The Legends of Sleepy Hollow

When autumn rolls around horror movies awake.  Among the most enduring of stories for fall frights is the short story by Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  The story is simple: an outsider schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, comes to Sleepy Hollow and is smitten by Katrina Van Tassel. Katrina’s beau, Brom Bones, frightens the credulous schoolmaster out of town by masquerading as the headless horseman of local lore.  This secular ghost story became a big screen hit with the addition of a religious element to the script. This addition fueled two seasons of Fox’s sleeper hit of 2013, Sleepy Hollow. It also may have contributed to the series’ demise. How did all of this come about?

Published two centuries ago in 1820, Irving’s story was the basis for one of the early ghost films of the cinematographic era—The Headless Horseman (1922), directed by Edward D. Venturini. While horror films have a longer pedigree than is generally acknowledged, this was clearly an early attempt to translate a ghost story to cellulite.  Two other silent films addressed the topic as well, but they don’t survive in film.

You can watch 1922’s The Headless Horseman on YouTube:

Fast forward to 2013. The sleeper hit of the fall lineup was Fox’s Sleepy Hollow. Combining Irving’s tale “Rip van Winkle” with that of “Sleepy Hollow,” the premise was that Ichabod Crane has just awakened after two-hundred years “dead.” In modern Sleepy Hollow he learns that the headless horseman is still after him and the key to stopping him is George Washington’s Bible. Wait. What? Read Irving’s original story.  Not only was the phantom horseman likely a prank of Brom Bones, but there’s no mention of religion beyond Crane teaching his students to sing Psalms, which was authentic to the period. How had religion come into the story? It weaves in and out with the long history of films based on this singular tale.

Crane and the Bible in Sleepy Hollow

The Headless Horseman from 1922, starring Will Rogers, follows Irving fairly closely, but the short story required some padding to make a feature-length film. One of the added scenes involved a church service–and it was played strictly for laughs. Crane has the role, also in the Irving story, of teaching singing.  Since the Psalms were the songbook of the era, The Headless Horseman has Crane leading church choir.  Everyone, however, falls asleep during the sermon and the religious aspect is funny rather than frightening.

The 1949 Disney package-film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad follows both Irving and the Venturini adaptation. There’s not a hint of religion in the Disney version, beyond a fleeting glimpse of Katrina Van Tassel’s wedding. No church scene to introduce humor. Where then did the idea occur to Sleepy Hollow’s ensemble writers that religion would add to the scares (at least for the first two seasons)? When Sleepy Hollow galloped loudly into living rooms and onto smartphones in 2013 the Bible was front and center. The headless horseman was one of the four riders of the apocalypse forecast by the book of Revelation. War, a second rider, was Ichabod’s son. They were controlled by the evil biblical demon Moloch. To stop them Ichabod Crane and Abigail Mills had to find George Washington’s Bible. Hit pause here. How did we get from horror to Sunday School?

Although Irving’s tale lends itself to cinematic treatment, it suffers in being a short story, a sketch. Also, it was written with considerable humor. Crane’s literary description is cartoonish, and the situation seemed right for a treatment like Disney’s. Other generally forgotten adaptations were produced. A television movie appeared in 1970 but made little impact. In 1980 there was a somewhat more influential made-for-television effort, this one starring Jeff Goldblum as the nerdy Crane. The ghost was real in this version, but religion played no role.

The effort that brought the story back to life, however, was Tim Burton’s 1999 Sleepy Hollow. This adaptation clearly influenced the Fox series in many ways. One of the most profound was in making religion a central theme. In a revisionist move, Burton cast Johnny Depp as a more serious Ichabod Crane, a rationalist detective who doesn’t believe in ghosts. All previous versions play on Crane’s credulousness—he’s a firm believer. Burton’s adaptation involves a kind of conversion for Crane. Sentenced to a two days’ journey up to Sleepy Hollow to solve a crime, he finds the unsophisticated villagers still quaking over their fear of ghosts and goblins. Crane insists the recent rash of beheadings are the work of a human fiend. Rev. Steenwyck, the town parson, drops a heavy Bible onto the table, shaking the tea cups. “This is the only book I recommend you read,” he warns. From that point on, the Good Book reappears at important junctures leading Crane to the true culprit—an undead Hessian mercenary betrayed by a young girl in the haunted western wood decades ago. An instant Halloween classic.

A closer look reveals just how central religion is to Burton’s treatment. Ichabod’s father, “a Bible-black tyrant” tortures Ichabod’s mother to death for being a witch. Ichabod (whose name indicates loss of faith) ceased believing in religion at the age of seven. In Sleepy Hollow an actual witch, Lady Van Tassel, controls a horseman risen from the dead. A conspiracy of town elders, including Rev. Steenwyck, keep her secret because of their various involvements in her plot. Crane discovers the truth via the Bible Steenwyck pointed out to him since it contains a family tree showing who stands to inherit the Van Tassel wealth should Katrina die. Burton is aware that religion can indeed enhance horror.

The ensemble writers of Fox’s Sleepy Hollow follow the Burton script, to a point. Crane isn’t some silly, willowy school teacher. He’s a serious man of consequence.  A former Oxford professor and officer in George Washington’s colonial army played by Tom Mison, he’s fighting for American freedom. Irving emphasized the nearness of the Revolutionary War by plotting his tale in the late eighteenth century.  With more than a nod toward Irving’s Rip van Winkle, Crane awakens over two centuries after his death, and meets twenty-first-century police lieutenant Abigail Mills. Together they take on the headless horseman and his minions in the tried and true monster-of-the-week format. Interlarded through their adventures of the first season is the Bible. Not only is the horseman foretold in Revelation, all the characters are biblically literate.  To solve the mystery of what’s happening they consult the Scriptures frequently.  Only George Washington’s Bible prevents the apocalypse. At the first season’s cliff-hanger climax, we learn the second horseman, War—aka Jeremy Crane—has also appeared in Sleepy Hollow, controlled by the demon Moloch.

Sleepy Hollow ran out of steam when the Bible fell out of the plot. Moloch was killed in season two and a new driving force of evil had to be found to raise the weekly monsters.  The demon was replaced by the mythological character Pandora.  The solution of Pandora was unsatisfying. Everyone knows Pandora’s a myth and not at all scary. The Bible, on the other hand, to an American viewership, retains a verisimilitude that Greek mythology obviously lacks. At an arcane, deep level, we still believe the Good Book might somehow be true. The biblical threat feels real. Who’s afraid of Pandora and her box?  The series limped through season three and a fatalism of cancellation hung over the final fourth season.  Without the strangely biblical headless horseman, Sleepy Hollow didn’t have a prayer.

Religion’s world-building has much to offer horror. Washington Irving was, personally, a religious skeptic. Adaptations of his famous short story have been enhanced by religious elements over the years.  The most successful, and memorable treatment of the tale by Tim Burton has launched new trajectories that explore how even secular ghost tales can become more frightening when religion is introduced.

Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow is streaming on Netflix.

The TV series Sleepy Hollow is streaming on Hulu and also Amazon #ad:

Steve A. Wiggins is the author of Holy Horror: The Bible and Fear in Movies. His next book, Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons is due out next year with Lexington Books. He blogs at Sects and Violence in the Ancient World. He he written for Horror Homeroom previously on Burnt Offerings,  Midsommar, Haunting in Connecticut, and The Lighthouse.

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