What would happen to Ichabod when he would walk home at night after spending the afternoon reading?

"" byis set in a small, isolated
valley
renowned for its legends of ghosts and haunted places. Chief among these
spectral
apparitions is a "figure on horseback without a head" that many
people believe is the
ghost of a Hessian trooper. Belief in these
supernatural entities fills the minds of the locals.
As the tale tells us
early on:

They
are
given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and
frequently
see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The
whole neighborhood abounds with
local tales, haunted spots, and twilight
superstitions...

Into this valley beset with superstition comes the new

schoolteacher, an odd-looking man named Ichabod Crane. Besides playing with the
children,
helping local farmers, and singing with the church choir, he likes
to go off by himself
sometimes and read until the evening dusk has settled so
that it is hard for him to see. At this
time he walks back to whatever
farmhouse he is at the time residing. However, Irving describes
Crane's
weakness:

His appetite
for
the marvelous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally
extraordinary; and both had been
increased by his residence in this
spellbound region.

In other words, Crane is susceptible to supernatural stories and
influences,
and living in Sleepy Hollow has made him even more sensitive to
them. As he walks home in the
darkness after his reading sessions, he
imagines ghostly sources for natural sounds around him
of whip-poor-wills,
tree-toads, screech-owls, and flocks of birds. He is startled by the sight
of
fireflies and the shadows of beetles. His walks home are very frightening experiences.
He
attempts to alleviate his fears by singing psalm tunes out loud, but these
walks leave him even
more vulnerable to terror later on when, on the way home
from Van Tassel's party, he believes he
sees the ghost of the headless
horseman.