The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (113 page)

Summoned to meet a New York psychiatrist named Nathan Kline, Davies was told of two recent cases that seemed to demonstrate beyond all doubt that zombification was not a myth. In 1962 a Haitian peasant in his forties, Clairvius Narcisse, was admitted to the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in the Artibonite Valley, suffering from fever; he died two days later and was buried the next day. Eighteen years later, in 1980, a man walked up to Narcisse’s sister Angelina and identified himself as her brother, Clairvius. He asserted that he had been “zombified” by order of his brother, with whom he had been disputing about land. He had been removed from his grave and taken to work with other zombies. After two years, their master was killed and he escaped to wander the country for the next sixteen years. It was not until he heard of his brother’s death that he dared to make himself known.

Narcisse’s identity was confirmed, and the BBC made a short film about the case. In the same year, a group of “zombies” was found wandering in the north of the country – where Narcisse had been forced to work, confirming Narcisse’s story of the escape.

In 1976 a thirty-year-old woman named Francina Illeus, known as “
Ti Femme
”, was pronounced dead. Three years later she was found alive by her mother and recognized by a scar on her temple; her coffin was found to be full of rocks. She believed that she was poisoned on the orders of a jealous husband.

In 1980 another woman, Natagette Joseph, aged sixty, was recognized as she wandered near her home village; she had “died” in 1964.

When Davies went to Haiti to investigate, his attention focused on
Datura stramonium
, known in America as jimsonweed and in Haiti as zombie’s cucumber. He went to see Max Beauvoir, an expert on vodoun. He interviewed Clairvius Narcisse and confirmed his story. He also discovered that Narcisse was not simply the victim of a vengeful brother; he had been something of a Casanova and had left illegitimate children – whom he declined to support – all over the place. Davies later concluded that “zombification” is not simply a matter of malice. The secret societies had a sinister reputation, but it seemed that they were less black than they were painted and often acted as protectors of the oppressed. Zombification, it seemed, was often a punishment for flagrant wrongdoing.

Davies’s research led him to a highly poisonous toad, the
Bufo
marinus
, and to two varieties of puffer fish, so called because they inflate themselves with water when threatened. Both are full of deadly neurotoxin called
tetrodotoxin
, a fatal dose of which would just cover the head of a pin. Captain Cook had suffered severely after eating the cooked liver and roe of a puffer fish. The Japanese throw away all the poisonous parts of the fish and eat the flesh raw – as
sashimi –
but the deadly liver is also eaten after being cleaned and boiled.

But it was clear to Davies that the poison of the puffer fish is not the sole secret of “zombification”. In his extraordinary book
The Serpent and the Rainbow
(1985), he describes his search for samples of zombie poison. His aim was to obtain samples and take them back to be tested in the laboratory. But although he met a number of
houngans
and witnessed some remarkable ceremonies – in a number of which he saw people “possessed” by spirits (so that one woman was able to place a lighted cigarette on her tongue without being burned) – his quest came to a premature end when one of his major backers died and another suffered a debilitating stroke. But his book leaves very little doubt that the secret of “zombification” is a poison that can produce all the signs of death. When the body is dug up, an antidote is administered (Davies was able to study some antidotes and concluded that the “magical” powers of the priest seem to be as important as the ingredients themselves), and then the victim is often stupefied by further drugs that reduce the subject to a level of virtual idiocy.

A 1984 BBC programme introduced by John Tusa confirmed that “zombification” results from a poison that affects certain brain centres, reducing consciousness to a dream level.

Wade Davies was left in no doubt about the reality of “zombification”. But his investigation into the vodoun religion also seems to have convinced him that not all the phenomena of vodoun can be explained in such naturalistic terms.

Index