Double Tap, The Zombie Watch is our first line of defense against the undead scourge. Join us as we search for all things zombie and zombie-related, but don’t forget to double tap. Safety first!
The zombie has been described as either an urban legend, supernatural being, mythological creation, voodoo sorcery or just some absurd concept that American teenagers are obsessed with. However, just like everything else, the zombie has a story of its own. Zombie history is enigmatic at best but its cultural significance cannot be underplayed because the tale of zombies paints a dark picture of the human mind. Perhaps when you push people to imagine some force that upsets the balance of the absolutes (life and death), all the rules of human society and rationale are lost and we have nothing but fear and uncertainty to deal with. After all, zombies evoke primal feelings of revulsion, fear, and rage which basically means that it comes from a deep dark place that all human beings collectively abhor/dread. Perhaps if we shone some light on who first came up with the idea of the shambling, re-animated corpses which crave human flesh, we would understand more about the entire phenomenon.
The word ‘zombie’ has been appropriated from Haiti, where the zombie legend comes from. Zombie is a type of voodoo sorcery according to most sources and perhaps the most pertinent source – Dr Wade Davis. Although reports of zombies and zombification have been filtering in since the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the work of Dr Davis (an ethnobotanist and anthropologist) that went some way towards explaining zombies to the rest of the world. The entire caper began when in 1980, a man appeared in a Haitian village claiming to be Clairvius Narcisse which doesn’t seem crazy at all until you consider the fact that Clairvius Narcisse was pronounced dead at Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti on May 2, 1962.
"I ain't no zombie, yo!" - Clairvius Narcisse, 1980
This of course perturbed the authorities at Port-au-Prince, who declared him dead all those years ago, but his family backed him up since he answered personal questions about them that not even close friends knew. Dr Wade took interest in this incident and at the behest of his mentor went to Haiti for a few weeks to find out who or what was responsible for this.
It had been said that for centuries the Bizango, (a society of sorcerers) who are powerful ‘bokor’ (sorcerers), possess a secret powder that can paralyze people to a near-death state. The people deemed to become zombies have this powder administered to them and it allegedly induces the aforementioned deep paralysis. The ‘zombified’ victim now enters a coma of sorts and when he awakens he will be in a sort of ‘zombie stupor’.
The powder is composed of some strange ingredients such as marine frog, human remains, datura flower and most importantly, pufferfish which secretes an extraordinarily potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin, which causes paralysis and death. The scientific community have more or less refuted all of Dr Wade’s findings but he argues that it is not really to prove that zombies exist but merely to find the substance that could be the cause of this phenomenon. The reports overall are conflicting and difficult to sift through but possibilities remain that a person could have been put in ‘a state almost indistinguishable from death’ and then revived.
Whose body contains a neurotoxin 10,000 times deadlier than cyanide? This guy.
The fact of the matter is for Haitian people, it is voodoo that has a complex and terrifying grip on their minds and perhaps to them, such an act is akin to the dead coming back to life. It is tradition in Japan for people who have ‘died’ due to puffer poisoning, are to be laid out on the ground for a couple of days just in case they come back to life. Sometimes they actually do, so it is not difficult to understand how this powerful illusion could scare the pants off people and convince them of the undead being a real possibility. For more on this frightening phenomenon, check out this fantastic documentary on Haiti’s voodoo and zombies by Hamilton Morris (no, he’s not a zombie) of Vice here. Also, add pufferfish to the list of things to stay far away from!
Check out our the previous editions of Double Tap, The Zombie Watch here.
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