Halloween Challenge, Day 8: Headless Horseman (opinion)

The prompt for Day 8 of the 31 Days of Halloween writing challenge by Fluture is to re-write your favorite Halloween story. Please do join in!

My favorite story for this season is the tale of the Headless Horseman. Told well first I believe, by Washington Irving in his story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow[amazon.com]”. Unfortunately, with the time I have today I don’t feel like I could do the story justice with a re-write so instead I’ll talk about a couple of the other tellings I enjoy.

There are a few good renditions of the story and the one I grew up with was “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow[imdb.com]” starting Jeff Goldblum. This was a made for TV movie in 1980 that we had recorded onto VHS. The bumbling school teacher falling for a local beauty, Katrina. Brams, also interested in said beauty, trying to use the local legend to scare the school master. Then the legend comes to life. It is a nice setting piece and just enough sense of unease for my child self in the day.

Several years back there was a new version simply titled “Sleepy Hollow.[amazon.com]” This one stars Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp. Another interesting piece , it focuses more on a scheming plot driving the Horseman on his haunting of the village. A bit more gore than the previous one and more in your face with the killing. An interesting tale though with some interesting sub plots to think about.

Either one makes a great movie to watch to get into the spooky aspect of Halloween but good luck getting your hands on the TV one. I hope you get a chance to check them out!

Happy haunting, everyone!

Be sure to check out my previous challenge entries:

• Halloween Challenge:Day 1, The Witches Three (poem)
• Halloween Challenge, Day 2: Bedtime Story (story)
• Halloween Challenge, Day 3: Frantic (poem)
• Halloween Challenge, Day 4: R.I.P. (poem)
• Halloween Challenge, Day 5: “Mr. Coffin”
• Halloween Challenge, Day 6: Circus Ghost (poem)
• Halloween Challenge, Day 7: A Mummy’s Wisdom (story)

Special thanks to GDJ for the spooky silhouette image

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