Legend of Sleepy Hollow

By Jeri Westerson

I can't pass through October without watching Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at least once, their take on Washington Irving's short story. You can't beat Buh-Buh-Bing Crosby's narration and singing in this very much of its time classic from 1949. My favorite song from it is, of course, the story Brom Bones tells at the Van Tassel's harvest party about the Headless Horseman with the tagline, "You can't reason with a headless man." Superb! And then of course the chase to the covered bridge!

I read this story many years ago now. The story was published in 1820, but is set in 1790 when the country was new. Set in the mythical town of Sleepy Hollow near the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, the stage is set for a creepy tale with the town's own legend. The Headless Horseman is supposed to be the ghost of a Hessian soldier who got his head blown off by a cannonball. But is this a real legend or is it trumped up by Brom Bones to scare off his rival the school teacher Ichabod Crane? In any case, Ichabod is trying to propose to Katrina, the only child of

the wealthy farm owner Baltus Van Tassel, but he is scuttled. That night, riding home from the party, Ichabod encounter the Headless Horseman and the next day his horse is discovered wandering and his hat lies next to a shattered pumpkin by the bridge. But Ichabod is nowhere to be found. Did Ichabod have a ghostly encounter with the Horseman and get whisked away as the women of the town think, or was it Brom Bones in disguise harrying the schoolmaster and scaring him out of town...or worse? Katrina ends up marrying Brom Bones who is said "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related". The "Legend", it turns out, is not about the Headless Horseman, but about Ichabod's encounter with him.

Though thought of as a strictly American tale, it has its roots in European tales of the supernatural, of a ghostly chase, and even a headless horseman. German ghost stories seemed fond of featuring headless horsemen of varying kinds, usually a "huntsman" riding about the countryside dispatching those of loose morals. Even J.K. Rowling alludes to this in one of her Harry Potter books when the ghost Nearly Headless Nick bemoans the fact that he cannot join the headless hunt (he's not headless enough). Irving was in Europe at the time he wrote The Sketch Book, a group of short stories in which "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was included.

I know the story and cartoon influenced my childhood and the things I liked to read. It's a very moody piece. It's still influencing me now. In fact, my new urban fantasy series, THE BOOKE OF THE HIDDEN, is based in a small New England town with ghostly things happening. Oh yes. And I set it in the fall.

The Horseman and Sleepy Hollow have even returned in a new television series, "Sleepy Hollow," with an Ichabod Crane awoken after 250 years to try to stop the end times (the Headless Horseman being one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, apparently) with the help of a modern female sheriff. That Ichabod is worth fighting over! (See the picture above)

And then there was the ill-fated movie version with Johnny Depp. The less said about that the better. 

Here is a link to the Disney cartoon with the song "You Can't Reason With A Headless Man" where Brom Bones relates the story of the Headless Horseman.

And here's the end of the chase. Happy Halloween!

Speaking of Halloween

Elizabeth Zelvin

I remember trying to coax my son, who was three at the time, into going trick or treating, an outing we’d planned with a little boy from his playgroup. Rather than going house to house, Manhattan kids ride the elevator and ring doorbells in their apartment buildings.

My son, who was easily scared, was dubious. “It’ll be fun!” I said. “You ring the doorbell and say ‘Trick or treat!’ and they give you candy.” “That’s not it,” the other mom said. Believe it or not, she was a psychiatrist. She put her face down close to my son’s and said, “You scare them with your costume, and that’s why they give you the candy.”

My son immediately started bawling (“Wa-a-ah!”), and that was the end of trick or treating for that year.

I remember going house to house in Queens as a kid. We always went in a group, and it’s possible, though I don’t remember it, that my mother came with me. I wasn’t scared of ghosts or witches, but I was scared of ringing the neighbors’ doorbells.

(Why does everybody who knows me ROFL when I tell them I was shy?) Costumes were homemade: a sheet with eyeholes for a ghost, scarves and bangles and your mother’s skirt and makeup for a pirate queen.

My granddaughters live in an enclave of McMansions where giant pumpkins abound and whole houses may be festooned with cobwebs and hung with skeletons. Their costumes are always store-bought, expensive, and designed to make them beautiful: Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts, the Little Mermaid. No little girl would dream of covering herself up with a sheet or putting a pointed black hat on her head or a wart on her nose. I know they considered a Medusa costume one year. I saw it in the catalog: a gorgeous green ball gown with glittery snakes so stylized that I doubt my granddaughters had the faintest idea what Medusa was actually meant to be.

In a guest blog here a couple of weeks ago, Krista Davis pointed out that Halloween is no longer strictly for kids, since “the bewitching holiday overcomes normally sensible adults, suddenly possessing them to wear costumes to work and to transform the fronts of their homes into graveyards.” That’s particularly true in New York City, where pedestrians start stumbling over gaggles of pint-size fairy princesses and ballerinas a week before the holiday, and their adult counterparts—cats and vampires and over-the-top hookers—for as much as a three- or four-day stretch, depending on when the 31st falls in relation to the weekend. And the Christopher Street parade in Greenwich Village, which the gay community strives to make more outrageous every year, has become a New York institution. According to Wikipedia: “Stretching more than a mile, this cultural event draws two million spectators, fifty thousand costumed participants, dancers, artists and circus performers, dozens of floats bearing live bands and other musical and performing acts, and a world-wide television audience of one hundred million.”

The truth is that Halloween was not intended for kids at all. The playful holiday it’s morphed into was originally the pagan Samhain, then the Christian All Hallow’s Eve, the moment when the veil between the everyday world and the unseen is at its thinnest. (I apologize for being imprecise, but before there was Wikipedia, I got most of my factual information from novels.) Contact between the living and the dead (or the undead, as the case may be) might be terrifying or comforting. Paranormal and horror fiction writers have had a grand time ringing all the changes on this concept. Even though in the 21st century, midnight is not all that late at night and graveyards not that dark (even bedrooms are not that dark nowadays, thanks to all those digital clocks and blinking cable boxes), Halloween is still an occasion, for those who wish to, not only to dress up and eat candy corn and miniature Snickers bars, but to feel pleasantly creepy.

Ghosts, Goblins, and Vampires. Oh my!

by guest blogger Krista Davis

Halloween is in the air. No longer just the domain of children, the bewitching holiday overcomes normally sensible adults, suddenly possessing them to wear costumes to work and to transform the fronts of their homes into graveyards. I confess that I’m partial to wearing cat ears and painting whiskers on my cheeks.

My most recent release, THE DIVA HAUNTS THE HOUSE, has a Halloween theme. As you can imagine, Halloween is the perfect time for a mystery. Candles, costumes, howling winds, and dry leaves rustling along the street make it a natural for spookiness.

Ghosts and goblins, or in my case, ghosts and vampires, make appearances in the book. My protagonist, Sophie Winston, finds herself with twelve-year-old houseguests who believe in ghosts and vampires. To set their fears to rest, she tries to reason with them. However Sophie is in the role of an aunt, not a parent who is used to dealing with children’s imaginations, and she quickly finds herself wondering where she should draw the line.

That led me to question my own beliefs. What would I say to a couple of scared pre-teens? After all, it’s fun to believe in spooks one night a year. What about all those vampire books and movies that are so popular? Do kids think they’re real? Is it fair to dampen their desire to suspend reality and believe in the undead?

Complicating matters, Sophie suspects that she has a ghost living in her kitchen. She and her ex-husband inherited the house from his aunt, and Sophie’s former mother-in-law drops in occasionally to chat with her deceased sister. So Sophie (and I) had to think about this dilemma. Is it fair to say there are ghosts but not vampires?

You may think neither one exists. Fair enough. I didn’t either at one point. As a child, I had plenty of Halloween fun, but I was never really afraid because I didn’t think ghosts were real. One of my best friends was the daughter of a local undertaker. Their home over top of the funeral home was warm and friendly, and not the least bit ghostly. Of course, that didn’t prevent her father from teasing us by saying we could have the candy bars in his desk drawer if we dared to venture downstairs to get them. Oh, the squealing and screeching! We scrambled back up the stairs faster than we ever moved in our gym classes. It was all in fun, and we knew that.

So I find it a bit odd that I am more open to believing in ghosts as an adult than I was as a child. Have I seen one? Maybe. Or maybe it was a trick of the mind. I have, however, experienced my share of quirky moments and unexplained events that give me pause. Some of my friends and relatives have admitted to equally peculiar occurrences. For the time being, I’m on the fence. After all, it’s just plain fun to believe in ghosts and otherworldly creatures on Halloween!

What about you? Do you believe in ghosts or vampires?

Krista Davis is the author of the Domestic Diva Mysteries. Her first book, THE DIVA RUNS OUT OF THYME, was nominated for an Agatha award. Her most recent release, THE DIVA HAUNTS THE HOUSE, inched up to number 27 on the The New York Times Bestseller List. Visit Krista at her website http://divamysteries.com or at Mystery Lover’s Kitchen http://mysteryloverskitchen.com .

Bela Lugosi, you're still the man . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

Trust me. Nobody but NOBODY can say "Good Evening" and send shivers up your spine like Bela Lugosi. And nobody but NOBODY has ever done the part of Dracula in a movie or on stage as well as Lugosi. He set the bar too high.

Back in the Fifties, homes had no VCRs or DVD players so I was introduced to Bela Lugosi's magnificent Dracula of the 1931 movie version thanks to a late night show that aired on Las Vegas television every Friday night. I don't remember the hosts' names but I can still see the husband and wife team showing and chatting about all the old horror movies, and me glued to the TV screen, waiting for Bela. Sigh, best night of the week after my father had hogged the television all evening for the Friday Night Fights.

Back in those days, actors once typecast in a roll were rarely allowed to play anything else, and admittedly, Lugosi played in some real stinkers late in his life. Opposite the Bowery Boys? Gimme a break.

Still, Lugosi managed to make his presence felt in more than one movie that otherwise would have been lost in shame forever without him. Take WHITE ZOMBIE. His protrayal of the character, Murder Legendre, is in my humble opinion one of his greatest roles. That the part for the female lead was seriously silly, you get no argument from me. But Lugosi? The stuff legends are made of. And what about THE BLACK CAT where some genius brought Lugosi together with Karloff as they fought over a young bride? The special effect of beautiful dead young women floating lifelessly in glass coffins on the wall? Lugosi as the good guy for once, trying to defeat Karloff and save the newlyweds? Ahhhh.

Then there were his minor roles, like Bela the Gypsy in the 1941 version of THE WOLF MAN with Lon Chaney, Jr. Or how about Egor in one of the FRANKENSTEIN movies? As I said, minor roles, but always extremely well done.

If you've never seen Lugosi's last movie, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE you truly have not plummed the depths of horrible horror movies. Lugosi (fortunately for him?) died during filming, and the director substituted a local chiropractor. The good doctor should have stuck to his day job. But that awful movie is now a cult fave, and as a true Lugosi fan, I, of course, own a copy.

And as a responsible parent and grandparent, I have introduced my sons and grandsons to the delights of Bela Lugosi. I collect his movies when I can find them, usually buying 2-3 copies to share with my grands. Can I help it if their parents no longer appreciate the true value of these one-of-a-kind treasures?

Every October I pull my collection out and emerse myself in Lugosi movies. I was surprised to learn from a recent horror movie documentary that Lugosi was NOT the first choice for the DRACULA movie, though he'd played the part well on the New York stage. However, serendipity interviened, the other two or three actors being considered weren't available for whatever reasons, and Lugosi snagged the part. Movie history was made.

In the 1931 version of DRACULA, Lugosi's reaction to Van Helsing opening a mirrored cigarette box is truly classic, without him even uttering a word. I love that. And the way Lugosi stands in a garden, working to capture the mind of the young woman in WHITE ZOMBIE. Wow.

It's not to late for you to enjoy the delights of a Lugosi movie this Halloween. I suggest DRACULA OR WHITE ZOMBIE. But SCARED TO DEATH, THE APE MAN, THE INVISIBLE GHOST, MURDER BY TELEVISION, etc, you could probably skip. Unless, like me, you believe that Bela Lugosi is still THE man. Sigh.

Thanks for stopping by. Please close the door behind you as you leave. It's time for me to pop another DVD into the player. Hmmm. Let's see. How about the one with the rediculously huge robot that Lugosi controls from a box on his belt? Yeah, that's a good one. Happy Halloween.