The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow

by Mark Latham

  Irving, naturally, asked who was controlling the huntsman – was it some mortal, as had been the case in Sleepy Hollow? The Grimms looked at each other, and Jacob answered “No. While the head remains lost, only the devil can control the Horseman.”

  Thus, that night, the three young men set about digging up the remains of the man who had become Hans Jagendteufel. They were quick and discreet about their work, for desecrating holy ground in such a way was a serious crime, and they would doubtless have been accused of bodysnatching if caught. However, the three conspirators believed that the Grey Huntsman had been unable to find his head due to its being buried in consecrated ground, which headless revenants are unable to cross.

  Before long, the body was exhumed. Sure enough, the neck of the skeleton was snapped – probably from a noose rather than in any attempt at decapitation. Irving argued that this would not be sufficient to transform the man into a revenant, but the Grimms countered, saying that the folklore was clear – it was the deeds of the man in life that created a headless horseman, not decapitation. After all, had not the Hessian been a monster long before he had lost his head? Satisfied, Irving helped the Brothers Grimm remove the skull and rebury the body before the first strains of dawn’s light streamed over the village.

  They stayed two more nights in Königsbrück, taking them up to May 31 – Walpurgisnacht. A few of the locals made great bonfires, and children ran about the streets after dark much as they did in New York upon the night of Halloween, but for the three hunters this was no time for games. Taking up weapons and supplies, and carefully packing the skull, they set off into the forest, on the precarious trail to the clearing known as Lost Waters. The hike took hours, and was arduous indeed in the dark. However, they reached the clearing by midnight as planned, and split up so that they each might cover a different quadrant of the area. According to local legend, the Grey Horseman passed through this way, crossing the ford on his way to claim the soul of a murderer, and so here the three scholars waited for their moment.

  Sure enough, not long after midnight, a strange sense of dread pervaded the little clearing. Mist rose from the ground and the temperature fell as sharply as if it were the depths of winter. Frost formed on the coarse undergrowth, and the sound of a hunting horn blasted from somewhere deep in the forest. Irving kept his eyes upon the clearing, trying hard not to succumb to his nerves, and, as expected, soon was heard the sound of hoof beats, drawing ever closer.

  The Grey Huntsman plunged from the dark shadow of the forest, drawing to a halt, his pale horse stamping angrily upon the frost-hardened ground. The headless rider wore a long grey coat of noble styling, and had a horn slung across his back. By the huntsman’s side was a long saber, for which his hand now reached as though the revenant sensed the ambush.

  At a barked signal from Johan, the three ghost hunters emerged from their hiding place. Johan held aloft the skull, and recited words from an Enochian ritual. Wilhelm advanced upon the huntsman, pitchfork in hand in case of attack, while Washington busied himself with bible and holy water, consecrating the ground so that the revenant might be laid to rest at last. At this, the huntsman put up a determined fight. The horse charged at Johan, striking him with its hooves and causing him to drop the skull. To their dismay and surprise, the horse then stamped upon the skull, crushing it to powder – something was terribly wrong.

  Before Johan could be injured, Wilhelm leapt forward, stabbing the huntsman through the side with the pitchfork, and dragging him from the horse. Quick as a flash, the huntsman fought to his feet, sword in hand, and made to strike Wilhelm’s head from his body. But Irving acted just as quickly. In a trice, he rushed at the huntsman and, using his gold watch-chain that he had worn as surety against the Dullahan, looped it around the huntsman’s sword-arm at the wrist, and pulled. The gold cut through the revenant’s wrist like a cheese-wire, and the twitching hand fell at once to the ground, sword and all. At this, the huntsman flailed backwards and knocked Irving to the ground, before mounting his horse once more with incredible agility. He took up his hunting horn with his good hand, and blared upon it three times, causing fire to blaze from its end, before the huntsman, horse and all, vanished – turned to nought but mist on the night air. The three hunters were shaken but unharmed. They found the huntsman’s sword lying in the grass, ice-cold to the touch. Of the revenant’s hand, there was no sign.

  Irving and the Grimms returned to Königsbrück to consult the rest of their books. They knew that they had made a fatal error – the body that they had thought belonged to the huntsman was not the right one, and thus the head had not been what the huntsman sought. As long as it remained lost, the Grey Huntsman would ride again. The possibility that someone might already possess the head, and be controlling the revenant, was too terrible to think about. On this occasion, at least, the Brothers Grimm had to accept defeat – although they kept the sword, which they felt might yet have secrets to give up.

  A week later, Irving bade farewell to the Brothers Grimm, and set off for Paris, and thence back to Birmingham. He had been inducted into an elite group of folklorists, who knew of the hidden threats behind the veil of normality, and tried in subtle ways to teach everyday folk about them. Irving knew that he had to make his tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, famous – he was now part of a tradition stretching back over a hundred years, and his story would serve to warn others of the dangers present in the dark places in the world.

  Chapter 4 – To the Ends of the Earth

  After The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was published to great acclaim, and Irving had returned at last to America to present his findings to the New York Lycean, he was given sufficient resources to continue his research into headless revenants. He remained in close contact with the Brothers Grimm, exchanging letters and theories for many years, and together they uncovered evidence suggesting that this strange form of decapitated entity had been found the world over, in myriad forms throughout history, from ancient Rome to present-day Brazil. What interested Irving the most was the idea that he could find the source of the haunting – the legend that would provide the origin of the revenants, and perhaps give a clue as to how to dispatch them for good. This was easier said than done, however, as Irving found many legends of distinctive prominence that were all likely contenders.

  Irving found that the Far East was particularly rife with ghost stories and superstition, of a kind often unfathomable to westerners. However, the headless revenants had made their presence known there too. In a battered and roughly translated copy of the Chinese Shan-hai Ching, for example, Irving found a lengthy discussion of a deity named Xing Tian. Originally written around the fourth century, the myth recalls a much earlier time, during which the giant Xing Tian conducted a battle against “the Supreme Divinity” (which Irving supposed was the Chinese interpretation of his own Christian God). In the battle, Xing Tian was beheaded and his head was buried within Changyang Mountain, but this did not stop him. Xing Tian rose again, this time sprouting eyes in place of his nipples and a mouth in place of a navel. He carried a sharp axe in one hand and a shield in the other, and continued the fight for all eternity, while searching for his missing head.

  Xing Tian, a ferocious headless giant from China, has eyes in the place of nipples and a mouth instead of a navel.

  Although the strange transformation of Xing Tian’s body was new to Irving, the account was ancient, and the scholar wondered if perhaps this was the first instance of a headless revenant in the world. Could it really have been inadvertently created by God? And if so, could there be parallels with the Biblical tale of the Fall of Lucifer? Irving shuddered at this, for his research was leading him to wonder if he truly had battled the devil that fateful night in Sleepy Hollow.

  Stranger still but no less disturbing, Irving discovered, were the Nukekubi of Japan, also called “The Prowling Heads.” By day, a Nukekubi is largely indistinguishable from an ordinary person, save for several lines of small wrinkles at the bottom of its neck, almost imp
ossible for the untrained eye to recognize. At night, however, its head detaches from the neck and flies away, preying on mortal flesh. Once it has found its victim, the head emits a paralyzing scream before closing for the kill. Often the Nukekubi have no idea what they are; they might only recall dreams in which they fly around rooms or hear frightened screams. To vanquish a Nukekubi, its idle body must be hunted at night and destroyed, thereby also killing the head. This is one of the more horrific headless revenant legends, for the Nukekubi appear to be alive, and largely innocent – their curse cannot be broken except by their own death. Whatever these creatures were, Irving decided, they were not what he sought – they had little in common with the horsemen he had encountered.

  By day, the Nukekubi look like normal people, but by night the heads detach, screaming through the night until they find human prey to attack.

  Another supposed “living” headless creature was detailed by the ancient Greek philosopher Pliny, and then documented centuries later. These were the Blemmyae – supposedly an African tribe, with no heads, but with faces on their chests. They were also veritable giants, standing “eight feet tall and eight feet wide,” meaning that their characteristics had much in common with Xing Tian, who was written about only 200 years later. Sketches of the Blemmyae, amongst other creatures, accompanied copies of a 14th-century manuscript entitled The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. These records, written first-hand by an English knight, first circulated in 1356, and in them Mandeville claims to have met the Blemmyae, writing:

  There are many different kinds of people in these idles. In one, there is a race of great stature, like giants, foul and horrible to look at; they have one eye only, in the middle of their foreheads. They eat raw flesh and raw fish. In another part, there are ugly folk without heads, who have eyes in each shoulder; their mouths are round, like a horseshoe, in the middle of their chest. In yet another part there are headless men whose eyes and mouths are on their backs.

  This third race recorded by Mandeville was also mentioned by Pliny. The veracity of the claims was in much doubt, of course, and even in the 19th century Irving could find no verification. But he had to wonder if Mandeville had really seen those headless giants, and if so, into what circle of hell he had strayed while on his long voyage.

  Returning again to a possible divine origin for these headless monsters, Irving stumbled across a reference to a headless deity in the Hindu religion of India. After much research, he pieced together several translations of sacred texts that made mention of the Hindu goddess Chinnamasta, or “She Whose Head is Severed.” She is depicted carrying her own severed head on a platter, its mouth open as it swallows the blood which sprays from the stump of her neck. Her devotees are usually nearby, also catching the goddess’s blood in their mouths. The legend goes that Chinnamasta decapitated herself so that she could feed her hungry servants with her own blood. She stands upon a couple in coitus, demonstrating that sex, life, and death are inextricably linked.

  Chinnamasta does not have many worshipers due to her intense nature, though the faithful maintain that shocking imagery is the best way to break through mental barriers to the truth.

  Again, Irving tried to make some correlation between this tale and the others – was this divine blood responsible for the spread of headless revenants since ancient times, like some infectious disease? The vampiric nature of the Japanese Prowling Heads might suggest a link – but how could this information help him in his ongoing investigation? Irving researched Hindu ritual and symbols thoroughly as he strove to make his esoteric defenses against the predations of headless spirits as ironclad as possible. He might not understand the root of the mystery, he decided, but he could be prepared for any eventuality.

  It was some relief when his studies returned to the history of the Americas, even if the subject of those studies was of the disturbing kind. Irving received a note from a novitiate within the Lycean who had traveled to South America to investigate reports of Catholic miracles in a small church in Brazil. While there, the student had heard a strange tale of a headless spirit, which he thought would interest Irving. He had dutifully conducted interviews and gathered what evidence he could from the simple people of the local parish. They called this entity the Mula Sem Cabeça, or “headless mule”: a monstrous mule with a hellish flame where its head should be. Its horseshoes were made of silver and made a terrifying sound as it galloped. Even though it had no head, the mule could be heard neighing from a great distance away, and sometimes these sounds transformed into human-like screams and wails.

  The God-fearing villagers swore to the Lycean novitiate that the mules were created when a woman had a romantic relationship with a priest – she was transformed due to her sinful seduction of a man of the cloth. However, other parishioners believed that sex before marriage, sacrilege, or even infanticide could also lead to a woman being cursed to become the mule. Digging deep into the church records, the student found an older version of the tale, written by a monk in the late 17th century. In this version of events, the headless mule was a noblewoman who often visited the local cemetery in the middle of the night. One night, her husband followed her and was horrified to discover his wife feasting upon a corpse. As the villagers learned of the woman’s dark secret and rounded on her, she was cursed, transforming into a monster and galloping into the woods, never to return.

  It was said that the Mula Sem Cabeça would appear if someone ran in front of a cross at midnight. Anything that crossed the path of the monster – man or beast – was trampled and killed, or maimed by having its eyes sucked out by magical means. The only way to hide from the mule was to throw oneself face down on the ground, hiding nails, teeth, and anything that might gleam in the dark.

  The Mula sem Cabeça of Brazil is a ghostly, black mule with silver horseshoes. It has a bridle attached to thin air where its head should be, and breathes fire from its neck!

  The story amused Irving, and with no solid evidence he could not be sure if there was any truth to it. But he felt most uncomfortable at the similarities between tales of the Mula Sem Cabeça and other headless revenants from isolated legends around the world – the headless horse (or mule, in this case), the God-given curse, the hellfire … Irving crossed himself against the evil spirits that he felt compelled to study.

  American Gothic

  With no clear candidate for the origins of the headless revenants, Irving instead set out to combat the entities on a case-by-case basis, using the knowledge he had gathered over the preceding years. It was in his homeland that he encountered some of the more persistent spirits, for North America had long been a homeland of far-flung immigrants, all bringing with them diverse beliefs and religious practices. Irving set out to learn as much as he could about America’s own headless spirits.

  In his later years, Irving recorded some 15 headless ghosts in the New York area alone, three of them akin to the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. In North Carolina, Irving went in search of Blackbeard’s ghost, reputedly to be found in Teach’s Hole, Ocracoke Island. It was there that Blackbeard – the pirate Edward Teach – made his famous last stand against the Royal Navy. Such was Blackbeard’s notoriety that the naval commander, Lieutenant Maynard, ordered Teach’s head struck off to ensure that he was dead. As the body hit the water, the head supposedly cried: “Come on Edward,” and the headless body swam three times around the ship before sinking to the bottom.

  From that day to this, Blackbeard’s ghost has haunted Teach’s Hole, forever searching for his missing head. Sometimes, the headless ghost floats on the surface of the water, or swims around Teach’s Hole, glowing under the water. Sometimes, people see a strange light coming from the shore, which locals dub “Teach’s light.”

  The pirate Edward Teach, more famously called Blackbeard, still searches for his missing head around Teach’s Hole in North Carolina.

  When he had visited Paris, France, Irving had found more civilized tales of headless spirits – those of Marie Antoinette and K
ing Louis XVI foremost amongst them. These had appeared to be little more than regular ghosts – restless spirits of those who had died before their time, with no real power over the living other than occasionally to manifest, heads tucked under their arms. The guillotine had claimed many heads in France at the end of the previous century, and so it was to be expected that ghosts would walk the sites of their execution or interment still. However, Irving was surprised to find a ghostly tale of the guillotine in his own land, presenting him with one of the more intriguing American ghost stories.

  A device of grim execution, the guillotine is responsible for many headless ghosts – from the nobles of revolutionary France to the sinister slave-spirits of Wytheville, Virginia.

  In 1850, aged 67, Irving visited Wytheville, Virginia, where the owner of a manor house reported being haunted by a plethora of headless ghosts, who were making his life a misery. Irving discovered that the manor stood on the site of an old cabin built by a man called Joseph Baker. Mr Baker had supposedly promised two of his slaves their freedom upon his death, but the two slaves decided to hurry this along and not only murdered their owner, but added him to a corn mash they were making. When news of the crime got out, the two slaves were captured and killed on the property.