Short Stories, Romance Elementary | 1 100 slov Two dark comedies with ghost/mystery themes which are set around the period of the American War of Independence. Ichabod Crane is the hero of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Peculiar-looking and socially inept, this schoolmaster is a joke to the people of Sleepy Hollow as he tries to win the love of the beautiful daughter of a rich farmer. In The Legend of Rip Van Winkle the hero of the title is well-meaning and kind but inherently lazy. To escape the constant nagging of his wife, he leaves his house one day to go hunting in the Catskill Mountains with his dog and his gun. There he falls asleep, only to wake twenty years later to an utterly different world.