On Friday, October 7, Netflix arrived ‘The Midnight Club’, a notable horror series in which mike flanagan (‘Midnight Mass’) adapted the homonymous novel by Christopher Pike, pseudonym of Kevin McFadden. Although it seems hard to believe, this book is inspired by real events which we will review below.
The origin of everything
Pike drew on an experience he had with a young reader of his books who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in the early 1990s. Her parents contacted the writer to see if it was possible for him to meet her as a last wish, as she was a huge fan of his.
Unfortunately, it was not possible for the two of them to meet in person, since they lived on opposite ends of the United States, so he wrote it first and then they talked on the phone. It was then that the young woman told him that the patients of the hospital in which she was they met at night in a literary club to discuss, above all, the works of Pike himself.
That led Pike to write ‘The Midnight Club’, ruling out the possibility of the book’s characters discussing their own works and opting instead for each of them to tell stories to the others. The idea was that it was a tribute to both the young woman and the rest of the patients and even offered to read several chapters of the book before it was finished.
However, as the writer told Vanity Fair, she refused, wanting to read the entire book. Unfortunately, he passed away before that was possible. and that he could find out to what extent the character of Ilonka was based on her.
Obviously, everything else was Pike’s invention, so in no case can it be said that what the Netflix series tells is based on real events, but yes, that experience of the writer was also transferred in some way to it.