There are few things more frightening than a snake in the house, but a snake in the bed is the sort of horror that seems almost too terrible to believe. Yet in this 1923 report from Jackson, Alabama, a sick young woman’s repeated cries were dismissed as fevered imagination until the truth was uncovered beneath the bedclothes.
Miss Minnie Ballard had already been ill for several weeks when she began insisting that there was a snake in her bed. To her mother, who was caring for her through the fever, the claim must have sounded like delirium. The girl was tossing and suffering, and for twenty-four hours she continued to say that something was there with her. Only after she was moved to another bed, in an effort to calm her, did the family discover that her terror had been real.
Curled between the covers at the foot of the bed was a large water moccasin, several feet long and made sluggish by the cool weather. The venomous snake had somehow found its way into a screened house and settled in the bedding, where the sick girl lay unknowingly beside it for an entire day.
Moccasin Found In Bed With Sick Girl
JACKSON, Alabama. — A large water moccasin, sluggish from the cool weather of last week, lay between the covering of the bed on which Miss Minnie Ballard tossed in fever for 24 hours and was only discovered when the young woman was moved to another bed.
Miss Ballard, who has been ill for several weeks, cried out to her mother, who was nursing her, several times that there was a snake in the bed.
The mother sought to quiet the girl, believing her delirious. After the girl for more than a day repeated her cries that a snake was in the bed, she was moved to another bed in the same room in order to quiet her.
The moccasin, several feet in length, was found sleeping between the bed clothes at the foot of the bed. How it entered the house is a mystery, as the house is thoroughly screened.
Source: The Birmingham Age Herald. Birmingham, Ala. May 31, 1923.
