This week’s weird fiction being discussed over at LibraryThing’s Deep Ones reading group.

Review: “The Red Bungalow”, Bithia Mary Croker, 1919.

You know this story. Out-of-towers come to town and find a great real estate deal, ignore the misgivings the locals have about the property, and then pay the price.

Here the out-of-towners are Netta, sister-in-law of the narrator, and her husband and their two children. He’s Tom Fellowes, a major and quartermaster in the British Army. The town is the station Kulu in British India. The house is the titular Red Bungalow which has been oddly ignored by the officers and their wives in town until Netta finds it for a very cheap price. 

But the narrator, on first visit, has an ominous feeling about it which he attributes to her Scottish Highland sensitivity. An old British woman warns Netta. The narrator’s servant warns about it. 

The interesting part is how horror is never seen or detailed. 

Continue reading →