There’s nothing quite like the thrill of a good jump scare, and The Midnight Club  has them in spades. The series, premiering on Oct. 7, just got the Guinness World Record for most scripted jump scares in a single episode  — specifically, there are 21 leap-from-your-seat moments scattered throughout the series premiere. 

The award was presented by the official Guinness World Record adjudicator Andrew Glass during The Midnight Club panel at New York Comic Con on Oct. 6. Moderated by Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, the panel included co-creator/executive producer Mike Flanagan, co-creator/executive producer Leah Fong, executive producer Trevor Macy and cast members Heather Langenkamp, Iman Benson, Igby Rigney, Adia, Aya Furukawa, Sauriyan Sapkota, Annarah Cymone, Chris Sumpter and Ruth Codd.

The Midnight Club Breaks a World Record for Most Jump ScaresMike Flanagan has a love/hate relationship with jump scares.

So what’s the story behind all the scares? Set in the '90s, The Midnight Club follows a squad of terminally ill teens, living together in a hospice center called Brightcliffe. Though they spend their days in treatment, the group gathers at night to form “The Midnight Club,” wherein they toast their peers who’ve passed and talk openly about communication from beyond the grave. The premise inspires some seriously spooky unanswered questions, including whether or not the “ghosts” wandering the halls of Brightcliffe are actually spirits from another realm, or simply the manifestation of the teens’ greatest fears. 

At the NYC Comic Con panel Flanagan, Wong, Macy and The Midnight Club cast also revealed some slightly less spooky (but equally as exciting) details about the show, the scares and what to expect from the season to come. 

1. Mike Flanagan hates jump scares.

Though he’s responsible for some of TV’s best jump scares (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass), Flanagan prefers to remain fully in his seat at all times. 

“I just hate them,” Flanagan told the panel audience. “For most of my career, people have come to me while we're working on scripts and said, ‘Add more jump scares.’ On this project, we thought we were just going to empty the missile silos, put as many jump scares as could ever fit into one scene so that hopefully by the end, they would be meaningless.”

He also said his aversion to jump scares makes the Guinness World Record a matter of strategy. 

“In the future, if anyone ever comes to us and says to add more jump scares,” he says, “We could say, ‘Actually, we have the Guinness World Record for most jump scares in an episode of television and we think it’s fine the way it is.’”

2. Every episode of The Midnight Club has its own vibe.

According to Flanagan, one of the most compelling and challenging aspects of The Midnight Club is that his team of writers had a chance to do something they’ve never done before: Tell more stories within a story, about each character you meet in the show. 

“We called them B stories in the writing room,” Flanagan said. “We had a chance to open up any subgenre we wanted to — all the other stories [after the pilot] are actually [based on] Christopher Pike books. We were able to throw all sorts of different stuff onto the screen.”

Flanagan went on to explain that to support the different vibe and aesthetic of the episodes, the characters also got deep dives into their backgrounds — in other words, every story has a unique look and feel that lends itself to the character’s personal arc. 

3. Leah Fong wrote herself into her characters.

Speaking of B stories, co-creator Fong told the Comic Con audience that she wrote herself into a couple of the characters. Most significant, she says, was the way she poured herself into Natsuki (Aya Furakawa).

“I've been writing television for over a decade now and I've never written for an Asian female character before,” said Fong  “Her B story is one of my favorites — it’s at the intersection of my culture and also mental health.

4. Prepare yourself mentally for Episode 7.

According to Flanagan, his shows usually have a significant, shattering moment at a certain episode, and he says that fans are expecting the same this time around. However, in The Midnight Club, the biggest moment comes a bit later. 

“The seventh episode of this season is directed by Axelle Carolyn,” said Flanagan. “I don't want to spoil too much, but a lot of people online have been saying, ‘Oh, the fifth episode,’ because of the pattern we've established in some of my other shows. In this season of this show, the seventh episode is our doozy. Axelle was able to do something with a very ambitious script that I had no idea what it was going to look like and it involves every single actor up here. How she wove them all together and how that episode came out, I was completely bowled over.”

5. There are several surprising (and sometimes hard to spot) cameos. 

Panel moderator Nemiroff  asked Flanagan if there were any Easter eggs in The Midnight Club that fans should look out for, and his answer didn’t disappoint.

“The mirror from Oculus is in the show somewhere, so keep an eye out for that,” Flanagan saids. “But there are very unusual cameos in it as well. You're going to see a lot of familiar faces.”

Flanagan challenged the audience to find three specific actors from The Flanaverse. 

“I won't say if it's visual or auditory, maybe one or the other or both, but you can find Hamish Linklater, Carla Gugino, and Kate Siegel — but it’s very difficult.”

The Midnight Club Season 1 TrailerWanna hear a scary story?