Goofer dust is the tradition's poison, and its name is spoken with more caution than any other material in the collections. It is a prepared powder built on graveyard dirt, with other ingredients that vary by worker and by region, and 'to goofer' someone means to work the kind of harm that is meant to sicken or kill. Hyatt's informants talk about it constantly - how it is made, how it is recognised, how a person who has been goofered can be brought back - and most of what they say is about being its victim rather than about using it.
The powder is laid where the target will step, walk or sleep, or is worked into a trick or a doll, and it is understood to enter a person through the feet, the skin or the breath. Diagnosis of goofering is a specialist reading, and the cure is a hard and long course of uncrossing, bathing and purging done by an experienced worker; the tradition's own accounts are full of people who were brought back and of those who were not. The powder is not described here because describing it would be supplying it.
Goofer dust is dangerous in the ordinary physical sense and not only the magical one: its preparations involve toxic substances, and a person who finds a packet of powder at a door should not touch it, burn it or breathe near it. In the tradition's own ethics it is the material of murder, it is never justified in the accounts the collections record except in stories of revenge that end badly for everyone, and a worker asked to goofer someone is expected to refuse. This entry names the material, describes its place in the tradition, and deliberately does not describe how it is made. Anyone who believes they have been goofered should see a doctor as well as a worker.
Every entry that names Goofer Dust, grouped by the system it comes from.