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 in the Stephen King Universe?
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 Stephen King’s 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 in the Stephen King Books?
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!