Horror Writer Michael Whitehouse's Bio

As a horror writer, it's difficult to write about yourself without sounding like Garth Marenghi. 'Blood? Blood... Blood!' I suppose the correct approach is to take the work seriously, but never yourself. I mean, how could I take myself seriously? Look at that face! A warning before you proceed. I may blow my own trumpet here, something I rarely do. But I guess this is the only place I will outline my achievements, if you can call them that. I was born in Glasgow, Scotland on a typically rain-lashed day. Perhaps that's why I love moody skies and thunderstorms so much. I've written horror stories since I was a kid. It seems to me this is a direct result of three major influences on my life. The first was listening to my dad's terror tales on many a gloomy Glasgow evening, looking out across the rainswept city to the mountains and wondering 'what's really out there?'. The second influence was a burning desire within myself to make things. Music, stories, games, I felt at home immersed in these pursuits. Safe. Away from the bullies and the harsh realities of life. I have no idea where it came from. It has always been there. The third influence is one I suspect you'll take with a grain of salt, as well you should. I would if I were you. I make no claims to the objective reality of these things, only that the memories are there, but as a child I had experiences that I can only describe as supernatural. Throughout my childhood and into my teenage years, I used to tell stories about my local neighbourhood in Glasgow, to the point where I think I had populated every street corner, lane, and field with some faceless abomination ready to leap out and devour unwitting passersby. Some of those stories fell into local folklore, and a few of my friends weren't keen to walk home alone at night because of them. During that time, I also made several short films with my old 8mm video camera, a hobby I've continued to this day. When I was 13 or 14, I won a national writing prize called The Young Author's Project and was featured in The Herald newspaper. It was a horror story called Ouija, and the less said about it the better. But it was the first time where I actually thought 'oh, I might be able to actually do this.' In my mid to late teens, my love of telling horror stories was put to the side for a while as a new love entered my life. Songwriting. From then on until my late twenties, I put most of my writing time into writing songs. But the creepy things that hide in the periphery, eventually burrowed their way back in, and I found myself writing again. Writing. Writing. Writing. Stories. Screenplays. Audio plays. Anything I could. Around fifteen years ago, I wrote a short story called 'Bedtime'. It was based on those strange experiences I mentioned. It was a complete surprise to me, but after posting the story to No Sleep and then creepypasta.com, Bedtime became a viral hit. Since then, it's been read by millions of people all around the world, translated into many languages, featured on podcasts and YouTube channels, made into a video game, and even adapted as a play in London. It's been cited by others as a major influence on online horror, encouraging writers to bring a more literary style into their works, but there I go taking myself too seriously. I promised I wouldn't! After Bedtime, I released somewhere in the region of fifty short stories and novella-length tales for free. They just poured out of me one after the other. At one point, I held six or seven of the top ten spots on creepypasta.com for the highest rated horror stories on the internet. To this day, I don't think that's ever been equalled. Since those ratings were given by the readers themselves, it's something I'm very proud of, though I lay no claims to my stories being better than anyone else's. I just seemed to hit a nerve for a few years. Around that same time, I was honoured to be brought on board by David Cummings and the No Sleep Podcast team to write many of their live tour scripts. Those plays have been performed by an amazing cast in front of thousands of people across North America and Europe. They even performed one at the infamous Stanley Hotel, the very place on which Stephen King's The Shining was based. I self-published my horror novella On A Hill, which became an Amazon best-seller selling more than 50,000 copies, along with two short story collections. I have also been lucky enough to have been published five times in various anthologies including by Simon and Schuster. I also began podcasting as well. I created a Youtube channel called Ghastly Tales and a podcast of the same name. I was blessed enough to have a group of extremely talented friends to collaborate with, and they soon became an integral part of creating new podcasts like Talking till Dawn and many short horror films and documentaries. Working and hanging out with Calum MacPhail, Alan Graham, and Martin Yates was and continues to be one of my most favourite things in the world. In recent years, I took a step back to raise my children through their early years, but now, I fully intend to release all of the book, film, and audio projects I've been chipping away at whenever I've had free time. I really hope you enjoy them. And if you do, thank you so much for taking the time to read, and please do consider sharing them with those who enjoy a good fright!