This second special issue on coastal imaginaries explores haunting as a means of analysing how environment, imagination and narrative shape our understanding of littoral spaces. Building on the first issue, and similarly adopting multidisciplinary approaches, it examines underrepresented themes and topics in coastal scholarship. Haunting here is not limited to figurative ghosts but encompasses spatial and temporal disruptions, the merging of past, present, and future, and aspects of the uncanny within coastal environments. The six articles explore topics ranging from nineteenth-century Cornish supernatural folklore to near-future science fiction literature that reads beached cargo containers as gothic crypts. In between, it examines interwar sea monster sightings, the mythic and autobiographical-infused coastal writing of Dermot Healy, an ethnographic study of how Timor-Leste fishing communities are adapting ancestral narratives to environmental change, and artistic practice as a means of exploring haunting pasts and futures in a Welsh coastal village faced with rising sea levels. Collectively, these contributions demonstrate the value of haunting as a critical tool for understanding coastal imaginaries and the emotional, psychological, and cultural dimensions of liminal spaces. Littoral haunting is shown to articulate anxieties about boundaries, ecological futures, and modern consumption, yet also serve as a means of preserving an element of mystery and secrecy within coastalscapes. Shaped in the interaction between physical environments, affective responses, and narrative practices, coastal imaginaries emerge as dynamic ways of articulating a sense of uncertainty, unease, and anxiety at the shoreline.
Karl Bell (Sun,) studied this question.