It is a well-known fact that the best-selling horror writer, Stephen King, hated Stanley Kubrick�s film adaptation of his novel �The Shining.� But what if Kubrick was not trying to tell a ghost story? What if Kubrick was trying to confess something he swore not to confess? Like filming the historical U.S. Moon Landing?

It all started with Kubrick�s masterpiece black comedy, �Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb� (1964). In pre-production, Kubrick knew he would have to use the interior of a B-52 Bomber plane for critical scenes in the film and wanted the U.S. Government�s help in aiding him with a plane. But the government refused based on their suspicions of it being a breach of national security. Nevertheless, Kubrick and his team went to work, trying to find another way in order to use the plane they needed to use. Finally, Kubrick found a photo of the plane�s interior and from the one photo, he was able to build it to scale. When the film was released, the U.S. Government was baffled at how lifelike and realistic the set was and never truly believed that Kubrick rebuilt the interior from one photograph.

Four years later, Kubrick released another box office smash �2001: A Space Odyssey� (1968) in which the film took place almost entirely in a spaceship. Kubrick�s knack of making everything look real on set for the camera came into focus again. And this is where the conspiracy theory starts.

There is already a widely-known conspiracy theory that the NASA Moon Landing was faked in order to stop Russia from winning �The Space Race� of the late 60s. But according to conspiracy theorist Jay Weidner, author of the website �Secrets Of The Shining,� the U.S. Government knew that if they were going to fake the Moon Landing, they would have to make it look real. Hence, Stanley Kubrick was hired to film it but was sworn to secrecy.

On Weidner�s website, he goes in-depth with his theory and points out interesting details from the �The Shining� (1980). For instance, when �Danny� sees the dead twin girls at the end of the hallway, he is wearing a sweater that has an Apollo-11 rocket on the front of it. According to Weidner, the image of the twin girls themselves have an interesting connection as well. Since in King�s �The Shining,� there is in fact only one girl that Danny sees, Weidner believes the twin girls in Kubrick�s adaptation represent NASA�s Gemini program. Another instance is that In King�s story, the haunted hotel room number is �217.� In Kubrick�s it is �237" and supposedly represents the average distance from the Earth to the Moon; in actuality it is 238,857 miles. And finally, Weidner also draws parallels between the characters� lives in Kubrick�s �The Shining� to Kubrick�s own life, particularly the deconstruction of the Torrance marriage to Kubrick�s own marriage.

So was �The Shining� (1980) a metaphorical confession to a government cover-up or just a different interpretation of King�s story? Perhaps nobody will ever know; the conclusion is up to the viewer.

For more information on this theory and to decide for yourself, visit Weidner�s website:

Jay Weidner's "Secrets Of The Shining"