Graveyard Dirt

Graveyard dirt is earth taken from a grave, and one of the staple materials of hoodoo, the African American folk magic of the southern United States. Its use belongs to a wider reverence for the dead and the ancestors that began in the Kongo region of Central Africa and came to America with the transatlantic slave trade. Practitioners use it to draw close to their ancestors and to reach the spirits of the dead, who may be petitioned or called up to carry out a task. Whose grave it comes from matters: earth from an ancestor's grave protects, while earth from the grave of someone who is not an ancestor may be used against an enemy or, again, for protection. It is paid for before it is taken, with three pennies or some other payment. It is carried in mojo bags so that a spirit goes with the bearer, it is a chief ingredient of goofer dust, and some of the people Harry M. Hyatt interviewed used the two names for the same thing. Earth from a murdered person's grave may be mixed with hair, nail clippings and other personal items to lay a curse. Its history in America is long: Alabama slave narratives tell of freedom seekers rubbing it on their feet or into their tracks to throw slave catchers' dogs off the scent, and nkisi bundles holding cemetery dirt and iron nails, left by enslaved people, were found at the Lott Farmstead in Brooklyn.