In a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane, an extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, competes with Abraham Van Brunt, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel. As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman. The Headless Horseman, is said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball, and "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head", though the story implies that the Horseman was really Brom in disguise.