Clairvius Narcisse

Wɔfrɛ no bio: the Living Zombie

Tete nsɛm ne anansesɛmAwufoɔ a wɔnantew1968 kɔsi 1999

Clairvius Narcisse is the most famous real person claimed to have been a zombi. A Haitian man documented as dead in 1962 turned up alive eighteen years later saying he had been drugged, buried, exhumed and enslaved. The ethnobotanist Wade Davis built a pharmacological theory of zombification around the case, which toxicologists have largely rejected. Whatever happened to him, his story shaped how the outside world has imagined the Haitian zombi ever since.1 2

Fa ko

Wɔdii kan kyerɛw

1980

Reappeared in 1980, claiming to have been buried in 1962

Mfiase

Haitian

Haiti

Deɛ ɛde ba

Ɛfoforɔ

By his own account a bokor took his soul; Wade Davis proposed poisoning with a tetrodotoxin powder followed by doses of datura.

Sɛnea wobɛdane bi

He said he was conscious but paralysed through his burial, then dug up and put to forced labour.

Ɛberɛ bɛn na ɛdii kan puee?

Tete wiase Mfinimfini Mmerɛ 1500 kɔsi 1899 1900 kɔsi 1967 1968 kɔsi 1999 2000 kɔsi 2009 2010 kɔsi ɛnnɛ

1980

Reappeared in 1980, claiming to have been buried in 1962

nhwehwɛmu nsɛm

Deɛ fibea no ka

Born 1922 in L'Estère; pronounced dead at the Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles in May 1962 and buried1 2

In 1980 he approached his sister and identified himself by a childhood nickname1 2

He said he had worked on a sugar plantation for two years until the bokor died1 2

A brother with whom he had quarrelled over land was suspected of ordering it1 2

Toxicologists Kao and Yasumoto called the tetrodotoxin claim 'without factual foundation'1 2

His story was the basis of The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)1 2

Fibea

Asɛm biara a ɛwɔ krataafa yi so fi saa fibea yi mu, na yɛde yɛn ankasa nsɛm na akyerɛw. Wohunuu mfomsoɔ bi? Ka kyerɛ yɛn wɔ [email protected].

Ma dɔm no aduane. Dawurubɔ nni hɔ, trackers nni hɔ, onipa baako na ɔtua ho ka. Akyɛdeɛ ma ɛkɔ so wɔ intanɛt so.Ma akyɛdeɛ

Tete nsɛm a efi nsase koro no ara so

Zombi (Haitian)Haitian (Vodou folklore), 1750

Felicia Felix-MentorHaitian, 1937

The Lancet zombi cases (FI, WD and MM)Haitian, 1997