Headless Hessian Horseman
German soldiers were hired by the British to fight in the American revolutionary war. Here's a snippet of a story about an undead one.
From ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ by Washington Irving
The story so far:
In a remote valley, the residents of the community of aptly-named Sleepy Hollow tell each other ghost stories at an autumnal gathering. None is so popular as the story of the grisly ghost of a soldier decapitated by a cannonball.
Now read on:
The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard.
The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favorite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the Horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when the Horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder.
This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire.
What we love about this…
We love how vivid and shiver-inducing this scene is, the men taking it in turns to tell their tales, each one more fantastical than the rest, and with jaw-dropping details: in one story the horseman ‘suddenly turned into a skeleton,’ in another he raced ‘for a bowl of punch.’ The scene gallops along through a series of dramatic cliches— ‘flash of fire,’ ‘clap of thunder’—that capture the spirit of adventure and bravado of these narratives nested inside Irving’s story.
About the author
Washington Irving (1783-1859) was the first American writer to achieve international acclaim. He had a long and varied career, which included founding a short-lived satirical newspaper, acting as an attaché for the US Embassy in Spain, and writing the biography of George Washington. He is best known for his fictional stories featuring early Dutch settlers in the American Northeast, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” They were published as part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1819-20). His works and imagination have left an indelible mark on American culture, including the word “Knickerbocker” to describe a New Yorker, which was taken from the name of his fictional alter ego, Diedrich Knickerbocker.
To read alongside…
You might enjoy shivering along to Robert Burns’s ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, a gripping narrative poem that likewise begins with a scene in a pub where the locals gather to tell tales. One of these is about drunken Tam who, the story goes, heading home late one night on his trusty mare Meg after some hearty carousing (and with his wife at home ‘nursing her wrath’ as she angrily waits for him), finds himself in the midst of a terrible storm. Suddenly he sees a ghastly sight:
Warlocks and witches in a dance; […] Coffins stood round like open presses, That shaw’d the dead in their dresses
One of the undead dancers pursues Tam and Meg in a spine-chilling scene that culminates in poor Meg losing her tail as the witch catches hold of it and yanks it off (luckily, the horse escapes). You can read the whole thrilling poem here.
You also might also enjoy work by Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose gothic leanings were partially inspired by Irving. See our past newsletter featuring a creepy scene from one of his novels:
Falling under the spell of a supposed evil-doer
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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