For me I got an old book of short stories from my library. And a rather spooky story was by America's first great author, Washington Irving himself. My parents used to read it to me as a child.
But not on the Headless Horseman this time. I have yet to read that.
It was Tom Walker and the Devil.
A fun but chilling story about a greedy SOB Tom and him selling his soul to the devil to become rich. I love the references to history like William Kidd and some details like Native burial grounds. But of course Tom didn't want to be too bad to be a slave trader he just wanted to be a loan shark. So he's totally fine right? ||He was not||
I remember though as a kid reading him, and he always had fun stories to tell.
Although looking at the short stories, the early 1800s and later 1800s stories and comparing them, early 1800s writers loved the narrator and the characters seemed to not talk as much. Also the paragraphs were really long.
I'm sure in the modern day of brevity people prefer characters to speak and the narrator to not talk too much. And perhaps to show not tell more. But I still love these tales.