Certainly we are all familiar with Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” but the concept of headless phantoms has been around longer than Irving’s famous 1890 tale.
The folklore used there was based on the Dullahan (Dah-hool), a kind of headless fairy phantom. This creature was said to drive a black funeral coach, usually drawn by black headless horses. Sometimes the phantom driver would be seen carrying his head, smiling from ear to ear. Or the severed head might be tied to the saddle. Certain versions of these phantom spirits have them driving a funeral coach made of human thigh bones and pulled by six black horses with fleshless skulls and burning candles in their eye sockets.
Anyone who even glimpsed a phantom death coach would be struck blind. The Dullahan could also bring disease and death to a community, or simply fling blood on an unsuspecting victim. Different versions of the death coach were found in Medieval England and Wales. This time the deadly transport accompanied a banshee’s wail. The phantom coach was said to descend from the night sky (like the Wild Hunt of Northern European folklore), drawn by a black horse. The death coach may be based on the earlier concept of Charon, that shady figure of Greek mythology who ferried the dead.
Japanese folklore featured a headless ghoul called the Kubikajiri. This was a jealous spirit who got even by eating the heads of both the living and the dead. If a person was unfortunate enough to see one, well, they just might become its next victim.
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