Clairvius Narcisse

A tún ń pè é ní: the Living Zombie

Ìtàn àtẹnudẹ́nu àti àròsọÒkú1968 sí 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

⚔️ Bá a jà

Ìgbà àkọ́kọ́ tí a kọ sílẹ̀

1980

Reappeared in 1980, claiming to have been buried in 1962

Orírun

Haitian

Haiti

Ohun tó fà á

Òmíràn

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

Bí o ṣe di ọ̀kan

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

Ìgbà wo ló kọ́kọ́ farahàn?

Ayé àtijọ́

Sáà Àárín

1500 sí 1899

1900 sí 1967

1968 sí 1999

2000 sí 2009

2010 títí di òní

1980

Reappeared in 1980, claiming to have been buried in 1962

àkọsílẹ̀ pápá

Ohun tí àwọn orísun sọ

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

Àwọn orísun

Gbogbo òtítọ́ lórí ojú ewé yìí wá láti àwọn orísun wọ̀nyí, a kọ ọ́ ní ọ̀rọ̀ tiwa. Ṣé o rí àṣìṣe? Sọ fún wa ní hello@zombiewiki.app.

Ìtàn àtẹnudẹ́nu láti àwọn ilẹ̀ kan náà

Zombi (Haitian)Haitian (Vodou folklore), 1750

Felicia Felix-MentorHaitian, 1937

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