Not having lived in New England I tend to have a very romanticized idea of it in my head. To me it is a magical land that is always viewed in dreamy sepia tones. It is always fall there and gentlemen still wear top hats. I know it isn’t like that in real life, but I like to pretend. I once spent a wonderful week in Virginia and the thing about the Eastern seaboard is this, the land is drenched in history, you can feel it. You get the same feeling when you travel to places like Rome, Greece or Paris. The very ground you stand upon is saturated with stories and memories of bygone times. If you sit still and listen you can hear it whispering its secrets. I know I felt that in Virginia.
I like the old stories and the idea of people sitting around the fireside telling tales, not necessarily scary. Electricity wasn’t even a glint in Edison, Franklin or Tesla’s eye and people had to rely on the sun and candles to light the way. It made everyone gather in rather than drift apart. You shared news and told stories, which with that entire unknown world out there beyond the trees; of course superstition would play a role. The unexplainable had to have some sort of explanation after all; otherwise life was too weird and disconcerting. Someone disappeared, ghosts did it. Crops failed, someone forgot to throw three seeds over their shoulder and spit. Lame horse, it was probably pixies. There was an order to things that superstition and stories provided. We may laugh at it but we do the same thing.
I love the tale of the headless horseman, I see him as the only sympathetic figure in the whole tale. He was a Hessian trooper in the revolutionary war who had the misfortune to lose his head. Now I don’t know about you, but if I lost my head and was doomed to come back to haunt the town I’m pretty sure my sole pursuit would be to find the silly thing. I love that he carves a pumpkin for a replacement head and I love that a covered bridge is his barrier. It’s like he is picking all my favorite October things.
Speaking of favorite things, I also love the descriptive language that Irving uses in his story. I wish more people wrote like that. “If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.” “A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere.” Now tell me you don’t want to go there.
I like that in the story none of the characters except for the horseman are likeable, or at least that’s how I read it. The only one I feel sorry for is the poor scared horse Ichabod rides. Brom Bones is a stuck up pompous jerk who thinks he is god’s gift to women. Katrina Van Tassel is a shameless flirt who uses the affections of the schoolmaster to make Brom jealous because she wants to play hard to get. Ichabod is a lazy opportunist who only wants to marry Katrina for her money. See what I mean. They all have it coming if you ask me.
At the end of the story you are left to wonder, was it really Brom who chased Ichabod that night or was there really a horseman after all? Did Ichabod really succumb to the horseman, or did he in fact move out of town and settle down somewhere else? Did Katrina and Brom live happily ever after or did Brom end up cheating on her in the end because he got bored with a farmer’s daughter? If Ichabod did survive, did he ever tell the story to others or did he keep it quiet out of shame and embarrassment? There are so many questions left unanswered for such a simple story, which may also be why I like it. The reader gets to fill in the blanks.
The closest we get to scary stories now-a-days are urban legends, but even they aren’t told that much. Perhaps the closest we come are the form letters we get over email and social media. Pass this on to five friends in the next ten minutes and you will get your wildest dream fulfilled. Maybe media is how we experience stories now. Instead of gathering round the fire we all file into the multiplex and have a story told to us. Maybe Star Wars is our shared fireside tale and Marvel superheroes are our version of Greek gods.
Interesting times we live in. If you haven’t already read Mr. Irving’s tale, I encourage you to do so. It is short but beautiful. Listen to it on tape if you really don’t want to read. If you absolutely have to watch the movie instead, make it the Disney version, not Tim Burton. Nothing against Mr. Burton, he is one of my Halloween heroes, but for this tale, Disney runs closer to Washington Irving’s vision. It is a wonderful read on a dark and stormy night. Watch it with the lights off, read it by candlelight and listen closely for the sound of hoof beats on the wind. The headless horseman is coming; he is searching for a head. Maybe, just maybe he might take yours.
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