Dreams and Signs

A St. Petersburg woman was getting sicker the more doctor’s medicine she took. “Ah only found out whut was de matter wit me by a dream”, she told Hyatt. Her dead mother came to her wearing a jade-green earring and necklace, and explained: “Green signifies poison” (Hyatt 563 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1005).

For Hyatt’s informants, dreams were not idle pictures. They were messages: from the dead, from God, from the work itself. Signs in the waking world carried the same weight. This entry covers both.

What it is

A dream could diagnose a sickness, name a killer, show a future husband or point to buried money. A sign, such as a bird in the house or a stray dog in the yard, could announce death or trouble before it came.

Hyatt himself treated this as part of the root doctor’s trade, noting that divination belonged to a hoodoo worker’s work.

The dead speak in dreams

Most of the dreams that mattered came from the dead.

• A New York informant said a buried man kept coming back to his family in dreams, asking to be taken up from his grave. When they dug him up, the coffin was standing in water. They moved him to a dry place and never saw him again (Hyatt 58 · New York City · informant 1).
• An Ocean City informant said her dead father warned her in dreams whenever a man or woman was about to approach her. She never heard his voice, only saw him (Hyatt 59 · Ocean City, Md. · informant 20).
• A Waycross worker wrote a letter to a dead man in the graveyard, addressed in care of hell, and slept with it under the head of the bed. You would dream of him, and that brought luck, money or a job (Hyatt 7825 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1137).
• To learn who killed someone, a Brunswick informant said, a relative wore the murdered person’s clothes; after the burial the killer would come to that relative in a dream (Hyatt 7404 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1184).

Dreams of what is coming

A St. Petersburg informant told of a man jailed because he had dreamed that someone was going to be killed. Told to dream again, he came back next morning and said the high sheriff would be killed the next day (Hyatt 260 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1028).

Dreams of buried money were common. Men went digging because they had dreamed of a treasure in a particular spot, or of money hidden in an old empty house (Hyatt 387 · Ocean City, Md. · informant 13; Hyatt 2751 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 769).

Dreams could also be called up. A Fayetteville informant put three unlit matches in each of a man’s shoes, crossed the shoes in a T under the bed and went to sleep without a word: “yo’ll dream yo’ goin’ tuh marry dat person” (Hyatt 591 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1426).

Stopping the dreams

Some dreams were unwelcome. The Waycross informant was being ridden every night by a witch, a little old woman who came in by the front door. Two cures:

• A Bible under the pillow (Hyatt 477 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1134).
• A shoe turned down under the bed (Hyatt 5274 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 994).

Signs and omens

• A bat that flew into the house and stayed was a sign of death, though a bat’s feather was lucky (Hyatt 10565 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1518).
• A stray cat or dog hanging round your yard meant sickness or death (Hyatt 10930 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1426).
• Turning back once you had set out was bad luck, unless you made a cross mark and spat in it (Hyatt 1057 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1374).
• In candle work, white and red were for luck, but black was a sign of death (Hyatt 2785 · New Orleans, La. · informant 797).

In their own words

“Yo’ kin put a Bible up undah yore haid if yo’ dream a lot – yo’ kin stop it.”

(Hyatt 477 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1134)

“I see him in this dream.”

(Hyatt 59 · Ocean City, Md. · informant 20, of her dead father)

“It shore a sign of bad luck”

(Hyatt 1057 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1374)

“that black candle, that’s a sign of death.”

(Hyatt 2785 · New Orleans, La. · informant 797)

How it’s worked today

Dreams are still a working tool in rootwork. Many workers keep a dream journal, sleep on a petition or a name paper under the pillow, and treat a visit from a dead relative as a message to be acted on.

Dreaming of the dead is still widely read as luck, and dream numbers are still played. Omens such as birds in the house, stray animals and turning back on a journey are still watched for in Southern families, and still answered with the old counter-actions: a cross mark, a spit, salt, or a Bible kept close.

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 from Hyatt’s informants for reference.