Recipe For A Zombie...

Much has been written about thewalking dead we’ve come to know as ‘zombies’. Immortalized in movies,television shows, books, comics, and music videos (remember Thriller?), zombies have become so mucha part of our culture that people can’t get enough of these brain-eating horroricons. When researching for The Last Timekeepers and the Noble Slave , the third installment of my young adulttime travel adventure series, I wanted to incorporate a Voodoo ceremony thatincluded creating a zombie. Oh, where to start, I asked myself, as there was somuch information out there to glean, and only a chapter to fit it in.

So do zombies exist? The people ofHaiti certainly think so. Here they are considered to be more than spookystories, but rather very real entities. Stories of zombies persist in Haitiright up to the modern day, with sightings of the poor, haggard creaturesfairly common in many rural areas. In fact, cases are so prevalent that therehave been wild estimates claiming that there are as many as up to one thousandnew cases of zombies a year. Wow, that’s a lot of the undead roaming around asmall island! Zombification is even a crime under the Haitian Penal Code(Article 246), in which it is considered to be on par with murder despite thefact that the zombified individual is technically still alive.

Bet you’re dying to know how to makea zombie? Read on…

The zombies of Haiti were said to becorpses that were reanimated through black magic by powerful
Voodoo sorcerersor priests known as bokors, for manual labor on farms and sugarcaneplantations. Zombies can allegedly be made from those who are still living ifthe bokor is powerful enough to wrest the victim’s soul from their body. Theprocess of turning a living person into a zombie is said to follow certainsteps. First, the bokor will place a hex on the target of the ritual, who willsubsequently fall mysteriously ill and die soon after. The exact methods andconcoctions used vary among the bokors, but many use a powerful neurotoxin derivedfrom pufferfish. Some zombification processes use blood and hair from theirvictims in addition to using Voodoo dolls. Ohers involve a carefully preparedmixture called ‘coup de poudre’ (powder strike) made of mystical herbs, humanremains, and animal parts. Administrating this mixture can also vary fromingestion, injection, or even a blow dart.

Once the family of the victimpronounces the victim dead, he or she is buried in the family tomb (usuallyabove ground), where the responsible bokor will steal the body from its graveand set about reanimating it through dark sorcery. Next, the bokor performs anancient Voodoo rite where he or she captures the victim’s ti bon ange (the part of the soul connected to an individual)within seven days following the death of corpscadaver, while it is still hovering over the corpse. This effects a splitin the spiritual parts of the victim and produces two complementary types ofzombies: the spirit zombie and the zombie of the flesh. The bokor then trapsthe spirit zombie in a small clay jar or container, and replaces it with theloa (Voodoo spirit) that the bokor controls. The container is hidden in asecret place and is wrapped in a piece of the victim’s clothing or some otherpersonal possession.

After a day or two, the bokor thenadministers a hallucinogenic mixture called the ‘zombie cucumber,’ (made fromthe plant Datura stramonium) thatrevives the victim and is used to keep the zombie in a state of submissiveconfusion. In this brainwashed condition, the zombie cannot speak, has nomemory, and no longer resembles its past human personality. Now easy tocontrol, the zombie is completely under the control of the bokor who createdthem until the bokor dies. Once released from bondage, the zombies can finallyreturn to their home village or place of burial, and die.

There seems reason to believe fromwork and research done in the past that there may possibly be a concrete, scientificbasis for stories of zombies, so perhaps time will tell. For now, thesemysterious creatures lurk along the fringes of Haitian villages and ourimaginations. Whether drug addled slaves or corpses reanimated through darksorcery, the enigma of real zombies beckons us. Perhaps one day we will bringthem out into the light and have the answers we seek.

With that, I’ll leave you with thisline in the song Thriller, by MichaelJackson: It’s close tomidnight! Something evil’s lurking in the dark! Hopefully, it’s not ablood-thirsty corpse. Stay safe this Halloween, my zombie-loving readers!