"De only Ku Klux I ever bumped into was a passel o’ young Baltimore Doctors tryin’ to ketch me one night an’ take me to de medicine college to ’periment on me. I seed dem a laying’ fer me an’ I run back into de house. Dey had a plaster all ready for to slap on my mouf. Yessuh.”
—Cornelius Garner (ex-slave, Virginia), interview by Emmy Wilson and Claude W. Anderson, May 18, 1937 (Weevils in the Wheat, 1976:102)
My arrival in Durham, North Carolina, in the sweltering August of 1937, marked the beginning of my work with the Federal Writers’ Project. My mission was to gather the stories of former slaves, to capture their fading memories and folkways before time erased them completely. However, in the Jim Crow South, securing accommodation proved to be as challenging as anticipated. Prejudice was deeply entrenched, and a Black man with education was met with particular disdain.
The proprietor of the Chanford Motel made his stance unequivocally clear, spewing racial epithets and tobacco juice as he denied me a room. Undeterred, I continued my search, eventually finding lodging with a Black butcher, a man built like an anvil. Amidst the scent of raw meat, he offered me a spartan room and a recommendation for Mama Elsa’s, a local eatery.
“Well, I’ll take you on. Mr. Bisset, is it? Gonna have to get yer food someplace else tho’. Mama Elsa’s just round the corner. One of the finest meals you’ll ever have in town. ’Less you like yer meat rare.”
He chuckled, wiping his bloodied apron before leading me upstairs to a simple room. He inquired about my work, about interviewing former slaves, and we shared a knowing smile, a silent understanding of the complexities of navigating the white world.
Later, after a hearty meal at Mama Elsa’s, I settled into my room, preparing for the interviews ahead. But sleep was interrupted in the dead of night.
Driven by an inexplicable urge, I donned a white suit – jacket, vest, pants, shoes, and socks – and a surgeon’s mask. Under the cloak of darkness, I moved through Durham’s deserted streets, eventually reaching my destination. A rap on the door brought a confused, sleepy face. Perhaps it was the hour, or perhaps it was the sight of a tall Black man in white, masked and imposing.
Silver flashed in the dim light, a precise cut across the man’s throat. Blood splattered onto the white apron I had carefully placed. The motel proprietor, moments ago spewing hate, now gurgled in terror, his eyes locking onto mine – the eyes of a predator meeting its prey. I watched him fall, then calmly seated myself, opening my bag of surgical instruments. These tools, designed for healing, felt disturbingly similar to the butcher’s tools downstairs.
“You may think this is vengeance for our earlier uncivil encounter. But I can assure it is nothing so base,” I explained to the dying man, displaying my leather book filled with anatomical sketches. “I’m a curious man, you see, looking for something. And you, I believe, offer a fine sampling.”
With clinical detachment, I dissected the man, meticulously documenting my findings in my book as life ebbed from his body.
The next day, my interviews started poorly. Two former slaves had been children during emancipation, their memories fragmented. The third was senile, offering little more than glares. Frustration mounted until I reached Miss Maddie Shaw’s humble shack at the edge of Durham.
Miss Shaw, claiming to be ninety-seven, was a striking figure, embodying the archetypal “old Negro type.” Her regal bearing hinted at a Dahomeyan ancestry. Initially guarded, she deflected my questions about slavery.
“Can I tell yer ’bout slavery days? Sho’, but I ain’t going to. Most of it I can’t remember. And the rest’s too awful to tell. Don’t need to know all that old talk no how. You got sweeties? I lak sweet things and don’t get dem too often.”
Sweets became the key. Her granddaughter’s intervention and the promise of candy loosened Miss Shaw’s tongue. She recounted tales of brutal masters, of whippings and degradation. Then, unexpectedly, she uttered a phrase that resonated deep within me:
“I ain’t gon tell yer much more. No, I ain’t. No sense for yer to know ’bout all dose mean white folk. Dey all daid now. Is dey in heaven? Lord no! Dey don’t deserve heaven nor hell. Wish the Night Doctors had took ’em!”
Night Doctors. The words electrified me. I set aside my official inquiries and pressed her about these mysterious figures.
“Night Doctors? Oh, dey was a fright round here back’n when dis was Payne land. Night Doctors was men, you see, only dey was not men. Used to come round at night and snatch away slaves to ’speriment on. Best you up and die ’fore the Night Doctors git you. Dey take you to where dey stay, a great white dissectin’ hall, big as a whole city, and cut you open right dere and show you all yer insides!”
Miss Shaw, sensing my fascination, grinned knowingly. She offered more stories, hinting at darker, more folkloric tales, promising further revelations for the price of sweets. My mind raced with the implications of “Night Doctors History.”
“Miss Maddie Shaw, a former slave, recounts chilling tales of Night Doctors, mythical figures of dread in African American folklore.”
Later, I sought out Mama Elsa, drawn by the tantalizing thread of “night doctors history.” Over iced tea, I inquired about the folklore.
“Night Doctors?” Mama Elsa squinted, a knowing look in her eyes. “Now what you want with them ol’ stories?”
I explained my project’s interest in ex-slave folkways, and my personal fascination with the tales. Mama Elsa, with a conspiratorial air, topped off our tea from a flask.
“You writer folk sho’ got queer ideas. I just know what the ol’ people say. Night Doctors was supposed to be men what snatched away slaves. They’d leave traps to get you. Some of em’ had black bottles full of ether or needles to prick you with. Other times, they put plaster round yo’ face. They’d experiment on you. Slice you up while you was still alive even!”
I probed her beliefs. She admitted childhood fears, fueled by her aunt’s stories, tales passed down from her grandmother. But now, she offered a more rational explanation.
“Did when I was little. My auntie used to tell us. Said she heard them from our grandmammy. Used to give me a fright. But I knows better now. Night Doctors was made up by white folks. Was the masters theyselves, you see, dressing up and scarin’ the slaves to keep them from running off the plantations.”
I nodded, recognizing the common interpretations: slave masters using fear tactics, or the grim reality of cadaver sales to medical colleges. The Night Doctors, I realized, were a multifaceted myth, evolving from slavery into the post-emancipation era, sometimes conflated with the Ku Klux Klan. Stories persisted across the South, each variation echoing a shared terror.
“Suppose you asking ’bout these Night Doctors because of what’s been happening here in Durham,” Mama Elsa’s words shifted the conversation to the present.
Puzzled, I feigned ignorance. She leaned closer, lowering her voice.
“It’s all folk can talk ’bout! Four white people found dead in the past week. They was cut open and then sewed up—like somebody took they insides out and put it all back in again!”
I widened my eyes, mirroring her concern. The killings, she explained, were baffling authorities. In Durham, suspicion naturally fell on white perpetrators for such a skilled and gruesome act. Black individuals were readily blamed for petty crimes, but this was different.
Unseen, a pattern connected the victims: a storeowner known for brutal racism, a corrupt public defender, a carpenter who boasted of a lynching. Their sins, whispered in places like Mama Elsa’s, were the invisible thread.
“Them killings done started up talk ’bout Night Doctors,” Mama Elsa continued, unaware of my chilling double life. “Some saying they even seen a man in white skulkin’ round the back streets at night.”
I reminded her of her skepticism towards the myth. She offered a wry smile. “There’s what you don’t believe in, Mr. Bisset, and then there’s what you ’fraid of.” She recounted a childhood rhyme, a chilling Night Doctors song:
Yuh see that house? That great white house?
Way yonder down de street?
They used to take dead folks in there
Wrapped in a long white sheet!
An’ sometimes when a nigger did stop,
A-wondering who was dead,
Them Night Doctors would come along
An’ bat him on the head!
An’ drag that poor dead nigger chile
Right in they dissectin’ hall
To investigate his liver, lights—
His gizzard and his gall.
Take off dat nigger’s hands an’ feet—
His eyes, his head, an’all,
An’ when them doctors finish up
They wasn’t nothin’ left at all!
She finished with a laugh, oblivious to the darkness that had taken root within me, fueled by the very history she recounted.
A week later, I returned to Miss Maddie Shaw, seeking deeper knowledge of “night doctors history.” Alone this time, she greeted me with a mixture of shrewdness and childlike anticipation.
“Well sho’ I do. See you come back to ask more questions for yer book. Colored folk sho’ come up high in the world. You git to learn from books in all dem big schools wit the white folk? No? A school jes’ for colored folk? Well, ain’t dat sumthin. What dey learn you dar?”
Medicine, I revealed, discarding the pretense of simple folklore collection. Surgery. But my curiosity, I explained, extended beyond the confines of medical science. I believed she held a key to something more profound.
“If so you say. You brung sumthin sweet?”
Caramels were my offering. As she savored the candy, I steered the conversation back to Night Doctors.
“Lak I say, dey was men that was not men who snatched away the slaves. Dey come mostly for the sick and old ones. Did Marser Payne know? Pfshaw! White folk ain’t pay no mind what slaves say. Dey lose a healthy nigger and dey thinkin he ran off. Dey lose a sick or old nigger, jes’ one less mouth at the trow’. Did dey like to scare us? Sho’. Nothin’ made dem happier than scaring niggers, exceptin’ whipping ’em. When I was small, Marster Payne used to put out a trow’ and have us little ones eatin’ from it lak hogs. Remember, he’d say whoeva finish last he gonna cut and hang up like a piglet and have us for Easter dinner. We eat fast den, and he jes’ laugh and laugh. Used to scare me powerful, thinkin’ of hanging up in dat smokehouse, all salted and ready fer marster ’n’ missus to eat.”
I presented the rational explanations for the Night Doctors myth, suggesting they were merely white men in disguise. Miss Shaw scoffed.
“Men in sheets? Night Doctors not no men in sheets! You figurin’ some ol’ white man in a sheet gonna scare a big field hand lak Jeremiah? Who was he? Only the biggest buck you eva seen! Strong too. One time, the overseer tie him to a tree stump. Jeremiah pull dat stump right out the ground and walk round wit’ it draggin’ behind! He wasn’t scared of nothin’ or nobody neither. Exceptin’ the Night Doctors.”
I pressed for a firsthand account, and Miss Shaw recounted a chilling tale of Jeremiah’s wife, Adeline.
“Jeremiah’s wife, Adeline, she take sick. Marster send out his nigger doctor, same one who look after horses and mules. But he say she burning up wit’ the fever and gon’ be dead. Was late dat same night the Night Doctors come. Jeremiah hear a knocking outside. And he knows nobody come calling ’round dat time. He shout for dem to leave. But Night Doctors don’t heed what you say. Dey come right in under the door! Yes, under the door is what I say! Dey can squeeze dey bodies like a rat do, right up under yer door and appear big as day! When Jeremiah see dem, he try to hold on to his wife.”
“But dem doctors just start talking dey whisper talk. Dat’s how dey get on, whisperin’ right inside yer head. Adeline hear dat whisperin’ and jump out dat bed lak she not sick! She start walkin’ to dem. When Jeremiah try and stop her, she turn back to him. But not her whole body, jes’ her neck, all twisted ’bout like an owl! And when she open her mouth, only dat whisper talk come out. Dat just ’bout make Jeremiah crazy. He starts to hollerin’ and the other slaves come running! But the Night Doctors wus gone. Take Adeline wit dem.”
Her vivid narrative, unlike any I’d collected before, shook me. I confessed my belief in the Night Doctors as more than myth, and my conviction that they held a key to my own dark quest.
“And what you lookin’ for, Mistuh Bisset? What you thinkin’ some Night Doctors can help you find?”
“Hate,” I whispered. “I’m looking for hate.”
Miss Shaw, unfazed, simply reached for another caramel. She understood, or perhaps she had seen too much to be surprised by human depravity. She continued Jeremiah’s story.
“When Adeline was took, Jeremiah swear he gon’ git her back. He sneak off to see a conjurin’ woman what live on a near plantation. She tell him to go into the woods a ways at night and look for the daid Angel Oak. Dat’s the way to where dem Night Doctors stay. He gon’ on do it, traveling to the big white dissectin’ hall and get to fussin’ wit’ dem Night Doctors ’bout Adeline. Dey don’t give her, but dey let him come back. When we find him, he ’bout half-daid and wit no eyes in his head. Yes, I say! No eyes! Wasn’t nothing dere but bloody holes starin’ out at you! And he tell us what he learn, why it is dem Night Doctors come.”
She gripped my arm, her aged hand surprisingly strong.
“It’s our sufferin’ dey want! See, dey ain’t got no feelins where dey comes from. Dey empty and dried out inside. Don’t know nuthin’ ’bout pain or misery. And ain’t nobody seen more pain and sufferin’ in these parts than us poor slaves. Dat’s why dey take jes’ us. Why dey leave the white folk be. Dat’s why dey take Jeremiah’s eyes, ’cause he done looked out on so much misery in his life. That was the bargain what won him free.”
Her words resonated with a chilling truth. The Night Doctors weren’t just boogeymen; they were entities feeding on suffering, drawn to the profound pain of slavery.
“If you go to see dem Night Doctors, dey gonna set a price ’fore you can leave. Or you don’t come back. Wat you ready to give, Mistuh Bisset?”
That night, guided by Miss Shaw’s directions, I ventured into the woods, seeking the dead Angel Oak, the gateway to the Night Doctors’ realm. I had to want to find it, she’d said, and my desire was absolute.
My medical training had dismissed humorism, the ancient belief in bodily fluids governing health and emotion. Yet, I felt a pull towards a hidden truth within it. Perhaps there was another humor, unacknowledged by modern science: hate. I had witnessed its devastating power and believed it could be tangible, extractable. My dissections, my killings, were all part of this desperate search. The Night Doctors, figures of folklore and fear, had become my inspiration, my potential allies in this morbid quest.
The dead Angel Oak materialized from the shadows, skeletal and pale against the dark forest. Skeletal branches, adorned with bone fragments, reached out like grasping claws. It pulsed with a strange warmth. I cut into its bark, and blood-like sap oozed forth. This was no ordinary tree; it was a living gateway.
Armed with a bone saw, I carved an opening into the trunk, the wood yielding like flesh. Plunging into the dark, fleshy interior, I tumbled into a vast, silent hall of white stone. The entrance sealed behind me, leaving no trace. This was their domain.
Corridors branched off in every direction, a city carved from ivory. My footsteps echoed in the oppressive silence. Then, a shuffling sound, growing louder – bare feet on stone. Instinctively, I darted into a corridor, peering back to see a monstrous centipede-like creature emerge. Colorless, massive, with segmented armor and countless legs ending in human hands, it moved with terrifying speed, drawn to the scent of my blood.
Panic propelled me into flight. The creature, a guardian or scavenger, was hunting me. I cursed my bloodied shoes, pausing to remove them just as something seized me.
Giants in white robes lifted me, their touch cold and skeletal. Featureless faces, devoid of eyes, nose, or mouth, turned towards me. The Night Doctors. I had found them.
They placed me on a stone block, stripping me bare. Another block descended, laden with silver surgical instruments. As they gathered around, tools in hand, terror gripped me – the same terror I had inflicted on my victims. But I had come too far to succumb.
“Wait!” I cried out. “I want to talk! Wait!”
The blades paused. Had they heard me? Would they care?
Then I remembered Miss Shaw’s words: the price. “I can pay the price!” I screamed.
The Night Doctors conferred in whispers that resonated directly in my mind. A featureless face loomed over me.
Price. What do you know of the price? The voice was alien, cold, a mental hammer blow.
“I know what you seek! The pain! The misery! I know it! You didn’t take me; I sought you out! I came willingly because I know about the price!”
Fools come here willingly.
“I’m like you, an explorer! I search for something more than pain. Help me find it, and I will offer it to you!”
Curiosity seemed to emanate from the blank faces. Name this thing you would offer. Name this new price.
“Hate,” I whispered. “I will give you hate.”
Confusion rippled through them. You will explain. Hate.
Silence. How to explain hate to beings so alien?
Then, the blade descended. Pain exploded as they dissected me, organs laid bare, investigated, passed amongst them like artifacts. And in that agony, understanding dawned. You will explain, Hate. They were reading me, seeking comprehension through my suffering. Hepatoscopy, the ancient art of divination through entrails.
As my eyes were plucked out, I sang to them of hate. Of lynched bodies, souvenirs of severed limbs, postcards of burning flesh, the daily grind of oppression, the cancer of hate consuming souls. My screams became a litany, an explanation in agony.
“Night Doctors, beings of folklore and dread, are depicted as featureless figures in white robes, wielding surgical instruments in their unholy work.”
Before dawn, I stood once more before Miss Maddie Shaw, white suit pristine, white bag in hand.
“You come back,” she stated, her gaze drawn to my empty sockets.
I nodded. “I have been to the place where the Night Doctors live.”
“Look like it so.”
Her granddaughter stirred. I silenced her with a mental command. My focus returned to Miss Shaw.
“They have shared their secrets and returned me to do my work.” They had initiated me, chosen me as their conduit, to bring them the promised feast of hate.
“I thank you,” I said. “For showing me the way.”
She grunted. “Seem like you knows the way long ’fore I tell you.”
I grinned, a sight she recoiled from. As I turned to leave, she called out, “What you give them to learn dey secrets? To let you come back?”
I looked down at my emptied body beneath the white suit. “All of me,” I answered. “I gave everything.”
And with that, I collapsed, becoming as thin as a shadow, slipping beneath her door and into the night.
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