[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CRYING]
[SINGING]
WADE DAVIS: The first thing you have to do when you even
begin to try to understand a phenomenon like the Haitian
zombie, which is just one thread woven through the
fabric of this amazing culture, is to sort of
eliminate from your consciousness all your
preconceptions.
HAMILTON MORRIS: In 1982, Harvard ethnobotanist Wade
Davis traveled to Port-au-Prince to investigate
the biological underpinnings of the Haitian zombie.
As early as 1938, Zora Neale Hurston found there was a
vodou potion that could induce a death-like state, though she
concluded the ingredients were so guarded, no sorcerer would
ever reveal them.
Wade Davis did what Hurston thought impossible.
And over the course of four years he gained the trust of
several vodou sorcerers, uncovering the ingredients of
the secret potion, and documenting his experience in
the 1985 bestseller "The Serpent and the Rainbow."
Though Davis is quick to say he's not a "zombieologist,"
he's still considered the world's leading authority on
the Haitian Zombie.
WADE DAVIS: Now what is a zombie?
A zombie, by folk belief, is the living dead.
It's an individual who has been brought to his demise by
sorcery, passed through the grave, or at least passed
through a state of death, and then somehow magically
resuscitated.
Zombies were almost deemed to be off-limits for serious
academic research.
But Lamarque Douyon had found this really extraordinary case
of this man called Clairvius Narcisse.
What made the case unique is that Narcisse had been
pronounced dead in the Schweitzer Hospital.
And his death had been witnessed by two physicians,
both American trained, one an American.
There were impeccable records describing his pathology at
the time of his demise.
18 years later, this man claiming to be Clairvius
Narcisse turns up in his home village, claiming that he'd
been made a zombie.
All these lines of evidence led Lamarque Douyon to go
public in about 1980, '81, saying that they had found the
first medically-verifiable instance of a zombie.
That kind of opening brought everybody back to a series of
reports that had existed in the folk literature of the
reputed existence of a folk poison that was said to bring
on a state of apparent death so profound that it could fool
a physician.
Lamarque Douyon had tried for some time to secure the
formula of that preparation, to no avail.
And that's why I was brought into the investigation.
Schultes, my professor, the man who sparked the
Psychedelic Movement, he was very much my mentor.
I was working in the Amazon, and one day he summoned me to
his fourth-floor aerie at the botanical museum and asked me
if I wanted to go down to Haiti for two weeks over
spring break and try to find the formula of the drug used
to make zombies.
Well naturally, I said, sure.
There are lots of plants and lots of animals that are
poisonous and that can kill you.
We weren't just looking for a toxin that could kill.
We were looking for a toxin that could bring on a state of
apparent death so profound that it would bring someone
literally to the edge of death, a threshold from which
they could then recover.
And I went down to Haiti and was able to secure the formula
of the preparation.
HAMILTON MORRIS: The preparation contains a
veritable Whitman's Sampler of poisons, showcasing the great
diversity of Haiti's medicinal flora and fauna, spanning two
kingdoms and eight Linnaean classes.
The potions Davis collected included such ingredients as
datura stramonium, velvet bean, cane toad, pufferfish
Hispaniolan boa, bearded fireworm, tarantula, cashew
leaves, and the bones of a human child.
To the sorcerer who mixes the potions, each ingredient
serves a distinct purpose, with the human bones playing a
role every bit as important as the psychoactive plants.
But to Davis, two ingredients held the key to understanding
the phenomenon of zombification.
The pufferfish contains a chemical called
tetrodotoxin, or TTX.
If administered in the correct dose, the victim will find
themselves trapped in a flaccid paralysis, perfectly
mimicking the appearance of death.
Upon their exhumation, the victim is fed a paste of
datura stramonium, which obliterates their memory,
leaving them in a stupefied, obedient delirium.
WADE DAVIS: We never could prove really anything, but we
could show that this was something that had a kind of
coherence within the worldview of the Haitian people.
If it could not be absolutely proven, it was at least so
provocative that it demanded investigation.
If you eliminate the other possibilities, you have to
allow the facts to speak for themselves.
And that's why I was prepared to say very strongly that I
thought this phenomenon existed.
HAMILTON MORRIS: In the years since the publication of
Davis's work, there's been little formal investigation of
the zombie phenomenon.
Though teams of scientists and anthropologists have traveled
to Haiti in search of answers, they often failed to find what
they're looking for.
Some have been fooled in elaborate hoaxes, or found
that the zombies could be explained medically, with
conditions such as schizophrenia.
And others have been imprisoned or sent home with
nothing at all.
In Haiti, the use of this powder is a crime on par with
murder, and those who concoct it do so with the knowledge
that it will be used to destroy a human life.
In light of all this uncertainty, I will travel to
Haiti to investigate the zombie and attempt to collect
poison samples for the first chemical analysis
in almost 30 years.
My results could support Davis's theory or redefine our
concept of the Haitian zombie.
Or I could have a railroad spike
driven through my scrotum.