Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE.
PART 68 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the February 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure:
*** The Eugenicists of 1913 and 1914.
*** Kentucky’s Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper for its hypocritical editorials blasting air pollution from factory chimney stacks while simultaneously hyping the tobacco industry despite the “air pollution” caused by smoking.
*** Republican and Democrat newspapers for amping up their combined attacks on Catholics. (Pearson found Catholic priests as disgusting as politicians, but found the newspapers’ attacks hypocritical.)
*** Joe Knowles, artist and Forest Survival enthusiast, for failing at his stunt of going into the Maine forests naked and insisting he would not only survive but would emerge after several weeks having made himself clothing that would be fitting for High Society. Knowles did survive but looked like a wild man and his clothing was like something Fred Flintstone would wear.
*** Miss Bana Douglass of Stratton, Maine. She was inspired by Joe Knowles’ stunt and announced her plan to go naked into the Maine forests herself in the summer of 1914. She too claimed she would thrive and create all the clothing and comforts of home for herself. The Fool Killer jokingly predicted that the Maine woods would be loaded with men that summer, all of them hoping to meet up with Bana Douglass.
*** What Pearson and his Fool Killer called “the Four Percent” (today we call them “the One Percent”) for their callousness toward the suffering of the working class and the poor. Continue reading
PART 67 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the January 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure: 
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore.
PART SEVEN: The seventh surviving Fool Killer Letter. (See Part One for an explanation.) 
For April Fool’s Day here’s a look at one of the original Fool Killer Letters from Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans’ newspaper the Milton Chronicle. This one expresses his disgust with the Civil War tearing the nation apart and his intention to hibernate until it’s over. 
PART THREE: The third surviving Fool Killer Letter. (See Part One for an explanation) 
JUNE 28th, 1861 – From “Down about Norfolk, VA.” (The Fool Killer wandered North Carolina and Virginia – which back then still included what is now West Virginia – and the dark-humored Fool Killer Letters were syndicated in several newspapers in addition to his North Carolina “birth place” the Milton Chronicle.) 
In this letter the Fool Killer adds a collection of Bowie knives to his arsenal alongside his ever-present club/ walking stick/ cudgel. Future incarnations of the Fool Killer in folk tales, short stories, novels and plays will assign him various axes, guns and even a scythe. 
The previous installments of Fool Killer lore have seen the neglected 1800s folk figure in a variety of roles: 
In honor of the Halloween season this post will look at the Fool Killer as a 1980s slasher. 
THE FOOL KILLER – As we all know, Anthony Perkins starred in the eerie 1965 movie The Fool Killer as an amnesiac Civil War veteran who came to believe he was really the legendary title figure. A 1980s slasher version of the Fool Killer could feature a deranged killer who has similarly come to regard himself as the “real” one.
AUGUST 1919 RETURN – From January of 1910 to July of 1917, James Larkin Pearson’s monthly Fool-Killer had been published, with his revival of the violent folk figure doing his ages-old job of bashing political and societal fools. In April 1917 America entered World War One and by July Pearson felt that a unified front for wartime was appropriate. 
In August of 1919, nine months after the end of the war, Pearson changed the name back to The Fool-Killer and resumed the hard-hitting political satire. That month’s targeted fools included: 
JANUARY 1910 – James Larkin Pearson, poet and newspaper man, carried on the Fool Killer tradition from 1910 to 1917, then again from 1919 into the 1920s. Pearson’s fellow North Carolinian Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans had written the Fool Killer Letters of the 19th Century so it’s appropriate that another Tar Heel continue the lore for so many years of the 20th Century.
Pearson’s Fool-Killer was the mascot of the entire publication, which was merely 4-6 pages anyway, not simply the supposed author of letters regarding his body count of “fools.” Think of this Fool Killer (I prefer no hyphen) as the written word equivalent of Puck (1876-1918), the political cartoon mascot of the humor magazine of the same name.
*** Frederick Cook, who, the previous December, had seen his claim to have reached the North Pole ruled invalid and possibly fraudulent by the University of Copenhagen. (The Fool Killer was unable to locate Cook, however.)
PART TWENTY: In a surprising development Balladeer’s Blog was contacted by THE actual Fool Killer. Using Jimmy Neutron-level science I determined that this correspondent was indeed the actual supernatural figure who had been at large in America since the 1830s. 
Coming to you as I wander in search of fools to kill, as usual a murder of crows following in my wake to feast upon the ample corpses I leave behind me in my travels.
Previously I examined Joel Chandler Harris’ 1902 story Flingin’ Jim And His Fool-Killer, set in Georgia in October of 1872, plus Ridgway Hill’s Facts for the Fool-Killer, set in and around Buffalo, NY in 1909. 
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