“THE BIRDS” The Short Story That Inspired Hitchcock’s Hit Film | #MidnightInTheMacabre

Few know of the original short story that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic horror film, “The Birds” - but it’s that story that I’m sharing with you tonight.

THE STORY: On December 3rd the wind turns east and winter lands overnight on a Cornish peninsula, where Nat Hocken, a part-time farm worker living on a wartime disability pension, wakes to something tapping at the bedroom window. By dawn there are fifty dead birds on the floor of his children's room, and out in the bay the gulls are massing by the tens of thousands, riding the swells and waiting on the tide. Nat boards his windows and stuffs his chimneys while the wireless carries a Home Office statement, then a national emergency, then nothing at all; he works out that the attacks rise and fall with the flood tide, and measures his family's odds in bread, candles, and kerosene. Evan Hunter's screenplay moved the story to Bodega Bay and built new characters around du Maurier's title, keeping her unexplained attacks and little else. The original ends with Nat lighting the last cigarette in the packet and throwing the empty one on the fire.

EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-thebirds

SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier from the book, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents My Favorites In Suspense”: https://amzn.to/3knkjZ3

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Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 17, 2026

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