When Washington Irving wrote the classic horror short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820, he drew upon a lot of things he knew. Sleepy Hollow is real town, although it was called North Tarrytown at the time. The Van Tassel family lived there. Ichabod Crane was based on two real people; Irving took his appearance from one guy he knew and his name from another. There was a headless Hessian soldier found nearby during the Revolutionary War, which Elizabeth Van Tassel arranged a burial for. Irving maintained that the legend of the Hessian having his head blown off by a cannonball was known when he was a child.
But what brought all these elements together to establish an American horror story is the myth of the dullahan. The dullahan is a very old Irish mythological character. While the dullahan has several forms, he is most often portrayed as one who lost his head, but still roams the earth, bringing either a portent of death or a warning of it. Read how the dullahan went from Irish folklore to Sleepy Hollow and established itself as a horror trope in our pop culture at Tedium. -via Digg
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