Halloween in Sleepy Hollow

The Sleepy Hollow cemetery walking tours are a spooky Halloween activity if you love hearing real scary stories by lantern light!

There is no better place to spend Halloween than in Sleepy Hollow, New York. We all know The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the Headless Horseman, they are Halloween staples! You can go to an old Dutch church for a story-telling of the Legend. You can also go to the Horseman’s Hollow (a terrifying haunted trail that leads to the horseman IRL). But did you know there are other fun events in the area for the month of October and even through November?

The Sleepy Hollow cemetery.

It’s SPOOKY.

Washington Irving and Andrew Carnegie are buried here along with Elizabeth Arden, Walter Chrysler, and other artists, politicians, and millionaires. The cemetery has day tours and night tours, which take you to most of the popular grave sites. But, we did something different and MUCH creeper for a pre-Halloween, fall night.

THE MURDER AND MAYHEM LANTERN TOUR

Murder? Mayhem?? Um, yes please. As you start the tour, you are brought to an area where all of the lit kerosene lanterns are located and every couple gets one as one of the only light sources to guide you as you get lost in the cemetery. Between the lanterns, the half moon, and you know, being in a cemetery, it really sets the stage for a haunting night!

So on this tour, we only visit the final resting places of the wicked! The murderers and con artists of the past. There are tales of massacre, suicide, homicide, as well as just mean people who got their karma. I don’t want to spoil the stories that you will hear, but one in particular got under my skin! A Columbia University engineer woke up in the middle of the night to massacre his whole family with an axe and then proceeded to kill himself…in the most gruesome way…you have to hear it to believe it! Scariest part? I felt a ghostly presence around me during certain parts of the stories being told…