Here come the zombies, lurching uninvited from the trees and still without an explanation. The story is pretty much the all about scarry ghoulash. Scores of staggering corpses, who can be rekilled only by shots to the head, attack people’s houses looking for the living. What do these doddering dead guys want? From the way they knock on the door, they may just want to use the bathroom. But when they start through the door, they look like the rush-hour crowd at Times Square. Joking aside, this legend is a belief of the Haitian people. Zombie comes from the Haitian Creole word zonbi. The belief is that a person dies and is revived by witchcraft. Zombification is the apparent return of a dead person from the grave, and his enslavement to a zombie master. The legend actually began in the late 19th century in North America and Europe but ethnologists discovered that zombification may actually exist in Haiti. They found that Haitian society strongly believe zombies exist in their society and it is a major part of the fabric of their culture. Researchers wanted to know if their belief in zombification was based on fact or merely legend as it is in every other society. It has long been known that the people of Haiti report seeing people reappear after being pronounced dead and buried. Researchers set out to find out if a substance is being used among Haitian sorcerers and what substance or drug they are using. Circumstantial evidence shows that the substance is probably a toxin derived from puffer fish of the genus Sphoeroides. This toxin can produce a total paralysis almost indistinguishable from death, during which the subject remains conscious. Japanese gourmets have long favored the carefully prepared flesh of the puffer fish for the mild intoxication it induces; the effects of the toxin are thus known from studies of accidental poisonings of unfortunate Japanese puffer enthusiasts. Having discovered that it is possible to drug someone with a substance that will mimic death, and then to retrieve the ''corpse'' from its grave, since the paralysis eventually passes, researchers studying the Haitian culture to find out why anyone would want to become a zombie. Zombification in Haiti is a form of punishment carried out by secret societies who administer justice on a local level in uneasy alliance with the formal governmental system. Those accused of various antisocial acts are brought before these societies, which investigate the accusations, reach verdicts and execute punishment. Ethnologists have found that the fear of a Haitian is not of being attacked by a zombie, but rather of being turned into one. Becoming a zombie is understood to involve having one's ti bon ange - roughly one's soul - stolen from one's body, and thus losing autonomy. This is indeed a scary idea, but one must bear in mind that the whole point of sanctions for maintaining social control is that they should be really frightening, or else the threat of them won't work. But puffer fish poison can't account for how someone loses his ti bon ange; it can only account for how someone can appear to return from death. Ethnologists believe that Zombies are a part of Haitian secret societies and that zombification takes place in an institutional context that, while subject to abuse, like almost any other social institution, operates to maintain social life and is part of a rich and coherent cultural system. So, zombies are real and not just legend, they have become zombies against their will.
the ‘‘Vaudoux’’ dance by noting the slaves,’ with a talent for music and whistling. C.R.L. James recalls the story of a tryst drawn from the local folklore featuring a ‘‘young beauty with ebony skin, her whole body trembling due to a Zombi tale. Saint-Me´ry defines the ‘‘Zombi’’ as the ‘‘cre´ol’’ word for a kind of ‘‘spirit’’ or ‘‘revenant.’’ Incorporeal zombies continue to be part of twentieth-century Vodou lore. According to Alfred Me´traux, evil spirits roving the woods are called aˆmes zombi. Some of these zombie souls are found in cemeteries and isolated places and are believed to be accident victims who died before their time. Me´traux also mentions another type of zombie, souls stolen from corpses and stored in bottles that are sought after by sorcerers to increase their magical power.
colonial records concerning rumors that proliferated in Saint Domingue about the devil working through outlawed slave healers who represented a threat to colonial power. A slave and herbalist named Marie Kingue´ reportedly inspired fear and attraction among both the masters and the slaves due to her renown as a powerful sorceress. Locals believed that she possessed ‘‘the power to kill and raise from the dead.’ Although the word zombie is mainly linked to spirits before the Revolution, the fear of corporeal undead slaves being exploited in Saint Domingue looms up, for example, in what could be considered as a slip of the pen by the great leader of the Revolution, Toussaint Louverture. In his 1801 constitution, a document well ahead of its time for its profession of democracy and human rights, Louverture abolished slavery on the island, while retaining his allegiance to the French. Article 3 stipulated that ‘‘There can be no slaves in the territory; servitude is forever abolished. Here, all men are born, live, and die, free and French’’. What is the difference between living and dying free? Sybille Fischer argues that the notion of dying free and French could simply be rhetorical, or it could point to Louverture’s fear of a ‘‘possible future’’ where secessionists might claim their independence from France. Louverture believed in the ideals of the French Revolution and envisioned the future of Saint Domingue closely tied with France’s. According to Me´traux, despite being a devout Catholic and campaigning against Vodou, Louverture was a herbalist convinced of the existence of magic. In the context of the superstitious atmosphere reigning in Saint Domingue and rumors about sorcerers resurrecting the dead, the interpretation of Louverture’s constitution should then also take into account zombification as another dreaded ‘‘possible future’’ that entailed a life of subjugation after death. The anxiety surrounding the embodied zombie appears again in an anecdote reported by Michel-E´tienne Descourtilz concerning one of Louverture’s soldiers. During the Haitian Revolution, Descourtilz was taken prisoner by the black insurgent army, in which he then served as a doctor. A few years after his liberation, he published an account of his experience in the Revolution that included the story of a former slave who, after serving several years under Louverture, comes home and claims that his poor, sick, and emaciated mother is a ‘‘zombie’’. Descourtilz describes the ‘‘old zombie’’ in terms reminiscent of Blessebois’s and Saint-Me´ry’s haunting spirits, but he also implies that the son feels compelled to reject his mother because she looks like a dead body.
A documentary filmmaker with a yearning for groundbreaking investigations heard there was a place in Haiti where zombies went flying. The great houngan, voodoo priest, in Gonaives might be persuaded to reveal this miracle for his camera. Voodoo miracle working is as popular in the documentary film world as Filipino incisionless surgery. The documentarian got about a quarter of a million dollars from backers interested in paranormal phenomena. After all, the Maharishi claimed his discipline could produce flying disciples, but all anyone ever saw was a little hopping up and down. The great voodoo priest of Gonaives was a long step for mankind ahead of the Maharishi. The filmmaker gathered his equipment, crew, cameras, and money. He was thoroughly briefed and equipped. The brave band of explorers stood in a field, panning, focusing, jiggling dials and meters, doing all those exciting documentary film things, while the houngan pointed heavenward, shouting. "There he is! No, you're in luck! There are two of them!" Agile, nimble, subtle, graceful and skilled, the two flying zombies swooped and soared at such a height that they could not be seen, but thanks to careful planning and the best Sony equipment, proof of the frisky stunt zombies was captured in its unseen entirety on 16 millimeter film. The report was traced to a Canadian doctor who was the source for the claim of mental illness did not exist. Despite this announcement, U.S. television networks continued to run less-than-favorable reports on Aristide that cited the false CIA report as their source. Offering a counter-narrative on the editorial pages of the Boston Globe during this time the reporter stated: "The main purpose of attacks on Aristide at this crucial moment of course, is to distract from the character of the real murderers and psychopaths who refuse to yield power in Haiti", but this counter narrative was an exception. References Davis, W. Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic. 1997. |
Zombie Legend and Fact
