Never has Sleepy Hollow been so popular.
Salisburians were disappointed when the group producing the “Sleepy Hollow” series for Fox TV chose Wilmington over Salisbury for its location. Imagine being Tarrytown, N.Y., which changed its name to Sleepy Hollow in 1996. Washington Irving set his scary short story in the New York village, making it the real deal, but an Illinois town named Sleepy Hollow seems to get the most mileage out of the legend. The town draws visitors with Headless Horseman rides, bonfires and other Halloween hoopla. “Having a town mascot with no head is pretty special out here,” one organizer told a reporter with The Wall Street Journal recently. Marketing trumps authenticity in this case. Or, as P.T. Barnum once put it, “Without promotion, something terrible happens — nothing!”