Description

In 1799, New York City police constable Ichabod Crane is dispatched to the upstate Dutch hamlet of Sleepy Hollow, which has been plagued by a series of brutal decapitations: Peter and Dirk Van Garrett, a wealthy father and son, and a widow, Emily Winship. Received by the insular town elders�wealthy businessman Baltus Van Tassel; town doctor Thomas Lancaster; the Reverend Steenwyck; notary James Hardenbrook; and magistrate Samuel Philipse�Ichabod learns that locals believe the killer is the undead apparition of a headless Hessian mercenary from the American Revolutionary War who rides a black steed in search of his missing head. Ichabod begins his investigation, skeptical of the paranormal story. Boarding at the home of Baltus Van Tassel and his second wife, Lady Van Tassel, he is taken with Baltus' spiritual daughter, Katrina. When a fourth victim, Jonathan Masbath, is killed, Ichabod takes the victim's son, Young Masbath, under his wing. Ichabod and Masbath exhume the victims on a tip from Philipse, learning that the widow died pregnant; Ichabod witnesses the Horseman killing Philipse shortly after. He, Young Masbath and Katrina venture into the Western Woods, where a crone living in a cave reveals the location of the Horseman's grave at the "Tree of the Dead". He digs up the Horseman's grave and discovers the skull has been taken, deducing that it has been stolen by someone who now controls him and that the tree is his portal into the living world.