Ghosts In Washington Irving's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

Do you believe in ghosts? In Washington Irving’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow we follow Ichabod Crane. He is a superstitious school teacher who is in Sleepy Hollow which is supposedly haunted by the Headless Horseman. But, inferences that we get from the story as well as a lack of evidence in real life tell us that ghosts are not real.

First, at the end of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, it is almost a mystery if it is a ghost story or if it was a prank, but all evidence points toward it being a prank. At the beginning of the story when Ichabod moves to Sleepy Hollow he falls in love with Katrina Van Tassel. Brom Bones who is “full of mettle and mischief”(Irving pg. 21) is also in love with Katrina. So, a rivalry is formed between the two, and Brom pulls pranks on Ichabod throughout the story. At the end of the story, Ichabod is allegedly scared away by the Headless Horseman.

There have only been claims of sightings that ghosts exist. So using the logic that someone can claim to experience ghosts and it is real, then I can claim that dragons are real and they are. But, that would not make any sense because you need evidence to prove something is real. To show that people can claim something and it is false, insider.com proves that at least seven of America's most famous ghost stories are fake. Some people may argue that ghosts date back a long time ago and that the Legend of Sleepy Hollow is documentation. But that story is considered to be fiction and according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary fiction means something invented by the imagination or feigned. So by definition ghosts in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow can not be real. On top of that, me and almost everyone I know has never seen or experienced ghosts. The only person that has claimed to see or experience a ghost didn’t see it; they just heard a “squeak” so even then there is so little evidence it was a