A Ghostly Imagination

In Washington Irving’s story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Ichabod Crane attends an autumnal harvest feast, where he listens to local townspeople recounting ghost stories. Later that night, on his fateful ride home, he encounters the Headless Horseman. The ending of the story is left open to interpretation: Is the Headless Horseman a ghoulish spirit, or is it actually Crane’s rival in love, dressed in disguise and further exaggerated by Crane’s haunted, overactive imagination? Write a ghost story in which you play with this ambiguity between the mundane and the supernatural, perhaps manipulating the observations and emotions of your main character, the stability of the story’s setting, or the sequence of events that unfolds. How does blurring the lines between human folly and otherworld menace imbue your storytelling with a sense of dread or horror?