The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, in a secluded glen called
Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a sycophantic, lean, lanky, and extremely
superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt,
the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of
a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel home
on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of
a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle"
of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest
of his head". Ichabod mysteriously disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones,
who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related". Although the
nature of the Headless Horseman is left open to interpretation, the story implies that the
Horseman was really Brom Bones in disguise.

Read by Glenn Close

Download File Size:22.59 MB

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