Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/391

 Rh her light is hidden by clouds, and talk of their own and one another's exploits, and give and receive news of the Voodoos scattered from New York to Florida. These wise men and women wander widely, and convey from town to town, and state to state, a vast amount of curious history, not only of their affairs but of their clients, white as well as colored, and prominent people with and without closet-skeletons. The rapidity with which news is carried from one end of the country to the other is amazing. I am at a loss to understand how it can be done. The iron horse travels swiftly for them, as he does for us, on his beaten track; but not all their tracks, by any means, are beaten. The water snake and the swallow are fit emblems of the Voodoo traveller going his secret way and leaving no more trace than the snake does on the pool, or the bird on the air. The man of mystery has a swift foot, but he cannot outspeed the locomotive and the telegraph, and yet, sometimes his messages anticipate steam and electricity. Telepathy is one of their agents, but that, I am assured, is never quite reliable for more than one vivid impression.

Clairvoyance is another agent, as I have before stated.

Hypnotism is the Voodoo's pastime, as well as his power. In the Circle he and his brethren make a game of it by willing one another from where they would be to where they would not. A—.M—. related to me an experience he had, which made the trial of strength more than an amusement. In the latter part of May, 1891, the members of the Circle were in a church loaned them by the sexton, as it was a nice, quiet place where police would not be likely to seek them. They were entertaining themselves by "willing." One man would stand in the front of the building and will one from the group at the back to come to him. By turns, every one except Alexander was willed from his place. Suddenly, a strange black man rose up from a dim corner, willed them all to him, put them to sleep, and went off with the contents of their pockets. In 1893, when they were assembled in the same place to choose a successor to Alexander, who, died in January of that year, the same man appeared and subjected them to the same treatment. He was entirely unknown to all of them. When I asked my informant if he were sure that a man and not a ghost appeared, he naively replied that one