Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 supernatural horror film The Shining was adapted from Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name, but one fan theory suggests that M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense was the first actual sequel to Kubrick's movie. The Shining is by far the most well-known adaptation of one of King’s works despite the author’s own personal issues with the film’s contents. King did eventually write a sequel to The Shining, and in 2019, Mike Flanagan debuted Doctor Sleep, the official movie sequel to The Shining, based on King's novel of the same name.

The Shining follows the Torrance family as the patriarch of the family, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), becomes the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in hopes of helping his own writer’s block. The longer the family stays in the hotel, the more paranormal occurrences begin to negatively impact Jack’s mental health and, in turn, threatens the physical safety of his wife Wendy and son Danny. Little does he know that Danny actually has a unique supernatural psychic ability called the “shining” that allows him to see the deceased and communicate telepathically with others that share his abilities.

Related: The Shining: Why The Overlook Hotel Prequel Movie Never Happened

Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense follows a boy named Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) who has the ability to see the dead. The film focuses on the unfinished business of the unknowingly deceased Michael Crowe (Bruce Willis). With the help of Cole, Michael is able to cross over to the afterlife. Due to their ability to see and communicate with dead people, Cole and Danny share this similarity and this one alone. While the theory suggests that Cole may have the “shining”, he does not.

Why The Sixth Sense Is NOT The First Shining Sequel

The Shining Danny With Bear

While Cole has similar abilities to Danny, he does not have the same condition that allows Danny to mentally connect with living things as well as dead ones. Furthermore, Doctor Sleep reveals that the “shining” allows Danny to travel through an astral plane to see through the eyes of others, enter their minds, and manipulate surroundings. If The Sixth Sense were an official sequel, Cole would have to exhibit abilities that could expand the intricacies of the condition already established by King in the original 1977 novel that he expanded on in Doctor Sleep.

Cole’s powers are more similar to that of Lorraine Warren’s psychic abilities, in which she can see and communicate with the dead in varying capacities. If anything, The Sixth Sense could be more interwoven into The Conjuring franchise rather than the King universe. Ultimately, Danny’s “shining” is a more complex connection to places beyond the physical realm. He can connect mentally in ways that no other psychic can and communicates with the dead on a grander capacity than Cole.

Conclusively, the theory that The Sixth Sense is the first sequel to The Shining is inaccurate and entirely improbable. It could be suggested that Cole has similarities to “shining” abilities but he does not have the gift that Danny Torrance has. Until otherwise stated, Danny Torrance and Cole Sear have vastly different psychic abilities and do not navigate the same cinematic universe.

More: The Shining: How Stanley Kubrick Referenced His Stephen King Book Changes