THE DEEP ONES: "The Red Bungalow" by Bithia Mary Croker
ConversazioniThe Weird Tradition
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1semdetenebre
"The Red Bungalow" by Bithia Mary Croker
Discussion begins April 20, 2022.
First published in Odds and Ends 1919.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?891557
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Women's Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937
"Number Ninety" and Other Ghost Stories
ONLINE VERSIONS
https://archive.org/details/oddsends00crok/mode/2up?q=red+bungalow (book p. 139)
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No online versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://melissaedmundson.com/tag/bithia-mary-croker/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bithia_Mary_Croker
https://newliteraria.com/articles/v02i1/v02i1-01.pdf
https://swanriverpress.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/number-ninety-other-ghost-storie...
https://tinyurl.com/3mm8ctkj
Discussion begins April 20, 2022.
First published in Odds and Ends 1919.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?891557
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Women's Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937
"Number Ninety" and Other Ghost Stories
ONLINE VERSIONS
https://archive.org/details/oddsends00crok/mode/2up?q=red+bungalow (book p. 139)
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No online versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://melissaedmundson.com/tag/bithia-mary-croker/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bithia_Mary_Croker
https://newliteraria.com/articles/v02i1/v02i1-01.pdf
https://swanriverpress.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/number-ninety-other-ghost-storie...
https://tinyurl.com/3mm8ctkj
2housefulofpaper
I've got that Swan River Press edition of "Number Ninety" and Other Ghost Stories. It's been excavated from the TBR pile, and I'm nearly up to the start of "The Red Bungalow" (on page 35).
3semdetenebre
Croker's 14 years spent living in India did much for giving this tale an authentic feel. I've read enough weird fiction that is set there (who can forget The Song of Kali by Dan Simmons or "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" by Poppy Brite?) but this is the first time that I recall encountering an Indian haunted house. Make that a bungalow, of course, which provides a further bit of novelty. I'm glad that the "it" is neither seen nor named at the finish. I was thinking about how one aspect of the old NIGHT STALKER TV series was that not only did you get a monster-of-the-week (unlikely as that might have been for Kolchak), but you usually got a whole lot of monster folklore with it. Rakshasa, anyone? Not so here. Just a vaguely glimpsed something and a very dark finish. Not even the monkey is unscathed. The fate of the children somewhat echoes that of Miles and Flora in "The Turn of the Screw".
I'll have to look for some weird fiction by Indian authors. I'd think that the country's lore and legends would be naturally conducive to it. I'm also curious now to read Croker's story, "The Little Brass God", which features a malevolent statuette of the goddess Kali.
I'll have to look for some weird fiction by Indian authors. I'd think that the country's lore and legends would be naturally conducive to it. I'm also curious now to read Croker's story, "The Little Brass God", which features a malevolent statuette of the goddess Kali.
4RandyStafford
A pretty familiar story: out-of-towners move in and ignore the locals' warning about a property they pick up cheap -- and pay the price.
Yet, it gets saved by that climactic scene with something circling below that table the children stand on.
In Women's Weird 2, editor Edmundson suggests this story is a metaphor for the anxiety of British colonizers ruling over India.
Going with that interpretation, we have the unexplained masonry ruins in the grounds under the Red Bungalow. The narrator expresses fear the property may hold snakes in some rooms. (Even the fauna can act against the colonizer.) Then there is the matter of the retarded daughter. It's as if India has taken even the gift of her native tongue from her while the "baba", a native, speaks it fluently. Netta, Edmundson points out, is a domestic quartermaster just as her husband is a quartermaster. But her domestic conquest is horribly thwarted.
Yet, it gets saved by that climactic scene with something circling below that table the children stand on.
In Women's Weird 2, editor Edmundson suggests this story is a metaphor for the anxiety of British colonizers ruling over India.
Going with that interpretation, we have the unexplained masonry ruins in the grounds under the Red Bungalow. The narrator expresses fear the property may hold snakes in some rooms. (Even the fauna can act against the colonizer.) Then there is the matter of the retarded daughter. It's as if India has taken even the gift of her native tongue from her while the "baba", a native, speaks it fluently. Netta, Edmundson points out, is a domestic quartermaster just as her husband is a quartermaster. But her domestic conquest is horribly thwarted.
5housefulofpaper
I got distracted a couple of evenings ago by >3 semdetenebre: - the comment about seeking out Indian authors of Weird fiction - and did some searching online.
Most of what I found was "true life" reports of hauntings rather than Weird fiction proper. But there is, apparently, a healthy tradition of chapbook publications, the modern day equivalents of Penny Dereadfuls and the Pulps I suppose, and printing genre fiction of various kinds. Unluckily for anglophone readers these are transient, almost underground publications, and unlikely to be available in English.
I did buy a book (in English) from an Indian publisher, Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India, which arrived next day as a POD paperback from Amazon. Wonders of modern science, etc.
Looking at "The Red Bungalow", I obviously have to agree with >4 RandyStafford: that this is a familiar set-up, and this would have been the case back in 1919. I was considering this in the context of Folk Horror - I mean the sort of story that has a modern, rationalist protagonist suddenly confronted by something from the Deep Past (e.g. standing stones, or the god Pan) erupting from their own countryside/their own cultural past, and the differences and similarities when the story is of stranger, incomer, or a coloniser encountering similar forces (examples that sprang to mind were The Amityville Horror - in the film if not in reality, THIS is the original "house built on an old Native American burial ground" and various Ray Bradbury "Mars" stories).
I noticed that B. M. Croker put some distance between her narrator "a middle-aged Scotchwoman" and the brisk but fatally wrong-headed Englishwoman, Netta. The narrator is stereotypically Celtic enough to sense something is wrong with the bungalow.
A final and minor point. I'm not sure I'd read the daughter as having learning difficulties, (not at the start of the story, I mean). These things don't have to run to a strict deadline and none of the characters seem worried about it, at a time when having a disabled child would be a real issue/stigma. It does allow Croker to have some variation in the fates of the children: one dead, one stricken.
Edited: corrected spelling of "reality".
Most of what I found was "true life" reports of hauntings rather than Weird fiction proper. But there is, apparently, a healthy tradition of chapbook publications, the modern day equivalents of Penny Dereadfuls and the Pulps I suppose, and printing genre fiction of various kinds. Unluckily for anglophone readers these are transient, almost underground publications, and unlikely to be available in English.
I did buy a book (in English) from an Indian publisher, Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India, which arrived next day as a POD paperback from Amazon. Wonders of modern science, etc.
Looking at "The Red Bungalow", I obviously have to agree with >4 RandyStafford: that this is a familiar set-up, and this would have been the case back in 1919. I was considering this in the context of Folk Horror - I mean the sort of story that has a modern, rationalist protagonist suddenly confronted by something from the Deep Past (e.g. standing stones, or the god Pan) erupting from their own countryside/their own cultural past, and the differences and similarities when the story is of stranger, incomer, or a coloniser encountering similar forces (examples that sprang to mind were The Amityville Horror - in the film if not in reality, THIS is the original "house built on an old Native American burial ground" and various Ray Bradbury "Mars" stories).
I noticed that B. M. Croker put some distance between her narrator "a middle-aged Scotchwoman" and the brisk but fatally wrong-headed Englishwoman, Netta. The narrator is stereotypically Celtic enough to sense something is wrong with the bungalow.
A final and minor point. I'm not sure I'd read the daughter as having learning difficulties, (not at the start of the story, I mean). These things don't have to run to a strict deadline and none of the characters seem worried about it, at a time when having a disabled child would be a real issue/stigma. It does allow Croker to have some variation in the fates of the children: one dead, one stricken.
Edited: corrected spelling of "reality".
6RandyStafford
I have a nagging feeling that the bungalow being red is somehow important, but I'm not sure why. There is the famous Red Fort in India. However, its limestone walls were painted red by the British.
According to the Web of a Million Lies, red, in Hindu culture, is a color of "beginnings, passion, and prosperity" and associated with the goddess Durga. It's "always an auspicious color" -- well, not for Netta. Maybe Croker is inverting that association?
According to the Web of a Million Lies, red, in Hindu culture, is a color of "beginnings, passion, and prosperity" and associated with the goddess Durga. It's "always an auspicious color" -- well, not for Netta. Maybe Croker is inverting that association?
7semdetenebre
>5 housefulofpaper:
The narrator is stereotypically Celtic enough to sense something is wrong with the bungalow.
Ha! Good point.
As far as Indian authors, I've run across Weird Tales of a Bangalorean while searching around. The following review for another collection provides some intriguing info about the author: http://davidagranoff.blogspot.com/2021/12/book-review-come-tomorrow-by.html
The narrator is stereotypically Celtic enough to sense something is wrong with the bungalow.
Ha! Good point.
As far as Indian authors, I've run across Weird Tales of a Bangalorean while searching around. The following review for another collection provides some intriguing info about the author: http://davidagranoff.blogspot.com/2021/12/book-review-come-tomorrow-by.html
8AndreasJ
Finally got around to reading this today.
As >4 RandyStafford: says, the story is familiar enough. Also, I found the (?)creature a little too undefined for the end to be really effective.
The local colour was convincing enough - though I'm probably easy enough to fool on that point - and perhaps what I appreciated best about the story.
As >4 RandyStafford: says, the story is familiar enough. Also, I found the (?)creature a little too undefined for the end to be really effective.
The local colour was convincing enough - though I'm probably easy enough to fool on that point - and perhaps what I appreciated best about the story.
