The Headless Horseman and Ghosts of Sleepy Hollow

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There is one person who claims to have cracked the case of the headless horseman for good. And this soldier's name? It was... Hello. And welcome to another episode of Citegeist.

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I'm your librarian and host, Joshua Spellman. I wanted this Halloween episode to be extra special. It's October 28, and I wanted to make sure that today's story was about this date. So an extra spooky ghost aversary for some wayward spirit. And it turns out, it's a spirit that many of us probably know, the headless horseman.

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We know it through pop culture references like Disney, Scooby Doo, and different film adaptations, but how many of us have actually suffered through, sorry, read through Washington Irving's original tale? I'd venture to say, not many of us. Though Irving's work was a work of fiction, the story itself was based on a local legend. In today's episode, I'm going to be reading a very abridged version of the legend of Sleepy Hollow, and then we'll try and reveal his true identity. And while we're at it, we're gonna be taking a peek at some of the other famous spirits of Sleepy Hollow to see if they're the real deal.

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But before beginning the story portion, a quick rundown of the characters in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The main protagonist is Ichabod Crane, a cowardly school teacher, and he has a stubborn steed named Gunpowder. Brom Bones was the town's local tough guy. He's who I imagine Gaston is based on, and he claimed that he had survived a run-in with the Headless Horseman. But enough of my yapping.

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Let's listen to the alleged origins of Sleepy Hollow's Headless Horseman. But be forewarned, it's very scary because of how prosy it is. You thought my writing was prosy? Hold on to your heads. From the listless repose of the place and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow.

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A drowsy dreamy influence seems to hang over the land and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say the place was bewitched by a high German doctor during the early days of the settlement. Others, that an Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by master Henrik Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights and hear music and voices in the air.

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The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions. Stars shoot and meteors glare, oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country. And the nightmare with her whole nine fold seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambles. The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from the haunted region.

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It breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassels, and as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains and morning cries, and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate major Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm having perished there in the snow. The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region and seems to be commander in chief of all the powers of the air is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head.

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It is said by some to the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war, and who was ever and anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, which have been careful in collecting and collating and floating in facts concerning the specter, alleged that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard. The ghost rides forth to the scene of the battle in knightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the hollow like a midnight blast is owing to his being belated and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak. And now, let us join our friend Ichabod Crane.

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Just at this moment, a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadows of the grove on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler. Just then, the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound, stood at once in the middle of the road. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions and mounted on a black horse of a powerful frame.

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He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along the blind side of old gunpowder. Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind. The other did the same.

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There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. A mounting arising ground which brought the figure of his fellow traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak. Ichabod was horror struck on perceiving that he was headless, but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the palm of his saddle. His terror rose to desperation.

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He rained a shower of kicks and blows upon gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip. But the specter started full jump with him. Away then, they dashed through the thick and thin, stones flying, sparks flashing at every bound. They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow, but Gunpowder who seemed possessed with a demon instead of keeping up made an opposite turn and plunged headlong downhill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile where it crosses the bridge and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

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An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. If I can but reach that bridge, thought Ichabod, I am safe. Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him.

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He even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs and the old gunpowder sprang upon the bridge. He thundered over the resounding planks. He gained the opposite side. And now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer would vanish according to rule.

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Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in a very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was tumbled headlong into the dust, and gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider passed by like a whirlwind. The next morning, the old horse was found without his saddle, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate.

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Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast. Dinner hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse and strolled idly about the banks of the brook, but no schoolmaster. Hans von Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation, they came upon his traces.

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In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt. The tracks of Horus' hooves deeply dented in the road were traced to the bridge beyond which on the bank of a broad part of the brook where the water ran deep and black was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod and close beside it, a shattered pumpkin. In that, more or less, is the story of Washington Irving's Headless Horseman. While many assume it's a complete work of fiction, it's not entirely made up. Some of the people were actually real, like Ichabod Crane.

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However, the real Ichabod Crane wasn't a Sleepy Hollow resident and was nothing like his cowardly, superstitious counterpart, which is probably why he took some umbrage with his name being used without his permission and a portrayal that he did not feel was quite accurate to himself. Instead, Ichabod's personality was actually based on Irving's friend, Jesse Merwin. And indeed, like the people in the story, the ghost stories in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow were also based on real folklore and legends in the area. We'll get to the other legends, but first, we'll have to give the headless horseman back his head, or at least try to. The headless horseman existed in oral tradition since after the revolutionary war, though he was likely known as the headless Hessian before Irving's tale took off.

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And first, you may be asking, what the hell is a Hessian? And I asked myself that same question. Hessians were Germans who were conscripted by the British during the revolutionary war, and they played no small part. At times, the Hessians made up a third of the British forces in the area. And as one would expect, these Germans were derided among the Americans.

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They were not popular. So it makes perfect sense to transform one into a headless demon on horseback. Now, how did the horseman lose his head? Oral tradition in Sleepy Hollow has several different origin stories, which also differ from Irving's version. The version that Irving may have heard before writing his story actually involved the ancestors of the Van Tassels, the Van Tassels, whom Irving included in his story.

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Katrina Van Tassel, played by Christina Ricci in the 1999 film, was the love interest of Ichabod Crane. During the American revolution, the Von Tassels were known as patriots, and so they became a target for the British Redcoats. In the middle of one winter night, the Redcoats forced the Von Tassels from their home and burned it to the ground. While the family watched their home burn, the mother Elizabeth was panicked and distressed. Her baby Leah was still inside the house.

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She tried to run back into the burning building, but she was held back by a stern Hessian soldier. And this soldier dragged her kicking and screaming into the woods, but not to harm her. He was there to reunite her with her baby. However, in another version of the story, a Hessian soldier ran into the burning house to drag out a mattress and blankets to keep Elizabeth and Leah from freezing to death in the winter cold. Regardless of which of those versions that you prefer, the ending is the same.

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After the embers died down and the family went to salvage what they could from the rubble, they found the decapitated corpse of the Hessian soldier on their doorstep. He had been executed for disobeying the Redcoats orders by showing mercy to the Von Tassels. Taking pity on him, the Von Tassels buried him. Some say that the Hessian actually died in battle losing his head, and then the Von Tassels recovered his body, and buried it along the eastern boundary of the old Dutch church in an unmarked grave in order to avoid desecration since the Hessians were so deeply hated. And indeed, there is a plaque in the old Dutch cemetery in Sleepy Hollow dedicated to an unnamed Hessian soldier.

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However, it's unknown who this person was, and if they are indeed headless. And it's not clear to me if it's a real burial, or if it's a memorial plaque of some kind. It's widely agreed that the story about the Von Tassels and the Hessian is folk folklore. While the Von Tassels farmhouse did burn down, there was no evidence that they ever assisted in a Hessian's burial, and the story is at odds with other tellings. Irving himself said that the headless horseman was the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war.

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The man is unnamed and even the battle is unnamed. So there's not really a lot to go on there. However, some historians connect the cannonball decapitation story to the battle of White Plains fought on 10/28/1776, which is why I chose October 28 for this episode's release. While it's only been speculated that the battle of White Plains was a source of the headless Hessian, there is one person who claims to have cracked the case for good. Author Christopher Rondina says that he found the name of the Hessian soldier who lost his head to a cannonball, not anywhere in The United States, but by examining records back in Germany.

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And this soldier's name? It was Heinrich Range. Range is said to have died in the very early morning hours of November 1, which means that some of his last moments on earth were on All Hollow's Eve. And this is actually a little bit curious because while the headless horseman has long been associated with Halloween due to modern depictions of him with a jack o lantern for a head, there's no mention of a Halloween connection or death or pumpkin head in Irving's tale. Though it is very much implied that the head that the horseman threw at Ichabod was a pumpkin.

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And spoiler, it was likely Brahm Bones playing a trick on Ichabod. Now, despite Rondina's breakthrough in 2019, it hasn't widely been reported on or adopted as a fact. Now, this could be partly because it's new er, but it's more likely because it remains fairly hidden. Rondino only sells his books on his own website, and his books have no ISBN, so they're self published. And without an ISBN, they're not able to be sold by major retailers or distributors, nor have they been added to any major library catalogs.

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I was not able to find a record for it in WorldCat. But in addition to distribution, another reason might be because no one else has been able to independently verify Rondina's findings. That could be because the records are all the way over in Germany, but there's also the very real possibility that the source is not properly cited in his book. So even if you got to Germany, you wouldn't even know where to begin looking. Now, I was gonna check his citation myself, but sue me.

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I didn't want to drop $30 on a website where some of the font color is the same as the background color, just to be disappointed when it arrives. I can go on seamless and do the same thing for a cold piece of pizza, but I digress. There is also another issue. What would this Hessian killed over in White Plains be doing in Sleepy Hollow to begin with? Some say he was a soldier that helped the Van Tassels, and they recovered his body for the burial at the old Dutch church.

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Except, Range died a year before the Van Tassel's farm ever burned down. But let's not fret too much about these fallacies, because the same issues that plague the headless horseman, well, aside from the part about being headless, befall some of Sleepy Hollow's other famous specters. In his introduction to Sleepy Hollow, Irving mentions a few other ghosts, like the woman in white that haunts Raven Rock. This is another interesting bit of folklore with three different origins. One version allegedly comes from indigenous tradition, though I have my doubts.

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It was said that a Mohawk warrior was trying to capture and force himself upon a native woman. And in trying to protect herself, she jumped off Raven Rock to escape him, and the ravens carried away her spirit. And this is how Raven Rock got its name. The next version, arguably the most famous and the one that Irving based his version off of, tells of a colonial woman who got stuck in a blizzard while gathering firewood, and she died at Raven Rock. Now her shrieking spirit appears before snowstorms to warn travelers so they don't suffer the same frigid fate.

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And finally, the newest version is that a colonial woman fell in love with a British soldier during the revolutionary war. They planned to meet in secret at Raven Rock, but the British soldier never showed, and the woman froze to death. And so now, she warns people about upcoming snowstorms. You you get it. With all these different versions, and the fact that she is the very common trope of a woman in white, local historians agree that the story is probably just folklore.

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Now, another interesting character and apparently famous ghost in Sleepy Hollow is that of Hulda, the witch, who like the Hessian soldier, also has a grave in the old Dutch cemetery. Now I love a witch and some believe her to be the high German doctor that was mentioned in Irving's introduction to Sleepy Hollow who cast a drowsy dreamy influence over the land. Though, that's debated and it is quite the stretch. Legend has it that Holda was a Bohemian immigrant who lived alone in the woods just outside of Sleepy Hollow. She was vilified and demonized by the town folk who regarded her as a witch for using herbs for healing and for being of a different nationality that wasn't Dutch.

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The citizens of Sleepy Hollow were known to be quite insular and xenophobic, So that does kind of track for a place in the middle of New York. Anyways, their opinions changed when Holda showed up with her musket to defend the town from a British invasion, and she was killed in the fight. Having earned the townspeople's respect for her sacrifice, they carried her body back to her cottage in the woods. And once there, they discovered a piece of paper inside her bible with her last wishes, which is kind of nosy, if you ask me. But that piece of paper had directions to a stash of gold that she wished to have distributed among the widows whose husbands had perished in the revolution.

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Now because of Holda's sacrifice, the townspeople decided that they would bury her in the old Dutch church cemetery despite believing her to have been a witch. And so behind the old Dutch church, a weathered headstone now stands. It reads, Hulda of Bohemia, died 1777, herbalist, healer, patriot. Felled by the British while protecting the militia, buried here in gratitude for her sacrifice. Except there's a problem.

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Hulda likely never existed, and the headstone isn't real, or at least it's not authentic. It was placed in 2019. You see, Holda is marketed as a real life character, so it's no surprise people come looking for her grave, which was one of the reasons it was erected in the first place. But there was no evidence to support that Holda ever existed, nor has her ghost ever been seen. Holda's first mention was in Edgar Mayhew Bacon's 1897 book, Chronicles of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.

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Specifically in the myths and legends section, where other fantastical happenings are listed like a ghostly pirate ship and maidens that float down from the sky. Yet her story has been circulated as a historical account. Jim Logan of Sleepy Hollow Country did the hard work of tracing down Holda's evolution. You see, since Bacon's book, Holda's story remained unchanged until a 1954 article added the small little fact that she was fluent in native languages, which would eventually become a sticking point in the coming decades. But this was just a small addition.

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However, the biggest expansion of the story came in 1975 with the publication of the article was Hold a Witch or heroine? By Burle Brown Dorland in the Tarrytown Daily News. This article added many new details unheard of prior to its publication, such as Hulda's apparent skill as a sharpshooter, as well as a whole supporting cast of characters. Dorland's source read this? She claimed that her information came from a local historian named Mabel Cleeland Whitimer.

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But Whitimer wasn't quite a historian. She was a children's book author who wrote fictionalized versions of the lives of famous figures, which now that I'm saying it out loud, is very similar to Captain Philip Babb and his connection to the ocean born Mary House. In Whitimer's book on Irving, he first came to Tarrytown as a young boy, and he became part of his own book where he befriended characters that he would later write about in the legend of Sleepy Hollow. And in this book, a new fictional version of Holda's story is told, and that was Dorlan's source for her article from The Historian. But this article was not the end of Holda's evolution.

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In fact, it was just the beginning. Holda's story got upgraded once again in Jonathan Kruk's 2011 book, Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley. In it, Kruk cites Bacon, Dorland, and other sources for Halta's biographical information. Now in Crux version, she's no longer a Bohemian immigrant, but some manner of native American descent that he wasn't quite clear on. Either she was a native American widow, or she was captured at a young age and raised by a local tribe.

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And this new detail was likely Crook's creative liberty based on the very brief mention in the 1954 article that she was proficient in indigenous languages. Now in Crook's tale, Hilda also has a booming trade business and even takes the redcoats on a dramatic chase away from Sleepy Hollow, not dissimilar to Ichabod and the Headless Horseman's own little race. And Kruk's version was later expanded with two local stage productions, both of which turned Holda into a swashbuckling action hero, in addition to a mystical master of the healing arts. As Jim Logan of Sleepy Hollow Country himself put it, Holda the witch of Sleepy Hollow had pulled off quite the magical feat, transforming from a seven paragraph footnote in an 1897 book into a full fledged local legend with her own headstone at the old Dutch church. And J.

[00:24:40] - [Speaker 0]
W. Auker, author of the New York Rimpendium, was cited as saying, not only have they grabbed onto her, associated a gravestone to her in the old Dutch burying ground, but they turned her into Zena, the warrior princess. Somehow, she single handedly won the American Revolution and is a feminist icon. It's completely not true. And that isn't really debated.

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Holda's place in Bacon's original book suggests she was only ever meant to be a legend. Her story even has a telltale moral lesson. But like Washington Irving's Horseman, it's possible that she may have been based on something or a similar person, but definitely not a witch that lived in a cottage in the woods outside of Sleepy Hollow and took down an entire troop of British soldiers by herself because she was secretly also a sniper. I think it's much more believable that she was a fable that was used to teach the insular and often xenophobic citizens of Sleepy Hollow to be a little bit more accepting of outsiders. But despite her dubious origins, Hold of the Witch has gained immense popularity over the years.

[00:25:45] - [Speaker 0]
Hey, I get it. I love a witch. I am obsessed with every witch. But hey, at least just be honest that she's not real. I love a fictional witch too, but some say that Holda was also a much needed character in the Sleepy Hollow pantheon of ghosts.

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Because as of late, Sleepy Hollow has really leaned in to their spooky reputation and has been in competition with Salem, Massachusetts as a Halloween destination. Though, if you ask Salem, bro, there's no competition. Now, are several reasons why Sleepy Hollow hasn't been able to glom onto this tourist trend like Salem has. For one, it's not a walkable city like Salem. I guess Sleepy Hollow did try and make its square pedestrian only, but it was a nightmare.

[00:26:33] - [Speaker 0]
But another reason is that Sleepy Hollow lacks real ghosts. So despite most, if not all, of Sleepy Hollow's ghost being fully folklore, does that really make them any less real? Because people have claimed to have seen the Headless Horseman. And there's a theory that these sightings are actually due to collective belief, That so many people have read Sleepy Hollow and seen its various adaptions, that so many people believe him to be a real ghost, that he has become one. The belief has created what's called an egregore, or an entity created by the attention and belief of a large group of people.

[00:27:13] - [Speaker 0]
Or because it's me and this is zeitgeist, perhaps the Horseman sightings are more easily explained by the mundane. People go to Sleepy Hollow with preconceived expectations. They saw what they thought was a headless horseman because of these preconceived notions. During Halloween, people do ride around on horseback. But this would also explain why so many reports of the headless horseman came about right after the publication of Washington Irving's book, when people still rode horseback.

[00:27:45] - [Speaker 0]
And this phenomena still happens today. It's similar to how Mothman sightings spiked after the publication of John Keele's Mothman prophecies. Except instead of seeing fellow horseback riders in the dark, people saw sandhill cranes in the dark with their spooky red eyes and their massive size and gigantic wingspan. And yes, I hear you saying, but cranes is not the Mothman. I don't think you understand how big a crane is until one is upon you.

[00:28:16] - [Speaker 0]
I guarantee you can mistake that for the Mothman, and birds are... They're hella scary. Have you ever been chased by a goose? Now that's horror. So while the ghost of Hulda the witch, the white lady, and even Irving's creation, the headless horseman, may not be real.

[00:28:33] - [Speaker 0]
Ironically, the ghost of Washington Irving himself, now his may be real. Maybe. Some believe Irving's spirit haunts his former estate, Sunnyside. After writing Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, Irving was drawn to the area that he wrote so much about. And in 1835, he purchased a rundown old cottage on the East Bank of the Hudson River.

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Irving himself believed the property to be haunted, having seen a woman in his upstairs bedroom which he claimed had died of love and green apples. Don't really know what role the green apples played, but I digress. The Hudson cottage that he bought needed a lot of work. It took Irving nearly twenty years to rehabilitate it. He poured his spirit and soul into the place quite literally.

[00:29:23] - [Speaker 0]
Having said, I really believe that when I die, I shall haunt it. But it will be as a good spirit that no one needs to be afraid of. So it's no surprise that his authorly apparition has been seen there. The most famous sighting of this ghost at Sunnyside was in June 2010 when Rachel Lambert, a 14 year old tourist, took a picture of what looked like a man hunched over with a quill in his hand in the window of Irving's old study. The patch, a local Sleepy Hollow newspaper reported on the sighting.

[00:29:55] - [Speaker 0]
They mentioned the photograph, and they described the photograph. They even mentioned what others who have seen the photograph thought of that photograph. But there is no photograph in that article. So I went on a hunt for it myself, and I found a blog article that embedded a YouTube video that Lambert had made, which included the photograph, but it's been since been made private, and it doesn't look like anyone had the foresight to screen grab the spooky snapshot. So we are here without a ghost photo.

[00:30:27] - [Speaker 0]
How convenient. Maybe it was took down out of embarrassment because in 2010, historic Hudson Valley spokesperson Rob Schweitzer commented that he was unaware of any ghosts at Sunnyside, but that's not true at all. Irving saw one there himself. And only three years after his death, three people at the same time reportedly watched him nonchalantly walking through the parlor and into his library, which honestly isn't too shocking. He seemed to be spending a lot of his afterlife finishing up some research.

[00:31:00] - [Speaker 0]
You see his friend, Joseph Cogswell, the first librarian of the Astor Library in Manhattan was known as a stern skeptic of spiritual specters. Sound familiar? It's like looking in a mirror. But one night, Cogswell spotted Irving's ghost in the library, and he actually approached him, and Cogswell asked what he was doing there. And Irving turned to him and replied that he was just finishing up some research, and he wouldn't be a bother once he was done.

[00:31:28] - [Speaker 0]
He was seen a few more times, and then never seen again. So he must have found what he was looking for and moved on. But back at his Sunnyside estate, Irving isn't alone. Of course, there's a lady with the green apples, but his five nieces are also said to haunt the estate, and they are said to clean up after guests on some nights. Now, you may also hear that the ghost of Irving's first fiance also haunts his estate, keeping watch on the cottage from behind the trees in the orchard.

[00:31:58] - [Speaker 0]
But the historic record would question that a lot. As a young man, Irving was engaged to Matilda Hoffman, who unfortunately passed away of consumption at the age of 17 in eighteen o nine in Manhattan. Irving didn't even write about the Hudson Valley yet nor did Hoffman live in the Hudson Valley. Sunnyside wasn't completed until 1841, well over thirty years after her death. Believers in her ghost say that she haunts Sunnyside because she was Irving's one true love.

[00:32:32] - [Speaker 0]
After all, Irving never married again after her death, and he was very distraught by it. But he didn't get remarried for a lack of trying. He did try and move on, but in the end, perhaps he couldn't and neither could Matilda. But while it's not impossible that her ghost was drawn to Sunnyside in the afterlife, it's a little illogical, even in the incredibly illogical world of ghosts. Ghosts are sometimes seen in multiple places.

[00:33:01] - [Speaker 0]
Sure. You've seen, oh, you know, Lincoln's ghost is seen in this hotel, and this hotel, and this hotel, and this hotel. But a haunting of a place that they've never actually been in their life? It's practically unheard of, unless it makes for a good lore drop on a ghost tour, or it's the result of very bad research, or both in a lot of cases. However, my theory is, if ghosts actually exist, is that the ghost of Matilda is actually the ghost of the woman that Irving had seen in his bedroom.

[00:33:31] - [Speaker 0]
You see, that ghost in recent years has somehow been exiled out of the house and placed in the orchard, perhaps due to her association with apples. And it doesn't seem that far fetched that people would see that ghost in the orchard and say that it would make more sense for this ghost to be his long lost love, because that's so much more of a compelling narrative than an unknown woman who overdosed on Granny Smith's, which I also implore you not to do on Halloween or in general, at least when it comes to the candied and caramel apples. Did you know that those post a huge risk for listeria? Now that is scary. And you know what else has been scary?

[00:34:15] - [Speaker 0]
This spooky season rush. I am exhausted. So you may be wondering, what does this mean for the future of the show? I've decided to continue Zeitgeist in a biweekly cadence, meaning every two weeks, I would literally be a ghost if I tried to do it twice a week. And I'm gonna be doing seasons of 13 episodes with a break of a month or so in between seasons.

[00:34:39] - [Speaker 0]
So this will give me a little bit more time to do more in-depth research and produce episodes without completely burning out, and providing you with the best episodes that I can. And doing this cadence is also going to let me experiment more with the type of content that I create. And remember, you can always watch Psych Ice on YouTube as well. And if you also wanna get a peek into my personal side, you can also follow me on Instagram, TikTok, or my second YouTube channel, which is my vlog channel, all of which I'll link in the description. On the main Psychiace channel, here, I also want to try and do some more spooky related content, graveyard tours, where we can look at old Victorian tombstones because they have their own language.

[00:35:20] - [Speaker 0]
If you don't know about that, it's super cool. And maybe even the dream, honestly, is to do vlogs where I travel someplace, stay in a haunted location, where I can actually do research there, and make actual psych ice episodes about it. I think that would be really cool too. And as always, I'm always taking suggestions on how to improve the podcast and the show. If there's something you don't like about format, something you want me to try, let me know.

[00:35:46] - [Speaker 0]
I am always up to experiment. But thank you so much for sticking with me through this spooky season. I almost lost my head. But y'all stay safe out there and vote. Go and vote.

[00:35:59] - [Speaker 0]
I'll see you in the stacks.