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Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie
In 1982, Harvard-trained ethnobotanist Wade Davis traveled into the Haitian countryside to research reports of zombies--the infamous living dead of Haitian folklore. A report by a team of physicians of a verifiable case of zombification led him to try to obtain the poison associated with the process and examine it for potential medical use.
Interdisciplinary in nature, this study reveals a network of power relations reaching all levels of Haitian political life. It sheds light on recent Haitian political history, including the meteoric rise under Duvalier of the Tonton Macoute. By explaining zombification as a rational process within the context of traditional Vodoun society, Davis demystifies one of the most exploited of folk beliefs, one that has been used to denigrate an entire people and their religion.
Interdisciplinary in nature, this study reveals a network of power relations reaching all levels of Haitian political life. It sheds light on recent Haitian political history, including the meteoric rise under Duvalier of the Tonton Macoute. By explaining zombification as a rational process within the context of traditional Vodoun society, Davis demystifies one of the most exploited of folk beliefs, one that has been used to denigrate an entire people and their religion.
366 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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1344 people want to read
About the author
Wade Davis
85 books828 followersEdmund Wade Davis has been described as "a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life's diversity."
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 3, 2011
Dr. Wade Davis, a Harvard-trained etnnobotanist, went to Haiti to embark on a journey in search of the botantical toxins used in the process of producing "zombies" in voodoun rituals. This might sound the stuff of sci-fi or horror if it had not really happened: in fact, Davis wrote two books on the topic, one that would become a blockbuster film (The Serpent and the Rainbow) and this, a more nuanced work of serious scholarship on the topic.
Davis's experiences and findings are more than enchanting—simply those rare cases where truth is in fact stranger than fiction and one could not hardly imagine a more complex web of intrigue. It helps that Davis is also a very skilled writer—a fact made even more acute in his later works such as One River. This is, to be sure, a true-life adventure story well-told but Davis also includes enough of the hard science behind the actual "ethnobiology" of zombism to fascinate on this level, also, although further lab research has been done in the past two decades that calls into question Davis' thesis that anhydrotetrodotoxin is the primary active compound in the "zombie powder" used to make humans into supposed "zombies". All in all, a powerful tale told at the hands of a skilled storyteller, scientist, and journalist. Few books are as odd, as keen, and as engrossing as this one and hardly any science/nature writer has the verve of Davis at his best.
Davis's experiences and findings are more than enchanting—simply those rare cases where truth is in fact stranger than fiction and one could not hardly imagine a more complex web of intrigue. It helps that Davis is also a very skilled writer—a fact made even more acute in his later works such as One River. This is, to be sure, a true-life adventure story well-told but Davis also includes enough of the hard science behind the actual "ethnobiology" of zombism to fascinate on this level, also, although further lab research has been done in the past two decades that calls into question Davis' thesis that anhydrotetrodotoxin is the primary active compound in the "zombie powder" used to make humans into supposed "zombies". All in all, a powerful tale told at the hands of a skilled storyteller, scientist, and journalist. Few books are as odd, as keen, and as engrossing as this one and hardly any science/nature writer has the verve of Davis at his best.
June 18, 2020
Wade Davis is an ethnobotanist. What is an ethnobotanist? Ethnobotanists study the relationships among cultures, cultural practices, and the botanical environments in which cultures live.
Ethnobotany is the perfect field to study and understand the zombie phenomenon, stripped of its Hollywood hype. Davis, in this book, undertakes a scientific investigation of zombification — the roles of the powders administered to victims, the spiritual beliefs in which zombification has a place, and the rites and practices that enact zombification in modern day Haiti.
Davis really takes up a series of questions:
Are there actual cases of zombies? If so, exactly, what is a real zombie?
What is the pharmacological basis for making someone a zombie?
What is the spiritual basis? How does the zombie fit into Haitian spiritual life?
What are the rites and practices that produce a zombie?
What role does zombification play in Haitian culture and politics?
He begins with some historical and cultural background on Haiti itself. That’s going to be important because, as an ethnobotanist/anthropologist, he believes that zombies and zombification really only are what they are within the culture in which they happen. Ultimately, he will claim that the very possibility of zombification depends on the spiritual beliefs of the victim and the cultural rites and structures in which it lives.
As to whether there are actual cases of zombies, Davis focuses on two relatively well-documented cases — Clairvius Narcisse and Francina Illeus. Narcisse in particular becomes a kind of model case. He was treated at an emergency room in a Haitian hospital, with a fever, body aches, and other more or less minor symptoms. But his condition deteriorated quickly, and he was pronounced dead by two doctors. He was buried in a cemetery under a concrete slab. Then, 18 years later, he re-appeared at a marketplace, recognized his sister, and re-introduced himself.
According to Narcisse, he had been in a dispute with his brother over a land inheritance, and it was his brother who had arranged for his zombification. He was buried, removed from his grave, beaten, and taken to work as a slave. When his master died, he wandered for 16 years before finally returning to his village after his brother’s death.
Narcisse’s story seems, at least in Davis’s telling, to stand up. The death certificate is real, and the identity of the man who showed up in the marketplace 18 years later was verified.
And Narcisse himself could tell his own story. He had been conscious throughout his ordeal, but unable to move or speak. He experienced his own death, burial, and resurrection, as well as his life afterwards.
As to what it actually is to be a zombie in Haitian culture, it’s a little different from the Hollywood version. At its core, what has happened to a zombie is that what makes him or her a person — a will, a character, an identity — has been separated from his or her body. The body, the “zombie cadavre,” goes on, is given a new name, and can be, as Narcisse was, made to work as a slave. It has no will or character of its own.
The other part, what makes the person a true person, called the “ti bon ange” (literally, the “small good angel”), is captured separately. It can be kept by the person, a “bokor” or “sorcerer”, who performs the zombification.
Taking it to be true that there are convincing cases, Davis then discusses how such a thing could be possible. His answer really has two parts.
One is pharmacological. He collects samples of poisons prepared by practitioners and submits them for chemical analysis. There are numerous ingredients or types of ingredients common across the samples he collects, including skin irritants, psychoactive substances, and, most importantly, puffer fish, a source for tetrodotoxin. Tetrodotoxin is a poison that induces a kind of paralysis, the kind that Narcisse reported, that permits the victim to retain consciousness.
Tetrodotoxin poisoning can be fatal, as sometimes happens with poorly prepared puffer fish as a Japanese delicacy. But it seems, by Davis’s account, that it is possible to administer the drug in a dose that is paralyzing but not fatal. The victim can fully recover, as sometimes happens also in the Japanese context.
The other part of zombification is spiritual and cultural. If tetrodotoxin could simply turn a person into a zombie, why wouldn’t it happen to some of those victims of poorly prepared puffer fish in the Japanese context?
The answer has to do with “set and setting”, the psychological and the social/physical contexts of a person undergoing a drug experience. In this case, the psychological context includes strong spiritual beliefs based in a Vodoun (Davis’s preferred term over the hype-laden term “Voodoo”) religion, in which zombification, the ti bon ange, and magical events have central roles. And the social/physical context includes rituals and practices — including the bokor’s performance, the victim’s burial and resurrection, etc.
The possibility of a zombie then depends on all of these factors working together. Davis opposes any idea that a drug can simply turn someone into a zombie. The spiritual and cultural factors are essential.
This may sound a bit magical — the mind playing tricks on the body. But certainly it is true that psychological (and cultural) factors can produce biological effects. Fear raises your heart rate. Depression suppresses your immune system. What is different here is that it is more than a psychological phenomenon (something that we could try to pass off as really biological in nature), it is a spiritual belief that works with psychological factors to produce the zombie experience. Narcisse’s belief in zombies and the ability of a bokor to make a man into a zombie, helped to turn his experience into his becoming a zombie himself.
Not to mention the terrifying experience that Narcisse went through, conscious while buried alive, removed from his grave, and helplessly beaten.
Davis goes on to elaborate on the place of zombification in Haitian culture, and in Haitian politics. Zombification appears to be a kind of punishment, either for violation of community mores or for betrayal of a “secret society.” In Narcisse’s case, he had violated a spate of community mores, involving land inheritance, selfishness, and failure to take responsibility for children he fathered.
The “secret societies” become a theme for much of the last third of the book. The Vodoun religious structures and hierarchies seem to make up a core of Haitian society. They aren’t “secret” in the sense of no one knowing they exist, but they do depend on secret rites, passwords, etc. known to their members, or some of their members.
In fact, their effectiveness depends on their public role. The urban government cannot reach into the mountains and villages without coordination with the Vodoun structures and roles. And it is a coordination, not a straight-forward expression of government authority. Davis discusses how this coordination played out during the Papa Doc Duvalier years (Papa Doc was thought by some to occupy a role within the Vodoun hierarchy himself), and hints at how it may have contributed to the downfall of his son, Baby Doc. In fact, in Davis’s recounting of Haitian history, Vodoun has always played a formidable role in both rebellion (including the Toussaint rebellion in the late 1700s) and in stable authority.
In the Haitian context then Vodoun religious beliefs and practices aren’t so strange. And zombification plays within those beliefs and practices, producing the context in which, with the bokor’s knowledge of plants and preparations, he can make a person a zombie.
Where does all of this leave us? The strength of Davis’s account, I think, is the ethnographic part — his accounts of Vodoun spirituality, practices, and its role in Haitian society and politics. I came away convinced that beliefs about zombies play an important role, certainly in village spiritual and cultural life. It seems natural, not bizarrely superstitious or even irrational, for Haitian villagers to believe in zombies, and even to fear that, if they violated their communities’ mores, they could be made zombies as punishment.
In order to take zombification as a confirmed, scientific reality, it would be great to have more well-documented cases to rely on. In fact, it may be that “successful” zombification is rare. The bokor has to really hit a small bulls-eye to turn someone into a zombie. The victim may simply die, or nothing may happen to them. It depends greatly on the bokor’s skill in preparing the poison and on the quality of the poison itself (the puffer fish seems to have varying levels of toxicity, across varieties, lifetimes, and seasons). The bokor's failures are explained away, and the successful cases, even if rare, establish the basis for belief.
That’s not the kind of scientific, strictly repeatable phenomenon that western science likes. Maybe so much the worse for western science.
The book is fascinating — as I read it, the zombie became more and more a natural, believable thing. Hollywood faded away, and what was left was something that seemed real and understandable.
Ethnobotany is the perfect field to study and understand the zombie phenomenon, stripped of its Hollywood hype. Davis, in this book, undertakes a scientific investigation of zombification — the roles of the powders administered to victims, the spiritual beliefs in which zombification has a place, and the rites and practices that enact zombification in modern day Haiti.
Davis really takes up a series of questions:
Are there actual cases of zombies? If so, exactly, what is a real zombie?
What is the pharmacological basis for making someone a zombie?
What is the spiritual basis? How does the zombie fit into Haitian spiritual life?
What are the rites and practices that produce a zombie?
What role does zombification play in Haitian culture and politics?
He begins with some historical and cultural background on Haiti itself. That’s going to be important because, as an ethnobotanist/anthropologist, he believes that zombies and zombification really only are what they are within the culture in which they happen. Ultimately, he will claim that the very possibility of zombification depends on the spiritual beliefs of the victim and the cultural rites and structures in which it lives.
As to whether there are actual cases of zombies, Davis focuses on two relatively well-documented cases — Clairvius Narcisse and Francina Illeus. Narcisse in particular becomes a kind of model case. He was treated at an emergency room in a Haitian hospital, with a fever, body aches, and other more or less minor symptoms. But his condition deteriorated quickly, and he was pronounced dead by two doctors. He was buried in a cemetery under a concrete slab. Then, 18 years later, he re-appeared at a marketplace, recognized his sister, and re-introduced himself.
According to Narcisse, he had been in a dispute with his brother over a land inheritance, and it was his brother who had arranged for his zombification. He was buried, removed from his grave, beaten, and taken to work as a slave. When his master died, he wandered for 16 years before finally returning to his village after his brother’s death.
Narcisse’s story seems, at least in Davis’s telling, to stand up. The death certificate is real, and the identity of the man who showed up in the marketplace 18 years later was verified.
And Narcisse himself could tell his own story. He had been conscious throughout his ordeal, but unable to move or speak. He experienced his own death, burial, and resurrection, as well as his life afterwards.
As to what it actually is to be a zombie in Haitian culture, it’s a little different from the Hollywood version. At its core, what has happened to a zombie is that what makes him or her a person — a will, a character, an identity — has been separated from his or her body. The body, the “zombie cadavre,” goes on, is given a new name, and can be, as Narcisse was, made to work as a slave. It has no will or character of its own.
The other part, what makes the person a true person, called the “ti bon ange” (literally, the “small good angel”), is captured separately. It can be kept by the person, a “bokor” or “sorcerer”, who performs the zombification.
Taking it to be true that there are convincing cases, Davis then discusses how such a thing could be possible. His answer really has two parts.
One is pharmacological. He collects samples of poisons prepared by practitioners and submits them for chemical analysis. There are numerous ingredients or types of ingredients common across the samples he collects, including skin irritants, psychoactive substances, and, most importantly, puffer fish, a source for tetrodotoxin. Tetrodotoxin is a poison that induces a kind of paralysis, the kind that Narcisse reported, that permits the victim to retain consciousness.
Tetrodotoxin poisoning can be fatal, as sometimes happens with poorly prepared puffer fish as a Japanese delicacy. But it seems, by Davis’s account, that it is possible to administer the drug in a dose that is paralyzing but not fatal. The victim can fully recover, as sometimes happens also in the Japanese context.
The other part of zombification is spiritual and cultural. If tetrodotoxin could simply turn a person into a zombie, why wouldn’t it happen to some of those victims of poorly prepared puffer fish in the Japanese context?
The answer has to do with “set and setting”, the psychological and the social/physical contexts of a person undergoing a drug experience. In this case, the psychological context includes strong spiritual beliefs based in a Vodoun (Davis’s preferred term over the hype-laden term “Voodoo”) religion, in which zombification, the ti bon ange, and magical events have central roles. And the social/physical context includes rituals and practices — including the bokor’s performance, the victim’s burial and resurrection, etc.
The possibility of a zombie then depends on all of these factors working together. Davis opposes any idea that a drug can simply turn someone into a zombie. The spiritual and cultural factors are essential.
This may sound a bit magical — the mind playing tricks on the body. But certainly it is true that psychological (and cultural) factors can produce biological effects. Fear raises your heart rate. Depression suppresses your immune system. What is different here is that it is more than a psychological phenomenon (something that we could try to pass off as really biological in nature), it is a spiritual belief that works with psychological factors to produce the zombie experience. Narcisse’s belief in zombies and the ability of a bokor to make a man into a zombie, helped to turn his experience into his becoming a zombie himself.
Not to mention the terrifying experience that Narcisse went through, conscious while buried alive, removed from his grave, and helplessly beaten.
Davis goes on to elaborate on the place of zombification in Haitian culture, and in Haitian politics. Zombification appears to be a kind of punishment, either for violation of community mores or for betrayal of a “secret society.” In Narcisse’s case, he had violated a spate of community mores, involving land inheritance, selfishness, and failure to take responsibility for children he fathered.
The “secret societies” become a theme for much of the last third of the book. The Vodoun religious structures and hierarchies seem to make up a core of Haitian society. They aren’t “secret” in the sense of no one knowing they exist, but they do depend on secret rites, passwords, etc. known to their members, or some of their members.
In fact, their effectiveness depends on their public role. The urban government cannot reach into the mountains and villages without coordination with the Vodoun structures and roles. And it is a coordination, not a straight-forward expression of government authority. Davis discusses how this coordination played out during the Papa Doc Duvalier years (Papa Doc was thought by some to occupy a role within the Vodoun hierarchy himself), and hints at how it may have contributed to the downfall of his son, Baby Doc. In fact, in Davis’s recounting of Haitian history, Vodoun has always played a formidable role in both rebellion (including the Toussaint rebellion in the late 1700s) and in stable authority.
In the Haitian context then Vodoun religious beliefs and practices aren’t so strange. And zombification plays within those beliefs and practices, producing the context in which, with the bokor’s knowledge of plants and preparations, he can make a person a zombie.
Where does all of this leave us? The strength of Davis’s account, I think, is the ethnographic part — his accounts of Vodoun spirituality, practices, and its role in Haitian society and politics. I came away convinced that beliefs about zombies play an important role, certainly in village spiritual and cultural life. It seems natural, not bizarrely superstitious or even irrational, for Haitian villagers to believe in zombies, and even to fear that, if they violated their communities’ mores, they could be made zombies as punishment.
In order to take zombification as a confirmed, scientific reality, it would be great to have more well-documented cases to rely on. In fact, it may be that “successful” zombification is rare. The bokor has to really hit a small bulls-eye to turn someone into a zombie. The victim may simply die, or nothing may happen to them. It depends greatly on the bokor’s skill in preparing the poison and on the quality of the poison itself (the puffer fish seems to have varying levels of toxicity, across varieties, lifetimes, and seasons). The bokor's failures are explained away, and the successful cases, even if rare, establish the basis for belief.
That’s not the kind of scientific, strictly repeatable phenomenon that western science likes. Maybe so much the worse for western science.
The book is fascinating — as I read it, the zombie became more and more a natural, believable thing. Hollywood faded away, and what was left was something that seemed real and understandable.
Want to read
March 31, 2007This needs to be added to our curriculum.
December 21, 2018
Wade Davis, anthropologist/ethnobotanist, weaves together pharmacology, medicine, political theory, sociology of religion, etc., to tell the fascinating story of how zombies are made in Haiti - real zombies, not the Hollywood version.
January 8, 2019
A highly provocative, informative and well-researched look into Vodoun religion, the role of Zombification in Haitian society, and the fauna and flora that are used in the making of the Zombie powder.
December 20, 2017
Despite the fact that it's non-fiction, it drags your mind to a far away land. For anyone interested in the reality of Voodoo, it's worth tracking down a copy.
March 3, 2024
The secret zombie formula is finally mine.
Read
March 24, 2015Zombies are all the rage these days. Heck, there are even warnings about them on the trafic signs. If you need a fix of zombie but a re getting a bit tired of the cliches, here are two classics that look at zombies in the context of West Indian legend. Wade Davis got interested in zombies via the case of Clairvius Narcisse, a Haitian man pronounced dead, buried, yet who rose again as a true survivor of zombiesm. Davis’s explorations found startling evidence about how poisons could manipulate the appearance of life and death to create the “living dead” as part of an elaborate means of social control.
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2009...
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2009...
January 9, 2015
I read this almost immediately after
The Serpent and the Rainbow
, and unfortunately, a lot of the text of that book is quoted wholesale in this one. This is probably the more important book from a scientific standpoint, but it's a less-exciting read than its predecessor, although he has quite a bit of further reflection on the topic here than in that book, which reads like a novel, as well as more detailed examination as to how the puffer fish poison may create "zombies" in a Haitian versus intoxicated Japanese men who eat fugu.
June 27, 2010
Zombies or the living dead are real folks, just not the man-eating ones. And what people fear most about them is becoming one not being eaten by one. Bizango secret societies in Haiti and their enforcement of laws, the organic concoction given to individuals to slow heartbeat, the effects of someone coming out of the death-like coma within the community, reasons why individuals face such punishment, and what is being done about the living dead all rolled into one well-written, very readable ethnography. If you ever wanted to really know what's up with the living dead, this is a good start.
April 24, 2025
A fascinating deep dive into the cultural and scientific roots of the Haitian zombie myth. Davis blends anthropology, ethnobotany, and history to explore how real-world practices and beliefs gave rise to something that has long fascinated (and been misunderstood by) the Western world. It’s both academic and accessible, offering a respectful and thoughtful look at Vodou, Haitian culture, and the intersection of science and spirituality. If you're interested in the real story behind zombies (far from the Hollywood version) this is a compelling and eye-opening read.
December 26, 2010
Davis is an anthropologist who believes that the Haitian stories about zombies are real: Haitian warlocks can administer a potent neurotoxin derived from Caribbean fish related to the Pacific fugu, which paralyzes the body but does not cross the blood-brain barrier; the paralyzed person is pronounced dead, buried, then dug out and enslaved. He met a man who claimed to have been made a zombie by his brother because of a land dispute. Other researchers are unconvinced.
November 9, 2007
Excellent book about vodoun and zombi.
March 19, 2008
this is what anthropology is FOR!
September 4, 2013
Serpent & Rainbow goes to grad school.
September 6, 2016
Impressive dedication to the topic, some great pictures; and in the mind and on the pages. Stimulating entertaining writing.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews