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
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Van Tassel was based on an actual young woman named Katrina Van Tassel. Washington Irving stayed with her family for a short time, and asked permission to use her name, and loosely base the character on her. He told her and her family he liked to give his characters the names of people he had met. The story was the longest one published as part of "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." (commonly referred to as "The Sketch Book"), which Irving issued serially throughout 1819 and 1820, using the pseudonym "Geoffrey Crayon". With "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of