The Dolphin Hotel

The other night I watched a movie entitled 1408 starring John Cusack (we're on a Cusack - John and Joan - currently). Cusack plays a writer who explores haunted hotels and writes about his findings, largely exposing them as hoaxes. After discovering a haunted room, 1408, at the Dolphin Hotel in NYC he tries to make a reservation, but is initially refused, and later the hotel manager, Samuel L Jackson tries to talk him out of it. In fact the room in not only haunted, but is a link to another dimension or reality. The movie was based on a Stephen King story that was released in the collection Blood and Smoke in 1999.

Now, I also happen to be reading a book entitled Dance, Dance, Dance by one of my favorite writers Haruki Murakami. In this novel the protagonist stays in a run-down family hotel in Sapporo called the Dolphin Hotel with a call girl who mysteriously disappears. Later he is called back to that hotel only to find it rebuilt into a contemporary monstrosity. He finds however, that when the elevator stops on certain floors, initially the 15th, he enters another space or dimension, which is, needless to say, more sublime and mysterious than King's.
Coincidence that I watched this movie at the precise time I was reading this book? I think not. I await the universe's next move.