1408

I'm a big Stephen King fan..it's no secret. His novels are awesome (ok, most of them are...some of the ones after his auto accident sorta suck). But his short stories..they freaking rule! I own every short story collection King's had published.

One of my favorite stories is 1408. It's in his Everything's Eventual colletion. There are 14 dark tales. This one is about a room in a hotel that goes beyond hauntings. 1408 added together is 13. As we all know there are no 13 floors, although 14 is really the 13th. So in this case..the story is about room 13 on floor 13. A writer who likes to debaunch haunted places spends the night (sorta) in the room and all kinds of things happen to him. Here's a spoiler on the Wikipedia site.

About two years ago, I found one of Stephen King's audio CD's on sale.

Blood and Smoke Audio CD Three tales all tied to smoking and ...blood. 1408 is the second tale and the longest. Stephen reads all the stories. He does an ok job, but if you're used to performance artists or actors reading CD novels, you probably won't like Stephens rendition. The first time I listed to 1408, I wasn't really frightened. I was in bed with the lights out. My headphones securely in my ear. And on the last few sentences of the story, a sax starts squealing and I swear it scared me so badly that I jumped ten feet off the bed and hit my head on the ceiling.

I recently found out that there is a movie that will be released this summer. John Cusack is playing the writer. Samuel L. Jackson is playing the Hotel Manager who tries to talk in out of staying in the room.

1408 movie

I will probably wait until it comes out on DVD to view it. I really hope they don't add to much junk to make the short story tale into a movie version length. If they do...may the thing in the wall find them.