Haitiaanse voodoo zombies

Haiti Voodoo - how to make a zombie - Secret Life of Ghosts & Werewolves

ZOMBIE

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One belief unique to voodoo is the zombie. The creole word ''zombi' is apparently derived from Nzambi, a West African deity but it only came into general use in 1929, after the publication of William B. Seabrook's The Magic Island. In this book, Seabrook recounts his experiences on Haiti, including the walking dead. He describes the first 'zombie' he came across in this way:

"The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of expression."

Haitian zombies were once normal people, but underwent zombification by a "bokor" or voodoo sorcerer, through spell or potion. The victim then dies and becomes a mindless automaton, incapable of remembering the past, unable to recognise loved ones and doomed to a life of miserable toil under the will of the zombie master.

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There are many examples of zombies in modern day Haiti. Papa Doc Duvallier the dictator of Haiti from 1957 to 1971 had a private army of thugs called tonton macoutes. These people were said to be in trances and they followed every command that Duvallier gave them. Duvallier had also his own voodoo church with many followers and he promised to return after his death to rule again. He did not come back but a guard was placed at his tomb, to insure that he would not try to escape, or that nobody steal the body. There are also many stories of people that die, then many years later return to the shock and surprise of relatives.

ENQUETTE POLICE NATIONALE D'HAITI - HISTOIRE DE ZOMBIE (ADELIN SEIDE)

Nzambi - The Hunt For The Haitian Zombie

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American soldiers returning from Haiti in the early ’20s and ’30s came home with arresting tales of voodoo potions, black magic, and living-dead zombies. They published their stories in mass-market pulp novels, which in turn inspired horror movies and eventually made their corporeal way to our supermarket aisles during Halloween.

But back in Haiti, zombies are real still. Late last year, just prior to the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that ravaged the country, VBS producer Santiago Stelley-Fernandez, a camera crew, and I headed to Port-au-Prince in search of the undead, known locally as Nzambi.

We had investigative forbearers. In 1937, American folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Haiti and encountered the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor, a woman who villagers claimed had died in 1907 at the age of 29 but had returned to the living 20 years later. Hurston investigated the rumors and discovered evidence that powerful drugs were used to replicate a death-like state.

In 1982, scientist Wade Davis traveled to Port-au-Prince to research the ethnobiological base of the Haitian zombie, procuring the secret poisons used in the procedure and discovering that the undead are far from a folkloric myth, like vampires or werewolves. He concluded that voodoo priests were employing a concoction of tetrodotoxin, a chemical derived from the puffer fish that produces paralysis and can mimic death — it is 100 times as deadly as cyandide, and something I have a longstanding interest in.

After zombification, a mind-controlling drug made from a plant called Datura stramonium was administered to the patient. Despite unlocking the chemical basis of this phenomenon, however, Davis maintained that zombification was not created purely through these poisons, but indeed relied on a tradition of voodoo sorcery hundreds of years old.

Thirty years later, and under the guidance of a massive local man who had survived fourteen bullets to the face, I was off to conduct my own zombie investigation. I traveled the countryside, spoke with sorcerers, and collected (and consumed) samples of the legendary poison. I went heavily armed into places that require you to be heavily armed. After months of labor, rigorous chemical analysis of the samples, several incidents that had our entire party mortally afraid, and untold numbers of night visions at the hands of total zombie preoccupation, we’re finally ready to share our findings.

See the rest at VBS.TV: Nzambi - Full Length subs - Hamilton's Pharmacopeia | VBS.TV