The Headless Horseman; wood engraving by Barry Moser
It has dawned on me, a bit late, that we have a wealth of creepy images in the archives that might be nice lead-ins to that glorious hootenanny called Halloween. Over the next two weeks, we will try to post as many of these as we can in addition to our regular posts.
Creature Feature No. 1 is The Headless Horseman from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. An eerie excerpt from the book describes the Horseman:
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war, and who is ever and anon seen by various of the country people, hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind…and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.