About

John Metcalfe, writing about John Metcalfe in The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural, T.E.D. Klein said that the author's work is marked by "a rare artistry, wit, and intelligence, and by a restraint too often lacking in the genre." Mike Ashley, in Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction, calls Metcalfe's works "skilful and bizarre," while E.F. Bleiler, in his The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, refers to them as "tense, cryptic stories of brooding supernaturalism" which are now "unjustly forgotten." John Metcalfe's tales of the macabre and the supernatural are amongst the finest in the genre, and are comparable to the stories of such authors as Walter de la Mare, L.P. Hartley, and Robert Aickman. The horrors in his stories are insidious and unnerving, frightening by stealth rather than by violence as they intrude into the quiet lives of ordinary people, who find their worlds shaken by forces they can neither understand nor control. Like the best horror tales of Poe and Le Fanu, Metcalfe's narratives are often disturbing accounts of excursions into the "bad lands" of the subconscious mind.