The interest of a story like 'Sleepy Hollow', though, is less in its anguishing over American possibility and European tradition, than its excellence as a ghost story. The atmosphere in the story, caught through nature description, suggestion, and the careful build up of stories, rumours and hints, is compellingly tangible. Ichabod Crane is an amiably unattractive hero, grotesque, brutal and greedy, his appetite for terror is his most endearing quality. The terrifying climax is wonderfully achieved, and if the resulting bathos and loss of ambiguity irritates, than Irving's surprisingly palatable (in small doses) style compensates. The movie (dare I say it) is much richer though.