Mysterious Woman - An Unidentified Face In The Tree of the Dead

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Within the Tree of the Dead's entrance, there is the head of a mysterious woman I believe to be Emily Winship. The head, however, is supposed to belong to the servant girl, Sarah (Jessica Oyelowo).

The woman's face is fairly clear in the following photos:


The last photo is slightly clearer in the footage from the Behind the Legend Featurette:


In the Behind the Legend featurette included on the US Sleepy Hollow DVD, Kevin Yagher kindly shows her to us in detail. Yagher later indicates that the head he is displaying will go inside the tree.


Pausing the film, after noticing the changes made to Sarah's features in her decapitated state, I came to discover that her head and that of the victim within the tree are apparently of the same cast. The sculpted head has the same mouth, same features that tend to list to the side. Her hair has been recolored, perhaps digitally.


Examples of Sarah's features:



Sarah wears her hair in a bun. (Seen in the background by the fireplace, between Steenwyck and Hardenbrook.) The sculpt in the Behind the Legend featurette, as pictured with Yagher, wears her hair in a braid. Also, most noticeably absent is the cleft in Sarah's chin. The head looks nothing like the servant girl. 

The scene of Lady Van Tassel raising her axe to take aim could easily have been added in the process of post-production. We see Lady Van Tassel behind Sarah, then, in another shot, Sarah's head supposedly falls into a basket.

I question if this is a matter of the filmmakers choosing to use the same prop twice. Perhaps, in an earlier version of the film, we were to see the Widow Winship's death, but that sequence became yet another victim.

Tim Burton confesses in his DVD commentary for the film that the opening sequence was a late addition. The official Sleepy Hollow comic from DC begins with the Widow Winship's beheading, leading me to think it is more than a coincidence.



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