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SLEEPY
HOLLOW’S HEADLESS HORSEMAN
By Sam Baltrusis
For more than two centuries after
Washington Irving unleashed “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the Headless
Horseman is still very much alive in pop culture.
Elizabeth Bradley, a historian and author of Knickerbocker: The Myth Behind New York, rattled off a few of the
various adaptations of the great American ghost story on the October 26, 2022
edition of WNYC News.
“It has such legs and you can see that in all of the different
interpretations,“ Bradley said during the radio interview. “There truly is a
version of ‘Sleepy Hollow’ for every generation.” It’s an impressive list that
includes Disney’s animated classic from 1949 and Tim Burton’s supernatural
horror flick starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci.
Of course, no one can eclipse the original which was initially published
with a collection of essays and stories for The
Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent in 1820.
“Irving's version of the Headless Horseman is set in the Hudson Valley
region, and it pits an outsider, a Yankee, named Ichabod Crane against a very
insular Dutch community,” Bradley said. “Throughout the course of the story,
Ichabod pursues a local Dutch heiress in an effort to integrate himself into
this community and is ultimately run out of town by the apparition of the
Headless Horseman.”
Bradley told WNYC that she believes the famed short-story writer created
the headless Hessian in an attempt to populate a young nation with its own
ghosts and mythologies. “You have to remember that Irving was born the year
after the American Revolution ended,” she said. “The war was in the rear-view
mirror of the people of Sleepy Hollow and a very new United States. It was an
opportunity to create a whole regional culture. He really seized the moment and
had a lot of fun with it."
How did “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” become associated with All
Hallows’ Eve? Bradley explained that the holiday wasn’t even on Irving’s radar
when he fleshed out America’s first monster. “He doesn't mention Halloween once
in the story,” she said. “[The Headless Horseman] is often associated with
having a pumpkin for a head,” she said, adding that the character’s
jack-o’-lantern prop was added in Disney’s The
Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and, over the years, the haunting
imagery then seared itself into pop culture. “Most people only knew the Disney
version and that’s where the Halloween association really started to come into
play,” Bradley added.
J.W. Ocker, author of The New York
Grimpendium and creator of the OTIS:
Odd Things I’ve Seen blog, is on board with the idea that the Headless
Horseman has somehow become the unofficial ambassador of spooky season. “The
Headless Horseman is the spirit of fall,” Ocker told me during a sit-down
interview at the Sleepy Hollow Hotel. “Every monster wants to be associated
with autumn, but there’s something about him running through a forest with the
leaves changing colors that makes him the patron monster of Halloween. The
bigger Halloween gets, the bigger he gets. Everytime you feed Halloween, you
feed him.”
Ocker agreed with Bradley that the animated version from the Disney
movie has ingrained itself into the American psyche. “Our generation grew up
with the Disney cartoon,” he said. “You can’t think of the Headless Horseman
without thinking of the purple-cloaked, cackling creature from the animated
version. The imagery has almost become a part of the monster’s brand.”
The United States of Cryptids
author said he always thought the Headless Horseman had a jack-o’-lantern in
one hand and a battle sword in another, but was shocked to learn that Irving
didn’t include the macabre accessories in the short story. He was also
convinced that the Headless Horseman eventually caught up with Ichabod Crane on
a covered bridge. Not true.
“People who visit Sleepy Hollow always want to see the covered bridge,
but it doesn’t exist,” Ocker said. “If I could change one thing to the original
story, I would make it a covered bridge. It just seems fitting.”
Despite being tweaked a bit in the modern adaptations of Irving’s story,
Ocker said the Headless Horseman is still his all-time favorite galloping
ghoul. “Irving gave us the first real American monster,” he told me. “I’m not a
very patriotic guy, but as an American there’s something that speaks to me
about the horseman. It’s our monster. Frankenstein is from Germany and Dracula
is from Transylvania. Thanks to Irving, we have our own.”.
The secret to the short story’s success? Ocker believes the ambiguity of
Irving’s fearless phantom somehow amplifies its mystique. “All we know is he
was a Hessian soldier who lost his head during the American Revolution,” he
told me. “There’s not much of a backstory to him. He’s this vague creature that
pops up in the graveyard and runs around on his horse. He’s not jumping out of
your closet. He has no face, He’s in essence an invisible man and there’s
something unnerving about him as a monster.”
In Brian Haughton’s Lore of the
Ghost, he mentioned that Irving was living in Birmingham, England when he
wrote “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and surmised that the celebrated American
author “probably picked up on some of the elements he used in the story”
overseas. “The headless ghost motif was known in German folklore at least as
early as 1505 when it was recorded in a sermon written by Geiler von
Kaysersberg, who mentions headless spirits being part of the Wild Hunt,” he
noted.
While Haughton wrote that Irving was strongly influenced by the stories
told by Dutch immigrants during his childhood in New York, he suggested that
it’s also likely that the writer was inspired by the recurring headless ghost
motifs from northern European folklore. “The tradition of the headless ghost is
found worldwide in many diverse cultures, and exhibits broadly the same
characteristics connected with death and death warnings,” Haughton reported.
“Popular tradition attributes such hauntings to the wandering spirits of those
who died by beheading, either by execution or accident.”
Haughton is in agreement that Irving’s story continues to leave a
profound mark on popular culture. “Irving’s dark story of the headless Hessian
soldier who rides forth every night through the dark lanes of Sleepy Hollow,
and the dénouement of the tale involving a supernatural wild chase through the
woods, has had a significant effect on the nature of American hauntings,”
Haughton wrote in Lore of the Ghost. “The
influence of Irving’s tale on popular culture is evident.”
Alex
Matsuo, author of Women of the Paranormal,
told me that there may be an underlying reason why “The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow” continues to strike a chord with American readers. “We don't think
about it often, but there are countless legends that were created to dehumanize
a group,” Matsuo explained. “Instead of perceiving the Hessian as a real
person, granted a terrifying figure during the time of the Revolutionary War,
he turned it into this story that is meant to remind people that the Hessians
were not meant to be trusted, even after the war was over.”
Even though Matsuo sees a deeper meaning to what could be viewed as a cautionary tale, she said the Headless Horseman keeps luring her back to the Hudson Valley area, “Between the story of the Hessian soldier who lost his head around Halloween in 1776, and Ichabod Crane encountering him while trying to avoid him at all cost, there is a lesson to be learned there,” Matsuo said. “But I think the way that Disney commercialized ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’ plus the Tim Burton film, there is a romanticization of the spell-bound region that has cemented it into Halloween traditions.
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