Ghost Story: The Striding Place

Today we enjoy one of the most famous ghost stories of the Victorian era, one of the most memorable of works from Gertrude Atherton. If you enjoy the macabre, drab nature of a silent walk on a lonely night or the terror of being swept away by the strong current of a river...beware The Striding Place. A terrific metaphor for the fear of the unknown and the impact of death upon those still living.

Episode music and narration by Tynan Portillo. Intro music by Emmett Cooke on PremiumBeat.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:34 Striding Place Poem
• 1:37 Story
• 19:02 Aftertalk
• 29:47 Farewell

Transcript

Tynan Portillo presents...featuring the best horror stories of the 19th century...welcome to The Poe Show. Narrated by Tynan Portillo.
Today’s episode, a famous ghost story, The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton.

This striding-place is called THE STRID,
A name which it took of yore:
A thousand years hath it borne that name,
And shall a thousand more.

And hither is young Romilly come,
And what may now forbid
That he, perhaps for the hundredth time,
Shall bound across THE STRID?

He sprang in glee,- or what cared he’
That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep? –
But the greyhound in the leash hung back,
And checked him in his leap.

The Boy is in the arms of Wharf,
And strangled by a merciless force;
For never more was young Romilly seen
Till he rose a lifeless corse.

Weigall, continental and detached, tired early of grouse shooting. To stand propped against a sod fence while his host’s workmen routed up the birds with long poles and drove them towards the waiting guns, made him feel himself a parody on the ancestors who had roamed the moors and forests of this West Riding of Yorkshire in hot pursuit of game worth the killing. But when in England in August he always accepted whatever proffered for the season, and invited his host to shoot pheasants on his estates in the South. The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills.

It had been a bad day. A heavy rain had made the moor so spongy that it fairly sprang beneath the feet. Whether or not the grouse had haunts of their own, wherein they were immune from rheumatism, the bag had been small. The women, too, were an unusually dull lot, with the exception of a newminded débutante who bothered Weigall at dinner by demanding the verbal restoration of the vague paintings on the vaulted roof above them.

 But it was no one of these things that sat on Weigall’s mind as, when the other men went up to bed, he let himself out of the castle and sauntered down to the river. His intimate friend, the companion of his boyhood, the chum of his college days, his fellow-traveller in many lands, the man for whom he possessed stronger affection than for all men, had mysteriously disappeared two days ago, and his track might have sprung to the upper air for all trace he had left behind him. He had been a guest on the adjoining estate during the past week, shooting with the fervor of the true sportsman, making love in the intervals to Adeline Cavan, and apparently in the best of spirits. As far as was known there was nothing to lower his mental The Library of America • Story of the Week Excerpt from American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps (The Library of America, 2009), pages 232–37. © 2009 Literary Classics of the U.S., Inc. Originally published as “The Twins” in The Speaker (June 20, 1896). Reprinted in The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories (1905). mercury, for his rent-roll was a large one, Miss Cavan blushed whenever he looked at her, and, being one of the best shots in England, he was never happier than in August. The suicide theory was preposterous, all agreed, and there was as little reason to believe him murdered. Nevertheless, he had walked out of March Abbey two nights ago without hat or overcoat, and had not been seen since.

 The country was being patrolled night and day. A hundred keepers and workmen were beating the woods and poking the bogs on the moors, but as yet not so much as a handkerchief had been found.

Weigall did not believe for a moment that Wyatt Gifford was dead, and although it was impossible not to be affected by the general uneasiness, he was disposed to be more angry than frightened. At Cambridge Gifford had been an incorrigible practical joker, and by no means had outgrown the habit; it would be like him to cut across the country in his evening clothes, board a cattle-train, and amuse himself touching up the picture of the sensation in West Riding

 However, Weigall’s affection for his friend was too deep to companion with tranquillity in the present state of doubt, and, instead of going to bed early with the other men, he determined to walk until ready for sleep. He went down to the river and followed the path through the woods. There was no moon, but the stars sprinkled their cold light upon the pretty belt of water flowing placidly past wood and ruin, between green masses of overhanging rocks or sloping banks tangled with tree and shrub, leaping occasionally over stones with the harsh notes of an angry scold, to recover its equanimity the moment the way was clear again.

 It was very dark in the depths where Weigall trod. He smiled as he recalled a remark of Gifford’s: “An English wood is like a good many other things in life—very promising at a distance, but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides, and the sun freckles the very bracken. Our woods need the nightto make them seem whatthey oughtto be—what they once were, before our ancestors’ descendants demanded so much more money, in these so much more various days.”

 Weigall strolled along, smoking, and thinking of his friend, the striding place 233 his pranks—many of which had done more credit to his imagination than this—and recalling conversations that had lasted the night through. Just before the end of the London season they had walked the streets one hot night after a party, discussing the various theories of the soul’s destiny. That afternoon they had met at the coffin of a college friend whose mind had been a blank for the past three years. Some months previously they had called at the asylum to see him. His expression had been senile, his face imprinted with the record of debauchery. In death the face was placid, intelligent, without ignoble lineation—the face of the man they had known at college. Weigall and Gifford had had no time to comment there, and the afternoon and evening were full; but, coming forth from the house of festivity together, they had reverted almost at once to the topic.

 “I cherish the theory,” Gifford had said, “that the soul sometimes lingers in the body after death. During madness, of course, it is an impotent prisoner, albeit a conscious one. Fancy its agony, and its horror! What more natural than that, when the life-spark goes out, the tortured soul should take possession of the vacant skull and triumph once more for a few hours while old friends look their last? It has had time to repent while compelled to crouch and behold the result of its work, and it has shrived itself into a state of comparative purity. If I had my way, I should stay inside my bones until the coffin had gone into its niche, that I might obviate for my poor old comrade the tragic impersonality of death. And I should like to see justice done to it, as it were—to see it lowered among its ancestors with the ceremony and solemnity that are its due. I am afraid that if I dissevered myself too quickly, I should yield to curiosity and hasten to investigate the mysteries of space.”

 “You believe in the soul as an independent entity, then— that it and the vital principle are not one and the same?”

 “Absolutely. The body and soul are twins, life comrades— sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, but always loyal in the last instance. Some day, when I am tired of the world, I shall go to India and become a mahatma, solely for the pleasure of receiving proof during life of this independent relationship.”

“Suppose you were not sealed up properly, and returned after one of your astral flights to find your earthly part unfit for 234 gertrude atherton habitation? It is an experiment I don’t think I should care to try, unless even juggling with soul and flesh had palled.”

 “That would not be an uninteresting predicament. I should rather enjoy experimenting with broken machinery.”

The high wild roar of water smote suddenly upon Weigall’s ear and checked his memories. He left the wood and walked out on the huge slippery stones which nearly close the River Wharfe at this point, and watched the waters boil down into the narrow pass with their furious untiring energy. The black quiet of the woods rose high on either side. The stars seemed colder and whiter just above. On either hand the perspective of the river might have run into a rayless cavern. There was no lonelier spot in England, nor one which had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were.

Weigall was not a coward, but he recalled uncomfortably the tales of those that had been done to death in the Strid.* Wordsworth’s Boy of Egremond had been disposed of by the practical Whitaker; but countless others, more venturesome than wise, had gone down into that narrow boiling course, never to appear in the still pool a few yards beyond. Below the great rocks which form the walls of the Strid was believed to be a natural vault, on to whose shelves the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination. Weigall stood, visioning skeletons, uncoffined and green, the home of the eyeless things which had devoured all that had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man’s mortality; then fell to wondering if any one had attempted to leap the Strid of late. It was covered with slime; he had never seen it look so treacherous.

He shuddered and turned away, impelled, despite his manhood, to flee the spot. As he did so, something tossing in the foam below the fall—something as white, yet independent of it—caught his eye and arrested his step. Then he saw that it was describing a contrary motion to the rushing water—an upward backward motion. Weigall stood rigid, breathless; he fancied he heard the crackling of his hair. Was that a hand? It thrust itself still higher above the boiling foam, turned sidewise, and four frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the black rock beyond.

Weigall’s superstitious terror left him. A man was there, struggling to free himself from the suction beneath the Strid, swept down, doubtless, but a moment before his arrival, perhaps as he stood with his back to the current.

He stepped as close to the edge as he dared. The hand doubled as if in imprecation, shaking savagely in the face of that force which leaves its creatures to immutable law; then spread wide again, clutching, expanding, crying for help as audibly as the human voice

Weigall dashed to the nearest tree, dragged and twisted off a branch with his strong arms, and returned as swiftly to the Strid. The hand was in the same place, still gesticulating as wildly; the body was undoubtedly caught in the rocks below, perhaps already half-way along one of those hideous shelves. Weigall let himself down upon a lower rock, braced his shoulder against the mass beside him, then, leaning out over the water, thrust the branch into the hand. The fingers clutched it convulsively. Weigall tugged powerfully, his own feet dragged perilously near the edge. For a moment he produced no impression, then an arm shot above the waters.

The blood sprang to Weigall’s head; he was choked with the impression that the Strid had him in her roaring hold, and he saw nothing. Then the mist cleared. The hand and arm were nearer, although the rest of the body was still concealed by the foam. Weigall peered out with distended eyes. The meagre light revealed in the cuffs links of a peculiar device. The fingers clutching the branch were as familiar.

Weigall forgot the slippery stones, the terrible death if he stepped too far. He pulled with passionate will and muscle. Memories flung themselves into the hot light of his brain, trooping rapidly upon each other’s heels, as in the thought of the drowning. Most of the pleasures of his life, good and bad, were identified in some way with this friend. Scenes of college days, of travel, where they had deliberately sought adventure and stood between one another and death upon more occasions than one, of hours of delightful companionship among the treasures of art, and others in the pursuit of pleasure, flashed 236 gertrude atherton like the changing particles of a kaleidoscope. Weigall had loved several women; but he would have flouted in these moments the thought that he had ever loved any woman as he loved Wyatt Gifford. There were so many charming women in the world, and in the thirty-two years of his life he had never known another man to whom he had cared to give his intimate friendship.

He threw himself on his face. His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was life in them yet.

Suddenly something gave way. The hand swung about, tearing the branch from Weigall’s grasp. The body had been liberated and flung outward, though still submerged by the foam and spray.

Weigall scrambled to his feet and sprang along the rocks, knowing that the danger from suction was over and that Gifford must be carried straight to the quiet pool. Gifford was a fish in the water and could live under it longer than most men. If he survived this, it would not be the first time that his pluck and science had saved him from drowning.

Weigall reached the pool. A man in his evening clothes floated on it, his face turned towards a projecting rock over which his arm had fallen, upholding the body. The hand that had held the branch hung limply over the rock, its white reflection visible in the black water. Weigall plunged into the shallow pool, lifted Gifford in his arms and returned to the bank. He laid the body down and threw off his coat that he might be the freer to practise the methods of resuscitation. He was glad of the moment’s respite. The valiant life in the man might have been exhausted in that last struggle. He had not dared to look at his face, to put his ear to the heart. The hesitation lasted but a moment. There was no time to lose.

He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange and disagreeable smote his senses. For a half-moment he did not appreciate its nature. Then his teeth clacked together, his feet, his outstretched arms pointed towards the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and bent down and peered into his face. There was no face.

 Hello from the Poe Show, I’m your host Tynan Portillo. You wanted it, you got it! People were sending fan mail to the show requesting another ghost story, so I hope you enjoyed this spooky tale. And if you did, like the episode, subscribe to this podcast, share it with your family and friends and give this podcast a good rating to expose it to more people.

 I also want to say thank you so much to our subscribers on YouTube! We have 38! It makes me so happy! A massive thank you for subscribing and listening, it means the world to me. If any of you listeners, my Poe Show Pals, would like to hear any other classic ghost stories on this podcast, you can send an anonymous text message using the link in the description, email poeshowpod@gmail.com or comment on the Poe Show YouTube channel. On to the aftertalk.

 The Striding Place was first published in 1896 under a different title, “The Twins,” referring to the nature of the body and the shoul. But Gertrude Atherton revised the story in 1905. She recounted this tale as “The best short story I ever wrote.”

 If I could give a color to this story, I think it would be blue, a dark ominous blue. The kind of feeling I got while reading went from dreary to ethereal to chilling, and that blue image was in my head while I composed the music for this story. I wanted that eeriness in the background of what was happening, making it all feel like a dream. And that’s what I always strive to do when I compose music, is take what I’m feeling and create the sounds that make me feel it.

 We follow Weigall, who is in such sour moods that he can’t possibly enjoy hunting grouse at this time, because his dearest friend Gifford has recently gone missing. He reminisces over the happy times he spent with Gifford and the many pranks he would pull. Then as Weigall takes a nightly stroll he sees a hand reaching up out of the nearby waterfall, the Strid. He runs over to pull this person out of the water, grabbing a tree branch to do so, but fails. He has to follow the body as it goes downriver and eventually rests upon a rock. He grabs the body, that of Gifford, and sees that the body has no face.

 Honestly, when I first read that I thought of that one scene from the Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest, where Will Turner finds that ship that’s been attacked by the kraken. And then he sees that one man who had his face suctioned clean off - that scene scared me as a kid.

 I found this ghost story very different from others that I’ve read before. The nature of most classic ghost stories, at least those from the Victorian era (which this would have technically fallen into by its first publication) were a form of escapism and macabre entertainment for a cold winter night next to the fire. And they turned into a major tradition because printing presses began to get a lot better and faster, and printing presses needed more content for their regular schedule. So publishers turned to authors who could write many entertaining short stories, specializing in magazines.

It could be argued that the general population was also more superstitious at that time because they developed strange rituals like photographing dead children and covering up mirrors to prevent trapping the soul in the house. But there were plenty of factors like gas lamps giving people hallucinations and lead plates poisoning food that would lead to people believing in a superstitious apparition. There’s a reason that in A Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooge says, “There’s more gravy than grave about you,” to his dead partner Jacob Marely.

 Although for this episode, this was technically a ghost story…without a ghost. It was morbid to be sure, that’s why I wanted to begin the episode with the bird call and the shotgun, to start off the story with death. But this story is more of a question with an unclear answer. The story infers that Gifford experienced his body being mangled in the Strid. Perhaps he was “experimenting with broken machinery” as he said. But the absence of a face says that Gifford has lost his identity, that his soul is no longer with his body. And the answer as to where his soul went is unknown.

 What’s interesting is that the whole story feels eerily similar to a funeral procession. People who know Gifford become very invested in his life now that he’s absent, many people hoping he’s in a safe place. Weigall recalls good times with him but is plainly in mourning. He even makes a joke that this is exactly the kind of prank Gifford would pull, exhibiting a coping mechanism. And suddenly, events associated with death, like hunting grouse, make Weigall feel uneasy. When he gets a chance to rescue his friend and see Gifford again, even at a risk to his own life, he tries desperately to bring him back onto shore, or a metaphorical land of the living. But the river is too powerful and it swiftly rushes Gifford away. And the only thing left of Gifford is his body.

The text also says that Weigall had loved Gifford more than any of the several women he had ever loved, but I’m not 100% confident that this was to be taken as a romantic love - it could be so, or it could be the bond that brothers might share. I think that’s more up to your interpretation.

 It’s quite possible that, as many authors do, Gertrude was writing something based on her own life. She had lost her son to diphtheria and her husband died at sea. And the River Wharfe is a real place; the Strid is an actual area in Yorkshire, England, with waterfalls that have claimed many peoples’ lives because there are caverns underneath the water and the rapids can quickly draw people under.

 Here’s a little bit more about the author. She started writing because she had married rich but found life in her big mansion boring, and she wanted to start a more independent venture in her life. She was a suffragist and very outspoken feminist, but despised the idea of using violence to enact political progress. And, I mean you gotta guess it at this point cause I’m reading works from classic authors here, she was also racist and a white supremacist. It’s a shame, but it’s to be expected of that time period, honestly.

 That’s actually something I’ve been asked about before: I’ve been asked how I feel as a minority narrating these stories of people who probably would have hated me. And to be frank, I don’t care. I think their fictional works are bigger than the authors are, and I kind of feel like I’m taking back a point from history by reading their stories. And I can appreciate the progress that they supported and advocated for, while acknowledging that they are human beings who have flaws, who lived in a time of very new ideas. I don’t excuse their actions, it’s just a part of history.

 Anyway, The Striding Place expertly expresses the fear of the unknown, and it doesn’t try to give any answers as to the destination of the soul. It doesn’t explore nihilism, spirituality or religion; rather, it focuses on the experience that death has on those still living. People miss Gifford. He had friends and family. And although the morbid thought of his faceless body sends chills up my neck, the story also demonstrates that his identity still remains…within the memories of those still living. Gifford has stayed, he’s stayed with the people he affected in his life. And I think that’s a touching message, despite the gruesome ending of the story.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Poe Show. You can follow this horror podcast on Instagram and Threads @thepoeshowpodcast and on TikTok @thepoeshow, to support the show and get sneak peeks at new episodes. That’s all for now, but I’ll talk to you again on the next episode of The Poe Show.