FILM · 2007 · USA
1408
24 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
24 Interesting Facts About 1408
Interesting Facts (18)
- #001
In the film, Mike Enslin (John Cusack) tells his recorder: "Hotel rooms are naturally creepy places, aren't they? I mean, how many people slept in that bed before you? How many were sick? How many were losing their minds?" Stephen King wrote these lines in his note on "1408" in his short story collection.
- #002
At the book signing, Mike signs off to his audience with "Stay scared," a phrase used by Stephen King's friend, director George A. Romero, who said it at many events and often wrote it with his autograph.
- #003
The film has several endings. The one in which Mike vanishes from Room 1408 with Katie is the most widely seen, since it is the default on most DVD and digital versions. In the alternates, Mike is pulled from the flames, reunites with Lily and has his conversation with Katie on his recorder; in one of them Lily can hear it too, in the other she can't.
- #004
The story behind the film was almost never written. Stephen King wrote the first few pages of "1408" as an example for his nonfiction book "On Writing," to show how to revise a first draft, but the story grabbed him, so he finished it and included it in an audiobook collection of short stories.
- #005
The axe the firefighter uses to smash the hotel door at the end is the same axe Jack Nicholson wielded in The Shining (1980); both films were shot at the same London studio, Elstree.
- #006
The original inspiration for 1408 came from a series of real news stories about world-renowned parapsychologist Christopher Chacon's research into the world's most notoriously haunted hotel rooms. In the United States alone, Chacon investigated hundreds of haunted hotels from New York City to San Francisco, including the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, the Battery Carriage House in South Carolina, the Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana and the Hotel Del Coronado in Coronado, California.
- #007
During his night in Room 1408, Mike goes through the five stages of grief in order: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Grief runs all through the film, especially around Mike's daughter and the way he runs from his own grief by traveling, leaving Lily and writing books that debunk his readers' belief in the supernatural.
- #008
Because of reported paranormal activity, the Emily Morgan Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, sealed off one of its rooms, number 1408.
- #009
One of the room's first victims was named "Grady," also a character in "The Shining," Stephen King's other horror story about a hotel.
- #010
Mary McCormack was pregnant throughout the shoot, which is why most of her scenes were framed from the waist up.
- #011
The 1408 script had more lines and detail than the finished film. Kevin O'Malley, for example, begs Mike to "fix it" (stitch up his throat) as he chases him through the air duct; the woman who leaps from the hotel window in the 1950s doesn't just weep but cries, "May Jesus forgive me… and fuck you, Henry Smith!"; and Mike tries to hug his elderly father in the hotel bathroom, only to open his eyes and find he is hugging the toilet. In the script, Katie Enslin is called "Gracie Enslin."
- #012
1408 is actually quite accurate about US laws that require hotels to accept guests. That doesn't mean guests can demand a particular room and stay in it, as in the film, but innkeepers and hotel/motel owners do have a legal duty to take in guests. An owner may refuse or eject people he reasonably considers objectionable, but the reason must be objectively reasonable (a court wouldn't accept that a requested room is haunted as grounds for turning someone away), and anti-discrimination laws also protect guests from protected groups. These rules come from earlier cases (Langford v. Vandaveer, 254 S.W.2d 498 (Ky. 1953), Pettit v. Thomas, 103 Ark. 593 (Ark. 1912), Moody v. Kenny, 153 La. 1007 (La. 1923), Morningstar v. Lafayette Hotel Co., 211 N.Y. 465 (N.Y. 1914)). If 1408 were real, almost the only ways Mike Enslin could be refused or removed would be if he didn't really intend to be a guest, was disruptive and damaged the property, wouldn't pay, or was suspected of endangering the hotel's business or guests through a dangerous, disruptive or hazardous situation (State / Steele, 106 N.C. 766 (NC 1890)). If Room 1408 were damaged or unsafe he couldn't stay there; but a claim that it is haunted doesn't count, and neither would past deaths or crimes in the room be a reasonable basis for keeping a guest out of it.
- #013
The earlier numbers add up to 13, and the hotel's address, 2254 Lexington Street in New York City, does too (2+2+5+4=13).
- #014
When the windows are first bricked up, Mike notices "Burn me alive" written somewhere among the bricks, another hint at how the room will end. The same bricks reappear later when the post office crumbles away, making it clear Mike has been sent back to the room, and he then takes the advice and burns it.
- #015
In an interview with AP Skott for Variety, John Cusack described his approach: he said he took LSD and based much of his performance on how he felt and acted while "tripping."
- #016
The film never reveals who sent Mike the postcard. The main theories are that the Room sent it to claim another victim, or that general manager Gerald Olin, who later appears in an angelic form in his office, sent it to bring in someone who would destroy the room for good.
- #017
The digital clock radio is tuned to 104.8 MHz FM.
- #018
The first sign of evil: when the Bible comes out of the drawer, the title looks normal, but when it goes back in, a split-second shot shows it the other way round.
Behind the Scenes (1)
- #019
The melting telephone in the scene where Mike begs the room to leave his wife alone was catalogued as a prop called "1408, Original Screen-Used SFX blue-screen phone and handset." The melting was done by filming the phone's parts with special blue markings so pieces could be removed with blue-screen techniques, then using CGI to make the phone appear to fall apart.
Easter Eggs & References (2)
- #020
The standard DVD runs exactly 104 minutes and 8 seconds, so it stops at 1:44:08, a direct nod to the title.
- #021
The film is full of references to the number "13." The room number "1408" adds up to 13 (1+4+0+8=13). The room is on the 14th floor, but the hotel skips the 13th, so it is really on the 13th. The room's lock is engraved "6214," which also adds up to 13 (6+2+1+4=13), and the first death happened in 1912, which adds up to 13 as well (1+9+1+2=13); 19 + 12 is 31, which reversed is 13. Even the release month and year, June 2007, add up to 13 (6/07; 6+7=13). The US release date was June 22, 2007.
Deeper Meaning (3)
- #022
In Stephen King's short story 1408, on which the film is based, Katie Enslin barely figures and her death isn't dwelt on; instead, Mike is a chain smoker whose brother died of lung cancer. In the script, Katie was first called "Gracie," before the name was changed. The finished film implies Katie had terminal cancer but never says so outright.
- #023
Early in his stay, Mike Enslin jokingly compares the room to the 7th circle of hell. In the "Inferno" section of the "Divine Comedy" (14th century), the 7th circle is for the violent. Its first ring, for murderers, warriors, plunderers and tyrants, is a boiling river of blood and fire; its second, the Wood of the Suicides, is for those who kill themselves or try to, souls embodying self-hatred; its third, the Burning Sand, is for Heretics, Sodomites and Usurers, who rejected God, Nature and Art respectively. In the film, most of the room's former occupants did indeed take their own lives.
- #024
Mike opens the room's Bible at random and lands on 2 Samuel 11; "11" and "2" add up to "13" (not to mention that the book shares a name with Samuel L. Jackson). And, purely by coincidence, verse 13 of that chapter closely mirrors Mr. Olin's dealings with Mike: "At David's invitation, he (Uriah) ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home." (New International Version.) It is part of the famous story of King David sending Uriah to die in battle so he could marry Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, and Olin's last line in the film suggests a similar hypocrisy.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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