Voodoo, called "Vodaun" in Haiti, is the believe in Loa; Land- , Air-, Fire-, and Water Gods, and the ghosts of the ancestors. Voodoo followers believe that all the aspects of life are influenced by Loa, which are manifestations of God - Le Grand Maitre - and they act as a intermediator in human occasions.
What makes Voodoo so unique, of all the religions in the caribbean, is the emphasize of the dark-side of human nature.
This manifest in activities of the "Petro-Loa", bad tempered, frightning and revengeful ghosts which are very powerful. The Petro-Loa will only help if you promise something and they take dreadful revenge if this promise is broken.
Some of these Petro-Loa are used for Black Magic; This is rewarded with a sacrifise. This is usually a pig, a goat, a bull or a corpse from the graveyard. But there are rumours that sometimes human sacrifises are made.
The Radu-Loa is the opposite of the Petro-Loa, this one only needs milk and flowers as sacrifise and is used to (for example) cure people.

Black Magic -also known as the work of the left hand- is skilled by some sects that seperate themselfs from the great Voodoo community. These sects, who practise in secret, are rejected by the traditional practitioners of Voodoo.
The most notorious sects, the "Bizango" and the "Cochan Gris", are well known for the fact that they sacrifise humans, call on the dead to harm others and transforming people in to zombies.

For Voodoo-believers there isn't a greater fear than loosing their souls, this happens when you get transformed into a Zombie, condemned to the living dead.
After the resurrection which has to occur within a couple of days after being buried because there is a risk of dying of lack of oxygen. The Zombie feels numb and suffers from loss of memory and personality.
He becomes a slave on a plantation or on a construction site of the 'Bakor', who often is the owner.
(A Bakor is a Voodoo-priest, who practices Black Magic.)
Some Zombies escape. It is claimt that the Voodoo spell can be broken if the Bakor dies. But sometimes brain-damage makes the Zombies useless. If this happens, he will be left alone in the forest.

It is not easy for a Zombie to reclaim it's life. Family and villagers often don't want anything to do with them. They are scared; because the Voodoo-believe claims that the Zombies have special powers that they can use to take revenge on the ones who transformed him into a Zombie.
They become outcasts, forced to make a living between the dead and the living.

Some families don't take any changes after a relative died. Not only do they perform rituals to sent the soul safely on it's journey, they also behead the corpse or they run a spear through the heart or they riddle the body with bullets just incase he or she was already transformed into a Zombie

The American Anthropologist and Ethnobotanicus Dr. Wade Davis has done extensive research about the Zombie-phenonemen.
He thinks a poison drink, that the Bakor gives to the victum to start the process of Zombiefication, is the key.
This poison is made by a combination of human remains, poison plants and parts of the deadly Boug-toad and the Hedgehog-fish. The poison is so strong that it works by just touching the skin.
According to Dr. Davis some Bakors are experienced poison-mixers who know exactly the right amount of deadly ingredients which makes the metabolism of the victims slow down so that it looks that they are dead. If they use to mutch than the corpse can't be revised.
After the funeral, the Bakor opens the grave and administer a strong antidote -the Zombie-Cucumber-.
This all can be true but how can we explain the Voodoo-spells that are not obtained by rituals or by poison drinks?
Few people doubt that ther is a strong connection between body and soul. Dr Davis poins out, in his book 'passage of Darkness' that even the most traditional docters admit that our mind influences our health. He claims that Voodoo works because it's such a big part of the cultural expectation pattern in Haiti.

Voodoo-believers are confinced that the power of their believe can influence all of us, no matter what we believe.