The Striding Place

photo of The Strid at Bolton from the bank (Wikipedia)

The Striding Place is an 1896 horror short story by Gertrude Atherton. You can read it online here. It begins,

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 new-minded debutante 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.

You can listen to it here:

This story takes place in August. The Bolton Strid is an actual place, described by Atlas Obscura as "a deadly waterway that has dragged down everyone who ever set foot in it". Ranker has an article that reports twelve disasters there and describes it this way:

A small portion of the River Wharfe in North England is a beautiful stretch of river that’s looks straight out of a fairytale. While one might expect to find a unicorn drinking from its water, or a lone knight on an epic quest to save a fair maiden, what they will most likely find instead is their own demise, as the small and twisting portion known as Bolton Strid is an infamous natural trap that has lured many in to its seemingly calm waters, only to claim their lives