“On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck, on perceiving that he was headless! . . . They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow, . . . crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.’’ “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’’
Washington Irving
SLEEPY HOLLOW, N.Y. - The Old Dutch Church remains, perched upon the same green knoll where Ichabod Crane, a timid schoolmaster, was galloping to sanctuary with the Headless Horseman hot behind him. Crane, alas, never made it to the church. But since the story of his hellish adventure appeared in print in 1820, enthralled readers have made it the object of a literary pilgrimage.
Despite gas stations, traffic, and other reminders of modernity in this Hudson Valley village-turned-suburb, enough other landmarks in the tale have survived to allow those under its spell to retrace the short chase, less than a mile from its startled start to its abrupt ending.
In his day, Washington Irving, who lived from 1783 to 1859, was immensely popular. He was one of the first American writers to claim an international readership and to make a living by the pen alone. Like Charles Dickens, who once dined at Irving’s nearby home, Irving achieved a celebrity that today’s best-selling authors would envy. So this village (population 10,200), about 30 miles north of New York City, is no stranger to ghoul-seeking tourists. It even changed its name from North Tarrytown to Sleepy Hollow in 1996, and its official website bills the village as “Halloween Central.’’ A cavalcade of events, from the Great Jack-o-Lantern Blaze to readings of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’’ unfolds over the weekends leading up to the holiday.
With or without the amped-up spookiness, an autumn ramble along Crane’s route makes for an easy walk of just under a mile on North Broadway (Route 9). But, as Irving cautioned in beginning his tale, beware: “However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, [visitors] are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.’’
