The debate over the headless horseman’s status in American lore is a no-brainer (no puns intended). The demonic and decapitated ghoul on horseback is merely a figment of one’s deepest and darkest nightmare.

Throughout much of the United States and the world, stories of the headless horsemen can be found. Most are part of a literary tradition in American Gothic Horror or folklore. While many of the stories have elements of reality weaved into it, most, if not all of them are simply tales told around campfires or legends passed down from one generation to the next.

In many respects, the stories are part of a long tradition of ghost stories. Its feature of a lopped-off head or a missing head, adds graphic horror, as well as a sense of evil to these tales.

The most famous headless horseman comes from the imagination of Washington Irving, one of America’s first noted authors. In the short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” the protagonist, Ichabod Crane is chased by the apparition of a hessian officer who had lost his head (literally) in the Revolutionary War when struck by a cannonball.

The story was part of a collection of interconnected short stories about the Hudson River Valley of New York called “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)”.

Hessians were German mercenaries hired by King George of Britain to fight the American Rebels. According to the story – as well as the legend the story spawned – the headless horseman, known as the Galloping Hessian, was one of 51 Hessians killed in battle for Chatterton Hill in the actual Battle of White Plains.

This particular battle would eventually become the precursor for the December 26, 1776 surprise attack on Hessian troops in the Battle of Trenton (made famous by General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River).

Another famous headless horseman tale is set in South Texas. Thomas Mayne Reid’s 1865 “The Headless Horsemen” became a popular adventure novel in its time. The story was about the ghosts of beheaded horse thieves.

Reid’s story was based loosely on folklore. The folklore, it turns outs, may have been based on a supposed true accounts of Creed Taylor, a veteran of the Texas Revolution, Mexican-American War, and the Civil War.

Taylor’s ghoul, known as El Muerto, the Headless Horseman, was not a ghost. Instead, it was the headless body of a Mexican thief propped up on a horse as a warning to others.

It would be easy to point to the “facts” in both stories and conclude that the tales were based on reality. However, the story of a headless ghost is nothing new, and the purpose of those stories is more of an indicator of it being a myth.

Decapitation has always been viewed as a horrible way to die. In some cultures, the separation of the head from the body is akin to one getting his soul removed. In a sense, the headless ghosts such as El Muerto and the Galloping Hessian are soulless beings - usually a sign of evil.

The old English epic poem “The Green Knight” featured a demonic knight who could have his head hacked off, only to be able to reattach it. This story doesn’t fall under the headless horsemen classification; however, it deals with decapitation, but takes it one step further; his ability to put it back on, meaning he had the power to defy death.

Also, the stories are often based on rage and vengeance. Irving’s headless horseman (known as the Galloping Hessian) stalks unsuspecting American travelers, chases them down, and eventually takes them. It’s as if the Hessian is going after the Americans who he believed were responsible for his demise (even if Ichabod was at least a generation or two removed from the revolting colonist).

Irving‘s “Galloping Hessian” and Taylor’s El Muerto have threads of reality weaved into their tales. In fact, the town of Sleepy Hollow was based on an actual village called North Tarrytown (now known as Sleepy Hollow when the residents decided to change its name in 1996, in honor of Washington Irving.

However, these threads only serve to place the characters and plots in a particular setting. The headless horsemen are literary characters or devices found in popular literature. If reality crept in, it was purely coincidence.