The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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The 1820 short story that inspired Tim Burton's movie - with Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci.

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity, especially during Halloween because of a character known as the headless horseman believed to be a Hessian soldier who lost his head to a cannonball in battle.

Quote: "All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman."