This sequestered Glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow.

A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land and pervade the atmosphere.

The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions.

The dominant spirit, however, 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 cannonball in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and a non seen in the gloom of night. Well, it's that time again, time to become a little scared.

Time when all that is autumn, the changed and fallen leaves, the picked apples, the mold cider, crates of pumpkins, so many pumpkins, all of it ushers in the usual suspects of supreme gothic horror, the witches, the mummies, the skeletons, Frankenstein's

monsters, the ghosts and goblins, the spiders in their webs, and most awesome of all, the infinite amounts of candy in our neighborhood stores.

It's Halloween and we kind of love it.

Nearby our home where we live in the Hudson Valley of New York, there is a guy, every town has one, who I don't know, but he must plan his Halloween all year long.

Suddenly, in early October, his front lawn is positively crammed with everything from murderous clowns to beetle juice, all larger than life,

all underlit for spooky effect, and most of it somehow moving animatronically.

It's actually frightening a little bit and

certainly dangerously distracting.

These crowded creatures of the night screaming for attention, but one character stands

still above it all, a little creepier and more gothic than the rest

shoulders above the rest in fact the headless horseman could there be a

creepier notion a rider perched on his steed holding a lit jack-o-lantern.

Is there a more perfect symbol of the loathsome fear and the trembling terror of Halloween?

This haunting, taunting specter charging through our darkest fantasies on a devilish mission of trauma and torment.

No, not my opinion anyway, but I take comfort in the fact that all of this is nothing more than a man-made confection carefully

crafted to entertain. And in the case of he who is headless, specifically written by

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