The Shining: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

It is November 1 when Jack finds the scrapbook in the Overlook’s basement. Wendy and Danny are hiking behind the roque court, so Jack goes down to the basement to hit the damper on the boiler and look for rats. Here, Jack finds old boxes filled with newspapers, ledgers, and receipts for toilet paper and other hotel supplies. He is captivated as he roots through the piles. The Overlook’s entire history is in the boxes, with the exception of the years it was closed, and Jack marvels at the fact that the hotel has struggled so much over the years—the Overlook’s location alone should be enough to ensure success. It even has a special ring to it—“the Waldorf in May,” Jack thinks, “the Overlook in August and early September.”

Jack thinks that the management must have been particularly bad at the Overlook Hotel over the years and returns to the history inside the boxes. He glances at his watch and can’t believe he has already been in the basement for nearly an hour, and then he notices the scrapbook. The book is sticking conspicuously out of the top of a box, and Jack immediately grabs it. It is bound in thick white leather, and the pages are wrapped in gold. He opens it, and an invitation to a masked ball celebrating the Overlook’s grand opening on August 29, 1945 falls to the floor. According to the invite, dinner is at eight and the unmasking is at midnight. Jack can just imagine the hotel’s ballroom filled with chants of “Unmask! Unmask!” and he settles down to look through the scrapbook.

The scrapbook is full of old newspaper clippings about the Overlook Hotel and Horace Derwent, the hotel’s former owner. Jack looks through pages of the famous people who stayed at the hotel over the years and still can’t believe the hotel hasn’t consistently made a go of it. He remembers hearing that Derwent often resorted to illegal and taboo means to keep the hotel open, like bootlegging and prostitution. Jack wipes his lips with the back of his hand, and thinks that he could really use a drink. As Jack looks at the pages in the scrapbook, he feels for the first time his level of responsibility at the Overlook. It is like he is responsible for history.

Jack reads that the Overlook was a school for writers for a short time in the 1960s, but it closed after a student drunkenly fell from a third-floor window to the concrete below. The newspaper suggested that the fall was a suicide, and Jack remembers what Watson said about all hotels having ghosts and scandals. Jack turns the page of the scrapbook and can feel the Overlook around him. He rubs his lips and reads about the Las Vegas group who owned the hotel before Derwent bought it back. The newspaper clippings suggest that Derwent had some sort of connection to the mob, and then Jack comes across the headlines for the “gangland-style shooting” at the hotel.

In 1966, two bodyguards of mobster Vittorio Gienelli were shot dead in the Presidential Suite of the Overlook Hotel. Gienelli himself was found dead as well, and the hotel was sold again shortly after. Jack flips through the rest of the scrapbook, but the pages after the shooting are empty. He goes back to the beginning and tries to find a name or some evidence of who the book belongs to, but he finds nothing. Wendy comes to the stairs and yells down. Jack has been down there for hours, she says as she comes down the stairs. Wendy looks at Jack and remarks that his lips are bleeding. “It’s been hell for you, hasn’t it?” she asks. Jack shrugs. Not so bad, he says, leading Wendy up the stairs, glancing back one last time to the scrapbook sticking out of the box.