The Haitian Zombies

8/3/2019 The Haitian Zombies

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Should you find yourself in Haiti, beware of the man they call the bokor. Vodou tradition warnsthat he may secretly sprinkle a powder onto you, causing you to fall ill and quickly die — apparently. Doctors can examine you and find no pulse, no respiration. You'll be buried and your friends and family will attend the funeral. Then, one night, the bokor will come and exhume your body, and administer a mysterious antidote. Your body will wake up, but your consciousness and

personality will be gone. Your body will be a dumb slave, eating, breathing, working, followingthe bokor's commands, perhaps even sold into labor; until it grows old, the joints fail, and noteven the bokor's magic can keep it going. The remainder of your life will be as a zombie.

To study the phenomenon of zombies, we have to answer a number of questions. We want toknow if the Vodou tradition actually does include zombies, or if it's merely a dramatizedcaricature invented by storytellers to frighten Western audiences. We want to know if this hasever actually happened to anyone, the way it's described. Finally, if these answers are all yes, wewant to find out if there is a pharmacologically plausible explanation for what's said to take place.

The first question is easily answered. Vodou tradition does include zombies, and belief inzombies is nearly universal among Haitians. 50% of the population self-identify as Vodou, andmost of the rest call it Catholicism, though it's really a syncretism of the Afro-diasporic rootsalong with what the French missionaries taught. It's polytheistic and includes both white magicand black magic, and its ceremonies often involve drug-induced trances believed to be possession by gods. Bokors (Vodou sorcerers) openly practice zombification, and though fewHaitians have ever met a zombie, even fewer doubt that it happens.

The second question, whether zombification has ever actually taken place, is the most important,and one that's all too often taken for granted in such mysteries. Before trying to explain a strangeevent, first establish that the strange event ever actually happened. If there's one thing I've

learned from Skeptoid, it's that that answer is no more often than you'd think. Are there actuallyany reliably documented cases of people being raised from the grave and living out their lives asmindless slaves?

The most familiar case is that of the man who is the subject of Wade Davis' 1985 book The

Serpent and the Rainbow, the Haitian man Clairvius Narcisse. In 1962, Narcisse was about 40years old when he checked himself into the hospital complaining of pain and difficulty in breathing. Two days later he was dead, and his official death certificate is on file. His body lay inthe morgue for 24 hours (in unsurvivable refrigeration) until his family collected his body and buried him in the family plot. 18 years later, Narcisse suddenly identified himself to his sister inthe street and told a shocking tale. He'd been conscious but unable to move or breathe during hisentire stay in the hospital and subsequent burial. After three days underground, his coffin wassuddenly opened. He was beaten, gagged, forced to take a hallucinogenic drug, and draggedaway to face two years of slave labor on a sugar plantation, as one of many similarly imprisonedzombies. He reported being in a dream state with no willpower the whole time. Finally another zombie killed a captor with a hoe, and the zombies all escaped. Narcisse wandered for sixteenyears, afraid to return home, convinced that his brother had been behind the plot. Then, upon his brother's death, he visited his sister.



Narcisse has maintained his story, and even appeared in the 2008 documentary film When the Dead Walk. When Narcisse's story broke in 1982, Dr. Lamarque Douyon, director of Haiti's onlymodern psychiatric facility, wanted to know if the man was genuine. DNA fingerprinting was notyet available, so he questioned Narcisse, his family, family friends, and neighbors, andestablished to his satisfaction that today's Clairvius Narcisse was indeed the same person who

was born and grew up with that name. It seemed to him that whatever zombification drug Narcisse had been given, if that was indeed the explanation, would be an important discovery. Sohe consulted with an associate in the United States, Dr. Nathan Kline, who sent the bright youngHarvard graduate student Wade Davis to find it and investigate.

An ethnobotanist by trade, Davis was convinced that he'd found a satisfactory pharmacologicalexplanation for what happened: the poison tetrodotoxin. He purchased samples of zombie powder from several bokors across Haiti, and though their preparations differed, he found threecommon ingredients: charred and crushed human bones, various plants with stinging spines, and pufferfish. Pufferfish is famous for being the source of the expensive and risky sushi fugu, whichif not properly prepared, can administer a lethal dose of the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin. It comes

from a bacteria that grows within pufferfish, newts, toads, and a number of other animals.Although they've built up resistance, for humans and predators it's deadly. Tetrodotoxin blocks asodium channel in nerve cell membranes, preventing the nerves from being able to fire anymuscles. In sufficient doses, which for humans is very small, it stops all muscle activity,including not only the voluntary muscles, but also the heart and muscles that control breathing.The victim is conscious but as there is no pulse or respiration, he loses consciousness and dieswithin minutes from the lack of blood flow to the brain. There is no antidote or treatment.However the effect is temporary, and a few fugu diners have recovered after their apparent death,having received just barely enough dosage to wear off before the brain was lethally damaged.

Davis asked about Narcisse's report of having been beaten and drugged when he was exhumed.

The bokors said that zombies are force fed a paste made of sweet potatoes, cane syrup, and a plant called Datura. Along with nightshade and henbane, datura has long been used in manycultures as a hallucinogenic drug. It contains scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine. But as arecreational drug, it's quite dangerous, and would need to be administered by someoneexperienced in its use, such as a bokor.

And so Davis published his book with this thesis: that tetrodotoxin produces a stateindistinguishable from death, but that bokors have some way of resuscitating the victims, whohave suffered sufficient brain damage from hypoxia that they live out their lives virtually asvegetables. But it received much scientific criticism, which focused on the zombie powder.Authors Takeshi Yasumoto and C.Y. Kao wrote in the British journal Toxicon that although pufferfish was indeed in Davis' powder, only insignificant amounts of tetrodotoxin were; andsince tetrodotoxin breaks down quickly in water or in alkaline environments, it was implausiblefor it to be delivered as a poison in powdered form. However, the bokor preparations were allinconsistent with one another; some might have been stronger. In 1984, Dr. John Hartung atDownstate Medical Center in Brooklyn fed Davis' zombie powder to rats, rubbed it on their skin,and even injected it into their abdomens, and observed no effect.

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From assessing the criticism and responses, my analysis is that a very few zombie powders arelikely to deliver a dose of tetrodotoxin, and most are not. If bokors do indeed attempt to poisonvictims with their powders, the vast majority of such attacks will fail. Either an insufficient dosewill be delivered, or the victim will die. Only once in a blue moon is it likely for a zombificationto result in both a lucky knockout and a resuscitation, and the level of brain damage will be

correspondingly variable. It's plausible, but unlikely; and if it happens at all, successes are probably extremely rare.

Skeptical criticism of Davis also pointed out that the entire case of Clairvius Narcisse is based ona flawed presumption. Even with all the documentation and evidence, and all the research done by Dr. Douyon, there is no reason to identify Narcisse as the man who died and was buried.

Haiti is not known for its wealth. In 1962, a hospital stay was beyond the means of manyresidents. The hospital where Narcisse is alleged to have died, the Albert Schweitzer MedicalCenter, charged $5 a day for local residents, and a higher rate for non-locals. But poor non-localsgot sick too, and it was not unheard of for them to check in under the name of a local to qualify

for the lower rate. We have no evidence to rule out the likelihood that some unknown mandeveloped a fatal kidney failure (which is what the lab tests showed as the cause of death),checked in using Clairvius Narcisse's name, and subsequently died.

It turns out that there is a perfectly plausible reason that the real Narcisse might have been justfine with this. In his younger days, he had been something of the family black sheep. He had anumber of illegitimate children whose mothers demanded support, and some other bad debts, andwas not well respected. In fact, during Dr. Douyon's interviews, he learned that the familyconsidered Narcisse's sins to be the reason that the bokors had punished him with zombification.It all made sense to them. And, for a man with Narcisse's skeletons in the closet, seeking achange of scenery is hardly unheard of. Perhaps in his later years he had a change of heart and

wanted to reconnect with his family. Considering the convenient circumstances, hiszombification was a perfect cover story.

Obviously this theory is unproven, but consider the alternative: He survived two days, conscious but with no heart or lung function and no oxygen to the brain, 24 hours of which were spent inhypothermic refrigeration in the morgue. He then spent three more days underground, and all of this with failed kidneys that lab tests showed were fatal; then emerged in perfect health andmanaged hard labor at the sugar plantation for years. Is all of that more plausible than a deadbeatdad simply skipping town?

We could go on all day and examine the many stories like that of Narcisse, but the rest lack hisdocumentation and are anecdotal at best, despite their abundance. Vodou practitioners drugthemselves regularly and perform zombie rituals, and some probably go for extended periodsunder the influence of datura. Almost certainly, in Haiti's history, some have been poisoned bytetrodotoxin in zombie powder and survived, though any with sufficient brain damage to becalled "zombies" had questionable utility as laborers and certainly would never have recovered.The grain of truth in the zombie mythology is a real one, but its popular portrayal — even withinHaiti — is an exaggeration based on tradition and superstition.



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The Haitian Zombies