The Case File
What happens to Ichabod Crane at the end of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? This is an ending explained, so it spoils everything. I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number forty-one, and the last section carefully. I will tell you what the text says, what it only hints, and what I think. My opinion is clearly marked.
The Night
First, the last scene, quickly. Ichabod leaves the Van Tassel party at midnight, downhearted, after a private talk with Katrina that the narrator says he did not hear. On the road he meets a huge rider on a black horse. A rider with no head. The head sits on the saddle in front of him.
Ichabod races for the church bridge, because the stories say the rider vanishes there. He crosses it. He looks back. The rider rises in his stirrups and throws his head. It hits Ichabod’s skull with a crash, and he tumbles into the dust. The horse, the rider, and the head pass by like a whirlwind.
That is the last time anyone in the story sees him. Everything after is evidence.
The Evidence
Here is what the text lays out, in order.
Exhibit one. The next morning, Ichabod’s borrowed horse, Gunpowder, is found at Hans Van Ripper’s gate, eating grass, with no saddle and the bridle under his feet.
Exhibit two. On the road they find the saddle, trampled in the dirt, and deep hoofprints at furious speed, all the way to the bridge.
Exhibit three. By the brook, in the deep black water, they find his hat. Right beside it lies a shattered pumpkin.
Exhibit four. They search the brook, and they do not find a body. His belongings are two and a half shirts, a rusty razor, a dog-eared psalm book, and a broken pitch pipe. His quarter’s pay, received a day or two before, should have been in his pocket.
So the text gives you a hat, a pumpkin, and no body.
Suspect One, the Ghost
The first verdict comes from the churchyard crowd. The next Sunday, the gossips gather at the bridge and think over the stories of Brouwer and of Brom Bones. They compare them to this case, and they decide that the Galloping Hessian carried Ichabod off.
Nobody pushes back. The text says that since he was a bachelor and owed no one money, nobody troubled his head any more about him. The school moves. Another teacher takes his place.
And the old country wives, whom the narrator calls the best judges of these matters, hold to this day that Ichabod was spirited away. The bridge grows more feared. The road is even moved. The old schoolhouse is said to be haunted, and a ploughboy sometimes fancies he hears a psalm tune out in the Hollow.
That is the supernatural ending. It is the one the valley chooses.
Suspect Two, Brom Bones
The second suspect is Brom Bones. Look at what the text sets up for him.
He hated Ichabod. He pulled pranks on him. He knew the Horseman’s legend, because he had told his own story of racing him at the bridge. He rides a horse called Daredevil that nobody else can manage. And right after Ichabod disappears, he marries Katrina.
And then there is the laugh. The text says Brom looks exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod is told, and always bursts into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin. Some people suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.
The text never says Brom was the rider. It never says there was a costume, or a mask. But the hint is strong, and in my view a pumpkin is a prankster’s tool, not a ghost’s.
Suspect Three, Ichabod Himself
The third answer is the strangest, because it is in the text too, and it says Ichabod lived.
Years later, an old farmer visiting New York comes back with news. Ichabod Crane is alive. He left the valley, partly out of fear of the goblin and of Van Ripper, and partly from embarrassment at being turned down by the heiress. He moved far away. He taught school and studied law. He was admitted to the bar, became a politician, wrote for newspapers, and finally became a justice of the Ten Pound Court.
Notice the source. The narrator says this account of the ghostly adventure came from that same farmer. So the person who tells us Ichabod is alive is the same person the narrator uses for the whole story.
I should add, the text doesn’t name a source for the ghost version or for the Brom version. It only says what the village believed, and what some suspected.
What the Text Won’t Say
So who is right? The story does not pick. It gives you a village ghost story, a prank, and a happy second career, and then it moves on.
There is a final clue in the postscript. The narrator describes the storyteller who told the whole tale at a city corporation meeting. A stern listener asks what the moral is. The storyteller answers with a joke: a man who races goblin troopers is likely to have rough riding, and a schoolmaster refused by a Dutch heiress is on the road to high office in the state. Pressed on the story’s wilder points, he says he doesn’t believe one half of it himself.
That line is the ending. Irving does not leave a puzzle with one right answer. He ends on a wink.
My Reading
Here is my opinion, and it is a draft. The text gives Brom a motive, the means, a pumpkin, and a laugh. And it gives Ichabod a very ordinary reason to leave: he lost the girl, lost the farm he was counting on, and was mortified. Put together, I think the rider was Brom, and Ichabod, terrified and humiliated, simply ran, and found a better life elsewhere.
But the story lets you pick the ghost, and I think that is on purpose. Ichabod spends the whole tale feeding on spooky stories. The valley does the same. In a place that runs on ghost stories, the ghost explanation wins by default.
Which do you pick: the Hessian, Brom, or a lawyer in New York? Tell me in the comments, and subscribe for more endings.
