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45-year mystery behind eerie photo from The Shining is believed to be solved

124 points by colinprince

by boulos

4 subcomments

What a weird investigation though. Sounds like they could have solved it by asking the photographer first, which they eventually did:
> Finally, Spark contacted Murray Close, the photographer who took the picture of Jack Nicholson that was inserted into the original image.
> The photographer revealed that "there was no such thing as the Warner Brothers photo archive [and] that was a complete mistake."
> Instead, Close had sourced the original photo from the BBC Hulton Photo Library in London, now part of Getty Images.
> The photo, it turns out, was taken at a Valentine's Day dance on February 14, 1921, in the Empress Ballroom at the Royal Palace Hotel in London.

by huhkerrf

2 subcomments

> I do feel a sense of achievement. We knew the photograph with Jack Nicholson in [it]. We knew that there was an unknown man, but we didn't know who he was.
Of course, this skips over the fact that it was actually a reddit poster who discovered the person, and the professor didn't believe him.

by _xerces_

1 subcomments

Non lite version: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/the-shining-photo-ident...

by netsharc

0 subcomment

Sheesh, an instance where the "lite" version of the page is more annoying than the full version: an article about an image. Yes I realise I'm moaning about extra clicks to load the images..

by kookamamie

2 subcomments

The whole article reads like a complex mystery itself. Took a while to piece together what was even being investigated.

by Lammy

0 subcomment

> "[There were] lots of discussion about who he is and how strange he looks," said Spark.
It's cool how he's doing a tilted-axis / pulling-apart / creating-reality / as-above-so-below pose. Even if it's just coincidental for the original photo I doubt it's coincidental in why Kubrick chose it.

by nottorp

1 subcomments

> Instead, Close had sourced the original photo from the BBC Hulton Photo Library in London, now part of Getty Images.
So the UK government privatized their photo archives at some point?

by Al898989

1 subcomments

If anyone is interested, I'm the person who identified the man and found the photo.

by soderfoo

1 subcomments

> Instead, Close had sourced the original photo from the BBC Hulton Photo Library in London, now part of Getty Images.
That's a bit disappointing if I am reading it correctly. A photo library initially funded by the taxpayers, is now locked down by Getty Images?

0 subcomment

by imzadi

3 subcomments

How is a picture from 1921 where people were bustling around at night so sharp and clear?

by m3kw9

1 subcomments

What a weird website. Why do I need to tap on every image like it was NSFW?

by Aardwolf

0 subcomment

Now that I see both pictures side by side, it's actually visible that the arms are in a slightly mismatched position compared to the suit in the retouched version

by computerthings

0 subcomment

[dead]

by 1oooqooq

5 subcomments

only mystery is why people pretend to like or understand the ending with the picture.

by nmilo

1 subcomments

The internet has sparked so many of these useless investigations, same with all those lost media forums, how many man hours were spent trying to find some obscure 1999 failed pilot for some Nickelodeon show no one’s watched. They stitched Jack Nicholson’s face over a photo of some guy from 1921. Who cares who the guy is? Are these people that bored? Is it some OCD tendency that every trivial detail in history should be logged and archived?