Omg, Ilonka in The Midnight Club is based on a real person and the club is an actual thing

The latest Mike Flanagan spookfest is finally here and on Netflix for us to spend our October quaking on the sofa too, and this time it’s the turn of The Midnight Club. Like the majority of Mike Flanagan’s acclaimed work in horror, this new Netflix series is also based on a book by Christopher Pike. Everyone has been wondering if it’s an original spooky tale, or if The Midnight Club on Netflix is actually based on a true story after all.

Ilonka is based on a real person!

In The Midnight Club, we follow Ilonka after she gets her terminal cancer diagnosis and ends up staying at Brightcliffe Hospice with other teens who are also dying, and see as she joins their secret society The Midnight Club who meet up to tell each other scary stories in the dead of night.

The Midnight Club is based on Christopher Pike’s book of the same name, and features the same premise of the kids recounting stories to each other. But Christopher Pike didn’t just get this idea from anywhere, it’s actually rooted in truth. Ilonka, the main character of the show played by Iman Benson, is based off a real life person!

Ilonka is based on a girl that Christopher Pike knew in the early 90s, who got diagnosed with a terminal illness and then reached out to him as she was an avid reader and fan of his stories. The girl and Pike spoke on the phone and she told him that in hospital her and the other terminally ill kids would read each other his stories in the night.

Christopher Pike then came up with The Midnight Club as a tribute to the girl and her friends. Christopher Pike told Vanity Fair that he had offered to share the chapters with the girl as he wrote, but she wanted to wait until the book was out.

Unfortunately, the saddest part about The Midnight Club true story is that she never lived to read the finished product.

The Midnight Club is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

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