 | | snake which he passed around his neck and over his head, foaming at the mouth and leaping aboutthe others rising and dancing.
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| | Another yell from the voudous louder than before, a grand shriek and at another signal the lights were put out, the snake's head was solemnly pulled off and thus ended the ceremony. The devil or fetish being supposed to have been in the snake, and being thus killed, he was got rid of and his worshipers were free.
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| | It was daybreak, the sun was just rising, and cast its rays over the waters of the lake as the party broke up.
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From some of the details in the piecethe use of candles, the notion of possessionit is likely that some sort of ceremony was in fact witnessed, although the pejorative phrases "eyes rolling," "like a demon," etc. indicate a spin to the interpretation, one which marks the reporter as largely ignorant of any content to the spectacle. The other pertinent aspect of this report is the admission that the ceremony was deliberately staged. What was shown was almost certainly a form of theater.
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Many press accounts claimed contact with ceremoniesthough, again, the similarity in the structure of the stories suggests that repetition of the established myth about secretive swamp orgies was as much a part of the reportage as was any kind of first-hand observation. "Outlandish Celebration of St. John's Eve," said the
Picayune
headline of June 23, 1896. "A Living Cat Eaten by the Voodoo King," the subheads continued, stacked atop each other. "Unparalled Scenes of Savagery in the Pontchartrain SwampsBecoming Impassioned, the Fetich Worshipers Tear Off Their Clothes and Dance Naked."
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In this story, a reporter seeks out a voudou celebration, encounters false leads and backwoods locations ("a secrecy which
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