1408 (King)
Short summary
New York City, modern day. Mike Enslin arrived at the Hotel Dolphin determined to spend the night in room 1408 despite the hotel manager’s desperate warnings.
Mr. Olin tried everything to dissuade Mike, revealing that twelve people had committed suicide in the room and thirty had died of supposedly natural causes. He explained that the room affected electronic devices and had made several maids ill.
Mike dismissed the warnings as attempts to build mystique. When he entered 1408, reality immediately began to distort. The door appeared crooked, pictures hung at wrong angles, and the room’s yellow-orange light created a nauseating atmosphere. The walls began to melt into alien shapes, and Mike heard a bizarre voice from the telephone counting random numbers.
As the room’s malevolent presence intensified, Mike realized this was no ghost but something far worse. In desperation, he set his shirt on fire using matches to escape the room’s influence. A fellow guest saved him with ice water. Mike survived with burns but was permanently traumatized.
It was never human. Ghosts… at least ghosts were once human. The thing in the wall, though… that thing…
Mike could never write again and lived in constant fear, keeping lights on at night and avoiding sunset’s orange glow.
Detailed summary by chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Chapter 1. Mike Enslins encounter with room 1408
Mike Enslin arrived at the Hotel Dolphin on Sixty-first Street and immediately spotted Olin, the hotel manager, waiting for him in the lobby. Mike's heart sank, realizing he perhaps should have brought his lawyer again.
Olin approached Mike with an outstretched hand, looking pained and glancing around the elegant lobby for help. When Mike asked if there was a problem, Olin requested to speak with him privately in his office. Mike agreed, seeing this as an opportunity to add to the ominous tone his readers craved, and recognizing that Olin was genuinely afraid of room 1408.
In his oak-paneled office, surrounded by pictures of the hotel and furnished with Persian carpets and standing lamps, Olin seemed to regain his confidence. On his desk sat Mike's last three paperback books, evidence that the hotel manager had been doing research of his own. Olin offered Mike a cigar, which he declined, though Olin noticed the cigarette parked behind Mike's ear - a habit Mike had maintained for nine years since quitting smoking after his brother died of lung cancer.
Olin asked if he could still talk Mike out of his plan, but Mike was determined. When Mike brought out his minicorder to record their conversation, Olin began reading the titles of Mike's books aloud: 'Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses,' 'Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards,' and 'Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Castles.' Olin observed that Mike had traveled extensively for his research, all tax-deductible since hauntings were his business.
Mike reminded Olin that his request was actually a legal demand, supported by Robertson and backed by New York State law and federal civil rights laws that forbade denying him a specific room if it was vacant. Room 1408 was indeed vacant - it was always vacant. Olin continued examining Mike's books, noting that he had read one story from each. He was surprised by the quality of Mike's writing, finding it subtle rather than the hack work he had expected. However, Olin made a disturbing observation about Mike's work.
What concerned me-what frightened me-is that I found myself reading the work of an intelligent, talented man who doesn't believe one single thing he has written.
Mike admitted that he didn't believe in supernatural phenomena, but maintained that he had kept an open mind throughout his investigations. He had never encountered genuine paranormal activity, though he would have written about it fairly if he had. Olin disagreed with Mike's assessment, arguing that his disbelief was precisely the problem. Olin explained that while unbelief might protect someone in an abandoned house or castle, room 1408 was different.
In an abandoned house or an old castle keep, your unbelief may serve you as protection. In room 1408, it will only render you more vulnerable.
Olin revealed the crucial difference about room 1408 that made it uniquely dangerous.
There are no ghosts in room 1408 and never have been. There's something in there... but it's not a spirit presence... it's not a ghost.
Despite Mike's burning desire to get upstairs and begin his investigation, Olin convinced him to stay for a drink by producing the key to room 1408 - an old brass key on a tarnished paddle, the only room in the hotel that still used an actual key rather than a magnetic card. Olin explained that room 1408 hadn't been occupied by a paying guest since 1978, and that electronic devices malfunctioned inside it. Digital watches ran backward or stopped entirely, calculators and cell phones didn't work, and beepers activated randomly.
While Olin poured drinks, Mike asked how he knew about the electronic malfunctions if no one had been in the room. Olin explained that maids entered monthly for light cleaning, and he often accompanied them. The room had a disturbing effect on the cleaning staff - some had weeping fits, others laughing fits, and several fainted. The twin sisters Veronique and Celeste had been the most successful at cleaning the room until Celeste retired due to ill health.
Olin recounted the room's history of suicides, mentioning twelve deaths in sixty-eight years, including the first occupant who jumped from the window in 1910. Mike was familiar with these deaths but dismissed them as statistical coincidence. However, Olin revealed something more disturbing - there had been at least thirty so-called natural deaths in the room, including a man who apparently drowned in a bowl of soup in 1973. The hotel manager emphasized that they didn't keep the room empty out of superstition, but because of genuine danger. Finally, Olin handed Mike the key, asking about his health and noting his lucky Hawaiian shirt with apparent irony.
Olin accompanied Mike to the fourteenth floor in the elevator, reverting to his less confident demeanor once outside his office. Mike noticed that the elevator buttons skipped from 12 to 14, omitting the thirteenth floor entirely. When they reached the floor, Olin refused to go any closer to room 1408, leaving Mike at the elevator. He warned Mike that the telephone in the room probably wouldn't work if the room didn't want it to, and made one final desperate plea for Mike not to enter. As the elevator door closed, cutting off Olin's words, Mike walked down the hallway toward room 1408.
Chapter 2. The aftermath and evidence
The most significant artifact from Mike Enslin's seventy-minute stay in room 1408 was eleven minutes of recorded tape from his minicorder, which survived the ordeal slightly charred but intact. The recording was notable for how little coherent narration it contained and how increasingly odd Mike's voice became throughout. Unlike his other professional recordings, this tape had a fragmentary, distracted quality that made listeners increasingly uncomfortable. Many people asked for the tape to be turned off before reaching the end.
Mike's problems with room 1408 began before he even entered. The door appeared crooked, tilted slightly to the left, which made him feel nauseated and reminded him of seasickness. When he looked away and back again, the door appeared straight, then crooked again but tilted to the right.
The door was crooked... It made him think first of scary movies where the director tried to indicate mental distress... by tipping the camera on the point-of-view shots.
Once inside, Mike found what appeared to be a normal junior suite with two chairs, a sofa, writing desk, and TV cabinet. However, he noticed that three pictures on the walls were crooked - a lady in evening dress, a sailing ship, and a still life of yellowish fruit. After straightening them, he opened the window for fresh air, though only the top half would budge. He found an old matchbook in an ashtray featuring the Hotel Dolphin with vintage cars and a doorman in an old-fashioned uniform. The bedroom contained a double bed with a yellow-orange coverlet and an old rotary telephone. Mike's recorded observations became increasingly disjointed as he described these seemingly ordinary details.
As time passed, Mike's perception of reality began to deteriorate. The pictures on the walls changed - the lady exposed her breasts with blood dripping from her nipples and grinned with filed teeth, the sailing ship showed the room's previous suicide victims, and the fruit became a severed human head with a cigarette behind its ear. The room itself began to melt and sag into impossible Moorish arcs. Mike tried to call for help, but the phone produced only a harsh, inhuman voice.
Six! This is six! Ignore the siren! Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room! Eight! This is eight!
Realizing he was in mortal danger from something alien and hungry, Mike lit a match and set his shirt on fire. The flames seemed to repel whatever was in the room, allowing him to escape.
It was as if the thing behind the bulging wall had no use for a burning man; did not, perhaps, relish cooked meat.
Chapter 3. The rescue and escape
By coincidence, Rufus Dearborn was in the hallway returning from the ice machine when Mike burst out of room 1408 with his shirt ablaze.
Dearborn acted quickly, pushing Mike to the floor and dumping ice on him to extinguish the flames. During the rescue, Dearborn noticed that Mike's scream seemed to grow in volume, as if he were arriving from somewhere far away. The burning shirt cast an unnaturally bright yellow-orange light that reminded Dearborn of the Australian desert. When Dearborn looked toward room 1408, he saw the same terrible light filling the doorway and felt compelled to enter it. Mike grabbed Dearborn's pants cuff and warned him not to go in, saying the room was haunted. At that moment, the door slammed shut, cutting off the light and the buzzing sound. Dearborn then ran to pull the fire alarm.
Chapter 4. Life after room 1408
Mike survived with second-degree burns on much of his torso, though a white square on his chest remained unmarked where his minicorder had been in his shirt pocket. The device was melted around the corners but still functional, containing the disturbing eleven-minute recording. Mike's literary agent Sam Farrell kept the tape in his wall-safe, refusing to let anyone else hear it due to its unsettling content and background sounds.
After his recovery, Mike found himself unable to write even a postcard without feeling nauseated and cold. His career as a writer was over. He developed various health problems including high blood pressure, eye trouble, back pain, and prostate issues. Mike moved to Long Island and took long walks on the beach when weather permitted. He rarely spoke about his experience, once telling the waves that whatever was in room 1408 had never been human - it wasn't a ghost but something far worse.
Mike's nights were plagued by nightmares he couldn't remember upon waking. He had all phones removed from his house, fearing he might hear that inhuman buzzing voice again. Most significantly, he couldn't tolerate sunset light - that yellow deepening to orange reminded him too much of the Australian desert light he had experienced in room 1408.
He sleeps with the lights on in his bedroom, so he will know at once where he is when he wakes up from the bad dreams... He can't stand the light that comes at sunset.