Oceanic Horror
And turning cosmic vertigo on its head.
A few weeks ago, I finished John Langan’s The Fisherman, a cosmic horror story about two friends, Abe and Dan, who bond over fishing after their wives pass away. It’s a story about grief, ancient folklore, filled with wonderful descriptions of the sea’s expanse.
Around the same time, I was writing the first feature of GHOST CURRENT, a new channel on this newsletter that looks at the scary side of gaming.
In that, I talked about Returnal, a game about an astronaut who crash lands on an alien planet where its enemies are directly inspired by how “inherently unsettling and foreign” the deep-sea is.
Before that, I went on vacation, where I spent time both next to the sea and on top of it. In short, I’ve spent a lot of the last few weeks thinking about water.
I’ll be the first to say how calming the sea can be. Nothing beats the sounds, sights, and smells of one wave rolling into the next, and how grounding it is to stop and stare at the horizon.
But we all know it has another side. A side that induces fear, working with the weather and the moon to deadly effect. Its duality makes it fascinating and a perfect vehicle for storytelling.
From ghost ships to leviathans, sirens to paranormal triangles, primordial gods to kraken, aquatic folklore and mythology stretches back to the beginning of time. Today, its influence is everywhere and the more I’ve looked into ocean horror as a genre, the more books I want to read.
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, The Deep by Nick Cutter, The Devil’s Pocketbook by Ross Jeffery, and the Dangerous Waters: Deadly Women of the Sea anthology, edited by Julia C. Lewis, are just some additions to my TBR list.
Film’s naturally a hotbed for nautical scares too, with found footage movie Open Water, The Lighthouse (which I’m yet to watch), and Jaws being a few that come to mind.
The more I think about why we keep going back to the sea, the more I realise it’s a place where the rules don’t apply. It’s like it takes everything humanity has established as “normal” and turns it on its head.
The ocean is a place where fish create light. Where lobsters don’t die of old age. Where creatures don’t always need a brain to function.
The deeper you go, the more the darkness defies expectations. Organisms grow curtains of tentacles, squids grow unnaturally long legs, and mouths grow multiple rows of teeth.
The results are ghostly, alien, terrifying, but an endless mine of inspiration.
There’s also something to say for its vastness. As something that covers over 70% of the planet, it isn’t just home to oddities, but mountains and canyons bigger and deeper than the ones we have above water.
When you want to be reminded of your insignificance, instinct will tell you to look up. Look out at the ever-stretching nothingness that wraps around us and attempt to get your head around the fact that it goes on forever.
It’s such a human sensation that there’s a name for it. Cosmic vertigo. The feeling of being overwhelmed by space. But why should that feeling be reserved only for space? Who says you can’t experience cosmic vertigo from looking down instead of up?
A Google search will tell you we’ve discovered only 5% of the ocean and almost all of the 95% we haven’t discovered is dark. We’ve all seen what the ocean is capable of. We’ve heard of its tragedies. We’ve been warned about the strength of its currents. It’s ominous, has moods, and is widely accepted as something you don’t mess with.
So the next time you want to recalibrate, feel free to look up and out at the night sky. Look at the stars. Enjoy its expanse. Ask the hard questions. But don’t forget what we’re living with, rather than what we’re not.
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/ JJW