Childhood memory of watching Disney's Sleepy Hollow

Everyone remembers the cartoon short Sleepy Hollow, right? With Bing Cosby narrating the cartoon? Anyway, I was just on authonomy and one of threads there was asking which one Disney character's do you most relate too. To make a long story short, I said that I was related to Ichabod Crane and with Happy on Snow White. Someone returned a comment about how the cartoon used to scare them when they were a child. In reply I told them this story of what happened to me when I was a kid. Keep in mind, I was like this person, It scared me too.

There's this place a few miles away from where I live and looks exactly the same way as the story of Sleepy Hollow is described, minus an old creepy bridge that was at least a hundred yrs. old. It was rebuilt 11 yrs. ago. Anyway a few days after watching the show, me and my dad were out late one night (Please no monster mash singing) and we were passing through the area. I had some how managed to scare myself and I was seeing things that were not there. During this paranoid state, I seen something fiery red flash as we passed by. My mind immediately went to Sleepy hollow and the headless Horseman. I thought we were going to be his next victims to be be-headed. So I urged my dad to start speeding up. By this time he was having a blast because he knew what I saw but kept quiet. By this time I was full on hearing things and kept on looking behind us, certain that the headless horseman was right behind us. I could have sworn I was hearing horse hoofs hitting the ground behind us in the forest.

This old bridge was over the river and in the legend the headless horseman couldn't cross running water or a covered bridge and we were coming up to it. So i grabbed by dad by the neck collar and told him to hurry it up. Which I might add was not the right thing to do when someone is driving, especially when that person was your dad. :( As soon I we crossed that bridge, I felt a huge sigh of relief come over me. I knew then that we were safe from the horseman. I looked back and I could have sworn I seen the horseman on the over side of the old bridge, not doubt cussing because we escaped.

Looking back on it now, I laugh at the memory because of how easily scared I was and having an over active imagination didn't help matters much. what I did see was nothing but an old emergency flashlight from the forties that had been discarded by my great uncle when it broke. As for the hooves hitting the ground, was my own heart beat speeding in my ears and as for the image of the horseman standing on the other side of the bridge was my over active imagination taking shape. But know this, years later, I did find out that the area we traveled through was indeed haunted but it wasn't by no headless horseman. Of course this is a story for another time and another place. :)