Near the Hudson River in New York, there is a small town. People call it Tarry Town. The wives in the country gave the town this name. Their husbands stayed too long at the village tavern (a place to drink and talk).
Two miles from the town, there is a very quiet valley. It is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook (a very small river) flows through it. You can hear the sound of birds and woodpeckers.
When I was a young man, I went to this valley to hunt squirrels. It was very quiet at noon. The sound of my gun was very loud. I thought the valley was a good place to hide from the busy world.
People call this place Sleepy Hollow. A strange power seems to live there. Some people say a doctor put a spell (magic that affects someone or something) on the land. Others say an old Native American chief held his meetings there.
The people in Sleepy Hollow see strange things. They hear voices in the air and see lights in the sky. They believe in many ghost stories. The most famous ghost is a man with no head who rides a horse.
People call him the Headless Horseman (a ghost with no head). They say he was a soldier in a big war. A cannonball took off his head. Now, he rides his horse at night to look for it. He is always in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before the sun comes up.
Every person who lives in Sleepy Hollow begins to believe these stories. They begin to dream and see ghosts too. Even people who move there soon feel the magic in the air.