Well, Halloween is coming round again so I thought it timely to write about a compilation of creepy tales that I have recently finished reading by the 19th century American short-story writer Washington Irving (1783–1859). If you are unfamiliar with the author, you may be more familiar with the titles of two of his more famous stories: Rip Van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820). He was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and he was admired by the likes of Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley and Walter Scott.
Irving had more strings to his bow than just short story writing: he was a diplomat, serving as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s, and a historian, responsible for several histories of 15th-century Spain. This no doubt explains why several of Irving’s stories are set in and around Granada and involve ghostly encounters in places like the Alhambra Palace with long-gone Moors from before the Reconquista. Many other stories, on the other hand, are set deep inside another area close to Irving’s heart, rural New York State including the Catskill Mountains (where Rip Van Winkle is set) and the bucolic environs of modern-day Tarrytown on the Hudson river (where The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is set and where, in fact, Irving would end his days).
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow story revolves around local schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and his competition with town alpha-male “Brom Bones” for the hand of beautiful heiress Katrina van Tassel. The supernatural element to the story, however, is provided by local legend which has it that a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball in battle still roams the area as a Headless Horseman. Irving was by no means the first to invoke the motif of the headless horseman – they have appeared in numerous stories from Gaelic, Scandinavian and German folklore, for example – but Irving’s is the one that has resonated down the ages, right down to Tim Burton’s (somewhat liberty-taking) movie of 1999, Sleepy Hollow.
Ichabod’s encounter with the headless horseman happens after his rejection by Katrina at the van Tassel household and he is returning home, crestfallen, on a borrowed horse, Gunpowder. Passing though a menacing swamp, he sees a cloaked rider and is horrified to see that the rider’s head was not on his shoulders but in his saddle. A frenzied race ensues as Ichabod rides for his life, desperately goading Gunpowder down the Hollow; as they cross a bridge, Ichabod turns back in terror to see the headless rider rear his horse and hurl his severed head directly at him: the missile strikes Ichabod and sends him tumbling headlong into the dust. The following morning, Gunpowder is found chomping at the grass, with the only sign of Ichabod, who is never seen again, being his discarded hat alongside a mysterious shattered pumpkin…
