I’ve been told that nautical horror is having a moment. What that means, or what any of us should do about that fact, is a little bit oblique, mainly because oceanic terror has been the quiet backbone of the horror genre for almost as long as it has existed.

The first horror film I ever saw was with my father. I was way too young to watch anything so graphic, and I cowered behind the ratty green footstool in the living room, daring to peek out when the worst was over. The lights were off, curtains drawn, blinds closed, and my father lay on the couch, very disinterested in my sheer terror. But by that time, I’d already learned not to make a fuss. Be still and quiet so you don’t get noticed.

Cemeteries don’t need the supernatural to terrify. Zombies and revenants aren’t required to raise gooseflesh along our necks. Ghosts don’t have to peer out from mausoleums to sink that stone of dread into our guts. King’s Pet Sematary is a great example of the fear that has been associated with graveyards in the horror genre.

“What’s your favorite scary movie?” It’s a question I’m often asked, and, for the longest time, I never had an answer to it. In a genre as storied and diverse as horror, anyone would be hard-pressed for a response. What’s certain, though, is few if any, casual viewers would pick a slasher film.

It’s a quiet night at home. A woman watches a scary movie in a darkened room when a real-life killer appears. Screaming, she jumps from the couch, popcorn flying, and the chase begins. The mask-clad, knife-wielding killer pursues her.

She might have siblings, cruel or kind, and a neglectful father wooed by the most wicked of stepmothers. Perhaps she’s a princess stuck in a castle, her father the king. Maybe she has jealous stepsiblings or a host of suitors ready to swoop in as soon as she’s of marriageable age. What she doesn’t have is a mother to keep her safe.

You draw one icy breath before the blizzard snatches it away. You moan in the same key as the storm, a polyphonic nightmare sound: ice cracking across a wide lake, a melody of numbness, backed by whispers of death and the rhythmic thud of something nearby.

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” ( bit.ly/3PIvslrgutenberg) first published in 1853, is not typically considered a work of horror. The tale of a law clerk who absents himself from his duties at work, then from the outside world, then from life itself, it presents itself as a work of realism with no gore, no horror, terror, nothing of the supernatural or the monstrous about it.

My experience in marketing, the secrets I was privy to in understanding what controlled people to make purchases: It felt like a strange power I had and one I didn’t really want anymore.

Jorōgumo, a spider that shapeshifts into a woman (there’s something for your nightmares). Zombies in every form. The making of a vampire. These transmutations represent more than just the birth of a baddie—they reflect change, upheaval, disruption, metamorphosis.