The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Perhaps the basis for every Scooby Doo episode ever made, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a story by Washington Irving, published pseudonymously in "The Sketch Book Geoffrey Crayon" in 1820. The story features Ichabod Crane, a scrawny and superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut. The unruly Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt and he vie for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of a rich farmer. As Crane leaves a party at the Van Tassel crib he is set upon by the Headless Horseman, the ghost of an American Revolutionary War vet who had his head blown off by a cannon ball. Ichabod mysteriously disappears and Katrina and Brom Bones get hitched. What ever happened to Ichabod Crane?

A masterpiece of American horror fiction, Sleepy Hollow is thrilling and beautifully written, and its unresolved ending leaves the reader eager for more. One can read it for light entertainment, or dissect it for the underlying context of a changing society in early America. Either way, it's still as spooky as it was almost 200 years ago.