The year is 1790. The Revolutionary War has settled, but the ghosts of combat remain.

One particularly vengeful specter—a Hessian soldier whose head was most unfortunately removed by a cannonball—is rumored to haunt the borderland glen to Tarry Town known as Sleepy Hollow.

Ichabod Crane—a mindfully superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut—finds himself in service to this tiny Dutch settlement, as well as enticed by the prospect of marrying Katrina Van Tassel, the only daughter of the wealthy landowner, Baltus Van Tassel. But to win her hand, the gangly gent must first outwit and outmaneuver his rival, Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt.

Or is there another he must outpace, a cloaked and terrifying rider waiting to bring punishment at the swampy intersection near an ill-fated tulip tree?

A gothic horror story first published in 1820, Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow continues to prove a long-lasting eloquence for seducing and frightening generations of readers.