The One Thing Everyone Gets Wrong About Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'

The Big Picture

• The Grady girls in The Shining aren't twins — they're ages 8 and 10, as confirmed by the film's credits.
• Stanley Kubrick cast real-life twins as the Grady sisters, but they were intended to be regular siblings.
• Visually stunning and meticulously detailed, Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining is hauntingly beautiful and terrifying.

Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of The Shining is as beautiful as it is terrifying. It's filled with visually stunning images that have haunted viewers for decades, from the elevator spilling a torrent of blood to the slow zoom-in of Jack Nicholson's spaced-out stare. Possibly the most enduring of these images is that of two girls, the "Grady Twins," standing together, holding hands, at the end of a hallway. Except it turns out that they aren't twins after all — not in the original Stephen King book nor in Kubrick's adaptation.

The Shining

A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future. 

Grady's Daughters Aren't Twins in 'The Shining' Novel

While the nuances and characterizations in the book and the movie differ, the general plot of The Shining is the same in both. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, bringing his family along with him. Jack's son, Danny, has "the shine," or psychic abilities, which causes him to see horrifying visions of the Overlook's violent past. Meanwhile, Jack quickly spirals into madness, in part due to the manipulation of whatever evil haunts the Overlook.

One of the visions Danny sees in The Shining is of the two Grady girls, daughters of the former caretaker who murdered them, his wife, and himself. Grady's creepy daughters have a much more prominent role in the Kubrick movie than in the novel. In the movie, they appear to Danny as both a warning and a terrifying enticement from the hotel, telling him to "come and play with [them]." Their appearance is one of the most memorable moments from the film. In the book of The Shining, though, the girls are only mentioned a couple of times as part of their father's murderous breakdown. However, their ages are given at the very beginning of the book. The on-season caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, Watson, talks to Jack Torrance about Grady and his rampage. Watson explains that Grady's daughters were eight and six when they were killed by their father.

Now, just because those were their ages in the book doesn't mean that's how old they were in the movie version of The Shining. After all, Stephen King famously hates Stanley Kubrick's adaptation, in part because of its deviations from King's book. But even so, there's clear evidence that the Grady girls aren't twins in Kubrick's version, either.

The Grady Girls in Kubrick's 'The Shining' Are Ages 8 and 10

The very first scene after the opening credits of The Shining reveals the true ages of Delbert Grady's daughters, and they are not the same. Jack is in an interview with Stuart Ullman, the manager of the Overlook Hotel, who tells Jack about the incident with Grady and his family. It can be easy to miss, but Ullman specifically says that he believes the Grady daughters were "about 8 and 10." So, while their ages in the movie are different than they were in the novel, the fact remains that they are still not twins.

Now, it's possible that the two girls aren't the Grady daughters at all and are two completely different ghosts, as one fan theory supposes. However, the visual language of The Shining sets them up as the Gradys, as they are two young girls shown lying bloody next to an ax, which fits the description of the Grady family's death. In addition, Delbert Grady's ghost speaks with a British accent, and so do the girls. It seems unlikely that three people with a British accent in an American hotel would be unrelated. But the most concrete evidence is in the credits of The Shining. Each girl is credited as a "Grady daughter," confirming the characters' identities. And please note that there's no mention of "twin" in those credits, either.

'The Shining's Movie Ending Changes One of the Book's Most Effective Scenes

Stephen King's original ending is much more explosive.

Why Does Everyone Think The Gradys Are Twins in 'The Shining?'

So, how did viewers and pop culture as a whole come to believe that the two scary girls in The Shining are twins? Likely because Kubrick did cast real-life twins in the roles: Lisa and Louisa Burns. But the former actors themselves confirmed that the characters they played were not meant to be twins. The Burns sisters just happened to catch Kubrick's eye. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Lisa Burns said that the original casting call wasn't for twins at all, just sisters. "Stanley was never looking for twins," Lisa explained, saying that Kubrick likely would have cast two girls with an age difference if the Burnses hadn't auditioned.

The Shining is full of symmetrical imagery and themes of mirroring, so it makes sense that Kubrick would find the image of identical twins appealing. Even Lisa Burns said they were lucky because, upon seeing her and her sister's audition, "Stanley decided twins were just spookier." Kubrick was also famous for his meticulous nature. One scene in The Shining holds the record for most takes at 148, while he reportedly broke Shelley Duvall down in another by making her repeat the staircase scene 127 times. With that kind of intense attention to detail, it's unlikely that Kubrick made a mistake with the ages of the Grady sisters.

The Grady sisters from The Shining have been referred to as twins in merchandise, article headlines, even on Lisa and Louise Burns' official Instagram handle. By this point, it may have become too ingrained in the public consciousness to be corrected, in the words of Delbert Grady. But at least that means the truth of the matter can be a fun fact to pull out in conversations to surprise people. And who knows? Maybe it will spread enough to eventually cancel out the "twins" moniker.

The Shining is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.

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