Kubrick's awareness of Freud's study of the etymology of the word 'uncanny' is apparent early on in The Shining with Jack's reactions during his and Wendy's tour of their living quarters in the oldest part of the hotel: on Danny's bedroom: 'Perfect for a child'; their bedroom: 'Cozy'; and the bathroom in which he will attempt to murder his wife: 'Well, it's very homey.'

Freud defines the strange yet somehow familiar experiences we call the uncanny as that 'class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar...in the mind and which has become alienated from it only throught the process of repression. Freud makes much of the fact that the German work for 'comfortable,' 'homelike,' cozy,' or 'familiar' (heimlich) also means 'secret' or 'concealed' and in certain contexts comes to mean its opposite - that is, 'uncomfortable,' 'sinister,' or 'uncanny' (unheimlich). In English, this same ambiguity of meaning about what is familiar and agreeable and what is hidden and disagreeable is carried within the English word 'canny,' which can mean 'cosy' but also 'occult' or 'uncanny' and which also includes among its definitions 'supernatural' and '(of a house) haunted.'

JACK Well, it's very...homey.