I eavesdropped on the tour and heard it was the third gravestone since fans used to take chips of his grave as souvenirs. Irving’s modest grave is just up the hill and it stands just a bit taller than the other Irvings buried around him. I parked and walked around the church, where the horseman, beheaded by a cannonball, tethered his horse. Traffic was heavy and there was a tour going on at the cemetery. Driving to the Old Dutch Church is another story. “A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere.” I felt that a bit, wandering about the grounds of Sunnyside. Years after writing the story, he bought the property in what is now known as “Sleepy Hollow Country.' Then he writes about nearby Sleepy Hollow and the small brook gliding through it. When he wrote “Sleepy Hollow,” his love of the area is apparent from the opening lines: “In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee.” He continues, mentioning “Tarry Town,” which he said got the name from housewives who referred to their husbands lingering at the taverns on marketing day. Irving picked this spot because he spent some time in his youth nearby escaping the yellow fever threat in New York City, where he lived, according to Historic Hudson Valley, which runs the site. Irving died upstairs.ĭespite the trains running right past the house periodically along the Hudson River, you feel as if you walked into a fairy tale. Irving never married and was said to have mourned her for the rest of his life. A framed photo of Irving’s fiancée, Matilda Hoffman, who died at age 17, sits on the original piano in the living room shrouded in black. The house tour is a pure delight with costumed guides and a well-preserved collection of his furniture. Irving bought the cottage and then renovated it, adding a charming mishmash of architectural styles, drawn from the Scottish, Spanish and Dutch.

Outside, some robust wisteria made its way up the side of the house like some sort of sci-fi mutant plant ready to consume the house. A skeletal hand reached out from a curtain in the Irving’s den, fake rats on the dining table eyed the doughnuts (named by Irving, according to one of the docents) and we were warned to watch out for a giant spider that kept falling off the staircase. There’s a collection of jack-o’-lanterns assembled in front of one of the outbuildings. The house was playfully decorated for Halloween.

The legend of sleepy hollow author