I have a confession to make.

Keep in mind I write about frightening things for a living.

I haven't read a horror novel yet that's managed to freak me out, and yet I am deathly

afraid of open water.

There, I said it.

I hate being on boats.

I'm not even sure why, to be honest, I just am.

Perhaps it's the idea that thousands of feet of cold darkness weight right beneath my

feet.

Maybe it's the mystery of it all, of what creatures, known and unknown might be waiting

for me, just beyond the reach of what little sunlight passes through the surface of the

waves.

Now, I live near the coast, and I've been on boats before, so my fear comes from experience.

But it's not the cold, deep darkness beneath the ship that worries me the most.

Know what really makes my skin crawl is the thought that at any moment, the ship could sink.

Maybe we can blame movies like Titanic or the Poseidon adventure for showing us how horrific

a shipwreck can be, but there are far more true stories of tragedy at sea than there

are fictional ones.

And it's in these real life experiences, these maritime disasters that dot the map of history

like an ocean full of macabre buoys that we come face to face with the real dangers that

await us in open water.

The ocean takes much from us, but in rare moments scattered across the pages of history, we've

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