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Study 182 - Miss Mack (Patreon)

Published:
2026-10-22 14:21:13
Imported:
2026-10
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Every day is Halloween in Miss Mack by Michael McDowell, the writer behind Beetlejuice!

Special thanks to our reader, Jimmy Mack of Gauge Illuminations! Check out Fifer's recent interview on the show.

Article on Michael McDowell at Divination Hollow.

Next up: an extra credit episode on In the Mouth of Madness!

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Comments

Hayden Orr

Highly recommend McDowell’s books, particularly Cold moon over Babylon which is a devastatingly bleak ghost story, and Gilded Needles which is a familial crime drama set in 1880’s New York City. They both also have reprinted covers done by Mike Mignola, with a new reprint for the Amulet also featuring a cover by Mignola coming soon.

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Wait, Defuniak Springs??? I'll have to relisten to the early part of the story to see if the school is in Florida or not, but if it is...I lived in that area for a couple years! I was listening to HPPodcraft there, even! And here I was just excited that my home state of Alabama even got *mentioned.*

Doug Bolden (edited)

Comment edits

2026-10-24 14:00 I was so excited when I heard you were going to cover this one because it seems to be so overlooked (nearly everyone I know who knows it knows it from that collection). Being from roughly the same patch as McDowell (before he moved away, for reasons) and as a person who largely had to hide elements of my own queerness until I also moved away, the "hidden" message of gay isolation felt super obvious to me and the story just wrecked me while reading it. That the story deals with queer isolation without ever explicitly naming it is another aspect of the isolation. It's code. They are a super happy couple and they can only ever be described in code. Gay/lesbian/etc folk reading the story would get all the stereotypes (playful and more mean-spirited) but it's trapped in that time and place without relief. Like you said in the show: it was a safe place that was occupied and destroyed. Here's hoping Janice gets the hell out of Babylon.
2026-10-22 17:50 I was so excited when I heard you were going to cover this one because it seems to be so overlooked (nearly everyone I know who knows it knows it from that collection). Being from roughly the same patch as McDowell (before he moved away, for reasons) and as a person who largely had to hide elements of my own queerness until I also moved away, the "hidden" message of gay isolation felt super obvious to me and the story just wrecked me while reading it. That the story deals with queer isolation without ever explicitly naming it is another aspect of the isolation. It's code. They are a super happy couple and they can only ever be described in code. Had it been Janice and Mr. Mack, for instance, the "always takes an afternoon nap" would have been "Baby It's Cold Outside" levels of *right there*. Gay/lesbian/etc folk reading the story would get all the stereotypes (playful and more mean-spirited) but it's trapped in that time and place without relief. Like you said in the show: it was a safe place that was occupied and destroyed. Here's hoping Janice gets the hell out of Babylon.

I was so excited when I heard you were going to cover this one because it seems to be so overlooked (nearly everyone I know who knows it knows it from that collection). Being from roughly the same patch as McDowell (before he moved away, for reasons) and as a person who largely had to hide elements of my own queerness until I also moved away, the "hidden" message of gay isolation felt super obvious to me and the story just wrecked me while reading it. That the story deals with queer isolation without ever explicitly naming it is another aspect of the isolation. It's code. They are a super happy couple and they can only ever be described in code. Had it been Janice and Mr. Mack, for instance, the "always takes an afternoon nap" would have been "Baby It's Cold Outside" levels of *right there*. Gay/lesbian/etc folk reading the story would get all the stereotypes (playful and more mean-spirited) but it's trapped in that time and place without relief. Like you said in the show: it was a safe place that was occupied and destroyed. Here's hoping Janice gets the hell out of Babylon.

Todd Korson

Live your show guys but being fat really isn’t somthing you have no control over. I mean come on

Daniel Weber

I’m struck with the horror of Janice’s situation of having Miss Mack just disappear from her life, leaving her with lame, entitled, evil Mr. Hill. I badly want to read the sequel story of Janice solving the mystery of her missing friend and her uphill (pun shamelessly intended) battle against the lame-ass mama’s boy and his bad-witch mom to undo the spell and rescue Miss Mack.

Richard Horsman

I was reading this in an ebook version. When I got to the last page and saw a big blank space far too soon, I hoped and prayed it was a formatting thing: that I would flip the page to an illustration of the purple Pontiac driving around the lake, followed by a few more pages of the indomitable Miss Mack getting out. And then making sure Hill and his mother get their comeuppance. Alas no. What I loved about this was that it’s set in 1957, but couldn’t feel more like a queer story from the 80s. You’re in the middle of something terrible, and the powers that be are ambivalent about whether you should be helped. Maybe they even set things up to make it difficult for you to be helped, because they see you as an obstacle to the world they want. If you want specifics, go ask a gay elder what they think of Reagan. If you can find anybody: a lot of that generation isn’t here anymore, even though they should be. You so badly want to see Miss Mack get out of this impossible situation, but I guarantee you McDowell knew a million Miss Macks who didn’t. Hell, maybe even himself, ultimately.

Jason Thompson

Wh-WHAT? What is this Nemo show you both appeared on?? How can I find this???

Ben Gilbert

Sweet Gum Head was a community in Northern Florida too small to be incorporated. It was also an Atlanta gay nightclub in the late 70s.

Jason Uresti

Whoo hoo it's Michael McDonald time! Yah mo be there, up and over! Yah mo - Oh I'm sorry you said Michael McDowell, my apologies. Seriously though the ending of this one was a real gut punch.

Casey

Thanks for covering McDowell. Blackwater is a favorite of mine.

Oleg Dolya

What a disappointment. It's probably not the point of the story but Miss Mack didn't even really try to do anything - she simply went to bed, again and again. And why was she out of food if it's a time loop? And what's the deal with Hill's mother? And what about Janice? And why Halloween?

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

I appreciated how her Mackness fell short of being able to overcome the spell. I too thought it would be the fun kind of horror story and that she’d sort out the puzzle and gain the upper hand on the bad guy, Jessica Fletcher style. Instead, it turned out to be the horror kind of horror story.

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

When the spell was being described I was reminded of a very funny prank dealing with time perception which the Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko helped to pull off and then wrote about, sometime in the early ‘80s. It even involved going fishing! It was very funny, and I looked forward to sharing it. And then the story ended in a way that did NOT lend itself to a second-hand tale of fishing trip hi-jinx. Very heavy. Devastating even. Please indulge me though while I race through it, fully recognizing that the vibe is off for this sort of thing. Basically, four middle aged friends, including Royko, rented a cabin on a lake for weekend to do some drinking and fishing, and one of them was especially vocal about wanting to be up and on the lake the before dawn, and he kept sniping at the other guys to wrap up their card game and turn off the lights. That guy fell asleep, and the rest of them each turned their wristwatches forward by four or five hours, and did his as well, and finally did the same with the alarm clock in the cabin. They crawled into bed and in short order were all up getting dressed. The rest of the story involves the victim I the boat getting more and more anxious as the sky was not getting lighter at the time it should, ending with him on the edge of losing his mind and swinging one of the oars around at the other guys until they finally let him in on what they did. Actually, they could’ve really ruptured his whole psyche that day so maybe it’s not so out of sync with this story.

Doc Singles

I believe that Miss Mack was trapped in Faerie. This is the shorthand I use when protagonists find themselves in a magical space with different rulesets for reality. You don't leave Faerie unless it decides to let you go. See the movie 1408 with John Cusack!

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

By chance, this week's Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff has a segment on the stock character of the Free Spirit, a broad category of mostly female characters that includes heroines of screwball comedies and Manic Pixie Dreamgirls in rom-coms, but also Bizet's Carmen, so genre determines whether their rebellion against social norms is celebrated or punished. Looks like this one was a "punish." Oof.

David Halstead

I'm so glad you've discovered one of my favorite authors! The qualities you enjoyed here are present in his books. His characters feel like real people. Likeable protagonists and despicable antagonists. Blackwater is my personal favorite of his, one of the best things I ever read. Too much for you to cover on the show, but you deserve to enjoy his work for yourselves.

Jim Cannon

As the end of the episode kept getting nearer and nearer I thought to myself more than once "There's not a lot of time, how is Miss Mack getting out of this?" and then the story just ended. Its been a while since I have been angered by (and hated) a fictional character the way I do Mr. Hill.

Rafe Ball (edited)

Comment edits

2026-10-28 10:00 A case of cola a day? A woman after her my own heart! I've never developed a taste for tea or coffee, so my preference for caffeinated drink is the carbonated form. I don't drink as much as I used to, but my record consumption level was set when I was in my mid-teens and my parents had their 20th Wedding Anniversary party at our house. I was too young to drink, and whilst the party was going on I had a friend over and we stayed up all night playing computer games and drinking 'full fat' Coke, as my parents had crates of it for the party. Over the course of about 12 hours I got through ten jumbo 3-litre bottles of Coke. Yes, 30 litres in 12 hours. My friend was a few bottles behind me. Cue 7am and two teenagers hopped up on massive quantities of sugar and caffeine, bouncing off the walls, mixing with a house full of hungover adults. I bet they loved us :-)
2026-10-27 10:10 A case of cola a day? A woman after my own heart! I've never developed a taste for tea or coffee, so my preference for caffeinated drink is the carbonated form. I don't drink as much as I used to, but my record consumption level was set when I was in my mid-teens and my parents had their 20th Wedding Anniversary party at our house. I was too young to drink, and whilst the party was going on I had a friend over and we stayed up all night playing computer games and drinking 'full fat' Coke, as my parents had crates of it for the party. Over the course of about 12 hours I got through ten jumbo 3-litre bottles of Coke. Yes, 30 litres in 12 hours. My friend was a few bottles behind me. Cue 7am and two teenagers hopped up on massive quantities of sugar and caffeine, bouncing off the walls, mixing with a house full of hungover adults. I bet they loved us :-)

A case of cola a day? A woman after my own heart! I've never developed a taste for tea or coffee, so my preference for caffeinated drink is the carbonated form. I don't drink as much as I used to, but my record consumption level was set when I was in my mid-teens and my parents had their 20th Wedding Anniversary party at our house. I was too young to drink, and whilst the party was going on I had a friend over and we stayed up all night playing computer games and drinking 'full fat' Coke, as my parents had crates of it for the party. Over the course of about 12 hours I got through ten jumbo 3-litre bottles of Coke. Yes, 30 litres in 12 hours. My friend was a few bottles behind me. Cue 7am and two teenagers hopped up on massive quantities of sugar and caffeine, bouncing off the walls, mixing with a house full of hungover adults. I bet they loved us :-)

Dr. Villain

This was really good. My 13yo paused the podcast as soon as Mr. Hill started his ritual to shout out "HE'S MAKING A POCKET DIMENSION!!! SHE'S GOING TO BE STUCK!!!!" At the top of his lungs.

Stacy Schumacher

I really found myself hoping that our good friend Silver John was going to wander past that campsite and see the magic totem and put things right. Alas....

Kyle Griffiths

I love Michael McDowell so much, going back to the Valancourt Audio/Paperbacks from Hell series - particularly The Elementals, a perfect Instagram Horror. I love how the readers do such a good job bringing out the laconic Southern dialogue and the wittily observed social commentary of the narration.

Christine M

I agree with the goal of getting more people into this story! To that end, let me share that this story is read on episode 775 of the Pseudopod podcast. I think the reader did a good job, and it’s nice that it’s free!

Ryan Thomas

Reminder to self, look up "Silver John" on Witch House Media.

Ryan Thomas

Thank you, Dr. Villain, for telling us about this exciting moment of recognition. As someone who lives alone, I am warmly tickled with joy to realize there are people living together who share in the experience of Chris and Chad's podcast. The level of engagement your 13 year old showed you (and us) is his reaction, Dr. Villain, is simply darling.

Ryan Thomas

Another way to look at this is that we are only informed of part of the story. In romantic comedies, the tale teller stops right after the joyful moment of love is declared and the orchestra swells. What about the tragedy that befalls the couple when they sink all they have into a money pit near a graveyard and their toddler gets hit by a Mac truck? That's another story.

Ryan Thomas

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack/ All dressed in black, black, black/ With silver buttons, buttons, buttons/ All down her back, back, back. Whoever it is that knows how this jumprope chant continues, please humor me with the remainder.