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Zombies,
by Colin Wilson.
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"Zombies, according to Alfred Metraux’s book, Voodoo (1959), are “people whose decease has been duly recorded and whose burial has been witnessed, but who are found a few years later . . . in a state verging on idiocy”. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, says Metraux, “there are few, even among the educated, who do not give some credence to these macabre stories”. Understandably, such tales have met with skepticism outside Haiti."
"According to Zora Hurston, people were “zombified” if they betrayed the secrets of the Haitian secret societies. No one believed her, and Metraux writes patronizingly of “Zora Houston [sic], who is very superstitious”. Nevertheless, Metraux tells a story involving two members of “high society”. After his car broke down, one of them was invited to the home of a little white bearded man, a houngan or vodoun (voodoo) priest. Piqued by his guest’s skepticism about a wanga (magical charm), the old man asked him if he had known a certain M. Celestin – who had, in fact, been one of the visitor’s closest friends. Summoned by a whip crack, a man shambled into the room, and to his horror the visitor recognized his old friend Celestin, who had died six months earlier. When the zombie reached out for the visitor’s glass – obviously thirsty – the houngan stopped him from handing it over, saying that nothing could be more dangerous than to give or take something from the hand of a dead man. The houngan told his visitor that Celestin had died from a spell and that the magician who had killed him had sold him for twelve dollars.
"Other stories recounted by Metraux make it clear that he considers zombies to be people who have literally died and then been raised from the dead. Understandably, he rejects this as superstition. In fact, as we shall see, Zora Hurston was correct and Metraux was wrong.
"Haiti, in the West Indies, was discovered by Columbus in 1492, but it was not until two centuries later that it became a base for pirates and buccaneers. French colonists developed Haiti’s rich sugar trade, using black slaves kidnapped from Africa. The Spanish ceded Haiti (or Saint-Domingue, as it was called) to the French in 1697.
"The slaves were treated with unbelievable cruelty – for example, hung from trees with nails driven through the ears or smeared with molasses and left to be eaten alive by ants. Another horrifying practice involved filling a slave’s anus with gunpowder and setting it alight, an act the Frenchmen often referred to as “blasting black’s ass”. In spite of the risks, slaves ran away whenever they could and hid in the mountains, until, eventually, certain mountainous regions became “no-go areas” for whites. In the 1740s a slave named Macandal, who had lost his arm in a sugar press, escaped to the mountains and taught the runaway Maroons (as the slaves were known) to use poison against their oppressors. Mass poisoning of cattle was followed by mass poisoning of the colonists. Macandal was eventually betrayed and sentenced to be burned alive (although, according to legend, he used his magical powers to escape). But from then on, the secret societies spread revolt among the black slaves. After the great revolts of the 1790s, French authority virtually collapsed, and although it was savagely restored under Napoléon, he was never able to conquer the interior of the island. A series of black emperors ruled until 1859, but the island has alternated between a state of virtual anarchy and harsh authoritarian rule ever since, both of which have nurtured the secret societies."
"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. ... 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."
"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."
"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."
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December 22, 2021 - December 22, 2021.
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