That long dark walk down the lonely seafront....

It reminds me of the passage used by Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein taken from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner;
"Like one, that on a lonely road

     Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turn'd round, walks on

     And turns no more his head:

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

     Doth close behind him tread."