Why do so many writers choose English seaside towns for their eerie yarns?

As we tentatively set off on summer holidays after months of lockdown, take heed: if you’re heading to the coast beware the ghosts, warns David Barnett

The seaside is the perfect backdrop for supernatural tales (Getty)

The seaside in summer is a place of life and happiness, when it’s at its best; the brittle shrieks of children running on hot sand to paddle in the shallows; the obstinate cries of gulls patrolling the skies for the unwary holidaymaker carrying aloft an unshielded ice cream or pasty; tinny music floating from a dozen windbreaked beach encampments to form a cacophony that rises up to meet the scudding white clouds in faultless blue skies; the crashing of the waves on the shore, lulling the foolish and drink-happy into an un-lotioned doze on a hired sun-lounger, to awaken lobster-red and shrieking louder than the children running pell-mell for the sea.

But when the sun has gone down, and the sand has cooled, and the music has faded, and the shouts have become just echoes, the seaside can become a very different place.

Perhaps your name is Tom and you are walking along the beach at dusk, and hear the creaking of ropes and the distant ringing of bells, and yet no ship or boat troubles the water between you and the far horizon. Maybe you, Philip, are sitting, reading, in a deserted cove, and from the corner of your eye catch a movement in the caves renowned to have been used by smugglers and wreckers centuries ago, and the faint calling of your name… or it could just be the birds crying out.

Possibly, Tracey, you are sitting, lost in thought, on a deserted, out-of-season promenade, and notice that someone has carved in giant letters into the wet sand, “Happy birthday”, yet you are there alone and no one knows it is your birthday, and the tide washes over the message and it disappears even as you wonder if it was there at all. Or you, Susan, pick up a shell on the shoreline, put it to your ear, and instead of the comforting sound of the sea you hear the screams of tortured souls.