The iconic and very unusual folk-literary spook character known simply as the Headless Horseman continues to stir our fancy, and I wanted to return from retirement from CBR for a Coronavirus-quarantine period folk-tale celebrating the offbeat mystical intrigue surrounding the darkness of this very iconic dystopian avatar. Thanks for reading (and enjoy!),





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Desmond Crane wandered into the snowy town of Haddonfield, New Jersey in the years of the Coronavirus tribulation and quarantine. Crane, a graduate of Dartmouth College, was to teach a town online high-school level A.P. English course on the intersections between comparative literature and psychoanalysis, comparing avatar dimensions of classic and neo-classical horror-literature/cinema avatars such as the Headless Horseman and Leatherface to modernized characterizations of self-idealization movies and stories such as Fight Club and I, Robot which were prone to self-improvement imaginations. Mr. Crane wanted to present lessons on the interplay between avatar construction and self-idealization psychology and horror-storytelling psychiatric catharsis, thereby hopefully measuring the legacy of shock-value storytelling invented arguably by Alfred Hitchcock and examining the home-life psychiatric value of modern life-intensive entertainment programs such as American Dad and The Walking Dead. Crane believed the real legacy of the psychiatric lessons of Sigmund Freud who sought to integrate readings with life catharsis was the flowery of self-idealization characterizations in virtual reality experiences, best exemplified in stories and movies and in folk avatars like the Headless Horseman and Leatherface.

CRANE: "The Headless Horseman reminds us there's no real safe nook or cranny in any American neighborhood, requiring us all to be honest about danger."

Desmond Crane's online schoolhouse in Haddonfield (New Jersey) during the Coronavirus quarantine tribulation in the USA became quite popular and esteemed. People/students marveled at the way they were able to and invited to offer their own interpretations of how folk avatars lended themselves to self-identification and self-delusions. This was literature and psychoanalysis magnified through the lens of life daydreams and life psychology. This was the perfect online high-school A.P. level English course for students engaged in the discourse surrounding the immersion of life with folk imagination. Why did horror-cinema and comics become so popular in the USA? Did young Americans appreciate naturally the way outlandish characters/avatars like the Headless Horseman and Leatherface embodied a very American traffic sensibility regarding complete personality diversity and unpredictability? How did horror-stories reflect Americans' views of pluralism/multiculturalism? These were some of the fascinating questions raised by Mr. Desmond Crane's very unusual course on comparative literature and psychoanalysis in Haddonfield.

CRANE: "Every night, while I'm walking to the local grocery store, I get the eerie feeling in the dark mist that I'm being trailed or tracked by an unknown entity!"

Desmond kept this feeling to himself. He lived alone in a rented nice apartment in historic Haddonfield. He taught his lessons from about 9 am to about 4 pm and then spent hours reading and writing some of his own literature-psychoanalysis critiques to publish in online journals for the academic community and high-school teachers' guild now working almost completely online to address the quarantine requirements of the Coronavirus tribulation. Mr. Crane had become a flourishing online educator of literature and psychology in America. Haddonfield had become his quaint hometown. However, Desmond Crane had this very unnerving feeling that he was being tracked or even stalked arguably by the haunting presence of an unknown or perhaps even unidentified specter. He decided to keep this latter strange feeling completely to himself just to avoid noise and scandal. After all, he'd been fully established already as a well salary earning American online schoolteacher. Why make waves now without evidence of any criminal danger?

CRANE: "I had no idea I had to go to the grocery store late tonight, and hopefully tonight will not be as spooky as the night last week when I saw a silhouette of a ghost."

This was the final diary entry of schoolteacher Desmond Crane before he was mysteriously killed or just vanished from historic Haddonfield. That night, Mr. Crane finished up his lessons for the day and went to work online for some of his own literature-psychology publications and research, which took much longer than he'd expected. Desmond Crane realized to his fear that he'd have to walk to the grocery store rather late that night, at about 10 pm, and he walked briskly according to the two witnesses of Haddonfield who saw him that night, the last folks who saw him alive or around in the iconic town. However, one witness, an extra watcher, who happened to be a wandering street-artist who noticed Crane run into an alley, swore he heard the sounds of a man on a horse but with only a very ambiguous silhouette, and he claimed the silhouette was of a man without any head on his shoulders! Was Desmond Crane chased into the alley in that town and then killed or somehow abducted into oblivion by the dismal specter of the Headless Horseman himself, a dark demigod Mr. Crane had written and taught so much about to young detectives and distinguished detectives alike?

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)


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