Real-life chilling photograph from The Shining found decades later

The real-life photo behind one of the most iconic scenes in cult classic, The Shining, has been found.

Stanley Kubrick’s film, which was released in 1980, is considered one of the best horror films of all time and has become an annual Halloween staple.

The film has also been the subject of numerous books and documentaries and, in these projects, film theorists have dissected the film, sharing ideas and hidden references featured within every scene.

But one moment in the film has remained a mystery for over 45 years.

At the end of the movie, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is seen in a black-and-white group photo at the Overlook Hotel, after his mental state increasingly deteriorates due to the psychological force of the building. The eerie snap reveals that Torrance, inexplicably, has always been a part of the hotel.

Now, after a year of investigation, New York Times journalist Alec Toler and British academic Alasdair Spark have found an obscure reference to the photo in a book from the 1980s that reported the original had been taken from an archive, with Nicholson’s head pasted on at the front.

Patrons at a St. Valentine's dance and ballroom dancing competition in the Empress Rooms at the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington, London, 14th February 1921. In the foreground (centre) is South African ballroom dancing teacher Santos Casani (aka John Golman). (Photo by Morey/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

According to a thread by Toler on X/Twitter, Spark recognised Santos Casani, a famous dancer and jazz instructor in London during the 1920s, which helped them narrow down the timeline and location. Casani also wore a prosthetic nose so the pair were able to “triangulate the rough date when his nose matched the photo”.

Toler and Spark looked through hundreds, “maybe thousands”, of “British newspaper archive pages, old photos from jazz clubs, building blueprints/floor plans, dance instruction videos, etc, but never found any places that matched”,

After much sleuthing, they narrowed down the source: the BBC Hulton Archive, which was later purchased by Getty. Their conclusion was confirmed by Murray Close, a photographer who worked with Kubrick on The Shining.

Nicholson’s image was pasted on to the image revealing that he never left the Overlook Hotel (Warner Bros)

The photo is from a Valentine’s dance held on 14 February 1921 at the Empress Ballroom in the Royal Palace Hotel in London.

Spark told Getty Archives: "The photo doesn’t show any of the celebrities I had speculated on – the Trix Sisters for instance - nor the bankers, financiers or presidents others like Rob Ager have imagined there. No devil worshippers either. Nobody was composited into it except Jack Nicholson. It shows a group of ordinary London people on a Monday evening. ‘All the best people’ as the manager of the Overlook Hotel said."

Fans were pleased with the revelation saying: “If these people only knew their group photo would become an iconic prop in one of the greatest horror films of all times...”