Browse:Power from Corpse Slobber (Volume 1, entries 821)
Power from Corpse Slobber
Volume 1, entries 821. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → THE DOCTORS THEMSELVES: BIRTH TO DEATH: DESCRIBED BY LAYMEN. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 821
I have a fellah, he told another boy an' myself - we always knowed 'im being very high [a high man = cunjureman] - he could do anything he wanted to do. In fact, I knowed 'em to put 'im in jail an' handcuff 'im, an' put 'im in a cell, a couple of hours after he'd be on the street. Nobody could never explain how he'd git out. They had to carry 'im back to jail. Jis' an ol' peaceful ol' quiet fellow, but would git drunk, you know, an' not create a scene, but jis' be disorderly we'll say. An' they'd put 'im in jail, an' the next morning they'd turn 'im out an' never would be no fine. So he said to me and another one of my boy friends - we were always walkin' down this town here - that he could fix us so that we could git all the money or anything else that we wanted, but we'd have to go with him at nighttime. Well, we decided to do it. So he told us to git shovels. So we got shovels. An' I'm not knowin' what he could do - of course, I'm skeered of those sort of things. An' we went around to his place about eight o'clock at night and he entertained us by playin' the guitar and the banjo, and singin' and dancin', till along about eleven o'clock we thought somepin ought to take place then, becuz it wus time for us to go home and go to bed. So he say at twelve o'clock we wus goin' out to the graveyard - to our colored graveyard, that there wus a body there had been buried jist a certain length of time. Seems as though a body had to be buried that's dead in a grave a certain length of time. And he said -
(Where was this cemetery?)
This cemetery wus about a half a mile out of this present town on this Deals Island road. And he said after a body laid in the grave so many days - I think he said ten days that there would be a slobber that would come from the mouth. And we had to git into this grave, that he would git this slobber. And he said twelve o'clock. Well, I wus through with 'im right then as soon as he said twelve o'clock. But he never told us whut we had to do until this particular night. And he would get this slobber. Our work would be to open the grave, and he'd go in it and git this off of this body; we'd cover it up and come on back. Then he'd build these things the next day. But he had to have that. Now I've heard speak of he had to have graveyard dust out of a coffin, but he never told us whut he could do with it or anything. But he did specialize in the slobber that would develop from a man's mouth or anyone that's been dead ten days. And that would be gotten and put together with various other things, and he would be equipped to do anything that he wanted to do and get away with.