Horror with a Happy Ending — “Doc Buzzard’s Coffin”

Photo taken by the author.

This post has spoilers! Trigger/content warnings include anti-Black racism, involvement with the police, murder (implied), and child sexual abuse (indirectly mentioned).

We’re doing something a little different this week. If it’s not exactly more lighthearted, it’s a little more hopeful!

“Doc Buzzard’s Coffin” is the second story in Eden Royce’s amazing Southern Gothic horror collection Spook Lights. We talked about the genre and history of Southern Gothic literature last time we discussed this book.

A quick refresher from the University of Maryland Library: “Common themes of Southern Gothic include flawed or disturbed characters, grotesque situations, often stemming from poverty, crime, violence or alienation.” (1) Black Southern Gothic horror might be a niche fiction category, but it’s one of my favorites. I’m from New Orleans and the Black South and our literature will always have a special place in my heart.

Story Summary.

A lot happens over just one night and the next morning in this story. The narrator, Jezebel, is a thirteen-year-old girl living with her twin brother, Jay, as well as their mother, Jane, and uncle. This uncle is Doc Buzzard himself, whose spiritual skills and practices are central to the story.

The story opens with Jane, Jezebel, and Jay Turner struggling to get Doc into a coffin in the middle of a sweltering Southern night. Doc appears dead and Royce sets the reader up to believe that some sort of foul play has befallen him. But everything isn’t as it seems: Doc Buzzard has done this to himself as part of a larger ritual. We learn along the way that Doc’s ritual is supposed to involve internment in a coffin in exchange for the actual death of a man we never meet but hear a lot about: Larry John.

This is where the trigger warning comes in. Larry John was dating Jane until Jay told Jezebel that Larry John abused him in some way. (Royce doesn’t go into detail). Jezebel, who’s only 13 herself and understandably had trouble keeping this a secret, told her uncle, who decided to take matters into his own hands without telling Jane.

As Jane, Jezebel, and Jay are carrying Doc Buzzard to his coffin, Deputy Darryl “Dog” Collins from the Sheriff’s department pulls up and catches them in the act. He interrogates them in their yard, then brings them to the station to further question Jane. But Doc and his coffin come along.

The kids wait with white LeRoy, another deputy, until Sheriff Edwards finishes questioning Jane and brings all three home. Collins stays behind with “dead” Doc in his coffin, but he chooses this time to wake up and scare Collins so badly that he ends the story in a mental hospital.

The next morning, the Sheriff and a third deputy (literally called Third) show up at Jane’s house to find Doc Buzzard sounding “rough” but alive and well and unapologetic. He took care of his family and, in my opinion, shouldn’t have to explain himself.

Happily and surprisingly, the sheriff drops it, maybe because of Collins’ trauma and inability to explain what he saw the night before in a way that made sense. Maybe it’s because he’s sweet on Jane.

We’ll talk more about how exciting it is to have a Black horror story with a happy ending later!

Place and the Senses in Horror Fiction.

Royce really works the senses into this story. I especially noticed the use of smells — Jezebel talks about how every place and every experience smells, from the marsh gasses around their home to the jail (“man sweat and burnt coffee”). (2)

Creating a full sensory experience is a key part of most storytelling. In my opinion, it’s especially important in horror because a lot of horror relies on contrast and the unexpected. I think the scary parts are much scarier when there’s something to contrast it with — when there’s a sensory buildup to the fright or when we get breaks from the adrenaline.

In a 2018 interview with Apex Magazine, Royce explained:

Setting is incredibly important in southern gothic. Creating the right atmosphere can be right up there with plot and characterization. I put myself in the scene and imagine what it would be like to experience that specific location. I try not to be heavy-handed with it, though. Selecting those few details to convey the mood I want to create can be the most fun part of the process. (3)

As a writer, I also love taking the time to choose which details to use to make the reader feel like they’re in the setting. Royce’s storytelling succeeds in painting compelling pictures of her characters and their locations without bogging the narrative down in unnecessary details. That’s hard to do sometimes — it takes a lot of practice to get right.

The settings in “Doc Buzzard’s Coffin” have implications beyond the immediate action — the story takes place in a rural area and at the sheriff’s station. These locations are full of possible consequences for the characters: a lot of horror takes place in the darkness of the countryside for good reason and, as Black people, we don’t need to go into detail about the potential devastation involvement with the police can bring. The story uses its natural settings and several hallmarks of the Southern Gothic and horror genres to great effect.

Moreover, Royce gets storytelling support from her homeland and upbringing. I love how these elements intertwine in her work.

Black Southern Culture and Spirituality.

In another interview, Royce says,

I love writing Gothic horror and dark fantasy, most especially about the magic systems of indigenous peoples. My roots are in Southern conjure and that pops up often in my work. I’ve realized recently that a lot of my work falls into the category of magic realism, where everyday events and situations exist alongside magic and aren’t considered by the characters to be out of the ordinary. (4)

“Conjure” here refers to hoodoo, a Black American spiritual tradition that came about during slavery times. Hoodoo is a mixture of traditions brought to North America by enslaved Aftricans and the European and Indigenous knowledge and practices they found once they got here. (5) Side note: hoodoo and “voodoo” might sound similar and have similar evolution stories, but the spiritualities themselves are very different. The word “voodoo” is a bastardization of the Haitian words vodun or vodou, which refer to a religion that originated on the island of Haiti from the enslaved populations there. I’m not an expert on any of this by any means, but I have been researching hoodoo for a while, and my understanding is that vodun is a religion in which devotees serve the Lwa, spirits “believed to control the physical world.” (6) Hoodoo, meanwhile, is more of a decentralized practice without a specific group of gods or spirits.

Often called “the northern-most city in the Caribbean,” my hometown of New Orleans is also known for our own specialization of vodun. If you’ve heard of Marie Laveau, you’ve heard of something related to New Orleans vodun. (It’s also a major tourist draw — that’s a rant for another time.) But, like the rest of the American South, Louisiana has a strong history and tradition of hoodoo as well. Hoodoo is primarily associated with the American South, particularly rural areas of this region, and Royce grew up in a hoodoo-practicing Geechee family in South Carolina. Before we go any further, we should talk about Geechee culture right quick, and how growing up steeped in such a powerful Black culture influences storytelling and creativity.

Every sub-region of the American South has a unique Black culture, from Exoduster experiences in places like Kansas and Oklahoma to the Blues musical traditions of Mississippi and Alabama to the Gullah Geechee culture of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. (And, of course, my own complex, magical state of Louisiana.) The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission explains that

The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of Africans who were enslaved on the rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic coast. Many came from the rice-growing region of West Africa. The nature of their enslavement on isolated island and coastal plantations created a unique culture with deep African retentions that are clearly visible in the Gullah Geechee people’s distinctive arts, crafts, foodways, music, and language. (7)

Eden Royce made a very exciting decision to set all the stories in Spook Lights in her home region. A lot of creatives make art set in or based on lived experiences and places that matter to them, and I think you can see Royce’s love for her homeland and culture of birth in her writing. Like we talked about in the previous section, her use of physicality and the senses in her work, to me, demonstrates just how deeply connected she is to this land and the people who have historically lived there. That’s something I aspire to in my own work.

~

While all of our regional cultures have distinct flavors and histories, there are also beliefs and experiences that unite many of us: legends and cautionary tales; creative media like art, oral storytelling, and quilting; hair care and styling; and the “you have to be twice as good to get half of what they have” talk that my father gave me when I was a child and that I later saw played out on Scandal.

I think it’s so fascinating and beautiful how Black people in this country have perpetuated, preserved, evolved, and adapted our cultures and creativity in the face of ongoing atrocities like chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and, today, institutions like the prison industrial complex and every single police department. Black people are not a monolith, but overall, I am awed by our persistent creativity and joy. I am so grateful to come from such a beautiful, rich, creative tradition, and I’m doing my best to honor the people in my family and culture who came before me.

Triumphant Black Horror.

Let’s bring it back to horror literature. “Doc Buzzard’s Coffin” is a great example of what I mean when I say “horror on our terms.” It’s incredibly important for Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color take up the space to tell our own stories with our authentic perspectives and experiences. Of course, “Doc Buzzard’s Coffin” is a work of fiction, and I’m not saying that Eden Royce experienced anything like this in real life. But she is Black and from Charleston, so the experiences that inform her imagination will be close to that reality.

This story really shows what I mean by “fear on our own terms”: Jane, Jezebel, Jay, and Doc go through harrowing moments, both on and off the page, that are mentally, emotionally, and physically draining. Some are traumatic. But by the end, there’s survival and skill and growth and hope. Meaningful change can’t happen without the ability to hope for and envision circumstances that are different but better, and fiction is a really important vehicle to encourage that hope.

That said, I do keep thinking about Jay’s trauma and the lasting impact that will probably have on him. When you survive any kind of abuse, it’s invaluable to know that you have people in your corner who believe you, still love you, and will take action for you. Jezebel and Doc are those people for Jay, but I imagine that he’ll still have a lot of reckoning and processing to do as he grows up. I did want to acknowledge that while yes, the Turners come out on top, this is also a complex story with complex, layered experiences and characters. Jay’s trauma might stay with him for the rest of his life, but I hope it helps him to know that his sister and uncle care about him like this.

And I think this story also shows how important it is for Black people to write Black characters, for Indigenous people to write Indigenous characters, etc. Not only because it’s more genuine, but because we often treat our characters with a tenderness and respect that other people don’t. It’s so meaningful when Black creators make art that includes not only problems in our communities but cultural solutions to those problems and characters who are multi-faceted and relate to each other authentically. Black joy and Black triumph are essential to our communities and our individual and collective healing.

Almost everything that can go wrong in the plot of this story does go wrong at some point and dread waits around every corner, but everyone gets as happy, hopeful an ending as possible. Well, except Larry John and Officer Collins — so, everyone who deserves it.

More to think about.

Below are some questions to ask yourself and prompts for further research. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog and the newsletter here on Medium — I’m sending out “extras” on the Tuesdays between posts with things that didn’t fit into the main entry.

And email me at blackhorrific@gmail.com and follow me on Tiktok (@domi_aaaaaa) if you want to talk more!

1. What do you notice about descriptions of sensory experiences and settings in your favorite works of fiction?
2. What are your favorite stories of Black triumph, horror or otherwise?
3. What do triumph and success mean to you as a Black person?

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in two weeks!

Sources:

(1) University Libraries, University of Maryland, “Gothic Literature in Special Collections,” Jun. 16, 2023, https://lib.guides.umd.edu/gothicliterature.

(2) Royce, Eden. “Doc Buzzard’s Coffin,” Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, 2015.

(3) Johnson, Andrea. “Interview with Author Eden Royce.” Apex Magazine, Aug. 9, 2018, https://apex-magazine.com/interviews-2/interview-with-author-eden-royce/.

(4) “An Interview with Eden Royce,” HorrorAddicts.Net, Sep. 18, 2015, https://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/an-interview-with-eden-royce/.

(5) Bleard, Angelie. Hoodoo for Beginners: Working Magic Spells in Rootwork and Conjure with Roots, Herbs, Candles, and Oils. Hentopan Publishing, 2020, pg. 14.

(6) Bleard, Angelie. Hoodoo for Beginners: Working Magic Spells in Rootwork and Conjure with Roots, Herbs, Candles, and Oils. Hentopan Publishing, 2020, pg. 16.

(7) The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission, “The Gullah Geechee,” n.d., https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/thegullahgeechee/.