On the hunt for the real Halloween in Sleepy Hollow

Ah Halloween. The day when the word “dignity” ceases to exist and goblins, ghouls, and sexy versions of…everything take to the streets to revel in a booze-and-drug fueled orgy that has left your head throbbing.

Now, I am in no way saying this isn’t how it should be. What would October 31st be without freshmen clinging to their toilets for dear life? An absolute sham. But what I am saying is that, somewhere along the way All Hallows’ Eve has become more about pounding a fifth of Fireball instead of actually being scared.

So in an attempt to soil my jeans out of fear, Emily, my lovely photographer, and I suited up like our favorite X-Files solving duo and set off to Sleepy Hollow, New York: the home of the Headless Horseman.
You’ve either read about it or you’ve seen the Tim Burton movie, but the Legend of Sleepy Hollow isn’t much of a legend. All you have to get to the Halloween-crazed village is head over to Grand Central, buy tickets for the Metro-North Hudson Line train, and in a little more than an hour you’ll stop at Tarrytown, the town right under Sleepy Hollow.
We arrived at around 1pm, before any of the creepy stuff had begun, but the smell of candy and rubber masks was thick in the air. Walking around it was hard to forget where we were. There was some kind of depiction of the Headless Horseman around every corner — hell, it’s even the local high school’s mascot.
At around 2.30pm there was small costume parade on the town’s main drag.

Families of all ages and species dressed up and walked across town.

From there we wandered around the village and basked in Sleep Hollow’s Halloween spirit. There were scarecrows tied to fences, eerie decorations lurking in the shadows and a 200-year-old graveyard at the edge of town to tie it all together.

This town undoubtedly has colonial charm you could never find in the city, but let’s not forget why we came here: to scare ourselves senseless.

The sun was setting, my pants were still dry and I was pining for a scare. But, as you would expect, the night satisfied my cravings.

A crowd was gathering around Philipsburg Manor, a historic house situated in front of a lake where there was a haunted house of monumental proportions called, The Horseman’s Hollow.

After almost an hour of waiting we were thrown into one of the most enthralling Halloween experiences I have ever witnessed: corpses dangling from ropes, cannibals feasting on flesh, demons skulking in the darkness and in the end we came face to…a torso of the Headless Horseman.

Enjoy the photos.

All images by Emily Dabney.