The original Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is an historical, yet active, cemetery. There are still burial lots available in this most hallowed ground and a new community mausoleum being constructed. However, perhaps you are more curious about The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?

Afternoon tours

Guided tours: Daytime tours on October 4 and 11. Meet in the parking area next to the Old Dutch Church at 2 pm. Advanced reservations required, $15. 914-631-0081 or tours@sleepyhollowcemetery.org.

Evening tours

Guided tours: Evening lantern tours on Saturdays July 19, August 2; October 18 and 25; November 1. It's always more fun in the dark! Cemetery historian Jim Logan leads evening lantern tours of the historic heart of the cemetery. After paying respects to Washington Irving, author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," we visit a Revolutionary War general, the cemetery's Revolutionary War and Civil War monuments, an infamous suicide, a notorious counterfeiter, a soaring gothic monument of a wealthy merchant, several artists, industrialists Andrew Carnegie and William Rockefeller, and others. Evening tours cover over a mile on foot. Meet in the parking area next to the Old Dutch Church (at 8:30 pm, July 19, August 2; at 7 pm on October and November dates). Advanced reservations required, $20. 914-631-0081 or tours@sleepyhollowcemetery.org.

Schedule your own custom tour: email us at tours@sleepyhollowcemetery.org. We can accomodate groups of up to 100 during the day, and up to 25 after dark.

The following is a letter from Washington Irving to Gaylord Clark, then editor of Knickerbocker Magazine.
My Dear Clark:

I send you herewith a plan of a rural cemetery projected by some of the worthies of Tarrytown, on the woody hills adjacent to the Sleepy Hollow Church. I have no pecuniary interest in it, yet I hope it may succeed, as it will keep that beautiful and umbrageous neighborhood sacred from the anti-poetical and all-leveling axe. Besides, I trust that I shall one day lay my bones there. The projectors are plain matter-of-fact men, but are already, I believe, aware of the blunder which they have committed in naming it the “Tarrytown,” instead of the “Sleepy Hollow” Cemetery. The latter name would have been enough of itself to secure the patronage of all desirous of sleeping quietly in their graves.

I beg you to correct this oversight, should you, as I trust you will, notice this sepulchral enterprise.

I hope as the spring opens you will accompany me in one of my brief visits to Sunnyside, when we will make another trip to Sleepy Hollow, and (thunder and lightning permitting) have a colloquy among the tombs.

Yours, very truly,
Washington Irving
New York, April 27, 1849