The Upper Berth; by the Waters of Paradise

Two Gothic tales of the supernatural, first published in 1885, that still possess the power to unsettle. "The Upper Berth" is a masterpiece of maritime horror: Mr. Brisbane, assigned to Room 105 aboard the Kamtschatka, discovers that every passenger who has slept in the upper berth has subsequently run screaming through the ship to drown themselves in the ocean. He and the captain mount an all-night vigil, armed with champagne and resolve, to face whatever waits in that cursed cabin. The result is claustrophobic dread raised to a breaking point. "By the Waters of Paradise" shifts to inland Gothic: a young man raised in a gloomy Welsh castle, fatalistic and melancholic, encounters a ghostly woman in his dreams who transforms his understanding of love, loss, and the boundary between the living and the dead. Crawford understands that the most terrifying ghosts are not monsters but mirrors reflecting our own mortality.