Special Feature: The Shore
by Robert Dunbar

Everyone starts somewhere.

Groping blindly, I didn’t want simply to reset one of the classics in a contemporary location. That’s all I knew. Yes, yes, everybody does it these days, but I hate stories about vampires in Cleveland or werewolves in Poughkeepsie – I wanted to find something authentically American. And I don’t mean Native American. I disapprove of demonizing some god or shaman from another culture. (It’s not bad enough we exploit and oppress them, but then we have to characterize their beliefs as evil?) Likewise, folklore from slave culture struck me as sacrosanct and off limits. Plus those legends tend to be so overwhelmingly sad.

But what else was there? I thought about it a long time and eventually had an insight.

(Okay, so a really long time passed.)

It seemed to me that the earliest European settlers must have brought their own myths with them, and that those myths must have evolved into strange new shapes upon being transplanted to the new world.

About then I began to explore the pine barrens, hiking, canoeing, always on the lookout for an atmospheric ruin or one of those fascinating little shanty towns. A lot of the people out there don’t see too many strangers – I definitely attracted attention and met some incredible folks. I mean, a few pineys got a little offended when they heard I was writing about the Jersey Devil, but mostly they were delighted. I’d set up my tape recorder, start taking notes … and out would come the stories. Everybody had an uncle who’d been attacked by the Devil; everybody had an aunt who’d been chased through the yard. Ever seen the pinelands? They’re beautiful but harsh – an almost surreal landscape – and it’s easy to understand how they gave birth to uncanny lore. I’m sure the locals told me lots of stuff they save for the gringos, but most of the stories turned out to be pure gold.

I became obsessed. Before long I was spending as much time hunting down articles on folklore as I was wandering the forest. (Haunting the woods is all very nice, but – trust me – haunting the library is much more my sort of thing. Prior to the sudden onset of this fixation, the most exercise I ever got was wrestling with my conscience.) And I discovered some fascinating things.

For instance, three distinct mythological creatures figure prominently in New Jersey legends. Obviously, Mother Leeds’ thirteenth child (also known as The Jersey Devil, also known as The Leeds Demon, also known as The Pines Phantom) remains the most enduring … if for no other reason than that people still see him. The other two, however, are virtually forgotten.

But a century and a half ago, residents of the Brigantine area often sighted the Headless Buccaneer. (Jersey’s coast has a rich history of pirate activity, giving rise to a huge body of ghostly shipwreck yarns.) Popular at about the same time was a specter known simply as The Lady in White. Believed to be the wraith of a sailor’s widow, she would usually be spied just before a storm, long hair trailing in the wind. Possibly, her appearance was intended as a warning.

Possibly.

The very last reported sighting of The Woman in White? On a foggy night in the fall of 1902, a local minister spotted her on the beach at Cape May. For once, she wasn’t alone. Prowling along the nearby rocks was the Leeds Devil.

I mean, isn’t this wonderful?  We’ve got an eerie setting, a monster … and a blonde. What further inspiration could any horror writer need?

For THE SHORE, I imagined a tiny resort town in the dead of winter, making it a composite of so many little towns I’d visited over the years, and I envisioned this novel as more of a supernatural mystery than a traditional horror thriller (though with plenty of scares). As with THE PINES, I employed the folklore as a framework, using the existence of these tales as a jumping off point for a vastly different exploration of the dark.

Picture snow on the beach. Got it? Waves hiss in the moonlight, and wind howls across the dunes. Does something else howl as well? As I got down to work, I asked myself a lot of questions. What if a couple of the characters from THE PINES were to surface? Could heavy snows cut the town off from the outside world? What if an ancient evil prowled the beach at night?

I think of this as method writing, my own personal version of method acting.

I figure if I can frighten myself, I’m on the right track.

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