The Truth About Zombies

Zombies are everywhere in popular culture today, and film maker George Romero helped re-introduce them to the modern audience. Romero defined the modern movie zombie. The ghouls, as he first called them, are flesh eating undead. The zombie evolution doesn’t start with Romero; it has its roots in history, myth, legend, and fact.

What if I told you, before Romero there were real zombies, but they didn’t eat people? What if I told you real zombies aren't just legends to scare children? What if I told real zombies do exist, have been documented and you might be one, even if you've never practiced voodoo or been to Haiti?

What does Haiti and voodoo have to do with zombies?

Haiti is the birth place of the zombie, sorry Pittsburgh, for centuries there have been legends of voodoo priest reanimating the dead and enslaving them. Most people have dismissed these stories as mere superstition. They are just tales of things that go bump in the night designed to scare children and primitive people.

While it is easy to dismiss the stories with the uber rational western mind it's also wrong. Haitian zombies are real, and anthropologists have proved it. Wade a Davis, an anthropologist, led the research on Haitian zombies, and here's what attracted his attention.

So this zombie walks into a village:

"a man walked into l'Est?re, a village in central Haiti, approached a peasant woman named Angelina Narcisse, and identified himself as her brother Clairvius. If he had not introduced himself using a boyhood nickname and Mentioned facts only intimate family members knew, she would not have believed him. Because, eighteen years earlier, Angelina had stood in a small cemetery north of her village and watched as her brother Clairvius was buried." (1)

So many claim to be undead, why did this one get attention?

There have been many cases in Haiti of people reporting zombies, either being them or having seen them. In most cases the claims are written off. Usually dead men returning to life, in a third World country doesn’t get the attention of the scientific community, it usually gets a big yawn from the scientific community, but Narcisse was a very interesting case, he had been pronounced dead by western doctors: his claim was not easily dismissed as a mis-diagnosis.

"But Narcisse's case was different in one crucial respect; it was documented. His death had been recorded by doctors at the American-directed Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles. On April 30, 1962, hospital records show, Narcisse walked into the hospital's emergency room spitting up blood. He was feverish and full of aches. His doctors could not diagnose his illness, and his symptoms grew steadily worse. Three days after he entered the hospital, according to the records, he died. The attending physicians, an American among them, signed his death certificate. His body as placed in cold storage for twenty hours, and then he was buried."(2)

What? How did that happen?

While the details of the story are interesting and I'd encourage everyone to read them, what's more important isn't how he became a zombie, but why.

Why did he become a zombie?

It wasn’t a viral infection, toxic waste, or even a zombie bite. It was his beliefs and behaviors. Simply put Clairvius Narcisse was a jerk. He wasn't an evil person, he just wasn't a good person and a voodoo priest took notice.

Don’t piss off your Voodoo priest.

In the voodoo religion the priests act not only as religious leaders and magician, but also as judge. Most of their ceremonies are about bringing balance and justice to the world. Apparently Narcisse needed both, so a he was sentenced to zombification, and an undead life of hard labor. The priest poisoned him, buried him, and brought him back from the dead.

The priest didn't kill him, which is an important distinction to make, he poisoned him. The secret poison brought Narcisse to the verge of death, but he never crossed that threshold. All of his bodily functions were slowed to a point that they were undetectable by modern science. His heart was still beating, he was still breathing, but at such a slow rate no one could tell. He was effectively placed in suspended animation. After he was buried all the priest had to do was dig him up, give him the antidote, and voila instant zombie.

Didn’t he know he wasn’t a zombie?

I know what you're thinking, wait a minute didn't he know he wasn't a zombie? That's the interesting part, he didn't. He knew he died and he knew he was buried and he knew he was alive again. So of course he knew he was a zombie, and that's the secret to real zombies, he knew. It's all about belief.

What you know can hurt you.

The practioners of voodoo know magic is real, they know spirit possession is real, and they know zombies are real. Believe might seem like a better word choice, especially to the scientifically inclined, but believe isn't entirely correct. Believe seems a little wishy washy, there is room for doubt. Know on the other hand leaves no room for doubt. If you know something, it is true, a fact, and reality.

Knowing something changes your whole world. It makes some things possible and other things impossible. For Narcisse it made him a zombie and a slave. For several years he was zombie slave on a plantation in Haiti, until one day by chance he was separated from his work group. After wandering the country side, for weeks, his beliefs changed, and his reality changed. He was no longer a zombie slave.

Are you a zombie?


I wonder how many of the things we know, things we know are true, things we know are facts, things we know are reality, aren't? We all might want to take a good look at the things we know. How do they shape us? If you really think, it’s not just zombies about in Haiti. It’s our everyday reality. How many of the things we know are just beliefs helping to turn us into zombie slaves? Are you a zombie?



1http://windward.hawaii.edu/facstaff/dagrossa-p/articles/SecretesofHaitisLivingDead.pdf