The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lanky schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" バン Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina バン Tassel, only daughter of a wealthy farmer. As クレーン leaves a party at the バン Tassel ホーム on an autumn night, he is pursued によって the Headless Horseman, supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who ロスト his head to a cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head." クレーン disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related."