[THEME MUSIC]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Since leaving Crescent's peristyle, I've
been plagued by questions regarding the man I saw locked
in the shed.
Unlike classic descriptions of the zombie, this man was not
shy nor sullen.
Indeed, he was screaming.
It would be equally foolish to blindly trust or completely
dismiss what I have seen.
But I can say with certainty that it chilled me to the very
threads of my cultural tapestry.
Today, I'm going back to the rice fields of Artibonite to
collect the potions that Crescent has promised.
I meet with Alex, who fears Crescent may attempt to rob us
and so has brought his friend from the special forces.
Hamilton.
SERGE: Serge.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Serge serves as the personal bodyguard to
the president's sister's husband.
Alex has brought along a magical potion to protect us.
Serge has brought a duffel bag full of guns and takes a
moment before we leave to hide one under
each seat in the car.
Again, we drive for many hours and find the roads completely
blocked with a large funeral procession
supporting a wooden coffin.
As we walk through the fields, I am facing the unknown.
I have no idea what to expect from Crescent.
He could give me the poison, or poison me with the poison,
or shoot me in the face 14 times.
We are deep in the country, and should we need help, it
will be unavailable.
At first, I find this frightening, but I'm comforted
knowing that Alex's lithe, agile body will be quick to
respond to any threats.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: We arrive at Crescent's, bearing gifts of
Barbancourt rum to show our goodwill.
He seems pleased, but I'm anxious to see this new poison
and how it might differ from the last, seemingly inactive
powder he gave me.
Can we see the powder, then?
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: They call it the weapon.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Does he still have any of the
ingredients left over?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He said you can go with him.
HAMILTON MORRIS: OK.
Fantastic.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
SERGE: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Crescent offers to let me see if a
laboratory, where he concocts his leaf medicines.
But he says that I must accompany him alone, so Alex
stays behind.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Can you ask if I can come closer?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Can you ask him what he was
just crushing up?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Ah.
The skull of the boy.
Can you ask him if he has the zombie cucumber?
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: The powder is retrieved from a child's
coffin and presented to me.
I'm delighted to find he's given not only a poison but
also a new powered antidote.
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: That's the brown container?
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: How much money does he want for those
two bottles?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: 15, 16, 17, 1,000 US dollars.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: At last, my mission is accomplished.
Yet, the man holding the poison has a face strikingly
similar to the zombie I saw yesterday.
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Would Crescent make so shameless an
attempt to fool me?
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: I went to Haiti to investigate a
mystery, and a mystery is exactly what I found.
Upon my return to New York, I bring the powders to the
laboratory of my friend, Jason Wallach.
Hello.
I've brought some samples of zombie poison from Haiti.
JASON WALLACH: All right.
We can look and see what's in these.
HAMILTON MORRIS: He subjects the powder to extensive
chemical analysis.
JASON WALLACH: Let's say 100 milligrams is
probably good to start.
HAMILTON MORRIS: First filtering material to find it
contains a large quantity of sand and numerous unidentified
hairs, likely of goat origin.
The remaining material is then extracted to detect alkaloids
and run through TLC and GCMS.
When he's finally finished, we can say that we know for
certain the secret ingredients, allele alcohol
and methylparaben, two non-psychoactive chemicals
commonly found in cosmetic products.
And so our powder is inactive.
Fake is too certain of a word to use, but pharmacologically
speaking, it's certainly inactive.
And in terms of TTX content, the potions Davis collected
were practically inactive as well.
So what can one make of an inactive powder?
Within the magical belief system of Haiti, zombification
would be possible in the absence of any active drug.
That is to say, the pure power of their belief in magic could
produce self-induced, psychological zombification.
I saw a man in a shed, making some unusual sounds.
Whether his condition was caused by a Bizango bokor, I
cannot say.
In Haiti, I know the placebo can take on new heights of
untold potency.
And whether my inactive poison is truly inactive cannot be
said outside of that strange Caribbean island.
I watched a man in the throes of spiritual possession, and
swam with the puffer, and had a mysterious powder
transdermally applied to my forearm.
But my search is not yet over.
I promised the goddess Erzulie that I would return to Haiti.
And I have no intentions of breaking her vengeful heart.
WADE DAVIS: We never could prove that Narcisse had gone
through this experience.
My research was totally misinterpreted by the media.
What I had or had not discovered was always kind of
exaggerated.
I was sent down to Haiti by a linear, rational, Descartian
scientist, to quote unquote, "Find the drug that's used to
make zombies." Well, no drug can make a social phenomena.
And in the end, instead of finding the drug used to make
zombies, I found myself investigating the social and
psychological and spiritual and political and historical
dimensions of a chemical possibility.
And the whole purpose of the research, in the end, was not
prove zombies existed, which it did, but really to take a
phenomena, that as I say, had been used in this explicitly
racist way and turn it on its head, make sense of the
sensation, and in doing so, try to draw attention to the
preconceptions and misconceptions that we had
about this extraordinary worldview, of Haitian vodou,
and that this was not a black magic cult, but this was an
amazingly complex metaphysical world.
[MUSIC PLAYING]