Having recently moved from Vermont to Boulder with his wife Wendy and their adolescent son Danny, former schoolteacher Jack Torrance has just accepted the five month job as the Overlook's winter caretaker in wanting uninterrupted solitude to start his new career as a writer.
Built in 1907, the posh, grand and secluded Overlook Hotel, located in the mountains of Colorado, closes for the winter months as it was never designed as a ski resort, that seclusion and isolation which has always been its attraction for its upscale guests and which makes it largely inaccessible in the snowy winter.
