Thursday 25 November 2010

The Gown Man

As recalled by Cyril Neville (of the Neville Brothers):

"If our mother wanted to keep us home, she'd tell us about the Gown Man. He was this big white guy in a hospital gown, and he'd snatch you off the street, put you under his arm, and take you over to the dissection room at Tulane University medical school. They'd pull off your skin and you'd get chopped up by medical students, practicing their autopsies."

And as recalled by his brother Aaron Neville:

"They had the Needle Man, too. Supposed to shove a six-inch needle in your eye, suck your brain out right from the socket."

Mark Jacobson, The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 209