Short Stuff: Jack O'Lanterns and Sleepy Hollow

We launch our spooky October episodes with a little bit on Jack O' Lanterns and Sleepy Hollow.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's chucking. Yes, Davis here in spirit. I don't think
I even need to say it. Maybe next time i'll
say it is when Dave's actually here. How about that
he's a disembodied spirit. That's right, chuck, nicely done. Because
this is a Halloween esque, halloween ish, nay Halloween e

(00:25):
short Stuff episode. Yeah, in October, we try and throw
and throw you a couple of bones from the skeleton
dangling from behind you. That's right, nicely so dumb, I know,
I think we explained Jack Lanards at some point. We
didn't know we did. We did a Halloween episode that
we could either redo or re release. That was good. Yeah,

(00:46):
but we definitely talked about Jack Lenerds in that one.
I think, well, we're gonna do it again, okay, uh yeah,
because I don't really recall the story. But the whole
idea of Jack o Lanards is that they're based on
a Irish legend of a man named Stingy Jack who's fascinating,
but you probably wouldn't have wanted to be friends with him. No,

(01:07):
not Stingy Jack, which is how I read it in
my head. Four times until just now when I said
stingy No, I finally figured it out, because it's pretty
obvious where he gets that name. But it was still
very thick headed and saying stingy Jack in my head.
But Stingy well, he was stingy because his legend has it. Uh,

(01:29):
Stingy Jack was hanging around, said the devil comes walking
by and he says, hey, devil, let's go have a
cool one. You could use that. And the devil said, sure,
let's do it. So Stingy Jack at the end of this, uh,
this little drinking sessh says, I'm a little light devil,
I don't have Uh, I forgot my wallet. If you

(01:49):
could help me out here, uh, turn yourself into a
coin so we can pay and get out of here.
So the Devil's like, all right, no harm, no foul,
I'll turn myself into a coin. And then Jack says,
I've got you. I'm gonna put you in my pocket
and I'm going to put you next to that silver
cross and you were just going to stay there as
a little coin. Sorry devil. Yeah. No word on how

(02:11):
he got away without paying the drinks in the first place,
but he got his drinks, and he got to keep
the devil coin. Uh. And then finally the devil's like,
come on, dude, I have things to do. Please let
me out of your pocket. And stingey Jack said, okay,
I'll let you out, but you have to promise not
to bug me for a full year. And the devil said, fine, whatever,

(02:32):
I don't care, and Sol said, you invited me for drinks, right,
He said, well, I didn't realize you're gonna bother me. Um.
So the devil, being a fine upstanding devil, uh, said
I will honor that agreement and left Jack alone. Uh.
Sometime around the next year, Jack got in touch with
this old friend devil, who by this time I had

(02:52):
forgotten that Jack had kept him trapped as a coin
in his pocket. Said hey, you want to hang again?
Devil said sure, And I guess somehow stinge Jack got
it in the devil's head that the devil should climb
a tree and pick him a piece of fruit. And
that didn't go according to plane as far as the
devil's concerned. There did it? No, it didn't, because the
devil climbs up the tree and checks like, I got

(03:12):
you again, devil. Look, I've carved the sign of the
Cross into the tree bark, so you can't come down,
and um, how about this, don't bother me for ten years? Right?
And not only that, if I die, you can't take
my soul. And the Devil's like, good Lord, this guy
really drives a hard bargain. But okay, fine, I'll agree

(03:35):
to all these terms. And not only will I agree
to him, being the devil, a fine upstanding devil that
I am, I will honor these terms. I will not
go back on my word. And he didn't. He didn't
because Sinci Jack died and the devil didn't try to
take his soul. As a matter of fact, wouldn't let
him in Hell, and God wouldn't let him in heaven.
So Cinci Jack was left to roam the earth. That's right.

(03:58):
And if you're wondering what all the us rigamarole has
to do with Jack A Lanard's, he was sent off
in the dark, had, like you said, couldn't go to heaven,
couldn't go to hell, stuck in between, and had a
burning coal to light his way, and he put that
coal into a carved out turn up. And he was
known by the oirish as Jack of the lantern. Yes,

(04:22):
but the Irish never said the word of in their
entire lives, the entire history of the Irish. So that's
where we get Jack a lantern, that's right. Uh. And
that turnip. Depending on where you were in the world
and this legend moved around, that turn up might become
a potato, it might become a beat if you're in
England or or if you're in the United States. One thing,

(04:45):
we have a lot of us pumpkins. Yes, so when
you're carving a Jack o lantern, you're paying homage to
a double dealing satan advantage taking uh Irish guy named
Stingia Jack. Okay, I love it. So there's part one.
We're gonna take a break and we're gonna mix it
up just a little bit and go tangentially. Tangentially that's

(05:09):
absolutely right, Jack Leonard related right after this. Okay, Chuck,

(05:44):
we're back and we're talking about now nothing that has
to do with check. Well, I guess a little bit
like you said, tangentially um one of the better, well
not better, one of the first ghost stories in American history,
I think one of the I mean, there's of course
been a lot of great ghost stories since. But the
legend of Sleepy Hollow is great. It is great. But

(06:06):
if you've read other Washington Irving short stories, he's actually
written much scarier stuff than that. That's a little more
tongue in cheek than some of the other scarier stuff
he's written. All right, fair enough, it's fine though. Uh So,
the legend of Sleepy Hollow concerns the Headless Horseman. And
I think, if you're a kid um, even if all

(06:28):
you ever saw was that Disney cartoon, the idea of
the Headless Horseman is utterly terrifying. Yes, totally, absolutely, one
of the more terrifying figures in American history American lore agreed. Uh.
And it takes place in the real Sleepy Hollow in
Westchester County, New York. And it is about a new
man in town, the sort of lanky, goofy schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane,

(06:52):
who is in love with in courts Katrina or all
thinks he's in love with Katrina von Tassel. Uh. And
when he is rebuff at a party by Katrina, he
that headless horseman appears seemingly out of nowhere and chases
him down. Uh and he vanishes. Yeah, Kabob Crane has
never found or heard from. Um, there's that jack O

(07:13):
Lanard because you know he's he throws that flaming jack
O Lanard in the cartoon right. Well, in the story,
the headless horseman throws his head and connects with Akabod
Crane's head and knocks him off of his horse. And um,
all that's found near the spot the next day is
a smashed pumpkin. So it's not entirely clear whether it

(07:35):
was a headless horseman or somebody playing a prank or whatever.
But um, if it was all in Iikabod Crane's imagination.
But the upshot is is that he was never heard
from again, which is pretty mysterious. Um. The thing that's
so cool about the legend of Sleepy Hollow though, and
what makes it so interesting is that Washington Irving, like
kind of inner wove fact and fiction to come up

(07:56):
with this tail um quite brilliantly. Actually. I think it's
one of the reasons why it is so so creepy
is because you hear like, oh wait, there's a real
town called Sleepy Hollow in New York and stuff like that.
You know, I wonder if you go to sleepy hollow.
If there's a any sort of touristy things you can do, oh,
I would guess. So I wonder what they do. I

(08:17):
don't know, but I guarantee there's a there's a headless horseman. Yeah.
And I'm not sure if it's a thriving tourist industry
but all but it's a pretty respectable tourist industry they
got going on there, especially this time of year. Yeah,
but you're right, he wove a lot of real things
in their real locations. The old Dutch church, um, the churchyard,
Major Andre's Tree. Uh. There may have been a real

(08:41):
Ichabod Crane. I mean there was. We just don't know
if there was any connection. I think the New York
Times said there was a Colonel ichabad B. Crane who
was alive at the same time as Irving, who was
a marine. Uh enlisted in eighteen o nine and served
for forty five years in the Marines. But they really
don't know if they met each other, or if that

(09:01):
name was just sort of a weird coincidence. I don't
think it was a coincidence. Um. Apparently Washington Irving was
a bit of a collector of weird Yankee names. Um,
and one of his stories he mentioned an actual New
Yorker named preserved Fish. But I think they would have
pronounced it preserved fish. But it's preserved fish when you

(09:23):
see it written down. Um, And so they were all.
The other kind of bit of of info that that
connects them is that they were both stationed at Fort Pike,
I believe around the same time. So they may not
have ever met, but um, Washington Irving probably did find
the names, Like I am using that at some point. Yeah,
and he's, uh, you know, there've been stories of headless

(09:45):
horsemen through the years. I think the Grim Brothers, which
we did a pretty great episode on two years ago.
Yea was that a two parter. Well, one was on
the Grim Brothers, the other was on folk Tales in general,
I think yeah, yeah, Um, they wrote about headless horsemen
other writers in other countries. I think, um, in Holland
and I think in Ireland there were other legends of

(10:08):
headless horsemen. So it's definitely something that he you know,
he had his influences. Uh. He was also a friend
of Sir Walter Scott, and in Walter Scott wrote The Chase,
which was really just sort of a adaptation of a
German poem The Wild Huntsman by Gottfried Berger. Uh, and

(10:29):
this was I think there was a headless horseman in
that too, right, Yes, there was. He UM had he
was chased around by the hounds of hell for all
eternity basically, So it wasn't like an entirely new thing.
But one of the things, one of the other things
that makes it so creepy is that Washington Irving took
a piece of actual like history of local New upstate

(10:52):
New York history, UM and used that as the basis
for his headless horseman. He said, it was a Heshian mercenary,
and there were Hessian mercenaries fighting in the Revolutionary War
alongside the English. Wasn't it the English they were fighting with?
I think it was. Yeah. Well, actually they're probably fighting
on either side because they were mercenaries and they didn't

(11:13):
really care. But um, in this case, there was a
Hessian mercenary who, at the Battle of White Plains around
Halloween in seventeen seventy six, got his head taken off
by a cannon ball. And it was such a remarkable,
unlikely event that UM people wrote down in their journals
about this. I can imagine the entire battle stopped and

(11:34):
everybody went over and looked because that was just such
a nuts so thing that happened. But that was an
actual event, and Washington Irving used that as the basis
for his Headless Horsemen. That's right. Uh. And all of
this to say is that maybe one reason why it
was so popular to begin with, because he was weaving
in these stories of folklore that other people had known,

(11:54):
all these real places from the region that people knew
were real places, and that probably made it just a
bit more interesting than your average ghost story for the time. Definitely,
And it is a great ghost story, everybody, So go
read it. Okay, Okay, are you asking me? Okay, I'm
looking for some support here. Yeah, everybody go read it.

(12:16):
Do what Josh says. So, since Chuck said that everybody short,
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