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Zombie n. (in vodou) corpse said to have been revived by witchcraft: (colloq.) person who seems to have no mind or will. (Oxford Popular Dictionary)
The story of the Zombie goes right back to the primeval mists of the past, so ancient, that it is difficult to place into a time frame. It’s origins however, are no where near as mysterious, with most scholars on the subject agreeing that the folklore originated amongst the dark lands of the African continent. In the mid 16th century with the onset of the African-European Slave Trade across the Atlantic, the dark religions of the Negro Slaves began to spread and with them, went the Zombie.
It is generally noted that the Zombie of the African practises, are the resurrected dead, controlled by the power of the Bokor, (pronounced book-er) a powerful sorcerer or sorceress, schooled in the black arts of the Vodou.
Like the corpse of the Vampire, the Zombie too is under the control of an evil influence but unlike the Vampire, they are no threat to the living unless, the Bokor decides it. They are literally mindless beings, forced into the labour and service of the sorcerer. It is believed that, through certain dark and mystical rites, the Bokor can catch and temporarily detain in a bottle, the life essence or spirit, of his intended victim and, all the while he has this spirit, the revived, dead body is subject to his will and his will alone. It is also said that, in order to lay the Zombie at peace, one must first get salt into its mouth. On tasting this, the Zombie realises the pathetic and cursed state of its existence and at once, the evil power of the Bokor having been broken by the salt, races to its grave where it will dig itself in to die a second and final time.
Western medicine has long been fascinated by the Zombie, believing that the powders and neurotoxins used in creating them, could, if deciphered, have great benefits for humankind. However, the Bokors guard their secrets well and will not relinquish them without a fight. Indeed, they will guard them with their very lives.
From the Slave Trade, the West Indian Island of Haiti became the Zombie capital of the world. Following a military coup de tat in Haiti in 1956, on a populist and black national platform, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, rose to power and became President for Life of the country. He ruled the island through fear and terror, for as well as basing his rule on a purged military or, rural militia, he incorporated a personality cult, based in the dark arts of Vodou. It was said of Papa Doc, that he had legions of the these undead under his direct control.
With the onset of the twentieth century there have been many documented cases of the Zombie in the islands that make up the Caribbean. While researching material in 1937 for her book on folklore in Haiti, the author Zora Neale Hurston happened upon the case of Felicia Felix Mentor in a remote village on the island. Felicia was a relative who had died at the age of 29 in 1907. The author pursued rumours that the people who became Zombies had been administered powerful psychoactive drugs but she was unable to substantiate this for such was the fear that the Bokors wielded, she could find no one to give evidence for the practice. Hurston would later write,
“What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.”
In 1985, an ethno botanist from Harvard University, Wade Davis, took his researches further in two books, The Serpent And The Rainbow(1985) and Passage Of Darkness: The Ethnobiology Of The Haitian Zombie (1988). The first of the books was later turned into a successful motion picture. Travelling to Haiti in 1982, Davis expounded the theory that a living person can be turned into a Zombie through the administration of a powder, so fine, that it can enter the blood vessels through the pores of the skin, inducing a death like, catatonic state in the victim whilst making their minds highly suggestive to commands from the Bokor. In his investigations, he discovered two powders that were used. Although they were fine enough to pass through the skin, mouth or eyes and into the blood stream, they were usually administered through a wound.
The first of the powders, coup de poudre (French for powder strike) includes the poison tetrodotoxin or TTX, a poison found in the puffer fish. The second powder consisted of dissociative drugs such as datura. When combined, these powders were claimed by Davis to induce a state of death in which the subject’s will would be entirely under the control of the Bokor. It was Davis too that brought the case of Clairvius Narcisse to the world’s attention, a man said to have died and been buried some years previous who suddenly appeared in his home village in a Zombie like state.
Although Davis’ works make for incredible reading and the movie The Serpent And The Rainbow is a must see for all fans of the Zombie, his projects and claims have been highly criticised, not least of all for a number of medical inaccuracies which include, among others, the claim that a Bokor can keep a subject in a state of zombiefication (pharmacologically induced trance) for a number of years. TTX poisoning can cause a number of symptoms including, nausea, numbness, unconsciousness, paralysis and even death. However, they do not include the stiffened gait associated with the Zombie or indeed, the death like trance. The eminent neurologist Terence Hines, dismisses, apparently along with the scientific community, that tetrodotoxin can cause the classic Zombie state in a person and he states that Davis’ claims on the nature of the reports on Haitian Zombies is over credulous to say the least.
In essence then, the Zombie paints a pathetic figure. Nowhere in the annals of this terrible tradition does it speak of one of these creatures harming or indeed, killing another a living human being. The Zombie is a creature to be, not feared, but wholeheartedly pitied.
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Randall Stone
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http://demonvampirehorror.blogspot.com/ carole gill
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