Recently, TikToker Liz Cooper (@literallylizzi) received a story submission from someone who lived in Sleepy Hollow, New York, one of the most famous haunted towns in the United States. When she was a kid, it was called North Tarrytown.
She claims to have been stalked by a headless entity throughout her entire life. During her childhood, her grandmother lived two houses down from her and always had strict rules for the kids: no playing outside after dark in October, and be home before the sun set and the woods got quiet.
She always thought it was just superstitions from an old woman. One day, she and her cousin Danny decided to push the boundaries. They were walking on a familiar path through the woods at around 7:30 p.m. when something strange happened in the woods.
“There really wasn’t any wind moving the leaves, no distant traffic hum from the main road,” narrated Liz. “It was like someone had put the entire forest on mute.”
“Danny grabbed my arm, and neither of us said anything until we heard footsteps behind us, not running, not scrambling, but walking slow, deliberate, and heavy.”
The footsteps stopped when they stopped. The footsteps stayed the same distance away, no matter how quickly she and her cousin moved.
Their instincts told them not to turn around. They just ran until they broke out of the trees and were illuminated by the glow of the streetlights.
The second that their feet touched the pavement, the sound of footsteps behind them vanished. They didn’t talk the whole way home.
When they walked through the door of their grandmother’s house, she simply stated that she had told them not to stay out after dark and went back to her knitting.
For years after this incident, nothing else happened. By then, she had convinced herself that she and Danny had worked themselves into a panic in the dark. When she turned 16, she started driving through the woods alone at night.
Around midnight, she was driving home from a friend’s place on a back road. When she checked her rearview mirror, she saw a tall figure standing in the middle of the road far behind her.
The figure appeared to be wearing a long, dark coat. She couldn’t see its face because the figure had no head. She slammed on the brakes in surprise. When she turned her head to look back, the figure was gone, and the road was empty.
Years later, in her thirties, she had moved two hours away for work and had mostly stopped thinking about the strange occurrences in Sleepy Hollow.
Then, one October, she returned to visit her parents for the weekend. She stayed later than she meant to and finally headed out at 11:00 p.m.
“About 15 minutes out of town, still on familiar roads, I noticed something on the side of my mirror,” said Liz. “At first glance, it looked like another car with its headlights on, keeping pace at a good distance behind me.”
“Except it never got closer, and it never fell back. I sped up, and it matched me exactly, staying at the same distance behind, no matter how much I accelerated.”
When another car rounded the bend from the opposite direction, whatever was behind her completely disappeared. It was a straight road, so it couldn’t have turned off anywhere.
A few weeks later, her grandmother passed away at the age of 91. The family spent the weekend cleaning out her grandmother’s house. She ended up finding a journal from the 1950s in the attic.
She read the journal and discovered pages, spanning nearly 20 years, describing “the rider.” Apparently, her grandmother had witnessed the ghost on three separate occasions. After that, she became much more diligent about being home before dark.
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By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
