Roundtable

The Rest Is History

A haunted highway, the business of exorcisms, and the Headless Horseman’s original look.

By Angela Serratore

Friday, October 30, 2015

Halloween postcard, c. 1908. Huron County Museum & Historic Jail.

• How early illustrators imagined the Headless Horseman and other characters from Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow (American Antiquarian Society)

• A night at the Lizzie Borden house, site of a notorious—and notoriously unsolved—murder: “Painted a somber dark green with black shutters, the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast looms on Second Street, several blocks from the Taunton River and just off I-195. Its immediate surroundings include the Fall River Justice Center, a housing complex called Borden Place, and blocks of shabby houses, which are occasionally interrupted by crumbling Victorian mansions—glorious and skeletal reminders of a time when Fall River was a booming mill town.” (Pictorial)

• In New York City’s East Village, does the ghost of one of the city’s original Dutch governors haunt the church beneath which he’s buried? (Bowery Boys)

• Is ‘The Ambitious Guest’ Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most frightening story? “Hawthorne is remembered as a moralist—but what, really, is the moral to be drawn from “Guest”? That a cautious traveler should conduct avalanche drills early and often? That bad things happen to (mostly) good people? That none of us knows when death will come, so none should make any plans? That it’s sinful to desire renown, because God will smite you and perhaps some innocent bystanders, too? That it’s wrong to be vain—as is the grandmother, who has already laid aside fancy grave clothes for herself—because no one can choose the expression on his face when God strikes him down? That mountainous nineteenth-century New England was no place to raise a family?” (Paris Review Daily)

• What roles are played by old women in fairy tales? (NPR)

• A trip down New Jersey’s ten-mile stretch of haunted highway: “All around New Jersey, you can mention Clinton Road and people will say, ‘Yes, the haunted road, right?’ And you’ll say yes and ask them what exactly that means to them, and they’ll tell you one of the many stories associated with the place but they'll be vague: A dead child? A cannibal? A gang? A truck? Nobody has many specifics on the road except the aficionados, just an overall sense of its haunting.” (Atlas Obscura)

• A look at the role of demons—and the business of casting them out—in contemporary America: “The insidious influence of Satan has become one of the religious right’s most reliable tools in its war against progressive values, but demons are rarely, if ever, blamed outright for the moral disease that supposedly plagues modern America. Satan is frequently invoked by conservative extremists and blamed for everything from political correctness to feminism, but such dire warnings are almost always framed in the context of demonic influence—an important distinction also frequently made by exorcists—rather than possession.” (Pacific Standard)