Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of The Shining is renowned for its chilling final scene, which features a haunting photograph from the Overlook Hotel’s 1921 Fourth of July ball, prominently displaying Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) amidst a crowd from a time before he was born. The image used in the film was a manipulated version of a real photograph, which had remained elusive until recently. Exciting news for fans of the film: the original 1921 Fourth of July ball photograph has been discovered 45 years after the movie's release.

Alasdair Spark, a retired academic from the University of Winchester, shared the journey of finding this iconic image on Getty's Instagram. He explained, “Following the earlier identification by facial recognition software of the unknown man in the photograph at the end of The Shining as Santos Casani, a London ballroom dancer, I can reveal that the photo was one of three taken by the Topical Press Agency at a St. Valentine’s Day Ball on February 14, 1921, at the Empress Rooms, the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington.” The post also featured a new scan from the original glass-plate negative along with supporting handwritten documents.

Spark, along with New York Times staffer Arick Toller and a dedicated community of Redditors, embarked on a challenging quest to locate the image. “It was starting to seem impossible; every cross-reference to Casani failed to match. Other likely places that were suggested didn’t match,” Spark noted on Getty. “There were some places we could not find images for, and we started to fear that meant the photo might be lost to history, and never be found.”

This discovery is sure to delight fans of The Shining. Stephen King’s novel, released in 1977, has been adapted into two notable versions: Kubrick’s iconic film and Mick Garris’ faithful 1997 miniseries.