For October 4
Plot:
To “slay the demon of neurosis,” Brent Ormerod takes a vacation in the quiet town of Todd on the Norfolk coast of England. As part of his treatment, he gets plenty of exercise and fresh air. He returns to the hotel from these daily walks exhausted and sleeps.
Things go well enough until he comes upon a deserted tower among the dunes beyond a golf course. For some reason, the landscape depresses him. He finds it sinister and decides that the only way to deal with the dark mood is to keep going back and press onward.
When he talks of these things to other people at the hotel, he gets no sympathy until he meets another newly arrived guest, one Mr. Stanton-Boyle. Mr. Stanton-Boyle concedes that the area beyond the golf course “gets on his nerves,” and it “is somehow abominable.”
So is this area indeed, as Stanton-Boyle later calls it, “terre mauvaise”? (Because the Bad Lands are “that bit in the States.”) Two people independently get the creeps from the same place, so it has to be bad, right?
After talking with Stanton-Boyle, Brent dreams of a country “full of sighs and whisperings.” He sees a sinister-looking house.
In the following days, he walks farther beyond the oddball tower and comes to the country he dreamed of, including the house. Looking in through a window (not at all creepy), he sees an old spinning wheel and concludes it’s evil. Not only is it evil, but it’s also the source of all the bad things in the surrounding countryside—and he must burn it!
Back at the hotel, he tells Stanton-Boyle of his plans. Rather than try to talk him out of arson and vandalism, Stanton-Boyle cheers him on, calling him a hero. Stanton-Boyle is the friend your mother always warned you about.
Thoughts:
The action takes place about fifteen years before the story is related, about 1905. Even so, spinning wheels couldn’t have been common. Was it real? A lot of the story has this feeling. Does Brent dream the house into being? There is an answer for that.
The descriptions and the moods created by the landscapes are evocative. Something is off. Is it haunted? What spirit oppresses Brent? How much is in Brent’s head, and how much is not? We have an outside observer. There must be some objective reality, right?
My read on the ending is that the author intended humor. City slickers lost their heads in a countryside they didn’t understand. Too much fresh air, maybe?
There is no note of whether Brent suffers any repercussions beyond humiliation. The townsfolk seem more annoyed and content with making him a laughingstock. They dismiss the things that Stanton-Boyle says. Adding to his embarrassment, Brent finds his sister, concerned he has not written to her, arrives from Kensington to look after him.
Bio: William John Metcalfe (1891-1965) was born in the UK. He is best known for horror and weird stories. He earned a degree in philosophy from the University of London and taught in Paris until the outbreak of WWI, then served in the British Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Corps. After the war, he taught in the UK and began writing. After publishing his first short story collection, The Smoking Leg and Other Stories, he wrote full-time. He taught in the UK and the US after WWII. He married American novelist Evelyn Scott.
The story can be read here, though it is challenging:
The story can be listened to here. (begins at 4:53:36)
Title: “The Bad Lands”
Author: John Metcalfe (1891-1965)
First published: Land and Water, April 15, 1920.
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 
I read this book and found it very interesting.
It is interesting. And very moody—at least till the end. I found it funny.
It seems like an odd but interesting story. You wrote and excellent review.
thanks. It is interesting.