Suspended animation in fiction which is indistinguishable from death. In American fiction, the first story to deal with suspended animation is the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. In the story, a British subject in the American colonies wanders into the Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolutionary War, and finds a group of fairies, whose moonshine he drinks. He then falls asleep for 20 years, and returns to his village in what is now the United States, finding his home town
Washington Irving Memorial northern end of Irvington. Sunnyside Creek, a small tributary of the nearby Hudson River, flows through a culvert underneath and lends a sloping, wooded character to the land behind the memorial. It consists of three parts: a tall central panel high and wide, bronze sculptures of two of Irving's characters, Rip Van Winkle and King Boabdil, flanking a bust of the author on a pedestal. Curved wing walls high and long come out on either side, further extended by of wrought iron fencing. All the stone is pink Vermont granite with dark veins. An inscription carved in the center memorializes