The classic “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, complete with a headless horseman, will come to life again during Conner Prairie’s annual Headless Horseman Festival.
The fall event is set for every Thursday through Sunday in October at Conner Prairie, 13400 Allisonville Rd., Fishers.
Holly Pasquinelli is marketing director for Conner Prairie. She said the popular Headless Horseman hayride — the “keynote” of the festival — has been updated to provide an even better experience for visitors.
She said it had gotten to the point where people could predict what was going to happen and when during the hayride.
“They knew each little part of the hayride,” she said. “Now, it’s going to be a little bit different and new for everyone. It really is leaning into the story of Ichabod Crane and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’ too. So, guests will see that story play throughout the entire hayride.”
The classic ghost story, written in 1820, is set in 1790 in a Dutch settlement in New York. A superstitious schoolteacher named Ichabod Crane, riding home after a party, is chased by a headless horseman carrying his head on his saddle. The horseman eventually throws the head at Crane, knocking him from his horse, and Crane is never heard from again.
Pasquinelli said that previously, visitors would hear the story while waiting to get onto the hayride, but the ride itself was primarily about an encounter with the headless horseman. This year, she said, there will be other elements from the story during the hayride, including the party scene and some narration during the ride.
The nonprofit museum also has added more early hayrides to the schedule, so kids and others who are more easily spooked can enjoy the experience with the comfort of daylight.
“We always see those daytime hayrides fill up very quickly for people with small children who are not sure if they want to do it when it’s dark,” she said. “We’re excited to open an hour early to provide more of those daytime hayrides and just more festival time in general.”
The festival also includes two corn mazes — the scary one and a not-so-scary option — a dry-tube ride on the sledding hill, a Sleepy Hollow one-man storytelling show, marionette performance, magician and live music.
Pasquinelli said there will be other updates to the festival this year with some expanded and new offerings.
“The midway experience will be completely different for folks,” she said. “We will have two carnival rides — we know that people love the spinning apples, so we got a second one. But we’re really excited to invite the Curious Life to Connor Prairie.”
Curious Life is a group of artists who have been working with Conner Prairie to create a new interactive exhibit at the museum’s Experience Center, which is still under construction. To introduce their work to the community, Pasquinelli said the group will have a “Haunted Studio” experience during the Headless Horseman Festival.
“It’s going to really play into shadow play,” she said of the Haunted Studio. “They have some films that they’ve created, so they’ll be airing those. There’ll be some pumpkin painting with them. And they are really big into collaborative art, so it’s just going to be a lot of those art invitations for people to come sit down, create whatever they want to out of the materials provided. They’re really good at engaging guests and our education department works closely with them, so it’s going to be kind of a fun, shadow-and-light, watch-the-movie, do-some-different-artwork (experience).”
Also updated this year is the barrel-train ride, which will take visitors through a singing pumpkin patch.
“We have these pumpkins and then projected onto them are little faces and they’ll be singing,” Pasquinelli said. “The tractor will go through for the kids to see. Before, it was kind of to the side and there were some visuals. This will be a whole experience. And it’ll also be kind of a photo opportunity, too, to get in front of the singing pumpkins.”
For more and to reserve tickets, visit connerprairie.org/explore/things-to-do/headless-horseman.
Artscape coming to Conner Prairie
Conner Prairie is in the middle of remodeling what was its welcome center into the museum’s Experience Center. Part of that transformation is a new interactive art installation — an artscape.
Conner Prairie Marketing Director Holly Pasquinelli said the artscape, created with art collaborative group Curious Life, is called “Wellspring.”
“This is their first project in the Midwest,” she said of the group. “It really highlights the land, the people who were here long before us and the animals who call this place home. It’s going to have a giant sycamore tree that they are creating in the middle of this artscape and little huts underground that people can go in. It’s going to be really incredible and really different than what anyone has ever experienced at Conner Prairie before.”
For more, visit ourwellspring.com.