he Headless Horseman captures the imagination like nothing else at Halloween. Regional American history and urban legend influences the interpretation of this apparition more than supposed.
Contemporary life is full of folklore, including urban legends, those odd, funny, or scary stories suited to the times and places we live in.
In a daring act, facing frightful peril, Mark Twain exploited a legend to launch his onstage comic career. With his future as a lecturer on a knife’s edge, Twain decided to open with a worn-out narrative that had seen better days. A disgruntled audience nearly drove him from the stage … until they understood his brilliant manipulation of their own folklore.
Relentlessly sunny and known for a love of trend over tradition, Los Angeles is an unlikely home to a new incarnation of the old Alpine devil. It helps, perhaps, that make-believe is serious business in my town, and that it’s filled with creative people prone to see in an old tradition of folk Catholicism a revolutionary way to shake up the holidays.
G. H. Finn reviews Adam Scovell’s excellent new book: Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange.
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