The Hypnotist and the Snake - A true story from 1901

A Snake and a Man… buried.

Wheeling, West Virginia, Summer of 1901

Under the thick canopy of Mozart Park, lanterns glowed like small, watchful eyes. The butchers’ annual picnic was in full swing—barrels of beer tapped, children darting between booths, laughter rising above the fiddle tunes. But by twilight, a darker curiosity pulled the crowd’s attention: a show promised by the traveling hypnotist, Professor Charles Cooper.

Time for a Show

He arrived with a sly grin, his high-collared coat and black top hat lending him an unsettling elegance. By his side stood James “Cannon Ball” Morris, broad-shouldered, calm—some claimed too calm. For years, the two had traveled from town to town, peddling a macabre act that left even physicians whispering about the reach of the human mind.

Yet by 1901, simple feats were not enough. Crowds were growing numb to the spectacle of burial and resurrection. So Cooper raised the stakes.

Bring Forth the Snake

Under the hush of evening, he led Morris to a stout wooden box sunk five feet into the soft earth. Before the crowd, he drew a blacksnake from a burlap sack. Its body twisted like oil on water. Cooper’s voice dripped through the air, rhythmic and low, and both man and serpent slackened, eyes dimming under his sway.

They laid Morris and the entranced snake together in the coffin, a thin pipe jutting up through the dirt to allow breath—and perhaps whispers—to travel. Then the earth swallowed them whole. Cooper promised the crowd they’d be raised again at dawn, living proof of his strange dominion over flesh and will.

Nightfall

But the night grew long. The lanterns dimmed, the fiddles fell silent, and only a single watchman remained by the pipe, hands clasped over his ears to shut out the rustling leaves and distant hoots of owls.

Just before daybreak, muffled cries clawed their way up the pipe—hoarse, frantic. The guard pressed his ear close and his face blanched. “Get me out!” came the gasping plea. “The snake— it’s alive!”

Panic flared. Men with shovels tore at the earth. When they wrenched open the coffin, Morris lay nearly blue, hands clutching desperately at a black coil that looped again and again around his neck. The snake’s scales gleamed with a sinister life, its small head pressing beneath Morris’s jaw, hunting for the pulse.

With trembling hands, Morris wrenched the creature off. Dirt clogged his throat. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes as he drew breath in ragged sobs.

Above him, Cooper stood, his pale fingers twitching as if still trying to command the serpent. Morris wouldn’t meet his gaze. Whatever power had bound them together—the hypnotist and his ever-willing subject—fractured in that dim dawn light.

Later, townsfolk whispered that Morris awoke nights afterward clawing at his throat, certain he felt scales tightening again. As for Cooper, he vanished from Wheeling not long after. Some say he fled to Pittsburgh, others claim he went south, chasing new towns and fresh believers.

But in Mozart Park, where the ground still bears faint scars from hurried spades, children swear that on quiet mornings, you can hear hissing drifting up from under the soil—waiting for someone fool enough to listen.