It was implied that the uptight schoolteacher Ichabod Crane was scared off by Brom Bones in disguise for hitting on his girl.
Later retellings of it, like the original story implied, played up the supernatural angle and made the Headless Horseman into a monster of legend.
But it’s not a wholly American one.
The Headless rider has shown up a lot in fiction: on cartoons like The Real Ghostbusters, an episode of Are you Afraid of the Dark, and even of an episode of Kolchak the Nightstalker.
It’s rare to find a supernatural-fighting hero who hasn’t fought a headless rider.
Three versions of it stand out the most to me at the very least: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad from 1949, which set the standard model; Sleepy Hollow for Tim Burton’s take on the story with modern twists and R-Rated terror; and the novel/anime series Durarara which goes to the source of the legend and provides something the other two only barely do, character for the monster.
And there’s the new TV show that came out earlier this week. I wrote this before I got a chance to watch it and it leaves me wondering how a series can last with only one supernatural villain at its center.
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