Buried Bottles and Bottle Spells

Dig under the doorstep of an old Southern house and you may find a bottle. Hyatt’s informants knew exactly what that meant. Someone had put you in it.

A bottle holds a person. Stop it up, bury it, and what happens to the bottle happens to them. It is one of the most feared tricks in the volumes.

What it is

A bottle spell seals a person’s concerns, their urine, hair, dirt from their tracks, blood or waste, in glass with needles, pins, vinegar, pepper or other ingredients. It is then buried where the target walks, sleeps or enters.

Hyatt gives a separate heading to the black bottle, a dark bottle used for killing work.

Where they were buried

• Under the doorstep or the steps, the most common place by far.
• At the gate. A New Orleans woman walked through her gate after work, a pain struck her foot, and it later broke open (Hyatt 978 · New Orleans, La. · informant 851).
• Under the back window. A Wilmington doctor dug up a bottle there with nine straight pins, matches and a liquid in it (Hyatt 861 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 222).
• Under the hearth. A brick was lifted, a hole dug in the fireplace, and the bottle set in stopper down (Hyatt 3102 · Princess Anne, Md. · informant 127).
• In the graveyard. A man’s waste in a black bottle, buried the way the dead are buried (Hyatt 1722 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 741).
• In the leak of the house, where rain runs off the roof. A person’s blood bottled upside down there would “run a person crazy” (Hyatt 3833 · Florence, S. Car. · informant 1308).

Upside down

Again and again the bottle is turned on its head. In Princess Anne the instruction was to stop it tight, turn it upside down and cover it. As the contents leaked away, the woman it was made for would waste away the same way, and die when it was empty (Hyatt 3102).

In Vicksburg a grandmother was told her death would come “when that stopper blew out” of a bottle buried under her back steps. She died, and it was only found afterwards (Hyatt 817 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 716).

A Waycross informant gave a bottle of a woman’s period buried mouth down, to pass her away (Hyatt 3855 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1069).

Other bottles

• A snake and a small frog put in one bottle and buried under the doorstep (Hyatt 702 · Fredericksburg, Va. · informant 48).
• Vinegar, salt, pepper and a hard-boiled egg cut up, left under a house. The aunt who found it had the informant’s mother arrested over it (Hyatt 2372 · Old Point Comfort, Va. · informant 23).
• Urine with war water and devil vinegar, buried so the person suffers until they die (Hyatt 1833 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1558).
• Dust from the hollow of a woman’s foot and three strands of her hair, buried at the door sill to bring her back (Hyatt 1868 · Norfolk, Va. · informant 473).
• Blacksnake root in a cologne bottle, carried three days, then buried under your own doorstep for luck. Hyatt calls it a buried hand (Hyatt 1737 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 999).

Finding and breaking them

A found bottle was not dug up lightly. Hyatt notes that the women who did so safely had a doctor’s permission, or a spirit’s leave (Hyatt 902 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 256).

• The Wilmington doctor burned what he found, and it popped “lak a pistol ball shoot” (Hyatt 861).
• Another root doctor turned the found bottle upside down, saying that otherwise it would more or less kill you (Hyatt 898 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 289).
• Against the snake and frog bottle, the victim laid black oak bark and turpentine on the step. The next morning the bottle had come up on its own (Hyatt 702).
• Keep your shoes damp inside with turpentine and you can walk over anything buried for you (Hyatt 1586 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1345).

How it’s worked today

Bottle work is still done, both for harm and for binding. The bottle is filled with the target’s concerns and sharp or sour ingredients, sealed, and buried upside down near their door or in a graveyard.

Sweet bottles, with sugar or honey, are made the same way to draw and hold. Anyone who finds a strange bottle on their property has it removed by a worker, who breaks it, burns the contents or sends it back.

Learn the work

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Source: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols., 1970-1978. Numbers refer to Hyatt’s own item numbers; the town and informant number follow. Written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations for reference.