Clairvius Narcisse

Era ayitibwa: the Living Zombie

Enfumo n'emboozi ez'eddaAbafu abalamu1968 okutuuka 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

Lwanyisa

Yasooka okuwandiikibwa

1980

Reappeared in 1980, claiming to have been buried in 1962

Gy'ava

Haitian

Hayiti

Ekikireeta

Ebirala

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

Engeri omuntu gy'afuukamu omu ku bo

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

Yasooka ddi okulabika?

Ensi ey'edda Emirembe egya wakati 1500 okutuuka 1899 1900 okutuuka 1967 1968 okutuuka 1999 2000 okutuuka 2009 2010 okutuuka leero

1980

Reappeared in 1980, claiming to have been buried in 1962

ebiwandiiko by'omu nnimiro

Ensibuko bye zigamba

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

Ensibuko

Buli kintu ku lupapula luno kiva mu nsibuko zino, nga kiwandiikiddwa mu bigambo byaffe. Olabye ensobi? Tubuulire ku [email protected].

Liisa ekibinja. Tewali birango, tewali bikulondoola, nga bisasulwa omuntu omu. Akasiimo kakikuuma ku yintaneti.Leka akasiimo

Enfumo okuva mu nsi ze zimu

Zombi (Haitian)Haitian (Vodou folklore), 1750

Felicia Felix-MentorHaitian, 1937

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