beyond the grave.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Fittingly for a vile beast of a man who used his power to torment others, he is trapped in a mental lockbox by Dick, his main victim, and is trapped there forever, completely powerless and unable to ever hurt or influence anyone ever again.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Possibly; his grandson was born with potent Shining, while Andy is never stated to have had any supernatural powers while alive. However, he did manage to return as a ghost, which is mostly done either by people who Shine, or those connected to the Overlook, both the books and the movies are fairly vague exactly how this works.
• Mythology Gag: Was an aquaintance of Charlie Manx, the Big Bad of NOS4A2 by King's son Joe Hill.
• Posthumous Character: Has been dead for over 50 years by the time even The Shining took place, but his actions shaped Dick into the man he became, and forced him to learn a very valuable skill.
• Sadist: He immensely enjoyed the physical and emotional abuse he inflicted upon Dick and his family as well as other children.
• The Savage South: Lived in Clearwater, Florida, for most of his life, and was eventually buried there.
• Spiteful Will: Knew that his family tried to put up with his abuse so they'd get his money when he died, so in a last act of cruelty he left the money to an orphanage in Alabama (which is heavily implied to have supplied him with children).
• Would Hurt a Child: He delighted in doing so, as he tortured and sexually abused Dick through his entire childhood, and tried to keep doing it after he died! It's also implied he did it to dozens of other children.