CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Here are two more curiosities in which fictional characters are described as having had real lives, though all are only seen as ghosts.

 In the Filmation GHOSTBUSTERS episode "The Headless Horseman Caper," the heroes encounter a ghost who appears based on the legend of the Hessian soldier recounted in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," but without the disturbing detail of getting his head blown off in battle. The cartoon just says he's some ghost-- not even given any specific military designation-- who was told by his boss, Prime Evil, to make himself look headless by pulling his head down into his body in order to scare people. The episode has nothing to do with the Irving story except for giving the ghost what I assume is supposed to be a Hessian costume.

Slightly better is "The Ghost of Don Quixote," though technically there are four ghosts from the pages of the Cervantes book: the Don, his sidekick Sancho, and their respective mounts, a horse and a burro. Ghostbuster Eddie is seen reading a book on the Don's adventures, but there's no mention of the book being fiction, nor that the author wrote the book to satirize chivalric romances. The scene shifts to Spain, where a young boy has been reading the same book. When he and his parents are assailed by motorcycle-thugs, the four ghosts spring out of the boy's book-- implicitly summoned from the vasty deeps by the kid's love of the Don's exploits. The lance-wielding ghost drives off the thugs, but their boss summons the Ghostbusters to get rid of the specters. However, the Ghostbusters make common cause with Quixote in defeating evil, and the ghosts then return to the pages of the "history book."