The Overlook Hotel claimed the most beautiful physical setting of any resort in the world; but Jack Torrance, the new winter caretaker, with his wife Wendy and their five-year-old son Danny, saw much more than its splendor.

Jack saw the Overlook as an opportunity; a desperate way back from failure and despair; Wendy saw this lonley sanctuary as a frail chance to perserve their family; Danny who was blessed or cursed with a shining, precognitive gift, saw visions hideously beyond the comprehension of a small boy. He sensed the evil coiled within the Overlook's 110 empty rooms; an evil that was wating just for them.