Who are the zombies – the neither living nor dead creatures often encountered in Haiti? Is a zombie really a dead body without a mind and without a soul? Is it under the power of sorcerers who have subjugated it by capturing its soul?
Haitians believe in zombies, they believe and fear them. Do they exist? Many examples are given to prove this, and the practice of voodoo testifies that the walking dead are servants of the devil's magicians. And even if zombie-like creatures are found, are they really walking dead? Is it possible to give a logical explanation for their strange state?
“The worst part was the eyes. And this wasn’t my imagination at all. They were actually the eyes of a dead man, but not blind, but glowing, unfocused, unseeing. That’s why the face was so scary. So empty, as if there was nothing behind it. Not just expressionless, but expressionless. By that point I had seen so many things in Haiti that were outside the normal human experience that for a moment I completely switched off and thought, or rather felt, “Great God, maybe all this nonsense is true…”
That's how William Seabrook describes his encounter with the most sinister of all supernatural creations. Seabrook came face to face with a zombie – a walking dead man. And at that moment, he was ready to believe everything he had heard about zombies since his first visit to Haiti.
The fate of a zombie is more terrible than that of a vampire or a werewolf. Vampires do return to those they love. They can be recognized and held. A werewolf can be wounded and will take human form. But a zombie is a mindless automaton, doomed to live in a half-sleep. A zombie can move, eat, hear, even speak, but it has no memory of its past, no knowledge of its present. Without a glimmer of recognition, it can look into the eyes of those it loved or pass by its own home.
Neither a ghost nor a living being, zombies are placed, perhaps forever, in this “border zone between life and death.” And if vampires are the living dead, zombies are the walking dead, a body without a soul or mind. With the help of witchcraft, they have been given the appearance of life. They are the creation of sorcerers, who use them as their own slaves or rent them out, most often to work in the fields.
Haiti is the birthplace of this phenomenon and is full of stories of people who died, were buried, and then suddenly reappeared as zombies. One of the most famous stories, first described by the American writer Zora Hurston in 1938, is still told in Haiti. A charming young girl named Maria died in 1909. Five years after her death, in the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, she was spotted in the window of a house by former school friends. The owner of the house flatly refused to give any explanation, and Maria's father took up the case himself. When the house was found, neither the owner nor the girl were there. Meanwhile, rumors began to spread around Port-au-Prince, and to calm public opinion, the girl's grave was dug up. In the coffin lay a skeleton, too long for a child. It was cleverly dressed in the clothes in which Maria was buried.
It was said that Maria was dug up by a sorcerer and turned into a zombie, and when he died, the widow gave his daughter to a Catholic priest. After her schoolmates saw her, it was said that her parents managed to take her out of Haiti to France, disguised as a nun. And that her brother later visited her there.
However, this is not very typical of zombie stories, because the saddest thing about them is that no one can help the zombies. Family and FRIENDS most often do not know about what happened, and if they do, they are too scared to try to do anything. Zora Hurston tells the following story, told by the mother of a dead boy. After the burial, in the middle of the night, his friends were awakened by a frightened woman and her daughter. It turned out that during the night the sister heard singing and noise in the street. Then she recognized her brother's voice. Her crying woke the whole house, and, looking out the window, the family saw an ominous procession wandering along the street, and the boy buried the day before. As he, dragging his feet with difficulty, reached the window, everyone heard his pitiful cry. “But such was the horror,” writes Zora Hurston, “inspired by these creatures, that even the mother and sister did not dare go out into the street and try to save him.” The procession disappeared from sight. After this, the boy's sister went crazy.
But why are Haitians so afraid of zombies? And what happens to those who try to free their dead loved ones? Do zombies really exist? To answer all these questions, we must look to Haiti’s past and, most importantly, to the beliefs and religious practices of voodoo.
Voodoo is a unique combination of African, Catholic, and even some Native American beliefs, as well as European occultism. But its deepest roots are in Africa, and its emergence coincides with the arrival of a large contingent of African slaves in Haiti. This dreadful period in human history began when Haiti was under Spanish rule in the 16th century, and flourished in the 17th century, when the island of Haiti fell to France. It became one of France's richest colonies, and slaves were needed to maintain that status. European slave traders had already supplied the New World plantations with slaves from the west coast of Africa, and were eager to meet the growing demands of the French. On the rare occasions when the French authorities had legal difficulties with the slave trade, they argued that it was the best way to convert African pagans to Christianity. Many slaves became members of the Catholic Church. In doing so, they slightly modified Christian doctrines to suit their own temperament and needs, and mixed Christian ceremonies with their own religious rituals. This combination has persisted to this day. Even today, despite the Church's disapproval, many Haitians practice both Catholicism and Voodoo.
Slaves were brought to Haiti from all over West Africa, but most belonged to the Yoruba-speaking tribes. These tribes believed in spirit possession. Separated from their homeland and families, transported in terrible conditions to an unfamiliar country, the slaves nevertheless remained committed to their traditions. They still revered magic and witchcraft and remembered the gods and spirits of their ancestors, who were worshiped in the forests of Africa, which formed the basis for the formation of voodooism in Haiti. The new religion united a rootless, suffering people. Therefore, the French authorities quickly banned it. Thus, they increased the popularity of voodoo, as well as its sinister mystical component.
Slavery was a great business. By 1750, 30,000 slaves were being brought to Haiti every year. As generations passed, longing and nostalgia for the past grew, preparing the ground for rebellion. Finally, in 1757, the island of Haiti tried to become independent. The rebellion of fanatical runaway slaves was led by Mackandal, but the French captured and executed him. Subsequent rebellions hastened Haiti's declaration of independence in 1804. With the departure of the French colonists, who were Catholics, the voodoo religion spread everywhere.
The voodoo religion has two sides. One is faith and worship of one's own gods – as in classical religious confessions. But there is another, mystically colored – voodoo of black magic, witchcraft, belief in monsters, murderers and resurrection of the dead. The most important part of some ceremonies is blood, and pigs, hens and roosters are sacrificed.
Voodoo ceremonies take place in so-called “tormelles” (gazebos). This can be a miserable hut with a dirt floor or a modern building, but in all cases there is a platform for ritual dancing. It is in the dance that the participants experience the main experience of voodoo – possession by spirits. Dancing, singing and drumming create an environment in which the practitioner of voodoo and the spirit can become one, and there comes a moment when the dancers fall into a trance, which ends in loss of consciousness.
The dancer may be possessed by any of the many gods and spirits, most of whom still bear African names. At this point, the possessed person is completely sure that he has truly “become” them, and adopts their appearance, gestures, and behavior. Thus, the possessed person by the ancient spirit of Papa Legba, who guards the gates to other worlds and is the deity of crossroads, whose symbol is a crutch, visibly grows decrepit and begins to limp. Those around him, recognizing the spirit, run to help with sticks and crutches. The god of the sea will row with invisible oars. The possessed person by a flirtatious female deity will behave coyly and provocatively. One of the traditional goddesses of Dahomey (Benin) – Agassa, a magnificent combination of a woman and a panther, retains her power in Haiti, forcing those possessed by her to bend their fingers like claws. Evil SPIRITS can cause convulsions in the dancer. The possession lasts for several hours, during which time the person can painlessly walk on hot coals, plunge their hands into boiling water, just as in some African tribes, in a state of trance, people can CUT OFF their fingers. Researcher Patrick Leigh Farmer, visiting Haiti, offered a rudimentary explanation of how possession, or the supposed “incarnation” of a god, can occur. In his book “The Traveler's Tree” published in 1950, he writes: “Every Haitian from early childhood is accustomed to the moment of incarnation, and he knows that this miracle will occur in the “tonnelle”, where the very air is saturated with mystery, and the drumbeat almost physically affects his brain, and under the influence of drums, dance and the divine presence, he plunges into a state of hysteria and, as a result, self-hypnosis.”
Using electroencephalograms, it has been established that the human brain is unusually sensitive to rhythmic influences. Thus, by changing the pitch and rhythm of a ritual ceremony, a voodoo priest – a houngan – can increase the degree of suggestibility. To help enter a state of possession, houngans know how to use magical powders and herbs, but they say that in the feverish atmosphere of a voodoo ceremony, even such a common thing as pepper can be enough.
Voodooists believe that the gods cannot enter the body if the soul is still there, and this is the moment that initiates possession. The soul is believed to be made up of two parts: the Big Good Angel and the Little Good Angel. The first is what we might call the self-consciousness. It is the essence and soul of man and makes him who he is.
Without the Big Angel, the Little Angel and the body lose contact. During possession, the Big Angel is displaced, and the person ceases to be himself, but becomes the deity that occupied his body. Usually, possession passes by itself, and the Big Angel of the voodooist returns to his place. But sometimes this can only happen with the help of the houngan. After death, care must be taken to find a new home for the soul freed from the body. The soul, which initially spends time at the bottom of the river, is called by the houngan during a special ceremony and placed in a consecrated box that replaces the physical body. Thus, it becomes the spirit of the ancestor, who gives advice and protects his family.
The idea of a soul is at the heart of many voodoo superstitions, including the belief in zombies. At the moment of displacement, the soul can fall into the hands of the devil. Of course, having a body without a soul, which has been replaced by a deity, is very convenient, but it can be taken over by a sorcerer through the machinations of the devil.
Voodoo sorcerers, or bokors, are rather creepy creatures, they communicate with the dead and practice the most sinister witchcraft for themselves or for their clients. Sometimes the houngan and the bokor are the same person: a voodoo priest, like anyone else, must be familiar with witchcraft in order to successfully combat it. Today, a houngan can cast a curse with white magic, and tomorrow use black magic spells. They can call both good spirits and evil ones, for example, Zandor, who turns people into snakes or vampire bats. Voodooists, however, are of the opinion that a real houngan will never practice witchcraft, and of course, there are bokors who have never been voodoo priests. Bokors lead secret societies, worship the devil and gather in cemeteries, where they conduct ceremonies of the sinister cult of the dead.
These sorcerers make special powders from cemetery soil and the bones of the dead to “send the dead” to the enemy. The powder, scattered near the victim's door or along the path of his passage, can lead to paralysis, even death, if the houngan does not take countermeasures at that time. Another method of struggle is to dress the corpse in the victim's clothes and hide it in a secret place, where it will rot, and the unfortunate victim will go crazy looking for it. As researchers note, if the potential victim knows what is happening and believes in the power of magic, then the desired result can be easily achieved.
Haitians tell harrowing stories of witches using corpses. William Seabrook, in his 1936 book The Mysterious Island, tells the story of a young woman, Camille Tussell, and her husband, Matthew. On their first wedding anniversary, shortly after midnight, Tussell called his wife to celebrate. He insisted that Camille wear her wedding dress, and she, frightened, obeyed. They entered a formally decorated, candlelit room. There were four other guests in evening dress. But no one congratulated Camille. Tussell apologized for them, promising that after the feast the men would dance with her. His voice seemed strained and unnatural to Camille, and suddenly she saw the motionless fingers of one of the guests awkwardly clutching a glass from which wine was pouring. Taking the candle, Camilla looked into the faces of the guests and discovered that she was in the same room with four corpses.
The woman fled in panic, but never recovered from the nightmare. The next day, her friends returned and found everything as she had described, except that there were no silent guests, nor Tussel. It was later said that Tussel had left the island.
Legend or fact? The evil plans of a sorcerer husband or the imagination of a wife? The Haitians who told Seabrook this story believed it to be fact. They knew many more such stories. Children in Haiti grow up surrounded by tales of black magic, ghosts and sorcerers. Mothers do not allow their children to play with their shadows and are told that if they misbehave, they will be carried off by a bokor, or tonton macout, a wandering voodoo sorcerer. The latter threat became a reality when Dictator Francois Duvalier came to power in Haiti, for his mercenaries were called tonton macout.
This atmosphere of fear and superstition gave rise to the belief in zombies. Believing in the cult of the dead, it is not very difficult to believe in the possibility of black magic to make a corpse move and carry out someone else's will. Many would say that this was precisely the intention of Tussel with regard to his guests. Of all the traps into which an unwary person can fall with the help of witchcraft, the most terrible is the zombie, since even the most experienced cannot easily cope with it. In the late 1950s, Alfred Métraux, author of Voodoo in Haiti, investigated the issues surrounding zombies. He writes: “In Port-au-Prince, there are few, even among educated people, who do not partly believe these sinister stories.”
One such sinister story recorded by Metro is about a young girl who rejected the advances of a powerful houngan. He left, muttering threats. Soon enough, the girl fell ill and died. It so happened that the coffin was too short, and in order to accommodate the girl, she had to bend her neck. At this point, a candle standing next to the coffin fell and scorched her leg. After some time, people demanded to see the girl, apparently alive. She was recognized by the burn and by her twisted neck. It was said that a jealous houngan turned her into a zombie and used her as a servant, but due to the increased interest in this story, he was forced to release her.
This sorcerer was driven by a desire for revenge – a common reason for turning a displeased person into a zombie. Sometimes, if there are suitable corpses, they are turned into zombies to be used simply as cheap labor. In rarer cases, they are victims of a pact with the devil's forces, who charge in human souls for services rendered. And if Christians talk about selling their own souls to the devil, voodoo followers sell the souls of others. In exchange for power, wealth or other benefits, it is necessary to give up the souls of the dearest and closest people. Every year the terrible procedure is repeated until there is no one left from the loved ones who can be offered, and then one's own soul must be given up. And the body, like the bodies of everyone else, becomes a zombie.
This pact is made through the bokors, and only they can create a zombie. As soon as it gets dark, the sorcerer saddles his horse and races to the victim's house. There, pressing his lips to a crack in the door, the bokor “sucks out” the soul and places it in a sealed bottle. Soon after, the victim falls ill and dies. After the burial, at midnight, the bokor and his assistants come to the grave, dig it up and pronounce the name of the victim. In response, the dead man tries to raise his head, since the bokor owns his soul. As soon as this happens, the bokor – for a split second – takes out the bottle with the soul and thrusts it under the corpse's nose. Now the dead man is reanimated. The bokor pulls him out of the grave, ties him up and hits him on the head to bring him back to life. Then he carefully fills the grave so that no one will guess what has happened.
First, the bokor and his assistants take the victim past her own home. It is said that after this, she will never be able to recognize it or try to return there. Then she is taken to the bokor's house or voodoo palace and given a special infusion. Some believe it is an extract from poisonous plants such as belladonna or datura (Jimson's weed). In colonial times, slaves poisoned their masters with these. Others say it is made from drops that drip from the dead man's nose.
There are other ways to catch a human soul. You can put a vessel with magical objects and herbs under the pillow of a dying person, into which the soul will be “pulled”. The soul of an insect or a small animal can be replaced by a human one. In neither case does the victim realize what is happening. You can even take the soul directly from the dead. But no matter what method is used, at the edge of the grave the role of the soul remains the same, and after taking the magical drug, the deed is considered done. The victim becomes a zombie – a terrible, obedient walking dead, ready to fulfill the sorcerer's wishes.
To prevent the sorcerer from taking the corpse and turning it into a zombie, a huge amount of work is done. A family that can afford it concretes the grave. Others bury it in their own garden or on the side of a busy road. Since only a fresh corpse is suitable for bokor purposes, relatives may keep watch at the grave until the body begins to decompose. Sometimes the corpse is killed again, by piercing the head or injecting poison, sometimes by strangulation. Sometimes the corpse is buried with a knife in hand, so that it can defend itself. Often the body is placed face down in the grave, and the mouth of the deceased is stuffed with earth or the lips are sewn shut, so that when the sorcerer calls out its name, it cannot respond.
If a person has become a zombie, the only way to escape the eternal trance is to try salt (often a symbol of white magic). After that, the zombies instantly realize their situation, understand that they are dead, and return to the grave forever.
In his book The Invisibles, British anthropologist Francis Huxley tells a story about a zombie that he was told by a Catholic priest. This zombie was wandering around his own village and was eventually taken to the police station. But the police were too scared to do anything, so they just left him on the street. A few hours later, someone plucked up the courage to give the zombie some salt water to drink, and he muttered his name. Then his aunt, who lived nearby, recognized him. According to her, he had died and been buried four years ago.
A priest was called, and the zombie revealed the name of the sorcerer who had forced him and several other zombies to work for him. The frightened police sent the sorcerer a letter offering to take his zombie back. But two days later, the zombie actually died – perhaps because of the revelations he had made, the sorcerer himself killed him. The sorcerer was arrested, but neither his wife nor the other zombies were ever found.
All zombie stories have an element of understatement. As if some important facts are missing. But Catholic and Protestant priests tell stories that are hard not to believe. About how they saw a dead person with their own eyes, conducted a funeral service, closed the coffin with a lid and threw earth on the grave, and a few days or weeks later met a “former client” with a frozen gaze and no facial expressions. Insane, but not dead.
Zora Hurston writes that sometimes these creatures are brought to missionaries by a voodoo-turned-bokor or a sorcerer's widow, in order to get rid of them. Hurston visited Haiti, where she saw, touched and photographed zombies. She photographed zombie Felicia Felix-Mentor, who died of a sudden illness in 1907. In 1936, she was found wandering naked along the road, not far from her brother's farm. Both her brother and husband recognized her as the woman they had buried with their own hands 29 years earlier. Felicia was in such a terrible state that she was sent to the hospital, where Zora saw her a few weeks later. “It was monstrous,” she wrote later. “A white face with dead eyes… Eyelids – absolutely white, as if burned with acid. What could you say to her? And what would you get in return? All you could do was look at her. But it was impossible to bear this sight for long.”
So zombies, or something similar to them, exist. But are they really the walking dead? How can a dead body be given the appearance of life? Montague Summers, an expert in witchcraft and black magic, wrote: “It is certainly possible, by means of black magic, to create the appearance of “life” in a dead body – it will move and talk, but, as the sorcerers themselves admit, to cast a spell for a long time, without its periodic renewal – a feat that only the most dishonest magicians, deeply immersed in the depths of hell, can do.”
In the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor, it is unlikely that even the most infernal curse could survive 29 years. A more plausible explanation is that the so-called zombies never died. Some believe that a zombie is simply a doppelganger of a dead person. But if this is true, then why does this doppelganger always look and move like a zombie? Zombies are characterized by a vacant expression, a downward gaze, a pale face, and a shuffling gait. They do not understand when spoken to, and their own nasal speech is almost always meaningless. Most often, it is simply a guttural noise resembling grunts.
Almost always they show signs of mental deficiency, and it is possible that many of the zombies encountered are in fact feebleminded people, whom the family carefully hides, pretending that they are long dead, until suddenly they meet someone, perhaps many years later. Alfred Metro was shown a “poor sleepwalker” under the guise of a zombie. This was a deranged girl who ran away from the home where her parents usually kept her locked up.
Haitian researchers note that zombies are treated no worse than the mentally retarded; the latter are usually beaten to make them submit. Once William Seabrook had recovered from the shock of seeing “glowing, unfocused, unseeing eyes,” he too concluded that the zombies he had seen were “only poor, mad human beings, idiots forced to work in the fields,” not half-animated corpses.
But what about the witnesses who swear they saw some zombies dead? Are they lying? And not all zombies are idiots to begin with. Some are remembered by their friends as healthy, intelligent people. These are difficult questions.
The answer to these questions can be found in an unexpected source – Article 246 of the old Haitian criminal code. “Also an attempt,” it says, “is the use of substances by which the subject is plunged into a more or less prolonged lethargic sleep, regardless of the purpose of the substance and the consequences. If the subject is buried in a state of lethargic sleep, then the attempt becomes premeditated murder.”
It follows that a zombie may indeed be a person who has been buried and mourned by his loved ones, and who has been brought out of the grave by a bokor, as in the legends. But he was buried alive, immersed in a death-like trance from which he may never emerge.
A prominent Haitian doctor told William Seabrook that at least some of the zombies he had encountered were the victims of such mistakes, either intentional or accidental. Zora Hurston discussed the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor with doctors. She wrote: “We have long theorized about the origin of zombies. This is certainly not a case of resurrection from the dead, but rather they have been induced to a state very close to death by means of some drugs, the method of making which may have been brought from Africa and handed down from generation to generation… They apparently destroy that part of the brain which controls the will and speech. The victims can act and move, but are unable to formulate their thoughts. Two doctors who have become very interested in these drugs have never succeeded in discovering the method of their manufacture. It is a secret, and those who are initiated would rather die than tell.”
The idea of zombies almost certainly comes from Africa, where legendary stories of sorcerers raising the dead are still told. However, real zombies are a specificity of Haiti. Of course, skeptics may say that the so-called zombies are just sleepwalkers or people in a trance, but some undoubted cases can only be explained at the level of magic. Today, voodoo is often used to attract tourists, and colorful performances with demonstrations of white magic delight both natives and foreigners. Francis Huxley told of a judge who saw a houngan take a corpse out of a grave and reanimate it. In the grave, the judge found a pipe through which air came from the surface. In fact, the corpse was an assistant of the houngan and could breathe freely while waiting for its own resurrection.
Haitians, of course, know about such mystifications. But, unfortunately, most of them continue to believe in zombies, and fear has simply joined their ranks in their blood. It may well be that zombies are not taken out of graves at all, but are immersed in a state close to death with the help of special means. But who will say what is worse? In any case, zombies are one example of the walking dead.
