Headless Horseman

English

Cover page to Mayne Reid's version of the legend, published in 1865

Alternative forms

• headless horseman

Proper noun

the Headless Horseman

1. A mythical figure who has appeared in folklore around the world since the Middle Ages, who is traditionally depicted as a man upon horseback who is missing his head.

Derived terms

• Headless Horsewoman

Translations

mythical figure

• Danish: hovedløs rytter c
• Dutch: ruiter zonder hoofd m (chiefly associated with Washington Irving)
• Finnish: päätön ratsumies
• French: cavalier sans tête m
• German: kopfloser Reiter m
• Polish: Jeździec bez głowy m
• Romanian: călăreț fără cap m
• Spanish: jinete sin cabeza m

Noun

Headless Horseman (plural Headless Horsemen)

1. A mythical man (perhaps of several) upon horseback who is missing his head, inspired by the Headless Horseman mythical figure.
   • 2006, Lindsey R. Hall, The Net Warriors, Trafford Publishing, →ISBN:

     The zone is normally the site of the battle with the headless horsemen, where you would have had to kill at least 100 to move on. The horsemen arestill here butarein the orchard picking apple points. We shall be OK providedwe stick to ...

   • 2012, Drac Von Stoller, The Headless Horsemen, Drac Von Stoller, →ISBN:

     The three headless horsemen fired back at the Smith and Wesson brothers killing them. Then the three headless horsemen threw the Smith and Wesson brother's dead bodies on the back of their horses and rode back to the mountain and cut ...

   • 2016, Mark Latham, Hunting the Headless Horseman, The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc, →ISBN, page 36:

     Though the Legend of Sleepy Hollow has remained the most enduring and famous tale of headless horsemen, Irving's research revealed to him that decollated spirits have roamed the earth since ancient times. In each case they appear to be ...

2. (slang) A corpse of a man that is missing the head due to decapitation.
   • 2003, Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, who Dies, and why : True Stories of Miraculous Endurance and Sudden Death, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 39:

     They had dozens of names for different types of corpses—“crispy critters,” “stinkers,” “floaters,” “dunkers,” and “Headless Horsemen,” just to name a few. Butch Farabee, national emergency services coordinator for the National Park ..

   • 2012, Gregg Hurwitz, You're Next, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 83:

     ... of women who'd been murdered in 1980 and unclaimed bodies that had turned up for years after that. He'd become acquainted with a virtual dictionary of shrug-off terms for corpses - floaters, crispy critters, headless horsemen.

   • 2021, Peter James Ford, Mysticism in Newburyport: Mystic Rider, Balboa Press, →ISBN:

     Right around this time another headless body was found, I used to call these bodies they were finding at that time, 'The Headless Horsemen'. Cutting off the heads of suspected informants does send a clear message.

Derived terms

• Headless Horsewoman