Hi! You mention nautical horror sometimes and I was wondering if you had any book recommendations in that vein?
I don’t know how many direct recommendations I have. Aside from the whole thing where you forget everything you’ve ever known the second you’re asked about it, with nautical horror it’s more that I love spooky things, and I love the ocean, and I love all the little places where they meet, whether in sustained fashion or otherwise. I don’t know how many books I’ve read on the theme. (Though if anyone else has recommendations, feel free!)
The things that do come to mind when I think of nautical horror …
First is a movie, because I saw it as a kid and it, along with reading about the legend of the Flying Dutchman and the mystery of the Marie Celeste, kind of kickstarted the whole fascination, and that was John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) (trailer on youtube). Small coastal town, dark deeds, a century-old curse, and the bank of strange glowing fog that rolls over them on the anniversary. It’s very 80s, but I deeply adored it as a kid, and I honestly think it still holds up very well today.
Another odd movie, I don’t know if it can be got anymore, but if you ever see Captain Clegg/The Night Creatures (1962), it’s also worth a look. Based on the Doctor Syn novels by Russell Thorndyke, it’s a much Scooby Doo sort of conceit, but it’s one of the things that gave me a fascination with wreckers and smugglers. Also, Peter Cushing and a very cheesy plot, who could ask for better?
And, okay. I will also give points to the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. All else aside, Elizabeth’s first night on Barbossa’s Black Pearl. That was good stuff.
Also, check out The Uninvited (1944). It’s mostly a classic haunted house movie, but the house is on a cliff, and the ocean is right there, and there’s an atmosphere. It’s excellent. (On a similar but significantly lighter note, there’s The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947), a very sweet, gentle movie about a young widow falling in love with the ghost of a sea captain at her new house).
In terms of books, I’m much more of a short story type person when it comes to horror. Again, one of the early things I read that set me on the path was HP Lovecraft’s The Terrible Old Man (full story behind link). With all the usual caveats of Lovecraft, The Terrible Old Man is just good? It’s just a good old fashioned spook ‘em. As a general life rule? If there is a creepy old man living alone in a creepy old seaside house throwing pirate fucking gold around town on the regular with exactly zero negative consequences to himself so far, maybe don’t try to rob him? There’s probably more happening there than you want to know about.
Continuing in a vein of Lovecraft, there’s the classic novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, although be aware that, while excellent, this one does … shall we say it does lay his prejudices a lot more bare than many? The racism is very plain in this one. The atmosphere, though, is very well done.
And I’ll also give points to Dagon. Again, usual Lovecraft caveats, and the story, at least to me, gets progressively weaker as it goes along, but the initial conceit. An adrift sailor in WWI falls asleep in his lifeboat on the open ocean, and wakes up on what appears to be an uplifted stetch of seafloor after some catastrophic night time event. He goes to sleep on open water, and wakes up beside his shipwrecked boat on a vast plain of black slime and dying fish. The actual monster, later on, is a significant let down compared to the raw alienness and unease of that opening premise.
(Apologies, I’ve been on a Lovecraftian kick lately. If you chance on it, I recently bought Shadows Over Innsmouth, a collection edited by Stephen Jones, where several other horror authors try their hand on a theme of Innsmouth and its horrors. I quite enjoyed The Big Fish, by Jack Yeovil, which is Lovecraft in the style of Raymond Chandler, as a 40s pulp PI gets involved in fishy happenings).
For more classic nautical horror, I don’t know how you feel about poetry? But the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge has so much of the strange nautical folklore and mythology to it. Curses, albatrosses, nautical immortality. There’s a lot of motifs in this one poem that echo through a lot of nautical horror.
The section of Bram Stoker’s Dracula involving the Demeter also fits nicely into this mould. Almost a little novella within the novel, it’s a very cool section.
Also, might not be readily apparent, but the original Hans Christian Anderson version of The Little Mermaid has a much more painful and folkloric feel to it.
In terms of video games, because video games are truly excellent at sustained atmosphere, three things immediately come to mind.
The first is Sunless Sea by Failbetter Games. The gameplay on this one often puts people off, because it’s grindy as hell, but in terms of horror and atmosphere and humour and gothic fun? Perfect game is perfect. But it is definitely an acquired taste.
The second is Dredge by Black Salt Games, the eldritch fishing game. In terms of gameplay, significantly more chill. It’s less overt horror and more gently spooky game where you tootle away in your little boat trying to get enough fish to buy more equipment, and as a casual side note there are ghost boats that might not be boats, and sea monsters, and if you give the wrong people the wrong fish they might get a bit altered, and also there’s a creepy occultist on his little house island who wants you to do some things for him, which will have no worrisome consequences for anyone at all, no sir. Heh.
Third, there’s Dishonored by Arkane Studios. Because while Dishonored is, broadly speaking, a game about stealthy-slash-bloody vengeance and politics in a plague-ridden industrial hell city by the sea, the background worldbuilding is BUILT, from the bones up, on nautical horror. I love it with all my heart.
I could also mention Subnautica, because it’s definitely nautical, and you will almost definitely crap your pants playing it, but that’s … It’s not so much nautical horror as it is science fiction nautical survival wherein there are very big and scary things in the water. Definitely an excellent game, though.
I realise this is a very eclectic mix, and most of them aren’t novels. Apologies. I mostly just like the atmosphere and the elements of nautical horror, wherever they appear. I don’t know that I’ve read too many dedicated nautical horror books. Apologies?
Anyone with other recs, feel free to weigh in!
