This article is about the figure from Haitian folklore.

For the figure from film

s such as "Night of the Living Dead", see Zombie (fictional). For the philosophi
cal concept, see Philosophical zombie. For other uses, see Zombie (disambiguatio
n).
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Zombie
(Zombi, Zonbi)
Zombie haiti ill artlibre jnl.png
Grouping Legendary creature
Sub grouping Undead
Similar creatures Revenant
Parents Bantu mythology
Mythology Caribbean folklore
Country Haiti
Zombies
Overview
Zombie
Zombie (fictional)
Zombie walk
Zombies in media
Films
Films (low-budget)
Short films and nominal zombie films
Video games
Novels
v t e
In Haitian folklore, a zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi, Haitian French: zombi) is
an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft.[1]
The concept has been popularly associated with the Vodou religion, but it plays
no part in that faith's formal practices.
Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 Haitian tradition
2.1 Chemical hypothesis
2.2 Social hypothesis
3 African and related legends
4 In popular culture
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
Etymology
The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by t
he poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi".[2] The Oxford English Dictionary
gives the origin of the word as West African, and compares it to the Kongo word
s "nzambi" (god) and "zumbi" (fetish).
Haitian tradition
Zombies featured widely in Haitian rural folklore, as dead persons physically re
vived by the act of necromancy of a bokor sorcerer (the bokor is a witch-like fi
gure to be distinguished from the houngan priests and mambo priestesses of the f
ormal Vodou religion). Zombies remain under the control of the bokor as their pe
rsonal slaves, since they have no will of their own.
There also exists within the Haitian tradition, an incorporeal type of zombie, t
he "zombie astral", which is a part of the human soul that is captured by a boko
r and used to enhance the bokor's spiritual power. Bokors produce and sell speci
ally-decorated bottles to clients with a zombie astral inside, for the purposes
of luck, healing or business success. It is believed that after a time God will
take the soul back and so the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity.[3]
It has been suggested that the two types of zombie reflect soul dualism, a belie
f of Haitian Vodou. Each type of legendary zombie is therefore missing one half
of its soul (the flesh or the spirit).[4]
The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Afric
ans, and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the
Vodou deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a h
eavenly afterlife in Africa ("Guinea"), unless they had offended him in some way
, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie. A zombie
could also be saved by feeding them salt. A number of scholars have pointed out
the significance of the zombie figure as a metaphor for the history of slavery
in Haiti.[5]
While most scholars have associated the Haitian zombie with African cultures, a
connection has also been suggested to the island's indigenous Tano people, partly
based on an early account of native shamanist practices written by the Hieronym
ite monk Ramn Pan, a companion of Christopher Columbus.[6][7][8]
The Haitian zombie phenomenon first attracted widespread international attention
during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915 - 1934), when a number of ca
se histories of purported "zombies" began to emerge. The first popular book cove
ring the topics was William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929).
Seabrooke cited the Haitian criminal code as what he considered official recogni
tion of zombies - Article 246 (passed 1864), later to be used in promotional mat
erials for the 1932 film White Zombie, reads in part:
"Also shall be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made by
any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a letharg
ic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the administering of such substances,
the person has been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what re
sult follows."[9]
In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the
case of a woman who appeared in a village, and a family claimed she was Felicia
Felix-Mentor, a relative who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29.
However, the woman had been examined by a doctor, who found on X-ray that she d
id not have the leg fracture that Felix-Mentor was known to have had.[10] Hursto
n pursued rumors that the affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive dr
ug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information.
She wrote: "What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Vodou in Haiti a
nd Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown t
o medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."[11]
Chemical hypothesis
Several decades after Hurston's work, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, prese
nted a pharmacological case for zombies in a 1983 paper in the Journal of Ethnop
harmacology,[12] and later in two popular books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (19
85) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988).
Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed
that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being in
troduced into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre
(French: "powder strike"), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequentl
y fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (order Tetraodontidae).
The second powder consists of dissociative drugs such as datura. Together, these
powders were said to induce a deathlike state in which the will of the victim w
ould be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the stor
y of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. The
most ethically questioned and least scientifically explored ingredient of the p
owders, is part of a recently buried child's brain.[13][14][15][verification nee
ded]
The process described by Davis was an initial state of deathlike suspended anima
tion, followed by re-awakening typically after being buried into a psychotic sta
te. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised
by Davis to reinforce culturally learned beliefs and to cause the individual to
reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" they were dead
, and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement o
f the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the
zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhi
biting attitudes of low affect.
Davis's claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witc
h doctors can keep "zombies" in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for
many years.[16] Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to para
lysis particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm unconsciousness, and death, b
ut do not include a stiffened gait or a deathlike trance. According to psycholog
ist Terence Hines, the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause
of this state, and Davis' assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zom
bies is viewed as overly credulous.[17]
Social hypothesis
Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultur
al expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental
illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychologica
l aspects of zombification.[18] Particularly, this suggests cases where schizoph
renia manifests a state of catatonia.
Roland Littlewood, professor of anthropology and psychiatry, published a study s
upporting a social explanation of the zombie phenomenon in the medical journal T
he Lancet in 1997.[19]
The social explanation sees observed cases of people identified as zombies as a
culture-bound syndrome, with a particular cultural form of adoption practiced in
Haiti that unites the homeless and mentally ill with grieving families who see
them as their "returned" lost loved ones, as Littlewood summarizes his findings
in an article in Times Higher Education:
"I came to the conclusion that although it is unlikely that there is a single ex
planation for all cases where zombies are recognised by locals in Haiti, the mis
taken identification of a wandering mentally ill stranger by bereaved relatives
is the most likely explanation in many cases. People with a chronic schizophreni
c illness, brain damage or learning disability are not uncommon in rural Haiti,
and they would be particularly likely to be identified as zombies."[20]
African and related legends
A Central or West African origin for the Haitian zombie has been postulated base
d on two etymologies in the Kongo language, nzambi ("god") and zumbi ("fetish").
This root helps form the names of several deities, including the Kongo creator
deity Nzambi a Mpungu and the Louisiana serpent deity Li Grand Zombi (a local ve
rsion of the Haitian Damballa), but it is in fact a generic word for a divine sp
irit.[21] The common African conception of beings under these names is more simi
lar to the incorporeal "zombie astral",[3] as in the Kongo Nkisi spirits.
A related, but also often incorporeal, undead being is the jumbee of the English
-speaking Caribbean, considered to be of the same etymology;[22] in the French W
est Indies also, local "zombies" are recognized, but these are of a more general
spirit nature.[23]
The idea of physical zombie-like creatures is present in some South African cult
ures, where they are called xidachane in Sotho/Tsonga and maduxwane in Venda. In
some communities it is believed that a dead person can be zombified by a small
child.[24] It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma.
[25] It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can zombify
a person into by killing and possessing the victim's body in order to force it i
nto slave labor.[26] After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, s
tories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were st
affed by zombified workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a pers
on boarding at night, and the person would then either be turned into a zombifie
d worker, or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original
location.[26]
In popular culture
See also: Zombie (fictional)
Participants of a 2009 zombie walk in Moscow
The figure of the zombie has appeared several times in fantasy themed fiction an
d entertainment, as early as the 1929 novel The Magic Island by William Seabrook
. Time claimed that the book "introduced 'zombi' into U.S. speech".[27] In 1932,
Victor Halperin directed White Zombie, a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. This
film, capitalizing on the same voodoo zombie themes as Seabrook's book of three
years prior, is often regarded as the first legitimate zombie film, and introdu
ced the word "zombie" to the wider world.[28] Other zombie-themed films include
Val Lewton's I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and Wes Craven's The Serpent and the
Rainbow, (1988) a heavily fictionalized account of Wade Davis' book.
The DC comics character Solomon Grundy, a villain who first appeared in a 1944 G
reen Lantern story, is one of the earliest depictions of a zombie in the comics
medium. In 2011, Image Comics released a four issue miniseries entitled Drums, b
y writer El Torres and artist Abe Hernando. The story consists of Afro-Caribbean
zombies that have been created using voodoo.
The zombie also appears as a metaphor in protest songs, symbolizing mindless adh
erence to authority, particularly in law enforcement and the armed forces. Well-
known examples include Fela Kuti's 1976 album Zombie, and The Cranberries' 1994
single "Zombie".
Voodoo related zombie themes have also appeared in espionage or adventure themed
works outside the horror genre. For example, the original "Jonny Quest" series
(1964) and the James Bond novel and movie Live and Let Die both feature Caribbea
n villains who falsely claim the voodoo power of zombification in order to keep
others in fear of them.
A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian religion, h
as also emerged in popular culture in recent decades. This "zombie" is taken lar
gely from George A. Romero's seminal film Night of the Living Dead,[29] which wa
s in turn partly inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend.[30][31]
The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead, but was applied later b
y fans.[32] The monsters in the film and its sequels, such as Dawn of the Dead a
nd Day of the Dead, as well as its many inspired works, such as Return of the Li
ving Dead and Zombi 2, are usually hungry for human flesh although Return of the
Living Dead introduced the popular concept of zombies eating brains.
See also