It's late at night and you're one of the last guests left in attendance at the party of
a wealthy farmer in upstate New York.
You dance and merrymake with the best of them, but as the hour grows late, you decide it's
time to head for home.
You head to your car and hop in, not looking forward to the long drive through the dark,
foreboding woods.
To make matters worse, the locals have spent all night filling your head with ghost stories
about the various spooks who haunt these woods.
One of those tales however stood head and shoulders above the rest- or maybe just shoulders.
That's the legend of the Headless Horseman, a shadowy figure who is said to be the ghost
of a dead Revolutionary War soldier.
The Horseman haunts these backwood roads late at night, and mercilessly pursues any who
cross his path.
But that's just superstition, you say to yourself, as you cruise along in your car, the headlights
barely cutting into the oppressive darkness ahead of you.
Then suddenly, you hear a faint sound from somewhere outside your car.
It sounds like... nah, it couldn't be... why, it sounds like horse hooves!
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, the sound is faint, distant, but growing nearer.
You look at the speedometer and you tell yourself there's no way that a horse could catch up
to you going 45 miles an hour.
Then an icy chill races down your spine, because no normal horse could manage the feat... but
perhaps a horse being ridden by a headless horseman could!
That's when you look up into the rearview mirror, and sure enough, there he is, black
cloak whipping in the wind behind him, his horse's eyes burning red as the fires of hell
itself- it's the headless horseman, and he's coming for you!
So you ignored the warnings of a bunch of dumb hick farmers and now have tread upon
ground sacred to a ghostly headless apparition who wants nothing more than to eat your soul...
or actually, we're not sure what the headless horseman wants really, but it can't be anything
good.
How are you going to defeat it?!
Most Americans are well acquainted with the tale of the headless horseman thanks to The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a short story written by author Washington Irving.
In the story, the Horseman is alleged to be the spirit of a dead Hessian soldier, who
now takes his revenge on the living for the loss of his head.
Curiously enough, in the original story it becomes quite clear that the horseman is simply
a myth, and a cover for a local man who was in contest with the story's protagonist for
the hand of a woman to marry.
The local man simply posed as the headless horseman to terrify his competitor away, and
it worked too.
Americans may be surprised to discover though that the headless horseman does not have his
origins in the famous short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which kind of makes sense
as horses and, well, horsemen, have been around for thousands of years.
It's inevitable that someone else would have thought of a spooky story involving a headless
horseman.
The Irish for example have a demonic fairy they call the Dullahan, or dark man, who is
a headless figure who carries his head tucked under his arm.
The Dullahan however is about a thousand times more metal than the American headless horseman,
as he also carries a whip made from the spine of a human corpse, which is our favorite type
of whip.
The headless rider gallops along in perpetuity, only stopping to call out a single name.
In that instant the named person dies, and the rider rides on.
The Scottish also tell tales of a similar figure, although theirs is a bonafide apparition
more in line with the American version.
In their tales the horseman is a man named Ewen who lost his head in a duel over leadership
of his clan.
Angered by the loss of his head and his clan both, Ewen now rides a headless horse and
haunts the Isle of Mull.
Not to be left out of the headless horseman club, the English have their own version of
the headless horseman, though theirs harkens back to the same myths from which sprung the
legendary King Arthur.
In the Arthurian story, King Arthur is throwing a feast on New Year's Day when suddenly a
giant of a man dressed entirely in green and riding a green horse rides into the middle
of the feast.
He challenges all of the assembled knights to a game- brandishing a beautiful axe, he
asks that any knight strike him once with the axe, on the condition that in a year and
a day the Green Knight may return the blow.
Weird game, we know, but this was back before cell phones and playstation, just a bunch
of people, living in the moment, challenging each other to decapitation contests.
None of the knights are brave enough to accept the challenge though, and Arthur prepares
to accept himself when Sir Gawain begs for the honor.
Arthur agrees, and with one swift chop, Gawain decapitates the Green Knight.
Unfazed by losing his head, the Green Knight picks up his decapitated head and reminds
Gawain of his vow to meet in a year and a day so the knight can return the blow.
Initially his courage falters, but as the date approaches Gawain resolves himself to
meet the Green Knight and receive his blow as he agreed to.
He discovers a castle near where he is to meet the Green Knight, and while staying with
the lord and lady of the castle, the lord proposes a bargain.
Each day the lord will give Gawain what he catches on his daily hunting trip, if Gawain
gives the lord whatever he gains during the day while the lord is gone.
Gawain agrees to the bargain, and when the lord leaves his castle, his beautiful wife
attempts to seduce Gawain.
Gawain however acts honorably and rebuffs her advances, at last yielding to a single
kiss on the cheek.
When the lord returns, Gawain receives the deer the lord hunted, and the lord receives
a kiss on the cheek from Gawain.
The second and third day play out the same way, though on the third day the lady offers
Gawain a gold ring, which he declines.
She begs him to at least take a green sash that she wears, which she assures him is enchanted
and will protect him from physical harm.
Gawain agrees, and when the lord returns that night Gawain keeps the sash a secret.
The next day Gawain rides forth to meet the Green Knight, who is waiting for him as promised.
Gawain presents his neck, and the Green Knight brings his axe down upon it, though it causes
only a slight wound thanks to the enchanted sash.
Gawain reveals the trickery, ashamed of himself, but the Green Knight laughs and removes his
helmet, revealing himself to be the lord of the castle.
He reassures Gawain that just the fact that he showed up to meet certain death and acted
honorably with his wife made him the most gallant knight in the land, and then reveals
that the entire headless horseman thing was just a ploy by Arthur's evil sister Morgan
le Fay to give Lady Guinevere a heart attack, because medieval stories are bonkers crazy.
So we've got four different horsemen, and you're running for your life from a ghostly
apparition who definitely wants to remove you from your own head.
How are you going to defeat the Headless Horseman?
First, we don't have time to figure out which headless horseman you're dealing with, so
we're going to hedge our bets and try to defeat all of them.
We'll start with the possibility of this horseman being of the American variety, which means
you're dealing with a long-dead Hessian mercenary soldier who was hired by the British to try
and defeat the American revolutionaries.
If you yourself are American, then rest assured that this headless Hessian horseman- say that
three times fast- is not going to be taking kindly to you, as it was an American cannonball
that knocked his head clean off in the first place.
His fellow soldiers couldn't be bothered to pick up the pieces of his head and simply
buried him without it.
As with any spirit, the best way to defeat the headless horseman, is to bring it peace.
In this case, you're going to have to go to White Plains, New York, and start digging
around Revolutionary War battlefields for the pieces of the horseman's missing head.
Now taking a cannonball to the face at high speed is not going to leave much behind but
fragments, so you're going to need patience and some superglue as you piece together a
skull jigsaw puzzle- but once you've got the skull complete, or at least most of it, offering
it to the spirit should bring it some peace, and you, a reprieve from certain death.
But what if your headless horseman is of the Irish variety?
Well, lucky for you Irish demonic fairies have a strong allergy to precious metals,
and in this case: gold.
Wearing a gold trinket will protect you from the attacks of the dullahan, and in fact just
putting gold in the path of a rampaging dullahan is enough to stop it dead in its tracks- pun
intended.
But we don't want to stop this demon fairy, we want to destroy it, and for that we're
going to visit any of several online retailers who offer- what else- gold bullets.
That's right, bonafide golden bullets, for when you want to kill someone but stay classy
about it.
Offering a variety of calibers, it's a dealer's choice of golden death, but one shot should
be enough to put the dullahan down for good.
If however your headless horseman turns out to be of Scottish origin, then things aren't
going to be that simple.
This ghost is angry at having lost his head and his tribe, and sadly for you- and the
spirit- both of those things no longer exist.
Whatever tribe he belonged to is long dead, or absorbed into greater Scottish society,
and finding the head of a 1500 year old ghost is going to be impossible, as there's likely
nothing but dust left.
Instead, you're going to book your angry headless horseman ghost an appointment with the nearest
therapist, because there's clearly some deep-seated anger issues to sort out here.
After a few weeks of self-affirming therapy, your ghost will no longer be angry, and come
to terms with having lost both head and clan.
Satisfied that things will be ok, your headless horseman will move on peacefully to the after
life.
Thanks, therapy!
But what if you're up against the Arthurian Green Knight, with the magical power to lose
his head and simply reattach it later?
Well, you could try Gawain's route and simply be honorable about it, perhaps offer your
head and the Green Knight will think you too are gallant and noble and spare your life.
If not, then remember- the Green Knight may be able to reattach his head when decapitated,
but you can't reattach what's been turned into a fine carbon mist.
We've featured this item on our You Versus series before, and mostly because it's honestly
a pretty great solution to pretty much any evil baddie you come across.
The XL18 Flamethrower is a budget flamethrower with a not-so-budget flame.
At just under three thousand dollars, the XL18 has a range of over 110 feet (34 meters)
and spews a flame several hundred degrees hot.
Best of all, it can be fired with just about any liquid fuel, or you can even fire it using
napalm!
Oh, and you don't need any sort of firearm license or other special licensing to purchase
one, which is pretty much 100% insane, but good for you!
You've got a headless immortal knight to turn to carbon ash after all, you don't got time
for public welfare and safety.
There you go, you did it.
You defeated your headless horseman, no matter what his origins.
And if yours was of the English variety you also got a kick ass flamethrower out of it.
Now all that's left to do is kick back and enjoy your Halloween season in peace, knowing
that if any evil baddies come knocking again, you've got a freaking napalm launching flamethrower
to knock back with.
How would you defeat the headless horseman?
What other evil creature do you want to see us tackle in our You Versus series?
Let us know in the comments and on our website!
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