In 1928, the SS Arcadia vanishes without a trace after sending several vague yet deeply creepy distress calls, the last of which concludes with "There are bodies in the walls."
Sixty years later, the wreckage of the Arcadia is found way off from its last believed coordinates. A documentary team will be the first to explore the ship. They'd planned to do some wreck diving but to mostly use remote-operated, unmanned vehicles. Unfortunately, their ROVs all mysteriously stopped working when they arrived at the wreck site. Since they'll only get paid if they produce the footage they promised, they decide to do three dives to explore the wreck.
The cave diving exploration of the ship is intercut with the story of exactly what happened to the Arcadia. It's hard to say which is creepier, because they're both incredibly creepy. From Below is an old-school style ghost story, relying on dread, implications, and things glimpsed out of the corner of your eyes.
What's terrifying about a ghost? To me, it's the thought that you might see one. Or worse, that you might realize that the ghost is standing right behind you and have to choose to turn around, knowing that when you do, you will see it. Or that it's under the bed, waiting to grab your ankle. Or that you might glance in a mirror, and see it behind you.
The fear that a ghost might kill you is, to me, the least scary thing about a ghost. Just being personally confronted with their existence is what's scary.
At a certain point, the book switches the fear that ghosts might just be there for the fear that the ghosts can kill you. At that point it becomes less scary and more of of an action/adventure story. Still good, but minus the existential dread.
I was disappointed by Our Wives Under the Sea, which didn't do enough with a lost submarine. I was disappointed by Dead Silence, which did a bad job with salvagers on a haunted spaceship. From Below was exactly what I wanted. You always know exactly how much oxygen the divers have. You know exactly what every bit of the ship looks like, feels like, smells like, both in the past and in the present underwater. The atmosphere is incredible. The characters have exactly as much characterization as they need and not a bit more, which in this case is perfectly fine. What Coates does overwhelmingly well is convey an atmosphere of sheer relentless dread.
In addition to the fear of ghosts, drowning, suffocation, corpses, getting lost underwater, being lost in some kind of sea hell, and going insane from terror, there is also a highly specific terrifying element which I've only ever come across once before, in a manga by Junji Ito involving caves.
I don't think the book really needed the final "just when you think it's over" beat or the partial/possible explanation for the haunting, but they didn't spoil anything either. If you want to read a terrifying book about ghosts on a ship, From Below is hard to beat.
Content notes: Nothing terribly gory or graphic beyond some corpse descriptions. It's about fear and dread rather than gore.
Thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay for mentioning it! I'd never heard of it before and I loved it.
ETA: Labeled spoilers in comments!
Sixty years later, the wreckage of the Arcadia is found way off from its last believed coordinates. A documentary team will be the first to explore the ship. They'd planned to do some wreck diving but to mostly use remote-operated, unmanned vehicles. Unfortunately, their ROVs all mysteriously stopped working when they arrived at the wreck site. Since they'll only get paid if they produce the footage they promised, they decide to do three dives to explore the wreck.
The cave diving exploration of the ship is intercut with the story of exactly what happened to the Arcadia. It's hard to say which is creepier, because they're both incredibly creepy. From Below is an old-school style ghost story, relying on dread, implications, and things glimpsed out of the corner of your eyes.
What's terrifying about a ghost? To me, it's the thought that you might see one. Or worse, that you might realize that the ghost is standing right behind you and have to choose to turn around, knowing that when you do, you will see it. Or that it's under the bed, waiting to grab your ankle. Or that you might glance in a mirror, and see it behind you.
The fear that a ghost might kill you is, to me, the least scary thing about a ghost. Just being personally confronted with their existence is what's scary.
At a certain point, the book switches the fear that ghosts might just be there for the fear that the ghosts can kill you. At that point it becomes less scary and more of of an action/adventure story. Still good, but minus the existential dread.
I was disappointed by Our Wives Under the Sea, which didn't do enough with a lost submarine. I was disappointed by Dead Silence, which did a bad job with salvagers on a haunted spaceship. From Below was exactly what I wanted. You always know exactly how much oxygen the divers have. You know exactly what every bit of the ship looks like, feels like, smells like, both in the past and in the present underwater. The atmosphere is incredible. The characters have exactly as much characterization as they need and not a bit more, which in this case is perfectly fine. What Coates does overwhelmingly well is convey an atmosphere of sheer relentless dread.
In addition to the fear of ghosts, drowning, suffocation, corpses, getting lost underwater, being lost in some kind of sea hell, and going insane from terror, there is also a highly specific terrifying element which I've only ever come across once before, in a manga by Junji Ito involving caves.
I don't think the book really needed the final "just when you think it's over" beat or the partial/possible explanation for the haunting, but they didn't spoil anything either. If you want to read a terrifying book about ghosts on a ship, From Below is hard to beat.
Content notes: Nothing terribly gory or graphic beyond some corpse descriptions. It's about fear and dread rather than gore.
Thanks to
sovay for mentioning it! I'd never heard of it before and I loved it. ETA: Labeled spoilers in comments!
