On March 27, at approximately 10:10 a.m., a heavily armed individual entered The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, killing three children and three adults. Police identified the shooter as 28-year-old Audrey Hale. It was later reported that Hale was a transgender man who went by the name Aiden. The former student at the private Christian school brutally murdered 9-year-old student Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9-year-old student William Kinney, 9-year-old student Hallie Scruggs, 61-year-old substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61-year-old custodian Mike Hill, and 60-year-old head of school Katherine Koonce before being shot and killed by police. An investigation at the home of Hale’s parents, where Hale was living, revealed two shotguns, a detailed map of the school, and a manifesto that has yet to be released. Despite allegedly being under care for an emotional disorder, Hale had legally purchased seven firearms, including three recovered from the shooting scene. Acquaintances recalled Hale coming out as transgender on Facebook in 2022 and struggling with the passing of a former teammate who died in a car crash last August.
Hale was an illustrator and graphic designer who recently graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design and claimed to be “on a mission to change the world.” “My illustrations usually bring a whimsical and light-hearted feel,” wrote Hale. “There is a child-like part about me that loves to go run to the playground.” This is reflected in some of Hale’s content, with one image showing the red sneakers of someone on a swing and the words: “To be a kid forever and ever.” However, in a section of Hale’s online portfolio titled “Mad World,” there is an illustration made up of typed words that create an image of Jack Nicholson from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic, The Shining. It includes numerous quotes from the film, with “REDRUM” being most prominent.
The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance (played by Nicholson), an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, who takes the position of off-season caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in the Rocky Mountains, which closes every winter. Jack moves into the vacant hotel with his wife and son but soon finds himself returning to his violent tendencies and fantasizing about killing them. Jack is unaware of his son, Danny’s, psychic ability that allows him to see things that have happened in the past, or will happen in the future. Before leaving for the seasonal break, the Overlook’s head chef communicates with Danny telepathically, as he also shares this gift, which he calls “shining.” The chef tells Danny that the hotel has a “shine” to it as well, due to residue from unpleasant events in the past, and warns him to avoid room 237. Danny begins to have frightening visions that include two twin girls who were murdered by their father, a previous caretaker. They ask Danny to come play with them “forever and ever.”
As Jack’s mental health continues to deteriorate, his wife, Wendy, becomes increasingly concerned with his erratic behavior. Danny is lured into room 237 and returns with signs of physical and emotional trauma. Wendy accuses Jack of abusing him. Jack wanders around the hotel, claiming that he would “give his soul for a drink.” He stumbles upon The Gold Room, a large ballroom, where a bartender appears and serves him a glass of alcohol. Jack relapses, and other figures begin to appear that encourage him to “correct” his wife and son. Wendy finds Jack’s manuscript with “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” written over and over again in different formats. Jack threatens to kill Wendy, but she knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat and locks him in the kitchen pantry. Meanwhile, Danny starts shining in their hotel room, saying “redrum” repeatedly while writing it in lipstick on the bathroom door. Wendy sees the word in the mirror and realizes that it is “murder” spelled backwards.
The fundamental difference between Stephen King’s original novel of the same name and Kubrick’s adaptation is that King saw the haunting as coming from forces within the hotel while Kubrick saw the haunting as coming from within Jack. I think that this is significant and correlates to Hale’s relationship with the material. Minutes before the shooting occurred, Hale sent a message to a former teammate stating “something bad is about to happen,” as if it were out of Hale’s control. Some are attributing Hale’s resentment toward the school to its religious teachings and the fact that Christianity does not embrace transgender individuals.
Many people, myself included, have had religious upbringings and struggled with their conflicting sexual or gender identity but are not inclined to enact violence against others. This kind of indoctrination usually results in feelings of internalized shame and self-loathing. These feelings linger throughout one’s life but can be subdued upon growing older, gaining distance from previous circumstances, and accepting one’s self. Hale, on the other hand, did not appear to have escaped these circumstances. While Hale was on a path to self-acceptance, continuing to live in a religious environment as an adult was a deterrent. Despite the fact that Hale began to identify as a man, Hale’s mother refused to acknowledge this, still referring to Hale as her “daughter.”
This may sound like “the haunting is coming from within the hotel,” but I’m with Stanley Kubrick on this one. I believe that, like Jack, Hale willingly chose to embrace evil, rather than fight against it. We are all capable of good things and bad things. Yes, outside factors come into play, but at the end of the day, there is only one person responsible for this tragedy. The contents of the manifesto are irrelevant, at this point, because six innocent people are dead. The fact that this has become a political issue on both sides is disgusting. Identity doesn’t matter. Belief doesn’t matter. A human being took the lives of other human beings.