Did you ever hear tell of the Fool Killer?
What’s that?
The Fool Killer’s a great giant with a . . . with a chopper.
And if you’re foolish, he comes and chops you.
Chops you for a fool.
Hi, I’m Luke Bauserman, the blogger behind The Weekly Holler.
I first heard about the Fool Killer from my friend, the talented storyteller, Gary Carden.
If you’ve heard of the Fool Killer, it’s probably from the 1965 film about a 12-year-old
boy who runs away from home and finds himself roaming the post-Civil War South with a philosophical
axe murderer.
The movie was based on a novel written by Helen Eustis in 1959.
Her book was inspired by two earlier stories.
Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer by Stephen Vincent Benet, and The Fool Killer by William
Sydney Porter who published it under his pen name O. Henry.
According to Porter his version of the story was based on an old southern myth, “like
Santa Claus and Jack Frost and General Prosperity and all those concrete conceptions that are
supposed to represent an idea that Nature has failed to embody.”
This peaked my interest.
I started to dig a little deeper, and was surprised to find a number of newspaper interviews
with the Fool Killer himself from the late 1800’s.
Take this one from 1877: I kept digging until I found the origins of the Fool Killer.
It turns out that he was a fictional character created by Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans,
a North Carolina journalist in the mid-nineteenth century.
Evans was the editor of the Milton Chronicle from 1841 to 1883.
He invented the Fool-Killer as a way to express sarcasm about national events and societal
ills.
The Fool-Killer was supposedly a man named Jesse Holmes who wrote letters to the Chronicle
discussing his travels, and the characters and situations he encountered along the way.
Fool Killer stories were published about once a month, and the columns were accompanied
by an illustration of the Fool Killer carrying a club which he used to bash various kinds
of fools he came across.
Here’s a sampling of the “fools” Jesse claimed to have killed: In, March 1859, the
Fool Killer said he was approached by a man who’d been the victim of theft.
"Mr. Holmes,” [the man said,] “some one fooled me out of a mighty fine turkey last
night, and I'd be mazen [amazing] glad to find out who did it!"
"Describe your bird," said I.
He did so, and just as I began to bob around, I heard a mighty noise like the tramping of
many horses feet—looking around I descried [a group of fair perfomers] on parade.
The chaps were all disguised, and one of the larks was decked off in the identical feathers
of the stolen turkey.
Collaring the chap, says I, 'youngster, you'll pass mighty well for an owl without feathers
to help you out," and then I proceeded to maul the feathers off him.
In another story, the Fool Killer takes on a materialistic young man.
“Going on to Raleigh I encountered a chap, en route, who seems to have heard enough about
me to know me at sight, and taking me one side he said that he supposed I knew everything,
and as he was courting a girl who had a wealthy aunt, and who, report said, intended giving
her all of her property when she (the aunt) died, he would like to know of me if he could
rely on the report as being true— ‘Why do you wish to know?’
I enquired.
‘Because,’ he replied, ‘if it is true I'll marry that girl before Saturday night,
as her old aunt can't live long—and if it is not true, I don't want her—as her daddy
has but little plunder.’
‘See here, old fel,’ said I, ‘are you flying around that girl and pretending to
be in love with her?’
‘I am,’ was the reply.‘And are you making "plunder" the consideration of your marriage?’Perceiving
me warm up and glance my eye at my faithful club, he lifted his hat and began to scratch
his head as if embarrassed for a reply, when I walked up to him and putting my hand in
his collar I told him that I was about the last man that he had any business with—that
he would probably fare better to thrust his head in the angry lion's mouth, or tilt his
pate against forked lightning—that he was my property, and mine alone.
‘You are,’ said I, ‘pretending to be monstrously in love with a young lady, but
it seems that you love her aunt's property more,’ and thereupon I pitched into him
with the savageness of skinning skunks, and mauld him about right.”
People who neglected proper fire safety also had to fear Jesse Holmes.
“I concluded to return to Carolina by the Richmo[n]d and Danville Rail Road, and en
route slathered more subjects than Sampson slew Philistines with the jaw-bone of a John
Donkey.
Near Vernon Hill I heard a mighty fuss in the night, and repairing there I met a parcel
of women running as if for their lives and screaming at every jump: A wheel-wright chap,
it appeared, had made a paper balloon, and a crowd had assembled to see him send it up,
but in his efforts the balloon got burnt up, and the balloonist came near to burning up
with it . . . I made the lark sing that good old religious tune ‘farewell vain world!’”
The Fool Killer also didn’t look kindly upon people who mistreated animals, drunkards,
and those who made a habit of handing out poor medical advice.
“Hearing of a man near New Hope church, in Caswell, who was feeding his horse on sugar!
to fatten it up, I spat in my hand and went for him.
When I got there, his brother, who had borrowed the beast and which it seems had run away
with his wagon and smashed it, arrived with the sugar fed animal and delivering him to
his brother remarked, ‘Here, take your d[ang] horse—you had no business giving him that
sugar!’
I collared the sugar man and made him dance to the tune of ‘sugar in the gourd.’”
Later at a revival meeting, the Fool Killer said, “I descried a tall red nosed, bench
legged chap rise up and wildly waving his hands about his head he spanked them together
and [cavorted] around considerably . . . The red nose of the man and blood-shot eye, excited
my suspicions, and leading him aside, l asked where he got his liquor.
But the sinner protested that he hadn’t touched a drop, whereupon a gentle tap of
my club made him disgorge a full quart of ‘branch whiskey.’
I then played into his bread-basket in the old fashioned style and made him show me a
gallon jug he had hid under a log in the woods.”
“Near Milton I made a clever old farmer jump the bushes for telling a young man how
to take warts off his hands, the advice being to cut one more notch on the North side of
a persimmon tree than he had warts.”
After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Fool Killer penned an indictment of politicians:
“Editor, when the historian comes to record the cause of the dow [n] fall of this once
proud and mighty Republic, tell him for me, to put in these words, to wit: "It fell the
hands of Fools!"
I tried my best to avert the dire calamity—I wielded my club by day and by night—I bathed
it in the blood of demagogues, designing politicians, fanatics, rapscallions and scoundrels—I
cried aloud and spared not—but all to little effect.
I called loudly for help to demolish the fools that seemed to be everywhere springing up
like the green grass of this mother earth on which you and I tread, but alas, alas!
too few heard my warning and came to the rescue.
. .” Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans died in 1883,
but the character of the Fool Killer was so popular that other newspapers began having
“interviews” with him, cementing his place in the folklore of the United States.
I hope you enjoyed this story.
For more like it, sign up for The Weekly Holler email newsletter at theweeklyholler.com.
You can also find The Weekly Holler on Facebook and YouTube.