A vampire could choose hunting grounds worse than a 19th century cargo ship, where the victims have no way to escape or call for help as he picks them off one by one. For horror writers, such a ship has the same advantages as the isolated island in Agatha Christie’s serial killer classic, “And Then There Were None,” with few places to hide, but infinite potential for fostering paranoia among a dwindling group of survivors.

Irish author Bram Stoker certainly understood the claustrophobia factor when he penned the seventh chapter of “Dracula,” his epistolary novel that has inspired countless retellings since its 1897 publication. In a brief but chilling passage, Stoker presents a captain’s log supposedly recovered from the Demeter, a Russian ship run aground in a storm off the northeast coa

See Full Page