Author: Washington Irving / Year: 1783-1859 / Genre: Halloween The story opens with a note that the tale was found written among the papers of a deceased man named Diedrich Knickerbocker. The transcript tells the story of a young man named Ichabod Crane, who was the schoolteacher in a place called Sleepy Hollow thirty years earlier, around the year 1790. Sleepy Hollow is part of the larger farming community of Tarry Town. It is one of the oldest Dutch settlements in New York and is situated along the picturesque banks of the Hudson River. Residents are fond of repeating stories of supernatural sightings and unusual occurrences experienced in Sleepy Hollow, and the area is considered both enchantingly peaceful and terrifyingly haunted. The most frightening of these is the tale of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, who is believed to be the ghost of a Hessian soldier decapitated by a cannon ball during the American Revolution. The Headless Horseman is reported to ride swiftly through Sleepy Hollow at night as if reenacting the battle that took his head, before returning at daybreak to the churchyard where he is buried.
