Uncontrollable Ergotism - Shrooming and The Shining

Interior designer David Hicks' orange, brown and red hexagonal carpet design is instantly associated with Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining. Recent films "Room 237" and "Ready Player One" have kept Hicks' iconic motif in the forefront of the minds of Kubrickologists everywhere. But what about the other not-quite-as famous carpet design featured in The Shining? The lurid, green and purple carpet in Room 237?

A photograph of the actual fungus Claviceps Purpurea, the source of LSD. These are the fruiting bodies, small, dark purple microscopic mushrooms growing on the sclerotia of a rotting rye grain.

Several Kubrick scholars have noted the scene in The Shining where Jack Torrance requests a bourbon in the Gold Room Bar, but is given a whiskey instead. Why? Maybe rye is why.

The Jack Daniels that Jack Torrance drinks is made from 70% rye, did you catch that?

The strange ghost woman in Room 237 shows signs of gangranous ergotism during her memorable apparition. Jack's ergotism was decidedly more convulsive, for better or worse.

Kubrick may have also been paying a bit of tribute  to H.G. Wells' short story "The Purple Pileus", another tale about an isolated man in an isolated environment, over-imbibing and wreaking havoc on a small family. Mr. Coombes, the protagonist of The Purple Pileus, has a violent outburst towards his wife after consuming wild mushrooms, in a desperate bid to not be  "dull":  

"Something had happened, but he could not rightly determine what it was. Anyhow, he was no longer dull--he felt bright, cheerful. And his throat was afire. He laughed in the sudden gaiety of his heart. Had he been dull? He did not know; But at any rate he would be dull no longer."

Wendy reads about Rye