I Lost My Head in Sleepy Hollow

Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about creepy things that surprised us around the internet. That Medwyn. I'm Michelle. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise. Welcome, We're back. We're back. We sound we're trying to sound creepy. Today I think we are creepy. So it all works out. It's just the season. I don't know if it's gloomy where you are, like, it is gloomy, and it's delightfully gloomy in Los Angeles today and beautiful sunny Los Angeles. Last night. I was writing at like midnight and started raining for a little woo that's exciting, and I was like, and I was like, this must this is what Edgar Allan Poe feels like. I felt like it, and then I started getting all weirdly poetic that I won't go into detail about it. Oh, okay, you're not going to share the poems that you wrote last night. No, they're too dark for my heart right now. So today I'm going to cover the legend of Sleepy Hollow, but also I'm going to talk about where Washington Irving might have gotten his inspiration, which is far scarier and way weirder. What's his name? Ichabod id Jcobod, a name that's just not around anymore, probably tainted by the story. I like the name Ichabod, but I don't know what it means, so don't I don't want to get kind of It is an old timy name. It reminds me of like Ebenezer. But I think you're more likely to find an Ebenezer now than an Ichabod. I don't know. If you're named Ikabod, please write in and tell us what it's been like being named Ikabod, because we don't think that name exists out in the wild anymore. Yeah, we want to know your experiences at Starbucks when they ask you what your name is, Kobod, you say that Ichabod. Crane like no matter what, and you're like, no, it's Icobod. Johnson, you son of a bitch. Oh escalated, and then you pull out like an ak fort. It's Iikobad Johnson. Mah, that was a gunshot, but it sounded like a good man, that's my gun. I guess they need to work on it. I got out there. Now. We have a little precursor to Ichabod. Ikabod comes to Sleepy Hollow, New York, from his home state of Connecticut to be the schoolmaster of the village. Sleepy Hollow is a small, tranquil town. Its residents seemed to move a little slower, daydream a bit more, and be prone to believing in the supernatural. Sleepy Hollow's most famous supernatural phenomenon is a ghost called the Headless Horseman, said to be a Hessen soldier who lost his head to a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. Side note Hessen soldiers were German soldiers that came over and fought with the British during the Revolutionary War for our listeners that don't know what a Hessen is. The horseman is often seen in Sleepy Hollow, riding by the where the local historians say he was buried. He is believed to always be in search of his head. Ikobod was fascinated by this story, being especially interested and prone to believe in tails of the supernatural. Now to talk a little bit more about Niccobod. Ikobad was a strict teacher, but not a cruel one, doling out his punishments of the rod only to those who could handle it, which I thought was a very funny line. Sounds like a character. No, you sound like a jerk, and then I wrote not Johnny depp ikabad is dall and laky, with huge hands. His head is small, his nose is long. He has huge ears, large green, glassy eyes, and a spindly neck. He looks like a scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. Imagine that that's what you're described like. A journalist is like interviewing you is like describing you. And it's like that he had a birdbeak, nose and donkey like ears. Poor guy. So anyway, character wise, Icobod is clever, self interested, self unaware, greedy, and highly superstitious. He makes almost no money, and it's customary in the village for farmers whose sons he teaches to feed and board him in rotation. Ichabod also makes some extra money teaching singing lessons, and he prides himself on his exceedingly magnificent voice. He's got that going for him, right, like he certainly doesn't have his looks. So this arrangement keeps him employed and gives him many opportunities to hear ghost stories from the farmers wives, eat meals with the farmer's daughters and gossip. Katrina van Tassel, a beautiful eighteen year old girl, is one of Ichabod's singing students. She's also the only child of one of the most prosperous farmers in the area. Ichobod is quickly taken in by her flirtatious charms when he first visits her father's abu. He considers himself truly in love with her, or at least her inheritance. Maybe that played a role. He's a pretty self interested guy. He quickly sets out to win her hand, coming by the van Tassel farm frequently to woo her. Ikabad is not alone in his attentions to Katrina, however. Her beauty and charm and wealth have enticed other men in the village, especially the formidable Bron van Brunt. He's a real Zach Began's type. I was waiting for that reference brom Bones aka Zach Begins. Oh man, Okay, so Zach Beggins was in there. Okay, Yeah, we've casted Zach Begins as brom Bones and brom He has a notorious boisterous personality, loves pranks, is great at horseback riding. All of which makes him kind of the village hero. It's definitely the Zach Begans type. So Brom has already scared off many of Katrina's other suitors. Imagine Zach Megan's riding a horse. I tried not to interrupt her, but I couldn't come up in a little room, so it's I have nowhere to go. It's fine, it's fine, it's good. Yeah, Zach Megan's riding a horse. How I mean, how much better can it get? Really? Seriously, it was just such a funny image in my head, Zach Began's riding a horse with this like his big old pants, like a paggy pants. I was imagining his gel pir from like season one, and then his black tight and hardy T shirt and then the weird baggy pants. Yeah, oh that was hilarious. Okay, so he was because he was excellent at horse riding, so he was a town like the town hero, and I just thought he was the beast knees. So Brom has already scared off a lot of Katrina's other suitors, but Ichabod is hard to shake. Avoiding physical confrontation with Brohm, which is Brom's primary method of intimidation. Without that option, Brom turns to his next best skill, pranks. He fills the schoolhouse with smoke, trains a dog to follow Ichabod around, howling, and sets many other pranks to frustrate and humiliate Ichabod around town. Just like a huge bully training a dog to do that just howl behind somebody. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty impressive. One day, a messenger comes to the schoolhouse and invites Ikabad to the party at the Van Tassels. He borrows an old horse from a farmer he was staying with and goes to the party. Icobad indulges in food and gossip and basically enjoys himself. He's having a great time, dances, flirts with Katrina. At one point he overhears Bram and his friends telling old ghost stories about the woods surrounding the village. When the party's over, he stays behind, deciding to make his move. OOO it's just for some reason. However, Katrina disappoints him and Ikabad leaves crestfallen, so she turns him down. Also suspect that Katrina might have been into Brahm and the leading on Ichabod. Ikobad is crestfallen. He finds the path home and the forest is dark and eerie, and he tries to keep himself from getting too scared, but he starts thinking of all those ghost stories he heard Brahm and his friends talking about earlier at the party, and he just allows his imagination to start playing tricks on him while he's writing home, and he just starts getting scared. He tries to calm himself down and say he's like being silly. Then all of a sudden, he sees a dark figure looming nearby. He's just hey. He tries to call, like just get the person to respond, but it doesn't respond, and as he passes by, it starts to move and joins him on the path riding a large dark horse. Ichabod is greatly disturbed and tries to shake off his pursuer, and he turns around, whipping over his shoulder, and he notices the rider has no head. The head seems to be sitting on the saddle in front of the man. Icobod tries to get his decrepit horse to run as fast as it can, but he is not a skilled rider and the horse resists. They end up by the church. The scene of most of the stories of the Headless Horsemen, and Ichabod races to the bridge where the ghost is said to disappear and not follow. Ichabod crosses the bridge and looks back, but he sees the horseman. Instead of disappearing, he hurls his deta hatched head towards him and it knocks Ichabod off his horse. Dune, dum, there it is there, it is so then he falls. The next day, Ichabod's horse returns to its owner's farm, but there's no sign of Ichabod, and a search party finds hoofprints and Ichabod's hat with a smashed pumpkin left next to it, and Ichabod is never heard from again. In Sleepy Hollow, some people believe that brom Bones pulled off a great prank which put Brahm in the final position to marry Katrina, but the old women in the local folklore maintain he was taken by the Headless horseman. But this is probably a good place to take a break, because I'm about to tell you the story that this is probably based on, and it's a way freakyar ooh cool, all right, cool, and we're back. Who are are just like, what break because there's no break. Look, look we got to earn that money somehow, you know what I mean. So this is based on the writer of this story. Washington Irving, used to take things from his real life or people that he knew places that so Washington Irving actually he wrote that story about the Catskills and he hadn't been there before, but he'd been abroad in Europe for seventeen years when he wrote those His parents were from Scotland and England. So anyway, he's in Europe, and I was like, okay, there's no way he didn't know this story and this was probably the inspo for Sleepy Hollow. But it is this creature called the doula Han. He would take the soul of those who are ready for death. He often rode on a headless black horse, or if it had a head, it had flaming eyes and short cropped ears that out distanced its body by six meters or more. He used a human spine as a whip and would take the eyes of those who stared upon him. He had a head and he often carried it along with him, and it was said to look like moldy cheese. Or yeasty bread in both patina and texture. I wonder who wrote this of like cheese expert, the dula had also possessed supernatural sight, and his eyes would scan rapidly from left to right as he held his severed head aloft, and would look across vast expanses of the countryside, even in the pitch dark, allowing him to see in the houses of the dyeing. Oh that's amazing. That's an awesome description. So it's like this all seeing like x ray cheesehead. Honestly, the yeast part gets me because it's like you could just kind of smell it. The beatina does it for me. It's just so classy. The doula hand wasn't just to be found on a horse. If you were unlucky enough, he might be your coachman to the afterlife. In Irish folklore, it is known as the Silent Coach, and the horses and coach travel so quickly that the bushes on the roadside were known to have started on fire. That is the super So I imagine that he would leave like a trail of fire. Is that the thing? Yeah? Yeah, because he's going so fast. That's an amazing scene. I imagine the fan art for this is amazing, like a version of have you ever seen Darby O'Gill and the Little People? Have you ever seen that? No? No, but what is that? I don't know. There's no reason to really see it. It's got Sean Connery in it. But there is a scene where the death coach comes, so anyway, bushes would start on fire, the locks on the houses and gates would open by themselves, thus affirming that no one is immune from the headless one. The headless one. Wow, it's terrified. Imagine hearing this as a kid, and like your grandpa's just like hey, and for me. Like we said in that last episode about La Yodona, which is literally just a woman crying down the river, but wait, I thought Lalla Verona pulls children in people start coming up with their own things. But basically it was like this woman who drowned her children because she was jealous that something. She lost her husband or he left her for something, and then she was just pissed and just drowned her kids and now she just goes around looking for them. But from what I heard, it's not like she goes and drowns you too. But I heard little legends, little things that reasons why you should be afraid of this, but they weren't as terrifying as seeing this thing. Seeing this thing because because you know it's here for death. Yeah, yep, it's like I've been summoned. Where was I? Oh? Okay. In Ireland, in particular, the death coach is seen as the signifier of the inevitability of death, as the belief goes, once it has come to earth, it can never return empty. It reminds you of this like Santa Claus type of thing to come by with a purpose. Obviously, I guess that's a bad example. I always I used to be afraid of Santa Claus. That was like, why is this guy gonna come into our house? And yeah, and I remember thinking that, okay, he's just gonna leave gifts, okay, but why should we trust this guy? It was just very I was a very annoying kid like that, and very stubborn in my ways. It's not invalid to be like, why is this weirdo coming into our house? Why is this woman taking our teeth underneath our pillows? What's she doing with our teeth? Yeah? Exactly when you say that, Okay, this thing cannot leave earth like it needs to get its name. Oh it's just such a I like it a lot, and I think this is why. Oh this is even though he stole all these ideas, I can see why. They're really interesting. So even for the Irish and the Celts, this was a starkly dark creature. Where did it come from? The headless one. Some people believe that the doula hand grew out of an ancient Celtic god named krun duv damn. That language is hard, the dark bent man. That's what it means. Klun duff a god who asked for human sacrifice. The dark man, the dark man, And then there is a question of why he was headless. The ancient Celts believed that the soul was in the head, and if a foe was a worthy one, their head would be taken to add to the warriors prestige. The headless horseman nicobun Crane he gets the jack lantern thrown at him. Is that where he came from? The jack o' lantern was also a part of the Irish and Scots legends, having been carved for centuries from turnips and corns. Huh, turnips, So there you go. Quahing Nerving was definitely inspired by this. There's no way he grew up and didn't hear this and wasn't scared to death of it. There is hope. If you see the Doula hand let me just in case he's at your house right now. If one were lucky, they would carry a gold coin on their person, and the sight of gold would send the Doulahan away back to the depths of the darkness. It's scared of gold, baby, it's scared of gold. We're safe. We are safe. We're always with our blink, always have gold on me, never not covered in gold. Sucks to be anyone who's listened to this and they don't have any gold, but we have tons of gold. So you know we got those watches. At least we told you that you need gold. Once again. Safety first, we want to make sure, we want to make we want to watch over our listeners and make sure they're safe out there. Be sure you're always carrying gold. You know it, you know it. I got my gold coins on, I got my gold toe rings on. I just have ten gold toe rings. There you go, you're safe. I loved it. I loved it, and it sucks that you can't actually summon it. You have to wait for it. Mind not summoning it, you know what I mean. I don't think this is one that you want to summon. I don't think this is one you want to see ever. I think since it's the season, like the best season out of the year, we got to keep up with these cool topics like moeros and Halloween. And you who were listening here have an idea again, send us an email. I have it in the description of this episode. Hello at Scary Mystery Surprise dot com or email this directly Edwin at Scary Mystery Surprise or Michelle at Scary Mystery Surprise dot com. AnyWho, what are we talking about next week? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise. Ah darn it. Okay, all right, so I guess we call it today. Be sure to follow us wherever you follow PODCASTA the follow thing, leave us a review a good one, please, and yeah, we'll see you guys next time. See you