Headless Horseman
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The Headless Horseman was purported to have been the malevolent ghost of a Hessian soldier—possibly Gerhard von Stantten—who roamed the village of Sleepy Hollow, New York on horseback with a pumpkin in place of his head. Though reputed to have been a casualty of the American Revolutionary War,[1] the phantom was apparently encountered by the Templar Shay Cormac during the French and Indian War at night near the village's Old Dutch Church. Decades later, the Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton investigated reports of mass murders committed by the Headless Horseman and managed to catch a glimpse of him from afar. Despite the brevity of the sighting, he concluded that the Headless Horseman was nothing more than a mortal man.
History
During the French and Indian War, the Templar Shay Cormac encountered a tombstone conspicuously mounted with a large pumpkin in the graveyard of the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow. Later that night, he was beset by a headless grenadier wielding a naval axe. Forced to fend for his life, he fought the phantom but found him invincible. Only upon firing his pistol at the pumpkin at the grenadier's grave was he able to dispel the spirit.[2]
Decades later in the midst of the American Revolution, the British colonial frontiersman Daniel Boone shared with his friend, the Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton, the legend of the Headless Horseman which he found widespread throughout the United States as far as Kentucky. According to the ghost story, the Headless Horseman was a Hessian mercenary whose his head had been blown off by a cannonball. In Boone's telling, the Hessian did not perish, but rather persists as a headless man chasing down innocents on horseback around the battlefield in search for his lost head. In the meantime, he wears a pumpkin as a substitute for his head and decapitates passerbys as though to vainly adopt their heads for his own. Although Boone himself had never seen the horseman, he claimed to have found the headless corpses he left behind.[3]
Ratonhnhaké:ton subsequently took it upon himself to investigate these rumors. Searching in the Frontier, he eventually came upon a slew of headless bodies, just as Boone had reported. It was at that moment that he heard the maniac laughter of a horseman from afar, wearing a jack-o'-lantern. Rather than attacking the Assassin, the rider rode away. Though Ratonhnhaké:ton had caught but a glimpse of the horseman, he recorded in his journal that the character was nothing more than a man, a mass murderer whose modus operandi involved beheading his victims and collecting their heads.[3]
In 2012, Abstergo Entertainment, a public front for the Templar Order, used the genetic memories of a German soldier from the American Revolutionary War as an avatar for their Animus game console under the title "the Hessian". The hacker collective Erudito, in unveiling the truth behind each of the avatars, postulated that von Stantten was the true identity of the Headless Horseman encountered by Ratonhnnhaké:ton. Aside from his Hessian origins, von Stantten was actually a psychopathic Templar hailed as an "unstoppable killing machine" by Abstergo.[4]
Appearances
- Assassin's Creed III (first appearance)
- Assassin's Creed: Rogue]
References
- ↑ The database entry "The Headless Horseman" in Assassin's Creed III does not explicitly place the war in which the man fell as the American Revolutionary War. However, not only is this is the popular setting in the real-life folktale, but he is cited as a Hessian, which historically among the colonial wars of North America, only served in the American Revolutionary War and were absent from the French and Indian War when Shay Cormac encounters him. In addition, Gerhard von Stantten, the Animi Avatar theorized by Erudito to have been the identity of the Headless Horseman himself, is described as having served in the American Revolutionary War.
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Rogue
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Assassin's Creed III
- ↑ Assassin's Creed III – Multiplayer