Zombies (3 page)

 

¹
Generally called “The March on Salisbury,” a horde of several hundred zombies was eventually hunted down and exterminated by a group of royalist cavalry.

²
The Journal of Animate Necrology
, Miskatonic University Press, Vol. 39 No. 2

³
The term “horde zombie” is sometimes used to group necromantic, atomic, and viral zombies together as these three types share a similar “herd mentality” and often form together in large groups.

⁴
Linguistics is still searching for words to replace “kill” and “fatal” in discussions of the undead. Since none have yet been found, I will continue to use them.

When the rise of Christianity drove the necromancers out of Europe, one group disappeared into the wilds of West Africa. Over the centuries, they wormed their way into positions of power and incorporated aspects of their black magic, including the creation of zombies, into the local religions. Records from this time are almost nonexistent, and what little information we have comes from ancient folklore. However, this strain of necromancy slowly re-emerged with the rise of the slave trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As the European slavers transplanted thousands of native Africans, including many witch doctors, to the islands of the Caribbean, the African religions slowly mixed with Roman Catholicism to create the culture of voodoo. And with this culture came a new variety of zombie.

US Marines stationed in Haiti in the early twentieth century.

Technically, voodoo zombies are a subclassification of necromantic zombies, but since they have been studied in isolation for so long, and because their magical reanimation contains so many unique elements, most animate necrologists continue to view them as a separate category. In fact, the most important contributions to the study of voodoo zombies have been made by anthropologists, most of whom are either unaware or unconcerned with the greater threat of the undead.

Voodoo took strongest root in the nation of Haiti, and it is there that a majority of voodoo zombies are found. Even so, voodoo is practiced by over sixty million people worldwide, including strong concentrations in parts of North, South, and Central America as well as the other islands of the Caribbean. In fact, voodoo had one of its strongest followings among the Creole people of Louisiana, and it is from their language that the word “zombie” originates. After the American Civil War, many of the Creole practitioners of voodoo were rounded up in the general pursuit of necromancers, and today the darker practices of voodoo only survive in America in the back streets of New Orleans and the most isolated parts of the Louisiana bayou.

A rare photograph of a voodoo zombie.

After successfully tackling the zombie problem at home, the United States attempted to strike against the heart of voodoo. After the lynching of Haitian President Jean Vibrun Guillaume Sam in 1915, the US Marines led an invasion of Haiti, ostensibly to restore order. Over the next twenty years, the Marines engaged in a systematic attempt to stamp out voodoo across the island.

Despite America's clandestine war against necromancy and voodoo, most of the citizens of the Western world remained blissfully ignorant of the undead threat. This began to change in 1932 with the publication of
The Magic Island
by William B. Seabrook. While many modern ethnologists have labeled the book “sensationalist trash,” Seabrook's account of his travels through Haiti includes many details about voodoo, including an encounter with a zombie. The book caught the public imagination, especially the zombie incident, and soon the idea spread to Hollywood. In 1932,
The White Zombie
, starring Béla Lugosi, hit theaters across the United States and launched a new genre of horror film that continues to cloud and confuse the true study of zombies to this day.

The United States withdrew its forces from Haiti in 1934. Although the Marines had made a thorough effort to eradicate voodoo, it survived and slowly rebuilt. In 1950, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier came to power in Haiti and fostered the regrowth of voodoo. For twenty years, Duvalier ruled the country through a fear partially inspired by the black magic of voodoo. Some claim that he created his own small army of zombie soldiers, though this has never been confirmed.

Political upheaval eventually forced Papa Doc's son and heir to flee the country, and thus ended the governmental support of voodoo. The practice remains strong, however, and America continues to send agents to the island to monitor the situation.

The strain of necromancy that lives within voodoo has a distinct flavor that sets it apart from the death magic of Europe and Asia. The wielders of this magic are called bokors,
⁵
and even within their own culture are usually viewed as pariahs. While these bokors deal in all kinds of black magic, including fetishes and charms, they are most feared for their ability to create zombies. Unlike Western necromantic zombie creation that only deals with corpses, the creation of a voodoo zombie involves capturing a person's soul.

Among ghost hunters and others who study the ethereal undead, it is a well-established fact that an individual's soul lingers near its body for a least a day or two after death, before continuing on to its second existence. During this period of lingering, souls are at their most vulnerable to necromancy. Using their dark arts, bokors can imprison souls in a sealed jar or trap them inside a fetish. These imprisoned souls are known as
zombi astral
and are forced to do the bidding of their captor. A
zombi astral
can be released by shattering the jar or fetish holding it.
⁶

Once a bokor has imprisoned a soul, he can command the corresponding body to rise up from death, using a substance known as zombie powder. This powder is basically a solid form of the brew used by other necromancers, though it contains several unique elements such as tetrodotoxin, an extremely powerful poison found in some puffer fish and octopi.
Bokors sprinkle the powder into the mouth of a corpse while taunting it with its own captured soul. After rising, the zombie remains under the command of whoever controls the vessel in which its soul is imprisoned.

It is worth noting that many bokors use zombie powder as a poison, slipped into food. There is no cure for this poison, and death normally occurs within four to six hours. Afterward, a bokor can quickly trap the soul and raise the zombie without a further application of powder.

Because voodoo zombies require the trapping of the soul, it is only possible to create them from the newly deceased.

Voodoo zombies are the least immediately recognizable form of zombie. From a distance, they appear to be normal human beings, though perhaps a bit slow and lethargic. Up close, however, it is a different story. Voodoo zombies have empty, soulless eyes, slack-jawed expressions, and very slow movements. They do occasionally speak, responding to direct questions in a nasal voice devoid of emotion. A few bokors sew the mouths of their zombies shut, to prevent them from eating salt. Due to a peculiarity of voodoo necromancy, the ingesting of salt causes a voodoo zombie to go wild, attacking the bokor that created it.

Like all forms of necromantic zombie, voodoo zombies are capable of using weapons and even tools. In fact, it is probably more common for this variety of zombie to be used for manual labor than as a weapon. When they are armed, most zombies carry the traditional Haitian machete, a weapon they wield with lifeless indifference. Otherwise, they will attack with their hands, displaying normal human strength.

François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, President of Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971.

In comparison to other forms of zombie, voodoo zombies offer little threat to mankind as a whole. The process of creating zombie powder is long, difficult, and expensive, and its use is limited to the newly deceased. Thus bokors are unlikely to assemble the large armies of other necromancers. On the other hand, the threat to the individual of being raised as a zombie is incalculable. With the possible exception of revenants, all other forms of zombie are the product of corpses whose souls have departed this earth. Voodoo zombism is the ultimate threat, the idea of slavery and imprisonment even after death. It is perhaps the greatest evil that necromancy has to offer and the main reason that the US government and other zombie-hunting agencies have worked so hard to stamp out the black magic of voodoo.