{"collection":"African","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/afr/vno/vno23.htm","path":"afr/vno/vno23.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/afr/vno/vno23.htm","text":"FELTIE BUTLER died a hoodoo death. The June night in 1940 that Feltie lay in his gray plush casket, encircled with flowers and \"standing\" ferns, his family and friends gazed down upon his face and nodded in agreement. Feltie had been fixed.\n\"It jest ain't possible,\" his wife kept saying. \"It jest ain't possible.\" The doctor had told her that Feltie had succumbed to pneumonia. \"Any time a man spits up snails and a frog, he ain't got no pneumonia. Feltie was hoodooed. I don't care what no doctor say!\"\nAccording to her, Feltie had been a good man in most ways and had never had an enemy. The only way she could explain what had happened was that some woman had been after him and had become angered when she was spurned. Feltie had a way with women, his wife admitted, saying, \"He jest had what it takes, that's all. I never did blame him, 'cause the womens look at him and start hoppin'. You can't blame no man for that.\" Gazelle Butler seemed proud that her husband had been so attractive to the opposite sex. \"That's why I married him,\" she said. She thought his one fault had been that he liked to drink sherry wine on Saturday nights.\n{p. 196}\n\"Feltie worked steady,\" she said. \"Some weeks he made pretty good money. The mens and womens used to be after him all the time, but he never did go no place 'cept on Saturday nights. I always let him go then. I figured a man what stayed home six nights a week ought to go out on the seventh. Ain't every woman got a six-nights husband.\n\"This Saturday before he died he was feelin' fine. He ate his supper and tol' me he was jest goin' down to the corner to get some scrap iron--that's what he call his sherry, you know. Feltie wasn't a hard drinker, and a man gotta have some fun, so I didn't mind. Couldn't hold him down too much anyway; he was a high-spirited man. But, after he was gone a long time, me, I began to worry. I went down to the barroom and a fellow named Jim Willie say he seen Feltie back of town at the Sweet Mellow wit' a yellow woman. I didn't like that, but I knowed the womens followed Feltie 'round, so I didn't think nothin' much about it. After that I had me a shot of scrap iron with a boy we call 'Fly,' and Fly say he heared this yellow gal tellin' Feltie how much she liked him and him tell her to go away and mind her business. Then Fly say she get real mad and tell Feltie she's gonna get even wit' him. I went on home feelin' pretty good and thinkin' Feltie was doin' all right.\n\"He come home late, and soon as I seen him I knowed he was sick 'cause his face was sort of red color. He say he ain't feelin' good, so I made him get in bed. Then I seen little yellow spots behind his ears. I took off his clothes and rubbed him all over wit' ammonia and water. That's the best thing to do when a man's drank too much scrap iron. But he kept gettin' worse and he feel like he's got somethin' in his throat that he can't spit up. He grab his neck and groan and say he's chokin' and for me to get a doctor. I called Dr. Williams and he come and look at Feltie and he say he's got pneumonia.\n\"That sure made me mad. I say, 'Doctor, you might know your business, but you is wrong.' I knowed by now what's the matter wit' Feltie. 'My husband ain't got no pneumonia,'\n{p. 197}\nI tell him. 'He's been hoodooed by a yellow woman!' Then I kind of lost control and I run out the house cryin' and carryin' on. I went down to the barroom and found a policeman and told him Feltie was hoodooed, but he jest laugh at me. Then I went back home and found Feltie as gray as that casket he's layin' in this minute. He rolled and rolled and jumped up and down, and I knowed the end was in sight. I lighted me some candles and I prayed, but it didn't do no good. I said, 'Feltie, you better pray 'cause you is gonna die.' That jest make him groan louder, so I knelt down by the bed and prayed for the two of us. Then Feltie started movin' his mouth and I saw he was prayin', too, although I couldn't hear no words. The children come runnin' in the room and I chased 'em. I was almost out my mind.\n\"Feltie was still livin' the next day, so I went back of town to see a hoodoo man named Father Joseph. He listened to what I said about Feltie, and then said my husband was full of snails and if I could get him to spit 'em up he might get well. I went back home and I sat by Feltie and I begged him to spit up them snails. He tried, but he couldn't get 'em out. I sure did pray then. Once I tried to get my hand down his throat to get them snails, but he jest hollered.\n\"It happened about twelve o'clock that night. I was sitting by Feltie and rockin' and prayin' when he gave one cough and up come three big slimy snails and a little green frog. They hit the floor and they disappear. Me, I let out a scream and run clear to the back yard. When I come back Feltie was pantin' and groanin' and there was blood runnin' out his nose. Right after that he was dead.\n\"You know nobody wanted to touch his body? Even the undertakers was scared of him 'cause it spread all over town that before he died snails and a frog had come out of him. They was afraid all that bad hoodoo blood was still in him. I'm still scared, me. I been lookin' all over the house for stuff and I got a feelin' that yellow woman is after me, too.\n\"Last night that doctor come here talkin' about pneumonia. I told him, 'Man, get out of my house and stay out. I knowed\n{p. 198}\nyou ain't knowed what you talkin' about before, and I ain't listenin' to you now. I jest took you in 'cause you was a doctor.' He wouldn't believe I seen them things come out Feltie's mouth, but I seen 'em and I knows that Feltie Butler died a hoodoo death.\"\nNegroes believe that tragedies such as that which overtook Feltie Butler are commonplace. For many years the curious belief that snakes, snails and frogs can be placed inside the human body to bring about ill effects has been widespread among them. It was said of both Marie Laveaus that they could thus afflict enemies, and today many illnesses and symptoms are believed by Voodoos to be caused by various living creatures inhabiting the human body.\nCorinne Mothershed vowed that some evil Voodoo doctor had killed her mother. Corinne talked with her eyes closed when she told of what she had seen at the moment of the mother's passing. \"I can't keep my eyes open when I talks about it,\" she said, \"'cause I keeps seein' it.\"\nHer mother came home from church one Sunday night complaining of pains in her abdomen, according to Corinne.\n\"My ma was a good Baptist,\" she said. \"We never did have nothin' to do wit' hoodoo. She went to bed and slept, but the next mornin' she call me in her room and ask me to get a doctor. But before I could answer her she start havin' some kind of a fit. Her eyes rolled in her head and she screamed four times. Then, when that last scream come, little blue snakes began jumpin' out her mouth. I was so afraid I couldn't move. Them snakes hit the bed and the floor and they ran away as fast as they could move. When the last one had come up my ma was gone. Don't never let nobody say things like that don't happen. I seen it. About eight of them little snakes jumped right out of her mouth.\"\nCorinne did not believe there was anything supernatural about it. \"Somebody done give her snake eggs in her food,\" she said. \"When they get big and want to get out her she die.\"\n{p. 199}\nOne of the most widespread of all such beliefs is that spiders sometimes come from the ears of people who have been Voodooed. Hattie Simpson had one sister who died this way.\n\"I been hearin' about that all my life,\" she said. \"I seen spiders on the pillows of people what died--lots of times. They comes from the person's ears. When my sister started havin' her headaches I told her she was hoodooed and I wanted her to go see a hoodoo doctor, but she laughed at me. She didn't believe in that stuff and she ain't been around like me and ain't seen the things I've seen.\n\"The night my sister died, about two years ago, she woke up and started screamin'. When I got to her she was standin' up in her bed hollerin' like she was out of her mind. Then she just fell down on her face and when I reached her she was gone. Then I seen little gray spiders runnin' down her cheeks. I was scared sure then. I had been right all along. Some neighbor or somebody had fixed my poor sister. I never did nothin' about it 'cause I ain't sure who it was. And I never did know why they done it. My sister was no hoodoo. She was a good woman wit' a steady brain. I'll never forget how them spiders crawled out of her ears and then got away so fast. They was hoodoo spiders.\"\nHattie seemed to be a member of a very unfortunate family. She had another sister who was struck blind by Voodoo means.\n\"They sure fixed Adele,\" she said. 'She was walkin' down the street and somethin' got in both her eyes. It hurt so bad she fell down and screamed. They took her to the hospital but she was blind. You know what they does. They kills a snake, lets him rot in the sun and then takes and throws the dust in a person's eyes. You see all kinds of little snakes grow in the person's eyes, and they can't see nothin.\n\"I got Adele to a good hoodoo woman and she uncrossed her. She cooked some mustard greens wit' the juice from a dog's tail, put it in a bottle and shook it well. Then she made Adele lie down wit' her head on a pillow and she put about\n{p. 200}\nfifteen drops of this mixture in each of her eyes. In a half hour's time snakes was pourin' out her eyes. The hoodoo woman catched 'em in a bucket and burned 'em. Now Adele can see as good as anybody.\"\nConsulted about the possibility of the dust of a dried snake causing blindness, a member of the Bureau of Scientific Research of the Louisiana State Conservation Commission stated that the venom of a snake is inclosed in glands within the snake's head. If the poisonous glands were dried along with the rest of the snake it was, according to his opinion, quite possible that the resulting dust might be capable of causing complete blindness.\nMrs. Desportes recalled what had befallen an intimate friend.\n\"This lady friend of mine made one of her neighbors mad,\" said Mrs. Desportes, \"and a little while after that she became sick. I tell you, honey, she really suffered like hell. The truth was this bad woman wanted my lady friend's husband. My friend kept getting worse and she went to every doctor in town, but none of them could do anything for her. She died in the most terrible agony I ever saw in all my days. Her daughter had her opened up and they found a live crab in her stomach. All her insides were eaten away. Wasn't that terrible? I always will say that neighbor fed her that crab in some food when it was little and it grew inside her. Oh, it was awful!\"\nMany people believe that a Voodooed person may carry living things of the proportions of lizards, frogs and snakes under the skin in some part of their anatomy.\nJoe Bezibon, colored, had a friend who developed a rising on one arm and sped in terror to a Voodoo doctor. The sorcerer told him there were lizards in his arm and he could be cured for five dollars. The victim consented, and the Voodoo doctor applied a poultice of lizard skin to the arm and gave him a brown candle to burn before he went to bed that\n{p. 201}\nnight. But it did no good, according to Joe. \"The man jest died and lost his money, too,\" he sighed.\n\"I remembers when I was a little girl,\" said Marnie Fonts, who lived in Pailet Lane, a Negro section of New Orleans near the Bayou St. John, \"there was an old lady named Aunt Laura. She had snakes under the skin of her foot. You could see 'em crawlin'. Some hoodoo had boiled a lot of snakes and put the powder on Aunt Laura's foot when she was sleepin'. Sometimes they would crawl up her leg to her stomach and then she would vomit snails. It was awful. You know when she died--and this is the truth--you could hear a frog croakin' in her belly!\"\nJoe had seen much of such incidents.\n\"I had a sister who bad a child hoodooed by a woman named Serena,\" Joe said. \"That poor child used to bark like a dog, crow like a rooster, neigh like a horse and grunt like a pig. She was always runnin' around naked, and no matter what my sister did she wouldn't stop. Serena had power over her.\n\"Well, we got a man named Doctor Barkus to treat her. He always came in the house walkin' backward and cussin'. He was strong in the work. He'd walk up to this child, hit her over the head wit' his fis' and cuss her. After a while she got cured, but Serena always had power over her in a way. You know she made a hoodoo woman out of that child? She's real good, too. She went to Mobile to live and she's the best hoodoo woman they got up there. She can take a starched dress, stand it up on the floor and make it dance. She gets five dollars for a mojo. You know what a mojo is? It's the leg bone of a black cat that's been killed in a graveyard at midnight. I had me a good one once, but I ordered it from Chicago.\n\"And now I'm gonna tell you a secret,\" said Joe. \"I want to warn you about this 'cause it's somethin' you ought to watch out for. When you drink anything out of a cup or glass always turn it upside down so everything gets drained out of it. Don't never leave a drop of water or coffee or nothin'. {p. 202} That is one way you get hoodooed now. There is still plenty of them people around, you know, but lots of other peoples forget that, and before they knows it they is in trouble. Some hoodoo done dropped some powder in their glass or cup, and it is too late to do anything about it. Me, I don't like ever to eat out at all. I guess everybody knows lots of colored people never eats in restaurants if they can help it. Plenty hoodoo workers are in those places, and you never can be sure the cook ain't being paid by one of your enemies to put gris-gris in your food. That's how peoples gets snakes and other things in their stomachs. Them hoodoos likes to work where your breath has been, too, and you don't even have to swallow anything. If they gets it into something you has ate out of, that is just as good. This is a secret, though, and most people don't never know it. Just remember you can't never tell who is a hoodoo and who ain't.\"\n{p. 203}","title":"22. Snakes Jumped Out of Her Mouth","type":"page"}