The woods around Rostrevor are said to hold one of the area's best-known supernatural legends: a headless horseman who gallops silently along old paths twisting through the trees, usually on moonless nights, with a figure glimpsed between the branches and the thunder of hooves fading into silence. He has no head and no lantern, yet he rides as if on some duty. Some locals think he was a messenger or soldier ambushed centuries ago, captured and beheaded on the spot and left in a shallow grave, his mission unfinished.
There are repeated reports of small, cold, bluish lights drifting between the trees that vanish if approached, taken by some for will-o'-the-wisps and by others for beacons marking the horseman's route. There are also accounts of disembodied voices, cries for help, whispers and sobbing, which stop as suddenly as they begin. The entry says no historical record confirms the horseman's identity, and the tale rests on oral tradition.
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