Dick Hallorann—Andy Hallorann

Dick Hallorann’s relationship with his paternal grandfather, Andy Hallorann, begins in childhood as a relationship of fear and domination and does not end with Andy’s death. Andy abused Dick, controlled the family’s response through intimidation, and remained present afterward as an angry spirit sustained by Dick’s shining. The account Dick gives Dan Torrance turns a painful family history into instruction: it explains both the damage Andy caused and how Dick learned to confront his lingering influence.

Family and Early Visits

Andy Hallorann lived in Dunbrie, Mississippi, where he owned a funeral parlor and was wealthy for a Black man in that place and time. His wife had died long before Dick was born. Dick and his parents visited him four times a year, and Dick dreaded the visits because he was terrified of his grandfather. By contrast, Dick’s maternal grandmother, Gramma Rose, lived in Clearwater and was remembered as good. This division within the family placed Dick between two sharply different older relatives: one associated with care and instruction, the other with the threat of harm.

At Andy’s house, ordinary routines became instruments of control. A housekeeper named Nonnie served the meal and dessert together, but Andy required Dick to finish every part of dinner before he could eat the dessert set beside his plate. If Dick could not finish, Andy took the dessert for himself; when Dick did finish, Andy sometimes spoiled it with a cigarette butt and treated the act as a joke. The ritual made the child’s pleasure contingent on obedience, while Andy retained the power to revoke it arbitrarily. Dick even tried moving the dessert to the other side of his plate, but Andy simply moved it back, insisting that it belonged on the right. The small domestic rule exposed the larger pattern: Dick had little control, even over the arrangement of his own meal.

Abuse and Family Silence

The meals were only one part of Andy’s abuse. He also touched and hurt Dick, used threats to keep him from telling anyone, and invoked a supposed dangerous man, Charlie Manx, as part of those threats. In one instance, Dick said he would tell his father unless Andy stopped; Andy responded by burning Dick’s bare foot with a cigarette and insisting that his father would not protect him. Andy claimed that Dick’s father was afraid of him and expected to inherit his money. That accusation belongs to Andy’s coercive account of the family, rather than serving as independent confirmation of the father’s motives.

Dick’s parents did not stop Andy’s humiliating dessert games, which they treated as jokes despite their unfairness to a child. Dick remembered them as frightened of Andy, and the fear helps explain the family’s passivity without making it protection. Andy’s control reached beyond his own conduct: Dick was made to believe that speaking up would bring further punishment and that other adults would not intervene. The relationship was therefore sustained not just by direct abuse but by an atmosphere in which Andy could present cruelty as humor and threats as a reason for silence.

Death and the Continuing Haunting

Andy died of a stroke. Dick wanted to attend the funeral, not to mourn him but to make certain that he was really dead. In the rain, beneath black umbrellas, Dick watched the coffin descend into the grave and recalled the ways Andy had hurt and frightened him. He also thought of the threat involving Charlie Manx and recognized that a dead Andy could no longer summon the imagined danger he had used to terrify a child. The funeral offered a concrete confirmation of Andy’s death, but it did not immediately end the relationship’s hold on Dick.

Six months later, Dick encountered Andy’s spirit in his own room. The encounter made clear that Andy’s death had not removed him from Dick’s experience: the figure could still appear and frighten him. Gramma Rose had sensed that something was wrong, but Dick kept it blocked away, and she did not force him to speak before he was ready. Instead, she told him she would listen when he was prepared. Her response contrasts with Andy’s coercion: she allowed Dick control over when to tell his story, rather than using fear to silence him.

Understanding and Resistance

Gramma Rose helped Dick interpret the haunting through his shining. She explained that some angry spirits do not move on, and that the shining could serve as food for them. In her account, Dick was unintentionally sustaining Andy’s presence; the spirit returned to what it could feed on. She also taught Dick that he could turn against the spirit the very thing it came seeking. This lesson reframed the bond: Andy’s continued access to Dick was not proof of his power over the boy, but a consequence Dick could learn to understand and resist.

Years later, Dick shared the story with Dan Torrance as part of teaching him. He presented the account as an explanation of how a haunting could be sustained and how knowledge could change a person’s response to it. The telling also makes visible the difference between the two elder figures in Dick’s life: Andy used authority and secrecy to injure and intimidate, while Gramma Rose offered patient guidance. Their opposing influences shape the meaning of Dick’s relationship with Andy. It remains a history of serious harm, but it also becomes a source of hard-won knowledge that Dick can pass on.