IT and The Shining Movie Theory

There’s a theory that’s been gnawing at me that IT and The Shining are not just stories from the same writer, Stephen King, but two windows into the same psychic universe. One reveals how the power of the mind illuminates reality while the other shows what happens when collective fear creates it.

In my view, Pennywise is a manifestation of the children’s shining in Derry. The collective psychic fear of those who possess that light.

1. Only Those Who Shine Can See It

In IT, not everyone in Derry sees the clown. Adults walk through carnage and floating corpses as if nothing’s wrong. But the kids the ones who feel too much, who dream vividly, who imagine they see everything. That’s the first clue. In Stephen King’s universe, those are the very same people who carry the shining the psychic sensitivity that connects humans to deeper layers of existence.

So maybe it’s simple…

Only those with the shining can perceive “It.”

Everyone else is blind to its existence.

2. The Shining as a Manifestation Engine

If The Shining shows us how an individual can project psychic energy outward, then IT shows us what happens when a whole group of shining minds project together especially under fear.

The children of Derry don’t just see Pennywise, they fuel him. Their fear, amplified through their shared shining, gives him physical form. He becomes real because they believe he is.

That’s why, at the end of Chapter Two, Pennywise begins to shrink when they mock him and stop believing. It’s not mere psychology, it’s metaphysics. When they withdraw their energy, the illusion collapses. They are his creators and his destroyers.

3. The Shared Universe of Stephen King

Both IT and The Shining exist within King’s wider multiverse one bound by psychic ability, evil forces, and the power of human thought. In Doctor Sleep, we learn that people who shine are scattered across generations, unaware of how connected they are.

It’s not hard to imagine that Derry itself could be a kind of psychic hot spot, drawing these gifted children together like magnets only for that energy to attract something ancient and hungry that feeds on it.

4. The Ancient Aspect of Pennywise

Long before Derry, ancient civilizations including the Native tribes in IT: Chapter Two told stories of a shape shifting predator that would return every 27 years to feed. But maybe what they saw wasn’t an alien at all.

Maybe what they witnessed was the same phenomenon repeating across ages, a psychic echo that took form through the shining minds of each era.

In the native times, perhaps “It” appeared as something else, a spirit, a beast, whatever the people most feared. Their collective belief gave it shape then, just as the children’s shining gives it form as a clown now.

It isn’t one entity it’s an idea that evolves, a mirror reflecting whatever each generation’s shining minds believe could harm them most.

That’s why “It” feels eternal. Not because it’s invincible, but because the human mind never stops dreaming monsters into being.

5. The Hive-Mind of Fear

If shining individuals can bend perception, then a group of shining children, united in fear, becomes a hive-mind capable of manifesting anything. Pennywise is that hive-mind given skin and teeth.

Each time he awakens, it’s not that he’s returning from outer space. It’s that the town’s collective trauma and psychic residue are strong enough to recreate him. The more the children believe, the more real he becomes. The more they fear, the more he feeds.

6. Conclusion

Only those with the shining ever see It. Everyone else walks through Derry blind, unaware that a nightmare is feeding on their silence.

The Shining is about a single person’s power to project the mind outward.

IT is about what happens when that same psychic power multiplies and turns against itself.

In both, Stephen King is exploring the same truth. The mind creates reality. Belief can heal, or it can summon horror.

Pennywise isn’t just a monster he’s proof that collective consciousness, when ruled by fear, can make even our worst imaginings come to life.

And maybe that’s the most terrifying thing of all, that “It” was never just from the stars. “It” was from them.