Michaelanne McGorman displayed a creative flair from a young age. Throughout her life, she exhibited a talent for drawing, storytelling, and has worked as an illustrator. In the winter of 2019, she began the arduous task of writing her first novel — a carefully balanced alchemy of religion and horror that resulted in the birth of The Names: An Epic Modern Gothic Horror. Exhaustively researched and hauntingly poetic, The Names is a supernatural thriller that gracefully lands as a deeply human story.
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Horrorlust: You have a background as an artist — how did that lead you to become a writer?
Michaelanne McGorman: I’ve always been a bit of a writer. I learned to read and write at a very young age. Illustrations and words are natural partners. I may have been five years old when I wrote and illustrated my first book. It was written on spiral notebook paper and stapled together with a mini stapler. It was about a little girl who no one at school wanted to be friends with, so at recess she wanders into the woods around her school in search of animals to be friends with. She doesn’t make any animal friends they all ignore her. She then wanders out of the forest and meets a tall man in a panda suite that gives her a balloon then she becomes friends with the balloon which concludes the story.
The second book I wrote as a child was about a haunted clock but I don’t want to give any of the plot away as it may be good enough to revise- I’m not sure if the same can be said about the six books of sappy gothic poetry I wrote just out of high school but I did write some short scary stories when I was younger that I would like to revise then gather in one book. I do still write poetry- it’s been much better of late.
As a child I would read anything and everything. My parents didn’t have money to buy me nice clothes or fancy toys or even braces on my teeth which is why I have them now, but they would always give me money for the book fair. I think that when you’re poor but you know you can read, write, and draw better than most of your peers, it’s like you have something powerful that no amount of money can buy. It simply can’t be priced.
I also wrote a lot of art history papers and apparently they were good, as a professor I had much respect for would introduce me as “The Great Writer”. It was a bit embarrassing but I knew he meant it so it was a bit of a boost as well.
Horrorlust: Can you provide an example or two of this “sappy, gothic poetry” that you alluded to?
Michaelanne McGorman: There are a few gems in the collection that are more gothic than sappy, perhaps I may do something with them in the future. I will provide one as it is about a well-known Michigan landmark that is now a haunt. When I was a teenager the landmark was immensely more frightening as all the patient wards and out-buildings were still standing in a state of haunting decay. So the poem is not about The Kay Beard Building or building “D” that’s standing there currently, that building was never in decay, it was an administration building at the time. The poem is about the entire asylum as it looked when I was a teenager- yes- please keep in mind I was a teenager when I wrote it. It’s rather puerile.
Eloise Is Still Standing
From the street I can see Eloise standing still
Her black windows are so set to tell no tells
Of the days when her doors were open and her rooms were filled
With the woes of the ill and unstable
But I am able to feel them still from where she stands
Vacant on the crowded land
Looking with gray brick and black eyes
Where the past meets the busy modern streets
The forgotten living and the forgotten dead reside inside of her still
Still searching for a cure so many they were
So many I can see the blur of a thousand lonely lifetimes
Still lingering restlessly ‘round her time ravished rooms
Haunting her halls harboring disease
Out of the gloom she calls to me and I insanely say
It’s a lovely day for a picnic Eloise, it’s a lovely day
Horrorlust: What literary work would you compare your book to and what served as inspiration for this story?
Michaelanne McGorman: As far as literary, I would say that it has similar elements as Dracula. The narrator is a bit like a Van Helsing, he’s awed by the horror yet remains composed due to his wisdom and experience while those around him feel as if they’re plunging into madness being exposed to such inhuman terror. There’s a bit more crime and mystery in my story.
What inspired it? I think I could write three separate books on what inspired it.
First off- bad horror films. I had watched three horror films that started off well yet didn’t continue well. I don’t know if they fired the original writer before finishing the script, or they ran out of money and had to shut the production down early. In each case the final product was a poorly written plot filled with tiresome tropes.
I was working in tourism at the time and it was the slow season so myself and some friends and co-workers, who also enjoyed horror films, were discussing the lack of good horror films. I was so disappointed in the films that I had watched that I declared aloud, “I can write a better horror film.” Then those who I declared that to replied, “You should.” So having experience in theater, I started to write a screenplay. Yet the well of mystery and horror within me was too deep. I had endless buckets to pull to the surface- so it became: “The epic modern gothic horror.”
So ultimately the inspiration came from that well. Obviously the next question is- what filled the well?
I’ve always enjoyed a good mystery- real or fiction. I loved “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” T.V. series with Jeremy Brett, G.K. Chesterton’s “Father Brown” series as well as “Midsomer Murders”. Some of it of course is the writings, especially the poetry, of Edgar Allan Poe, Classic gothic novels from “The Castle of Otranto” to “Jane Eyre”. More modern books like Anne Rice’s vampire series. The old “Dark Shadows” T.V. and film series, old “Hammer” horror films, old Vincent Price films. Most Stephen King novels were turned into films that were playing on television when I was a kid. My favorite was and is “Carrie”. I had only ever seen the film on T.V. so it was a bit of a shock as an adult to watch the complete film and find it had brief nudity and swearing.
Of course one person’s creations can inspire many yet growing up there were real horrors that existed outside of books and film. I think that’s why I always preferred the classic mysterious gothic tale. “Night of the Living Dead” brought out the zombies in broad daylight and many writers at that time were dragging the ghosts and ghouls from old creepy castles and plopping them down in modern cities and suburbia.
It was clear by the time I was born that, in reality, the ghouls and monsters had already arrived in our modern cities. Words like, stranger-danger, serial-killer, child molester, kidnapper van, satanist were all part of the Gen-X kid lexicon due to what was happening at the time.
The disappearance of Adam Walsh in 1981 and Johnny Gosch in 1982 followed by more missing boys cast a long black shadow that affected how we raised our children as it affected our minds as kids. Kids of my generation would walk everywhere- to our friends or to the store, we would disappear for hours playing somewhere or exploring a new bike trail. We’d get dropped off at the mall or the theater to goof around for hours but we all carried this box of anxiety- that in the midst of whatever we were doing, in the midst of our joy, we had to beware that there are monsters among us that look like ordinary people. We had to pause and put ugly thoughts about strangers in our minds. That affects you as a kid. I remember the first nightmare I ever had. I was probably five years old. It was about kidnappers/child molesters. In my dream they grabbed my brother and my cousin, and I ran and ran until I woke up still feeling that it had actually happened.
Of course this story could have never been written at all and I would not be the person I am today had I not had my own personal experiences with the supernatural and the preternatural. I didn’t know the meaning of either of those words at the time. All I could say of it was “ghost” yet as young as I was I knew there was so much more to it.
My family wasn’t really religious, pseudo-Christian I guess. We all loved Jesus and read the Bible sometimes and thought going to church was a good thing but we definitely thought it more than we actually did it. But my beliefs about God and reality itself took a turn in a new direction one sunny afternoon.
Myself and others have loads of creepy tales from my grandparent’s house however for me, this is the most significant tale. As far as I know no other soul had encountered what I had.
I believe I was five or six years old at the time. I always felt a bit afraid of the upstairs loft at my grandparent’s house. I chalked it up to a poster of a fierce looking African lion with eyes that followed my every move. I remember keeping my head down to avoid looking at it as I discovered something exciting on the bottom shelf of a beautiful old roll top desk that stood against the wall next to it. I sat down on the floor. I was a complete tomboy unless one of these beauties were about. It was a Barbie doll, an old 1960s one yet still the ultimate female action figure in my mind. I was quite content and mesmerized. You’d think nothing could pull me away from my playful adventure but “pulled” is exactly how I felt.
There was something watching me and it was never the lion poster. It felt like a magnet pull forcing me to look at it though it wasn’t what I wanted to do.
It was hideous. It was so black that the edges of this shadowy shape appeared to glow. Slowly it shifted its shape from complete shadow to the most sinister skeleton glowing within the shadow yet even more frightful than what I was seeing was what it was doing to me.
Not only had it forced me to look at it, it was forcing a wordless message into my mind it formed there telepathically. In that instant the message was clear, it hated me and wanted me dead. It wanted my entire family dead. It was pure cold evil. I remember scrambling backwards to get away from it. I flew down the stairs and out the back door where there was sunlight and familiar faces.
I never told anyone until I was much older. It was quite indescribable. That was the first experience that made me a rather spiritual person and then a truly religious person. I did encounter the entity several more times in much more subtle ways. It liked to watch me when I was alone and sometimes it would move objects. It seemed to feed off the fear it caused and revel in its ability to hide as if it didn’t exist when two or more people were together. I didn’t know at the time but I know now that what I had repeatedly encountered was a demon.
When I was 21 I had a Ouija board tell me I was going to die when I was 27. It wasn’t exactly wrong. I converted to Catholicism at that age though I wanted to convert ten years prior when I was 17. I remember being in class at that age and the teacher was asking every student what they wanted to be when they grew up and I replied, “a saint.” He couldn’t get over my unusual answer. It was public school after all and I wasn’t even a Catholic yet but that was my plan.
I am now a Traditional Latin Rite Catholic. I no longer participate in any occult activities. I know too much about them just as I know a planchette on a Ouija board does in fact move without human touch. I still do a lot of research on the subject of the occult. By the time I converted in 2005 I had already started listening to the late great host of Coast to Coast, Art Bell, and his many interviews with the exorcist Fr. Malachi Martin. Through those interviews and the interviews Fr. Malachi did with author Bernard Janzen. I began to really understand what I had truly encountered as a child. I went on to read Fr. Malachi’s book “Hostage to the Devil” it’s quite the frightful read as it is based on true stories of demonic possession. Through Fr. Malachi I discovered the exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth then quickly gobbled up all his books and interviews. I went on to read the work of other exorcists but it is Fr. Malachi and Fr. Amorth, as well as my own priest, that inspired the main protagonist/ the narrator.
One thing that I would really like readers to know is that a lot of actual research went into this story but not in the way you might expect. I didn’t decide to write a scary story then start researching that which is scary. I feel that I’ve nearly spent my whole entire life researching the supernatural and the preternatural, occult practices, religious practices, cults, kidnappings, exorcism, haunted places as well as haunted people. It’s an accumulation of personal encounters and more than thirty years of researching. I think that is why the characters and their stories seem so realistic.
So that leads back to what I first said about what inspired the story. Bad horror films. I wanted to make it as authentic as possible especially where my Catholic faith is concerned. I am beyond tired of films depicting exorcists doing all kinds of nonsensical things that a real exorcist would never do. Not only that but, the humility, the faith, and devotion that it takes to persist as an exorcist never makes it into the films. Just bad tropes. The films always focus on the demons’ actions and ignore the purpose that they serve. There is a hierarchy of demons. Some are more powerful than others and what they manifest is truly horrifying yet some of them are very boring. They’re like a one-note pest that does the same tricks over and over. No matter the type of demon, they do serve a purpose.
I’ve always found the true stories behind the horror films to be much more frightening. The documentation known as “The Exorcism of Roland Doe” which the book and film “The Exorcist” is based on is, to me, a far more frightful story as it is the true story. Today we can create all kinds of monsters and effects with AI but the truth will always be more terrifying. A lot of truths went into the book so I hope it becomes a classic for its genre.
Horrorlust: The story is told as if one is reading the journal of one of the main protagonists — why did you decide to frame it in that way?
Michaelanne McGorman: There are many intimate and emotional interactions in the book so it had to be written in the first person. The first part of the book is a complete mystery that the reader uncovers along with the narrator and other main characters. If no one has guessed it yet, the first-person narrator is a priest and an exorcist, however this is not a story focused on possession- no- it’s quite unique.
In reality most exorcists document, not only possessions, but any cases involving demons whether its oppression or infestation. One reason why they do that is to educate other priests who may be or may become an exorcist. The documents usually have intimate details about the person suffering so they are very private. The documents or journal entries are not at all for the public. So the way in which this book is written is that the reader is one of two things: a member of clergy that has been given permission to read an exorcist’s journal or a curious visitor who knows they shouldn’t be nosing about but once they start reading it they can’t stop- like the cleaning lady that comes in once a week and takes a peek.
Since it is written as a personal journal, there are no titled chapters in the book. Instead each journal entry acts as a chapter.
I did consider framing it as a stolen journal- introducing it in such a way but that’s rather negative and the story being so realistic I didn’t want any weird “Blair Witch” backlash like “Oh no, it’s a real stolen journal they just have to say it’s fiction.” There are true stories within it and stories based on truths, but it is fiction. It doesn’t need any sensationalism. It speaks for itself.
Horrorlust: There’s a number of Michigan and Detroit references included in this story. How would you say these instances serve the overall narrative?
Michaelanne McGorman: I think putting fictional characters in real places makes them come alive. Anyone can visit Detroit and tour the places mentioned in the book. It’s real easy to envision the characters in these places. These are everyday places known to Detroiters. Setting a story in a city and state where you feel the landscape and history has been known to you forever, it’s easy to plop down any character and have them grow roots.
I couldn’t place this story in Paris just as much as I couldn’t place it in Los Angeles, not without doing tremendous research as I’ve never been to those places but I have been a resident of Michigan all my life. I know much about the history and the mysteries of Michigan and I know I heard it or read it somewhere the phrase, “Always write what you’re familiar with and it will be compelling.”
Horrorlust: What are some of your favorite places to visit throughout Michigan and Detroit?
Michaelanne McGorman: Two of my favorite places to visit in Detroit are mentioned in the book, that would be, the John K. King bookstore on W. Lafayette and The Detroit Institute of Arts. There are quite a few extraordinarily beautiful historic Catholic churches that offer the Latin Rite Mass. I’ve attended three of those churches, St. Joseph Shrine, St. Josaphat, and Assumption Grotto. Each church is quite unique in its exquisiteness so, I’d favorite them as well.
It’s always fun to visit legendary sites rumored to be haunted. I’ve been to the ghost town, Pere Cheney. It’s eerie and lovely at the same time. I recommend a visit.
One of my favorite spots to haunt when I was younger was The Henry Ford Estate in Dearborn where Henry Ford’s home Fairlane resides. It is rumored to be haunted but the reason why it was my favorite spot was because the grounds were gorgeous. It was a very well-manicured nature preserve that drowned out the sounds of the busy city. It had gardens and waterfalls- lots of trees. I don’t know what it is like now but it was always free for people to walk the grounds. I would often go there to read or write or do homework or just to walk and take in its beauty.
Horrorlust: What Michigan-based legend or bit of lore fascinates you most?
Michaelanne McGorman: It’s hard to pick only one. I do like the legend of Le Nain Rouge. That there is a little red devil appearing in the streets of Detroit and that every year there’s a Marche Du Nain Rouge which is like a mini Mardi Gras. Some people say the Marche is to celebrate Nain Rouge others say it’s to banish Nain Rouge as he’s a harbinger of misfortune. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
From Dogman to haunted lighthouses to The Evangelista Axe Murders, Michigan is certainly not fly-over country when it comes to haunting legends and tales of mystery.
Return next week for the conclusion of my interview with Michaelanne McGorman, author of The Names: An Epic Modern Gothic Horror.
