Misc
HORROR 101: SHINE, THE SHINING, AND THE PSYCHICS OF THE STEPHEN KING MULTIVERSE
Welcome back to Horror Press’s Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.
Today we’ll be reaching into The Dead Zone of our minds, making Firestarter from our brain matter, and taking a trip across Stephen King’s sprawling works. Or at least I am, I have to write the article. Of course, we’re talking about “the shine,” the versatile psychic power shared by many Stephen King characters but mastered by few. Who has it, why, and what exactly is it?
Spoilers ahead for: The Shining, Doctor Sleep, The Dark Tower Series, Black House, and the Mr. Mercedes trilogy.
WHAT IS THE SHINING?
Not to be pedantic, but technically it’s just called “shine” or “the shine.” Though Dick Halloran says his grandmother called it “the shining” in the book, he uses it interchangeably with shine, and most other sources like Doctor Sleep also call it shine.
FINE. WHAT IS THE SHINE?
Shine is a wide set of powers, mainly psychic abilities, possessed by a number of the characters in Stephen King’s novels and short stories. Despite their radically different manifestations of shine, the likes of Carrie White from Carrie, John Coffey from The Green Mile, and Ted Brautigan from the Hearts in Atlantis all share the ability. Called by different names like “the Touch” or given no name in certain cases, the interconnected nature of Stephen King’s writings means its all shine.
Rather than an energy field people tap into, shine is almost definitively a limited resource users are born with. We know that it’s finite, as Doctor Sleep details that people with the shine also have a certain amount of “steam,” a ghostly psychic vapor released when they die painful deaths. Steam is directly proportional to the strength of their shine and degrades over time (which is why the True Knot feeds on young shine users), implying shine is expendable.
Shine is not purely mental and is influenced by the physical body, placing it on the border between tangible and intangible. Steam and by extension shine can carry disease, which transfers to the people who inhale it like the psychic vampires of the True Knot.
WHAT CAN THE SHINE DO?
Practically anything if you put your mind to it.
Get it? Mind? Because they’re psychic powers.
…Anyways.
The versatility of shine is unbounded, with it manifesting in its users in a number of ways. Its telepathic applications can transcend time and space, as Danny Torrance is able to speak into the past to a younger version of himself under the guise of his imaginary friend Tony.
Its telekinetic applications are devastating on both a small and large scale, as shown in the book Carrie, in which the title character destroys buildings, spreads fire across town through her psychic rage, and summons meteorites localized entirely on the White residence.
Other abilities like pyrokinesis, precognition, and mind control were less common, but just the tip of the iceberg for what those who possessed them could do. Shine could even heal the sick and possibly resurrect the dead, as shown with John Coffey from The Green Mile.
Despite how dangerous some of these abilities are, the most devastating instance of using shine would have to be what it’s capable of in The Dark Tower series: destroying the multiverse. The Dark Tower’s primary antagonist (and the overarching antagonist of almost all Stephen King stories), The Crimson King channels the powers of those with shine, whom he dubs “breakers”. Their purpose? To shatter the “beams” that hold up the anchor point of all realities, the eponymous Dark Tower.
Shine’s limitless potential means the infinite potential to destroy as well.
WHERE DOES THE SHINE COME FROM?
There are very few straightforward explanations for the origin of the Shine, but we can assume it originated with the creator of the multiverse, Gan. I’m not going to explain The Dark Tower’s cosmology until the Mike Flanagan series comes around since it’s a lot of metaphysical stuff to go over, and we don’t have enough time. Just know, shine as an energy could have originated with him, or the primordial soup he formed out of.
Even if it isn’t that old, shine has likely existed for as long as humans have. Dick Halloran claims that the psychic vampires of the True Knot and other clans have existed since early human history as some of the first nomads. Grampa Flick, the oldest of the True Knot, claims to have been around since early humans in Europe were still “[worshipping] trees,” meaning shine was present from the outset.
WHO HAS THE SHINE?
Any living being can have the shine, and based on what Dick Halloran says everybody might, just to differing degrees.
Dick mentions in The Shining that especially intuitive or lucky people are implied to subconsciously shine, as Dick says he knew about 50 or 60 people who used it and “[didn’t] even know it,” while he had met 12 who could shine on purpose. Dick also implied that Wendy Torrance and all mothers could shine slightly in the form of motherly instincts. Even if everyone has the shine, however, the amount of shine most people can access is negligible.
We even learn in The Shining that places can have the shine, as Dick Halloran observes that The Overlook Hotel does in its own right. The Overlook was considered “greedy” by Dick and craved Danny’s shine. With its abilities, it could make inanimate objects like the topiary animals move and manifest the spirits of its victims.
HOW DO YOU GET THE SHINE?
There’s no reliable way to awaken the shine in people, but there is a common theme among many who have it: trauma. Something about being exposed to it allows victims to tap into their shine.
The most obvious trauma comes through abuse. After all, Danny Torrance was abused by his father Jack. Carrie White’s shine is genetic, apparently, in so far as all the women in her family had it. Still, given what the book and film show us, the White family dynamic is unhealthy for the women. They might have all just had access to it as a result of being abused and put through the wringer constantly.
In some cases, it’s physical trauma, as with Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone whose car accident subsequently unlocks his psychic abilities. Similarly, Brady Hartsfield from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy receives head trauma and is put into a similar state and accesses his own latent powers while hospitalized.
Many groups have tried to harness the power of shine and failed. Beyond the Crimson King’s forces, the clandestine government project The Shop from Firestarter and The Tommyknockers experiment with a drug named Lot-6 to force Charlie McGee’s parents to manifest their shine, which succeeds only in the short term.
In the book “The Institute”, the researchers studied the presence of the real-life BDNF protein, a high rate of which was apparently a common trait in those who possessed shine. Despite them trying to codify shine as science, it’s pretty evident that all attempts to reproduce and control it are borderline impossible.
It’s brain magic. What can you do?
WHO HAS THE STRONGEST SHINE?
This is obviously up for debate, but my personal answer? It’s a tie between Abra Stone from Doctor Sleep and Tyler Marshall from Black House.
Though Carrie’s telekinetic rampage and telepathic broadcast are powerful, and Charlie McGee’s explosive pyrokinesis is just as devastating, Tyler Marshall from the novel “Black House” is indicated multiple times to be the strongest breaker ever, with the potential to shatter the Dark Tower (the heart of the multiverse) by himself.
While this is impressive, it isn’t an endless supply of power impressive. Abra shines from an even younger age at considerable distances and with exceptional strength. We know her shine has to be among, if not the strongest shine ever, as Rose the Hat’s plan involves keeping Abra alive to bottle enough steam to feed the group indefinitely. At one point, she even dubs her the “Everest [of steam].” I wouldn’t be surprised if Abra’s upper limits of power are revealed to be nonexistent in a future Stephen King novel.
IS THE SHINE GOOD OR EVIL?
Technically, neither. It’s a neutral force that doesn’t have a sense of morality. It’s up to the user to decide what they do with it…
And that will be it for today’s Horror History 101 lesson. See you in the next class, and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content concerning horror movies, television, and everything in between!
Misc
The Final Destination Franchise, Ranked
With this year’s Final Destination: Bloodlines threatening to bring a major horror franchise of the 2000s rushing back into the hearts and minds of the people, just when we need it the most, there’s hardly a better time than to look back at the franchise that was. The five-film series, which kicked off in 2000 with a movie adapted from an X-Files spec script and follows Death’s increasingly elaborate design to claim the lives of people who somehow avoided disaster, is one of the most thrillingly consistent franchises of the modern age, so this was a particularly tough ranking to hammer out.
With this year’s Final Destination: Bloodlines threatening to bring a major horror franchise of the 2000s rushing back into the hearts and minds of the people, just when we need it the most, there’s hardly a better time than to look back at the franchise that was. The five-film series, which kicked off in 2000 with a movie adapted from an X-Files spec script and follows Death’s increasingly elaborate design to claim the lives of people who somehow avoided disaster, is one of the most thrillingly consistent franchises of the modern age, so this was a particularly tough ranking to hammer out.
The Entire Final Destination Franchise Ranked
#5 The Final Destination (2009)
I have a chinchilla-level soft spot for The Final Destination, and it’s not just because of its extreme willingness to objectify male characters at the same level as the female characters, but even I must agree with the general populace on this one. It’s demonstrably at a lower level than the others. There’s no appearance by franchise stalwart Tony Todd (RIP), for one thing, and the questionable 2009 CGI is also incredibly damaging for a franchise that is primarily a delivery system for horrible onscreen deaths. That said, there is something charming about the brutal efficiency of its storytelling. It’s painting in strokes so broad it almost becomes a fable, and it is still more clever than it gets credit for in its Rube Goldberg approach to Death, especially in the way that most people become undone by their own good luck tokens.
#4 Final Destination 2 (2003)
Final Destination 2 is definitely the movie in the franchise that I’ve flip-flopped on the most over the years. Its conceit, following Death tracking down people whose lives were saved by characters from the first movie who shouldn’t have been alive in the first place, is solid. Plus, it has that unimpeachable opening sequence with the 18,000 car pileup on the freeway. However, there’s a lot of running around in circles between the death sequences that never amounts to much, A. J. Cook delivers one of the blander protagonist performances in a franchise that isn’t exactly known for textured and interesting leads, and the mini-premonitions she has during the main part of the movie are chintzy and goofy.
#3 Final Destination 3 (2006)
Forgive me for the inexcusable pun, but this one is a roller coaster ride. Mary Elizabeth Winstead delivers a solid leading lady performance, it’s downright nasty to its dead meat characters, and the “prophetic photos” trick is a fun way to get the characters involved in trying to stop their own deaths. This one also suffers from a severe lack of Tony Todd (he has a voice-only cameo at the theme park in the beginning), but at least it remembers that the franchise sometimes gives Death a theme song (“Rocky Mountain High” in the first movie, “Dust in the Wind” in FD5). The one they chose here – “Turn Around, Look At Me” by The Lettermen – is maybe the most perfectly creepy oldies needle drop this side of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”
#2 Final Destination 5 (2011)
This miraculous sequel is not only deeply interested in ways to push the premise of the franchise forward (“take a life, steal their remaining time” is one of the most narratively satisfying approaches to giving the dead meat characters something to do), it also contains some of the best pre-death sequences in the franchise. Every installment has at least one terrific Rube Goldberg sequence where random events pile up into a violent death (the beauty parlor in TFD, the fire escape in FD2, and the tanning beds in FD3 come to mind). Still, there has hardly been a better tension-building setpiece than the “sharp screw falling on the balance beam” scene in this movie. It harnesses the wicked glee that is always present in Death’s fuckery throughout the franchise, but it also captures the way that some of the most effective horror comes from the most mundane, everyday threats.
#1 Final Destination (2000)
It’s very common for any ranking to have the first movie at the top, but frankly, I don’t know that this is the case for Final Destination. Because all the movies are so good, and the sequels are bigger and splashier (sometimes literally), the original 2000 installment can get short shrift. And sure, later on they found more ways to push the envelope of what is set up here, but it is set up so damn effectively. What this movie lacks in the slickness of the sequels, it makes up for with brutality. Moments like seeing a strangled teenager’s veins burst in his eyes or the miserable way that Ms. Newton clings to life until she just can’t anymore during her kitchen misadventure have a profound power. This is by far the most emotionally excoriating installment in the franchise, where the weight of the deaths is felt by the characters in a real way, rather than just as yet another link in the supernatural slasher chain the movie is building.
The franchise’s ability to play on common real-life fears is also introduced with one of its brashest set pieces. That Flight 180 explosion is second only to Final Destination 2’s logging truck for lodging right in the back of your brain for the rest of your life.
Three years ago today, Horror Press slithered its way out of the birth canal and onto the popcorn-covered floor of [insert your local indie movie theater]. Covered in embryonic fluid, Raisinets, and sticky miscellaneous floor fluids, Horror Press has come a long way. You’ve been with us through our first steps, the terrible twos, countless festivals, two podcasts, numerous giveaways, Horror 101s, rankings, retrospectives, lists, and so much more. We’ve appreciated your support along the way, but we want you to know that we’re just getting started. Our third year is already starting off with a bang and we plan on making it bigger, badder, and bloodier.
While it’s important to look forward to what’s to come, I also want to take a moment and look back at all of the quality content that’s gotten us this far. From gay sharks, to a unique look at Martyrs, to an interview with Jennifer freaking Kent, we’ve covered a wide variety of topics. It’s time to put on your party hat (like Leo in that episode of Twin Peaks where Bobby and Shelly dress him up when he’s comatose) and join us as we highlight what makes Horror Press, well, Horror Press!
A Look Back at Some of Our Favorite Articles at Horror Press
Gay Jaws!
Queer historian of American horror cinema Abigail Waldron wrote one of our most controversial articles in the history of Horror Press. In March, Abigail asked the question, “Is it time for a queer Jaws remake?” This article caused tons of…debate among horror fans across social media. Many of the responses were from readers who merely read the headline, but those who read the article were treated to an incredibly well-written thought experiment. If you happened to miss this article when it came out, now’s your time to check it out.
Angry Aliens!
One of the co-hosts of the Horror Press Podcast, Eli BadCritic, took on the task of ranking the Alien franchise in the most Eli way possible! If gay Jaws didn’t get people in a tizzy, this one sure did! Ridley Scott’s Alien is one of the most prolific Sci-Fi horror films ever, but where does it rank for Eli? We’ve had many franchise rankings here at Horror Press but none as contentious as this one!
Castle On A Hill
Luis Pomales-Diaz is unquestionably one of the powerhouses at Horror Press. From Smile 2, Terrifier 3, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, A Quiet Place: Day One, Longlegs, and countless others, Luis has made sure to cover many of the heavy hitters to grace the silver screen last year. Aside from his unwavering love for the Chucky series, Luis wrote an editorial on something that I, and many fans my age, care deeply about: Dark Castle Entertainment. Dark Castle initially set out to remake the films of famed horror filmmaker William Castle. As far back as I can remember, some of my earliest horror movie memories are of Dark Castle films. If you are also a fan of the Aughts classics, then give Luis’ editorial a read. You won’t regret it!
Final Girls Support Group
Many of us use horror as an escape from the real world, some of us use it for entertainment, and some of us use horror to help the grieving process. Writer Ian Carlos Crawford crafted a brilliant look into his relationship between horror and grieving. This is the article that drew my attention to Horror Press and prompted me to ruin Curator of Everything Horror Press James-Michael Fleites’ life. Horror has the unique ability to cover a wide variety of topics and handle each one of them differently; sometimes all you need to make yourself feel comfortable is an hour and a half of good ole hack-n-slash.
Michael Myers and Me
Sharai Bohannon has been incredibly busy between her countless podcasts and numerous bylines. Her Shudder streaming guides have been incredibly helpful and well-received by both fans and casual horror enjoyers. While not scouring through Shudder’s insanely awesome catalog, Sharai has written one of the most deeply personal editorials on Horror Press. Check out her article about her insatiable love for Halloween and the undeniable tether she has to the masked killer.
Too Much Paranormal Activity
We all know that Paranormal Activity was the film to singlehandedly kickstart the mid-aughts obsession with found footage. Writer/podcaster Brennan Klein, who has a penchant for 80’s slashers, took on the daunting task of watching and ranking ALL of the films in the Paranormal Activity franchise. This isn’t the only franchise he tackled, Brennan has also ranked franchises like Leprechaun, Blair Witch, and The Amityville Horror! He also took a task that many would be too afraid to broach when he covered the Top 10 Child Deaths in Horror.
Hellraiser and You
Brooklyn-based Bash Ortega has a history of interviewing quite a few exciting voices in horror. From the crew behind Black Eyed Susan on AI and consent, prolific filmmaker Bertrand Mandico on his queerly fantastic She Is Conann, and the writer/director Alex of one of my Letterboxd Top 4 Alex Phillips on All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms! And that’s to name a few. One of my favorite editorials from Bash is their deep dive into Hellraiser and all the kinky shit that lurks below the surface.
Disturbing Movies
Toward the end of 2023, James-Michael shared an article with me that pissed me off. Buzzfeed saw fit to put out an article on the most disturbing movies of all time. Now, I’m not one to gatekeep horror by any means, but it was clear all they did was google “disturbing movies” and hastily put together a list they thought would pass for casual horror fans. It did not. This led me to watch 50+ movies I had never seen before and revisit movies I have seen before…I didn’t sleep for a month. I’m proud of all of my articles on Horror Press, but this one takes the cake. (Though my interview with Larry Fessenden is definitely the runner-up!)
This is all just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless amazing articles from the Horror Press writers and there is so much more to come! Thank you for joining us along the way and we hope to keep your skin crawling for years to come.
Hail Raatma!
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Slappy Was the Blueprint: How the Dummy from Goosebumps Became A Horror Icon
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