Phantasmal ruralism: A terror of folk ecology in Washington Irving's 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'.

This article analyzes Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as a nineteenth-century American folk horror narrative that portrays rural nature and provincial people as a fearful collective shaped by their environment. Through an ecocritical lens and comparison with Tim Burton’s 1999 film adaptation, the study argues that supernatural beliefs in the story arise partly from the perceived cultural and physical separation of rural areas from urban centers. Key rural sites—the schoolhouse, Van Tassel farmhouse, and church—are examined to show how the merging of people, objects, and landscape fosters a haunting ecology that both reflects and amplifies social anxieties about rural life. The article also discusses how the story’s rural-urban dichotomy, while reinforcing stereotypes of rural folk, ultimately reveals the instability of such boundaries amid environmental change and development.