Subject:Autopsy
Entries
Entry 817
About my cousin, my grandmother told me that - that's been round about twelve years ago, ten or twelve years ago. (Here - here in Vicksburg?) No, sir, that was in - up here in Shelby, Mississippi. (Shelbv, Mississippi.) Yes, sir, and she'd taken sick. Well, she and a lady friend was living together. Well, you see, she didn't know this girl had no grudge agin her; in fact, she could have did it for someone else, you see, got it for someone else. Well, she's a very beautiful girl and lotsa people liked her and some disliked her, you understand. Well, she was - dis lavatory was a good piece from de house and she would do what she was going to do in de house and take it out. So one day she did it and she didn't take it out except de girl did, and got part of it and stopped it up in a bottle, and so she'd taken sick from it. So, well, they never did take it to no two-headed person to find out what it was about; she went to a medical doctor. But her bowels was tied up - she could not do anything. And this bottle - after she was dead my grandmother saw [two- headed person] concerning of it. And she was told to go to her back steps, up under a board she had going to her lavatory, that bottle was buried with some of her in it; and say, when that stopper blew out, that's de cause her death.
(I see.)
So she died. They never did find it out till after she was dead.
Entry 10
Well, I know of a lady tryin' to poison someone else. An' so I wus told by a gentleman [doctor] that - she goes to work an' takes a tahrahpin [terrapin], a water tahrahpin, cooks this water tahrahpin up, takes this grease of it an' greases the other lady's husband in order to poison this lady [husband's wife]. Well, see, this lady [wife] was a - she happened to be cunnin' enough to not let this man [her husband] git nowhures nigh 'er. Well, he goes back to whure this woman wus. An' so in jist about a - well, say about nine month's time - well, it wus - yes, it wus nine month's time, this woman she has to be taken to the hospital. An' so whenever she got to the hospital the doctors wanted to 'topsy 'er after she died. So whenever she died they finds a tahrahpin wus hung on to this woman's livah. This wus re'lly true. I knowed this woman mahself. That wus in 1926. That happen in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The woman died in the hospital. [The preceding word poison is a technical term unknown to toxicology; it is a concept belonging to the realm of magic thought and action. We shall meet poison again and again, also the concept fixed, and always there will be problems. Why did not the husband have the terrapin hanging to him? The evil-doer intended the terrapin for the wife. How was this intention thwarted? By counter-intention. We are in a strange world - the nature of reality faces us.] She got it back on herself. But how this man turn it back on her, I don't know. But I know how the man told de man's wife to do to not let it be turnt back - for her to not get it, you see.
(What did she -do to get this on him?)
She rubbed it on him.
(All over him?)
No, not all over him. She just rubbed it on him [his privates]. So this fellah he wus supposed to go home to his wife. See, he wus to get this grease on her an' this wus supposed to take onto her, you see. He didn't get it off on his wife. So by his wife bein' cunnin' enough to not let him touch her no way, he goes right back to this woman an' returned this deal right back on her. An so the length of time that it wus supposed tah take - you know, in de nine months - why it taken effect.
(Instead of an actual child it was this terrapin?)
It wus a tahrahpin that wus attached to her livah. [At this point, from the informant's hesitation and manner, her companion's attitude, I suspected that the story must have been a personal experience and so asked for the complete details.] She wus tryin' to git rid of me. So she a - I commence, you know, I'd feel funny. Mah husband, he wouldn't stay at home, you see. I couldn't keep 'im home. Nothin' I could do, you see. I couldn't keep 'im at home. I could do - come in an' clean up [and leave]. An' two children in the home. Workin' ever' day. You see, I couldn't do nothin' atall with 'im. An' so he'd come in; he'd stay in the house for a few minutes. An' so mah mother-in-law, she stayed there with me, an' she says, "Nora," she says, "you'd better watch," she says, "maybe perhaps that woman has done somethin' to Thornton." I says, "Ah shucks!" I says, "Do away with that, mama." I says, "They ain't no woman can do nothin'." I says, "He jis' want to run anyhow." So one day she come to me - I wus drivin' an' ole Ford car. I'd always take him to work ev'ry day, bring 'im back home - backwards an' forewards. So I says to 'im, I says - she stayed home with me, she says, "Nora," she says, "I wan' choo to go off a piece with me." I says, "Go off a piece wid joo, mama?" She says, "Yes." So I says, "All right." An' so that day - so I goes on an' takes mah husband to work an' I rushes right back there. I says, "All right, mama." I says, "I'm ready to go." She got right in - she gets in the car. When she gets in the car, why, I says, "Where you goin'?" She says, "I'm goin' to Dunn [North Carolina]." She says, "No matter where I'm goin'," she said, "you come on an' take me." Well, I felt funny, you know because I know de whole - all of them, you know, that it wus used to such as that [all people who believed in cunjuration], that they did somepin [to protect themselves]. So I says, "All right." So I goes ahead with 'er. An' so we get there, we gets out of the car. An' so we commence goin' through a branch. We stopped the car way out here an' commence goin' [walking] through a branch. I says, "Where you goin', mama?" She said, "That's all right. Joo come on an' go with me." So we goes on acrost to a - so we goes to a branch. An' we wus steppin' acrost tussocks, zhoo know, goin' across. [This is my only encounter with spoken word tussocks: in the U. S. A.] I kep' axin' 'er. I said, "Mama, whar is you goin'?" Well, I wus afraid, joo see. An' she says, "Don't joo be uneasy." But whenever [as soon as] we walks in the house - we come to the door, she walks right up to de man. He wus an' ol' cunjure-man [a white man]. And we walked right to the door. And so he said, "Good evenin', Miss Nora, come in." Well, I looked at 'im. Well, I could have [been] shot [she was so astonished because he knew her name]. Well, I says, "Good evenin'." He says, "Pore thing." He say, "You ought to have been here long ago." [This is a usual opening remark by doctors.] He says, "You're tormented." He caught me by the hand an' says, "Have a seat, chair." Well, he drawed his chair right up. He says a - he says, "Well, you is certainly in a bad condition."
[This is another usual remark by doctors.]
I says, "In a bad condition! Why?" Well, she [the mother-in-law] still hadn't tole me anything, you know. So I says, "Why you say I'm in a bad condition?" He says, "They's a brown-skin woman that's givin' you lots of trouble," an' he says, "you are [something]." He says, "Now, I'm gon'a work for you." He says, "I seen you comin' here." He says, "You been on your road here since one a'clock." I says, "Yes?" Well, I know'd I left home at one a'clock sure enough I says, "Yes sir." An' so he says a - "Well," he says, "the thing for you to do, he says a, "tonight when you get home," he says, "whenever [as soon as] your husband comes home tonight," he says, "he ain't goin' hardly wait to eat his supper before he wan'a go to bed." I says, "Yes?" I looked at 'im. I says, "Wan'a go to bed?" He says, "Yes, '' he says, "but don't choo go." He says, "Don't joo go to bed - find something to do. Keep ev'ry night alone for two or three nights - keep away from him an' he'll care [carry] this right back." He says, "Pore thing," he says, "I'm sorry for you." Well, I go on back. I says, "Well," I says, "now, if he [the husband] don't do this, I know he's [the cunjure man is] not tellin' de truth." So I goes on back home. I talked with mah mother-in-law goin' on back all the way. She says, "Well, I knowed whare I wus car'in' you." She says, "Lots of people would say their mother-in-law wouldn't do that, you see, but it's a shame for him to do like that." I goes on back home. Sure enough, he comes in from work an' goin' out - you know how this house is, out on the porch, an' washin' his face. He - I had supper on the table. He couldn't - it looked like he wus nervous or something. He couldn't eat. He - "Come on," Nora, "let's go to bed." I says, "No." I says, "My land of mercy, I've got all these clothes to pack up here." I says, "I can't go." "I'se wantin' to get it." I says, "No." I says, "No, whenever I ain't got no work to do" - we jist had a big racket about it. I says, "When I ain't got no work to do," I says, "you is out an' gone." I says, "You can git out an' go." Well, he worried me around, around, there till about eleven a'clock, jist like he [the cunjure man] said. At eleven a'clock he says, "I believe I'll walk down to the depot." I says, "All right." He walked on out. But when he came back 'twus that next morning. All right. An' about two month's time another girl came to me. She says, "Oh-oh-oh, she says, "Thornton an' Mary is raisin' a new family." I says, "They is?" I says, "That's nice." She says, "I suppose it's so - I'm only tellin' whut I hear." An' so mah mother-in-law - in a few days mah mother-in-law come to me. She says, "Oh," she says, "Fannie [someone sent by Mary] come here to get some medicine." I says, "Did you give it to her?" She says, "Yes, I give it to her." I says, "All right." So - I still - so she hadn't heard still whut he [the cunjure man] told me. I told her some an' I kept some. [The mother-in-law was not present during the actual interview between the informant and the cunjurer.] So sure enough, about - well, she taken ill on about Saturday. So on Saturday he came to me an' he says, "Nora, I guess you're satisfied." I says, "Whut's de matter?" "They say you has poisoned Mary to death." I says, "Oh! beg your pardon." I says, "Poison?" I says, "I haven't paid one nickel out to poison nobody." I says, "If you think that joo would want to die yourself [be hanged or electrocuted for poisoning a person]." I says, "Whut's de good of a head an' you don't use it?" I says, "I jis' as well take a knife an' cut de thing off an' throw it away." So when I said dat, he says, "Well, you's poisoned her." I says, "Whut?" He says, "I'm gon'a do ever'thing I can for 'er." I says, "Well, that's all right - go ahaid an' do it." So on Saturday night he comes in - she wusn't dead, she wus in the hospital. Well, I wus workin' on Fairmont Hill, that's why I heard it - I could come down, the hospital sets a-way back - an' I could hear her screamin' murder, an' she's screamin'. They said, whutevah it wus, it would rise up in her - jis' rise up jist like that [from her stomach towards the throat] an' go back down an' rise up. Well, the doctors begged an' begged her fathah to let 'em 'topsy her. So when they 'topsied her they said it Was a tahrahpin [about six inches in diameter] wus hangin' onto her livah. So he came in that Sunday night an' set down by me an' set on the side of de bed, an' he busted out in a-cryin'. He says, "Well, you have killed her." I says, "Well, thank God! My prayers is answered." That's all I said. So mah mother-in-law come acrost a-laffin' to me. She says, "Nora, she's gone." I says, "Yes!"
Entry 2745
To bring in trade or any kind of congregation, you get what they call the Adam-and-Eve root, place that in the front of your door. Then you go to work and get what they call Louisiana hoodoo dust and put that under yore doorsill. Then you go to work and git what they call the good and evil candle and place that at twelve 'clock in the night in your front door with your door closed and burn it. And with the Eqyptian incense and by reading the 37th division of the Psalms of David, reads as follows, "Fret not yourself because of evildoers, be thou not envious in the works of iniquity and so forth. Why each night if you do that three times a week, you will have trade for thirty days.
(What do you do with this incense?)
Burn it.
(While you are reading the Bible?)
Yes, jest light it - light it iest befo' you start de reading.
(Where do you get this Louisiana dust?)
Wal, yo' kin write to - ah don't know her address - Louisiana - New Orleans, Louisiana.
(And she will send you this dust.)
I know fer mahself from an experience in 1923.
(Where was this experience?)
Heah in Washington, right heah. My first wife, we were living at 217 "E" Street, N. W., Washington, and she said to me on a Saturday - she had been invited out fo' dinnah next do'. She wanted me to go there with her an' I refused. Any- way she went. Sunday - that Sunday - [she] came back home [Saturday] - that Sun- day night she got in bed. On Monday morning between 9:30 and 10 'clock I had to rush her to Garfield's Hospital. And with them taking her to the hospital on that Monday morning, of having several specialists to examine her, to give her a thorough examination from time to time, and each one of them said that her body showed as though it was normal from start to finish. Well, her mother said that it was a spell. Later on, the one that she had taken dinner with begin to talk and tell other people about what she had done. And she said this, that she'd taken the skin of a frog and put it in a pan and cooks it real crisp and powders it up and give it to her in coffee and that was the cause of her sickness and also her death. Dr. Fowler, being at the time the head surgeon of the doctorical staff of the District, he give a thorol examination and said that he couldn't locate or tell what her disease was - even up to her death. I noticed on the night - on Saturday night - like she died Sunday morning, I was there at the hospital all that night. I notice between the skin and her flesh there were the figure of frogs. Her eyes begin to turn yellowish - de white of her eyes and her head. She suffered with very severe pains. After the doctors couldn't find out, even by taken a picture - they said her heart were perfect, her stomach perfect, her liver perfect, kidneys perfect - her whole system. But by the misery being in her head, dey couldn't figure or tell whether it might have been a form of an abscess somewhere on the tissue of the brain. So after her death they asked permission of holding an autopsy on her brain, and when they did that why they said that her brain were normal. Well, it goes on to show me that the fruits of the thing that which she [the other woman] had said that she had done was true. Later on ah begin to seek into such [the truth of hoodoo]. I goes to Alexanderia, Va., to a woman by de name of Cely Coles, and begin to seek information 'long dose lines. An' she says to me, she says, "It's true just what she said she done." That was itl But if you had obtained or had of went to work and taken some sulphur, table salt and alum and made a solution out of it, or made a little drink and give her nine tablespoons- ful, why she would have passed them from her and she would have gotten well.
[To remove 'live things conjured into the body, see pp.227-239 and Index.]
(After you found out these things, what happened after that?)
Well, ah came back. Wasn't anything that I could do then - jest to give it up in de hands of God. But I was glad to know these things. And then later from self experience - for mahself - ah had went to what we call a donkey party.
(What is that?)
That's jest the figure of a donkey made up into a picture of some kind and then you buy a whole lotta tails and then you take chances, see. And de one dat pin dose tails in the proper or nearest the proper place, they get the prize. Ah goes to dis donkey party - it was for the benefit of the St. Paul Baptist Church - an' while being there they were serving refreshments or selling refresh- ments and I bought some of them. An' after I had bought a glass of lemonade and drank it, I goes home and nine days from dat day I had hairy worms in my stomach. Now the cause of that was the oil out of the skin of a frog created those worms. A man ovah heah on tenth street at de time - I were carried to him and he give me medicine fo' that. Later on I found out jest what to do to prohibit those things. It matters not what a person might be hurt with, matters not what chew walk ovah, and if they come to be alive in you, you can take a silver dime or a silver dollar and take a fine file and file off part of it and boil it and take a tea- cupful of it. It will remove it one way or the other [above or below]. [See also, pp.484-493.] Not only that, we have a way to tell, there is a way to tell, even if you have just a weakness, whether you are hurt or not. And the way that is, is by taking a salt mackerel fish and bind it wheresomever that weakness is, with the head up and the tail down, and that misery will then become a terrific terror there. You will know then that it's no need of taking any medical doctor's [Doctor of Medi- cine's] treatment. You will have to seek other sources. Well, ah know at mah home town - Richmond, Virginia - there were an' ole lady by the name of Mary Moody lived on Green Street. That's in the east end.
(I've heard of her.) [Her name is somewhere in the text.]
Mary Moody. In other words there Was a woman lived in my neighborhood by the name of Lucy Williams. I leave Coatesville, Pa., an' I goes home and she becomes jealous or envious of me because I wouldn't go or keep company with none of her daughters. She goes to work, she did, an' taken one of those square halfa pint whiskey bottles used to be [before Prohibition] - Sherwood bottles. Comes to my father's house and my mother used to be fond of her, used to let her do all of her washing at times, and she'd taken a part of my underclothes, the seat of them, and a part of my left sock and carried it off with some different roots. Ah don't know what de roots was, but those different roots she packed in that bottle and she dressed it with still water - poured it in this bottle.
(What do you mean by still water?)
Water that she had let stand fer a certain length of time. And she dressed that nine days before she buried it, and when she buried it, she buried it in the pathway that leads from my mother's house to her well, that I might walk over it. An I become - begin to go over towards my left side and dwindling away to noth- ing without a ache or pain. An' mah father he'd taken me to Mary Moody. Mary Moody wanted her pichure and mah father happened to have one the pichures on a tintype in the home. An' he'd taken that and she said to him, says, "Now, you go back home and plow up your pathway from your house to your well and when you find this bottle," she said, "bring it to me." An' he did so. An' when he did that, why she'd taken it and drew that Lucy Williams pichure from de other one on a sheet and put this bottle behind it and shot it. She said, "Now, when yo' git back home, the same thing that yore son have on him, she will have on her and she cant git rid of it." An' that happened.
(What did she shoot this bottle with?)
With a pistol - a real pistol. (She drew this picture on a piece of paper and put it up before this bottle and shot through the paper and broke the bottle?) Yes.
(How long ago did that happen?)
That's been - that was in 1916. It's a man lives - he lives in Beaver Falls [Pa.] too - 606 Eighth Avenue. He don't keer if you give a policeman his address, he's iest that smart. He takes - he has five spools, spools what thread come off, takes three needles and run through 'em - that little hole in those spools.
(He puts the three needles right through the spools.)
If the street is coming this way in front of his house, he sets one object to that corner, one obiect at this corner, and one where you turn in off the street to go in de front of his door - with the one at each corner is pointing straight up and down the street.
(You mean this spool is pointing straight up and down the street.)
That's right. The one what enters the door pointing in an' out the door, and he has the two at the back the same way that the two at the first two corners are. An' he gits up and calls on de four winds - five waves of de water with the speech that he makes telling these people - it matters not who it is - to keep on passing his door. Dey would come round an' start to his door and their mind change and they walk right on away. Right today he has two stills turning out round about 90 gallons of whiskey each. (Now here's the street going by his house. On the corner of the street here and this corner of the street are the two spools - they are turned this way, the holes are turned this way [parallel to the street passing house]. Then you come to his house and the [third] spool is turned with the holes going this way - toward his house. And then where does he put - he puts these remaining two spools at his back door?) At the back corners of his house, yes. (And the holes in these spools are parallel with that of his house [the third spool]. He just passes these three needles through each of these holes. He doesn't do anything with the needles.) Man in Norfolk, Virginia, he was telling me one day, said that if you want a person to die, dat you take one of those cut nails.
(Those square nails?)
Square nails and take and carry it to a green tree on Sunday morning and you stump it [start the nail into the tree] and each morning for nine mornings go there and hit it, and you tap that together, and then the ninth morning, the ninth day you drive it up to the head. After that nine mornings, he said that person going crazy - drifting.