The Hyatt Files

In the late 1930s, Harry Middleton Hyatt travelled the American South with a recording machine. He sat in rented rooms from Maryland to Louisiana and recorded about 1,600 people: rootworkers, conjure doctors, the people who went to them, and the people who had been fixed.

He took down their words exactly as they spoke them. The result filled five volumes and nearly 5,000 pages: Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, published between 1970 and 1978.

It is the single largest record of real hoodoo ever made. It is also hard to find, and the set costs hundreds of dollars.

What The Hyatt Files are

A free library, built straight from those five volumes. Each entry takes one practice and sets out what Hyatt’s informants actually said about it: the methods, the variations, the contradictions and the parts most modern books leave out.

Every point is cited to Hyatt’s own numbering, with the town and informant number, so you can go to the source yourself.

The words of the informants are kept as they were recorded. This is the history of the work, told by the people who did it.

The entries

• The Black Cat Bone
  What Hyatt’s informants said about the black cat bone: the boiling rite, the bone that floats or rises, invisibility, luck and the deal behind it.
• The Crossroads and the Devil
  Selling yourself to the devil at the fork of the road: the nine mornings, the black chicken, the guitar and the man who comes, from Hyatt’s informants.
• Graveyard Dirt and Goofer Dust
  How Hyatt’s informants chose, paid for and used graveyard dirt and goofer dust, from love work to running a person off.
• Foot Track Magic
  Taking up a person’s foot track to hold them, run them off or hurt them: what Hyatt’s informants did with the dirt from a footprint.
• The Silver Dime
  The silver dime in hoodoo: worn at the ankle, held under the tongue, turning black when you have been fixed, and paying the dead.
• Lodestone
  Lodestones in Hyatt’s Hoodoo volumes: drawing money, love and court luck, fed with cologne, paired male and female.
• High John the Conqueror Root
  John de Conker in Hyatt’s interviews: the biggest-selling root, carried for jobs, money, gambling, love and protection.
• Hot Foot Powder
  Hot foot powder in Hyatt’s interviews: sprinkled at the door to run a person off, mixed with graveyard dust, tracks and pepper.
• Live Things in You
  Snakes, frogs, lizards and scorpions put into the body by a trick: how Hyatt’s informants said it was done, felt and cured.
• The Psalms in Hoodoo
  Which Psalms Hyatt’s informants read for protection, enemies, court, the hag, healing and luck, and how they read them.

More every week

New entries are added each week. Coming next: the hag, the mojo hand, bottles, urine and personal concerns, candles, salt, the black hen, the doll baby and court case work.

Learn to do the work

The Hyatt Files tell you what was done. Our courses teach you how to do it: the Hoodoo Witch Certification Course for the whole system, and Hoodoo for Hate for the baneful side.

Hyatt, Harry Middleton. Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols. Hannibal, Mo.: Memoirs of the Alma Egan Hyatt Foundation, 1970-1978. Entries are written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations for reference.