We've all heard of zombies, I'm sure. Vacant eyed creatures that walk about with their arms straight out in front of them, with a lust for blood or flesh or some such thing,terrorizing quiet little neighborhoods in quiet little towns. Ressurected from there graves usually for the express purpose of terror or bloodshed in cheesy B-movie horror shows. But the truth is so much more terrifying for the fact that these horrifying creatures are in truth the innocent (or not so innocent) loved ones of families or singular people targeted specifically by a voodoo master (better known as a bokor) or by someone who has employed the services of a bokor.
Evidence was given of how this horrific state of affairs is achieved by a former zombie! Clairvius, a resident of the Haitian village of l'Estère, gave account of how he had fathered many illegitimate children but had refused to give financial support for them. He had also argued fiercely with his brother over a land dispute.
Because of this, his brother had employed the services of a bokor to zombify and enslave Clairvius.
Clairvius then gave account of how he had been secretly (apparently without his or anyone elses knowing) been fed a poison that initially caused fever symptoms but eventually sent him into a death like trance. Within this trance he was still aware and conciouse but was paralyzed completely. This poison also slowed down his heartbeat to the point where it was undetectable to two seperate examinations from two seperate doctors. It also produced a palor of the skin of ghostly proportions making also appear very dead on the outside as well as the inside.
His family, greiving for their loss buried him the next day, unknowing that he was still very much alive on May 2, 1962 in a cemetary north of l'Estère.

Not long afterwards his still paralyzed body was unburied by the bokor and he was administered another drug that allowed him to regain his mobility but left him sluggish and unable to achieve any type of clear, decisive thought. A slave.
Clairvius was then savagely beaten and taken away to the north end of Haiti. He remained a slave there for two years, constantly beaten by his sadistic master along with many other zombies that the bokor had collected.
Freedom only came one day when another zombie, somehow achieving enough awareness and clear thought, attacked and killed the bokor. Thus cutting off the supply of the mind numbing drug that had been administered to them daily, Clairvius slowly regained his memories and identity.
(most who are discovered wandering along roadways or such never regain what the bokor took from them, most remain the mindless, vacant eyed, shuffling creatures of movie fame) Clairvius being lucky enough to so regain his life wandered from one region to another for a few years till hearing of his brothers death ( the that sold him to the bokor) he returned to l'Estère, where he met his sister Angelina.
All doubts of his identity were cleared when he correctly answered questions about his boyhood that only he could know.
Not long after an American biologist, Wade Davis, after hearing of Clairvius, wanted very much to uncover the identities of the mysterious drugs used on Clairvius. Davis visited Haiti and collected samples of the substances. He ascertained that the first, paralyzing poison contained two noteworthy ingredients. Tetrodotoxin, a very effective nerve toxin inducing rapid, profound paralysis; it is commonly taken from puffer fish. The other ingredient was a potent hullucinogenic anesthenic secreted from the skin glands of the poisonous cane toad Bufo marinus.
The other drug that revived the subject and left him or her an easily controlled slave was datura which comes from the, aptly named, zombie cucumber, Datura stramonium. Also known as the thorn apple or jimson weed this drugs effects include delusions, mental confusion, disorientation, amnesia and if taken in great enough dose an impenatrable stupor. Which pretty much describes the characteristics of the zombie.
Yet oddly this did not explain why, after the drug was no longer administered, most other zombies rarely regained their normal mental state as Clairvius did.
Davis offered the explanation that after burial, zombification victims could wait in their coffins for any number of time before the bokor came and dug them up. Most would more than likely suffer from oxygen deprivation before the bokor came, effectively causing irreversable brain damage that enhances the drug datura's mind-numbing ability. Clairvius more than likely regained hisself because he was not long left in his coffin so he did not suffer from any signifigant degree of oxygen deprivation.
So zombies are not exactly the shambling monsters protrayed in Hollywood films. They are not truly dead at any time and they are not magically resurrected from thier graves with chants and sacrafices.
Mind you, this doesn't mean that I don't believe in magic.
Ware the voodoo, ware the voodoo.

If you wish to know more about zombies and/or voodoo there are many other sights on the net. An excellent one is The VODOU Page by Mambo Racine Sans Bout. It is intresting and gives a full accounting of what exactly voodoo is, where it originated from, and offers lessons in vodou (which is voodoo's actual spelling). I suggest you visit it.

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