The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

A short, funny ghost story told by a narrator who admits he doesn't believe half of it. The first half is slow description, but the party and the midnight ride are great. About twelve thousand words, under an hour. Four out of five (draft). Read it if: you want a classic you can finish in one sitting; you like ghost stories with a sense of humor; you want to know the story behind the headless horseman. Skip it if: you want a scary horror story: it is mostly comic; long old-fashioned descriptions of food and farms bore you; you expect the movie or tv versions: this is a short, quiet story.

Our ending explained covers the final chapters in full, with spoilers. What happens to Ichabod Crane at the end of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? The hat, the pumpkin and three answers. Full spoilers. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Ending: What Happens to Ichabod →

Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, scene by scene: Ichabod Crane, Katrina, Brom Bones and the Headless Horseman. Full spoilers. Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow →

It is a short story by Washington Irving about Ichabod Crane, a nervous schoolmaster in a Dutch valley on the Hudson River, who courts a rich farmer's daughter, Katrina Van Tassel, while her rival Brom Bones plays pranks on him. The valley is said to be haunted by a headless horseman.

It is a short story, not a novel. The Project Gutenberg text (ebook number 41) runs about 12,000 words, which is under an hour of reading, and has no chapters. It is also sold in collections and as stand-alone editions.

Washington Irving. The text presents itself as found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, so a made-up narrator passes the tale on, and a postscript has a storyteller admit he doesn't believe half of it.

The valley's legend says he is the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head was carried off by a cannonball in the Revolutionary War, who rides at night looking for it. Whether the rider Ichabod meets is that ghost is something the story leaves open.

The text places it in a small valley about two miles from Tarry Town, on the east shore of the Hudson River, where the river widens into the Tappan Zee.