The Souvenir from the Swamp

The bayou stretched out like a dark mirror under the late-afternoon sun, Spanish moss hanging from cypress trees like funeral veils. I was on a road trip from Texas—me, my beat-up GMC, and a playlist of old hip-hop—when I spotted the roadside stand just off Highway 90. A rickety wooden shack with a hand-painted sign: “Authentic Swamp Curios – Gris-Gris & Good Luck Charms.” Plastic beads dangled from the windows, catching the light like cheap Mardi Gras leftovers. The seller, an older Black woman with silver-streaked braids and eyes that seemed to see right through my sunglasses, sat fanning herself on a folding chair.

I pulled over mostly for the photo op. Touristy kitsch, right? I laughed when she offered me a “real voodoo doll” for twenty bucks. It was small, about eight inches tall, stuffed burlap with black yarn for hair, button eyes, and a stitched mouth turned down in a perpetual frown. Tiny red threads formed a crude heart on its chest. A few straight pins were already stuck in a little pouch tied to its waist.

“Careful with that one,” she said, voice low and gravelly. “It’s bound. You poke it, somebody feels it. You burn it, somebody burns. You keep it safe… maybe nothing happens.”

I rolled my eyes. “Bound to who?”

She shrugged. “Man who crossed the wrong people ’round here. Name’s Remy. Mean son of a gun. Runs a shrimp boat out of Lafitte. Thinks he’s untouchable.” She leaned closer. “You take it, it’s yours. But don’t say I didn’t warn.”

I bought it anyway. Twenty bucks for a funny story to tell back home. I tossed it on the passenger seat like a forgotten fast-food toy and kept driving.

Back in Austin a week later, the doll sat on my desk in the home office. Work was hell—endless Zoom calls, a boss who loved passive-aggressive emails, and a client who kept changing deadlines. I started fiddling with it during stressful calls. Twist an arm when the client nitpicked my report. Jab a pin into the leg when my boss CC’d the whole team on my “oversight.” It felt cathartic, like squeezing a stress ball shaped like petty revenge.

The first sign was subtle. I scrolled Instagram one evening and saw a post from a guy I’d met briefly at a bar in New Orleans—Remy LeBeau, the shrimp-boat captain. We’d chatted for maybe five minutes about crawfish boils. His story showed him limping on crutches, caption: “Slipped on deck today, twisted my ankle bad. Doctor says I’ll be off the water two weeks. #badluck.” The date lined up with the afternoon I’d jabbed the doll’s leg while yelling at a spreadsheet.

Coincidence. Had to be.

But then came the migraines. Remy posted again: blinding headaches, couldn’t see straight, missed a big haul. I remembered twisting the doll’s head in frustration during a particularly brutal meeting. My stomach twisted. I laughed it off—correlation, not causation. Still, I moved the doll to a drawer.

Weeks passed. Remy’s posts grew darker. A fire on his boat—electrical short, he said, but the photos showed scorch marks right where the doll’s chest would correspond. Then a freak accident: a winch cable snapped, nearly took his arm off. I hadn’t touched the doll in days, but I’d thought about him angrily after seeing another post where he bragged about undercutting local fishermen.

I started dreaming about the bayou. Murky water, cypress knees rising like skeletal fingers, and that woman from the stand watching me from the shore. In the dreams, she whispered, “You poke it, somebody feels it.”

I dug through my junk drawer and pulled the doll out. It looked… different. The burlap seemed tighter, the button eyes glossier, almost wet. A fresh pin had appeared in its heart—red-headed, not one of mine.

Panic set in. I googled “voodoo doll real effects” and fell down rabbit holes: Louisiana Voodoo isn’t Hollywood curses; it’s spirit work, gris-gris, healing more than harming. But tourist dolls? Often just souvenirs. Yet some sellers—real practitioners—still tie them to people for protection, revenge, or balance.

Remy posted a hospital selfie: “Docs say heart arrhythmia. No history of this shit. Feels like someone’s squeezing.” Attached was a photo of him clutching his chest, face pale.

My hands shook. I hadn’t done anything lately. But the doll was warm, like it’d been sitting in sunlight.

I booked a flight back to New Orleans the next day.

The stand was gone when I returned—nothing but flattened grass and tire tracks. I asked around in Lafitte. Locals knew Remy; said he’d been a bully, cheated suppliers, ran rivals off the water. “Somebody finally got tired,” one fisherman muttered.

I tracked Remy to a small clinic outside town. He looked twenty years older—gaunt, eyes sunken. When I showed him the doll, he froze.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Roadside. Old lady with braids.”

He laughed, bitter. “Mama Zora. She warned me years ago. Said if I didn’t make right, it’d come back.” He touched the doll’s chest. “That’s my hair braided in there. My blood on the thread. She made it after I… after I hurt someone close to her.”

I felt sick. “I didn’t know. I thought it was fake.”

“Most are. This one ain’t.” He coughed, winced. “You been using it?”

I nodded.

“Then it’s feeding. Every poke, every twist—it’s pulling from me. But now it’s hungry for more. You stop, maybe it stops. You destroy it wrong…” He trailed off.

I drove to the bayou edge at dusk, doll in a paper bag. The water was still, air thick with cicadas. I remembered the woman’s warning: burn it, somebody burns.

Instead, I untied the pins one by one, whispering apologies I didn’t fully understand—to Remy, to whatever spirits listened, to the doll itself. I placed it gently on a cypress root, like an offering, and walked away without looking back.

Remy’s posts stopped for a while. Then, months later, one appeared: a photo of his boat repaired, him smiling on deck. Caption: “Feeling better. Made some amends. Life’s too short for grudges.”

I never saw the doll again. Sometimes, on stressful nights, I still feel a phantom pinch in my side—like a reminder. Not pain. Just… awareness.

I don’t buy souvenirs anymore.