What happened
In 1820 Washington Irving published “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” set in a Dutch settlement on the Hudson around 1790. According to the local tales Irving wove into the plot, the area is haunted by the ghost of a Hessian trooper – a mercenary who fought for the British in the War of Independence – whose head was carried away by a cannonball. Buried in the churchyard, he rides out every night in search of his head and gallops back to make it before dawn. The victim of the phantom, or perhaps only of a rival's prank, is the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, who vanishes without a trace after a night chase ending at the bridge by the church. The burying ground of the late-17th-century Old Dutch Church still exists, and in 1996 the village of North Tarrytown renamed itself Sleepy Hollow.
Witnesses
A literary figure; Irving presented it as a local tale of the Dutch settlers. No specific witnesses.
Explanations and hypotheses
The Headless Horseman is above all literary fiction, though Irving knew the area and drew on European (German and Irish) tales of headless riders as well as local tradition. Researchers have looked for a model in a Hessian soldier killed nearby during the War of Independence, but there is no evidence of a specific person. The story's success brought the legend “to life” – Sleepy Hollow now thrives on Halloween tourism, and the churchyard and rebuilt bridge are the goal of night tours.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, 1820; Project Gutenberg)
- ABC7 New York – Inside Sleepy Hollow's 300-year-old Old Dutch Church
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