NARRATOR: The Kingdom of Congo, 1482.
Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao is the first European
to sail up the Congo River into the heart
of this ancient African nation.
Despite the dense rainforest on both sides of the river,
Cao spends months exploring this unknown land
and meeting its inhabitants.
After he reports his discoveries back home, the king of Portugal
dispatches waves of missionaries to the region.
The goal is to convert tribesmen from their ancient religion
of Vodun to Catholicism.
You have to remember, this isn't
too long after the Crusades.
So Europe had already sort of went
from-- right from the Crusades into colonialism.
And one of the big projects was not
just to get land and money and slaves, although that was it,
but also to gain souls, converts,
for the Catholic church.
NARRATOR: Over the next century, European missionaries
have great success turning the Kingdom of Congo
into a Catholic land.
Their belief that a sky god created
the Earth and its inhabitants is changed
to the Catholic origin story.
But the locals hold on to some of their beliefs,
including the concept, which is also
held by the ancient Egyptians, that people
have more than one soul.
We have what's called the big soul and the little soul.
And one of them is responsible for what we normally
think of as our personality, what makes
you, you, what makes me, me.
But the other one is more of a basic sort of soul
that animates us.
It gets the flesh moving.
They speak of us as each having a lesser
angel and a greater angel.
At the time of death, the lesser angel stays with the body.
It doesn't know what to do, but the greater
angel leaves the body.
NARRATOR: As missionaries convert much of the population
to Christianity, traditional bokors, or witch doctors,
are forced to perform some Vodun ceremonies in secret.
European missionaries hear astounding stories
that these witch doctors use ancient rituals
and traditional knowledge to raise the dead,
creating automatons that are later dubbed zombies.
The idea of the zombies is that they actually have
only one of these two souls.
They've passed on.
They've died.
And they've been resurrected, but only
with the soul that animates us.
So they're lacking in that personality
and in that personal feelings and things.
With zombism, it is then only the physical body
is resurrected in a sense.
And the personalities, that part of the soul,
has completely disappeared.
NARRATOR: Could these stories have been true?
And if so, might this be proof that both the Egyptians
and the tribes of the Congo were correct in their belief
that our consciousness is divided into separate parts?
But how could witch doctors who lived hundreds of years ago
with no access to modern technology
have been able to breathe life into the dead,
reviving just the part of the soul responsible for animating
the flesh?
Ancient astronaut theorists point out that African myths
suggest voodoo magic originated with the sky gods
and their emissaries to Earth, known as orishas or loas.
The topic of the orishas is very interesting to me
because they are looked upon as these divine messengers,
messengers of knowledge.
And the stories are very clear that the orishas
arrived from the sky.
And what I find interesting is that in many
of the old carvings that we can find in wood, for example,
they are depicted in sitting in these weird craft that look
like craft and that they all seem to feature
these elongated skulls.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that these African sky gods were
actually extraterrestrials that not only taught the natives
the secrets of the soul but also showed
them how to resurrect the dead?
And could this be the origin of our modern day stories
of zombies?
Perhaps through the centuries, these original teachings
of these celestial beings were lost.
Sorcerers and magicians in Africa and elsewhere
began mimicking or trying to copy
what the originals had done and had
a limited degree of success.
They were able to create zombies,
but the source is clear.
These teachings originally came from celestial beings.