Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some
witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people,
causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of
marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see
strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood
abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars
shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of
the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, seems to make it
the favorite scene of her gambols.    4
        The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and
seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the
apparition of a figure on horseback without a head.



      Washington Irving (1783-1859).  Rip Van Winkle & The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow.
      The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction.  1917.



This plce just recently became "Sleepy Hollow, NY" a real place on a map,
near Irvings place. It is said that it's main character, Ichabod Crane was
based on a schoolteacher acquaintence of Washington Irving's who is buried
on Staten Island. A terrible tragedy occured on Staten Island yesterday in a
trench for services into new construction (filled marshes everywhere going
up on pilings and rip/rap) when a gentleman's would be rescuer decapitated
the workman with the backhoe excavator being used to dig the trench and was
used to attempt the rescues of those in the collapsed 15 foot trench it was
reported.

George Myers