Zombies appear regularly on our TV screens, as more Tales of the Undead are unleashed upon us, and some old ones exhumed. But here's a surprise - zombies can be real. In real life, the zombies come from the Caribbean island of Haiti. They are a person who has been almost-killed, and then later raised from the almost-dead by a voodoo priest, to be used as slave labour for the rest of their miserable life. Zombies can move, eat, hear and speak, but they have no memory and no insight into their condition. There have been legends about zombies for centuries, but it was only in 1980 that a real-life case was documented.

The story begins in 1962, in Haiti. A man called Clairvius Narcisse was sold to a zombie master by his brothers, because Clairvius refused to sell his share of the family land. Soon after Clairvius "officially" died, and was buried. However, he had been later secretly unburied, and was actually working as a zombie slave on a sugar plantation with many other zombies. In 1964, his zombie master died, and he wandered across the island in a psychotic daze for the next 16 years. The drugs that made him psychotic were gradually wearing off. In 1980, he accidentally stumbled across his long-lost sister in a market place, and recognized her. She didn't recognise him, but he identified himself to her by telling her early childhood experiences that only he could possibly know.

Dr. Wade Davis, an ethnobiologist from Harvard, went to Haiti to research this story. He discovered how to make a zombie. First, make them "dead", then make them "mad" so that their minds are malleable. Often, a local "witch doctor" secretly gives them the drugs. He made the victim "dead" with a mixture of toad skin and puffer fish. You can put it in their food, or rub it on their skin, especially the soft, undamaged skin on the inside of the arm near the elbow. The victims soon appear dead, with an incredibly slow breath, and an incredibly slow and faint heartbeat. In Haiti, people are buried very soon after death, because the heat and the lack of refrigeration makes the bodies decay very rapidly. This suits the zombie-making process. You have to dig them up within eight hours of the burial, or else they'll die of asphyxiation...

ZOMBIES There have been many films featuring zombies over the years. Who out there hasn't heard of Night of the Living Dead, most of us have watched it. Here I will be talking about the theories about this supernatural myth.....

 So, what is the definition of a zombie then. According to my dictionary which was published around the same time as dinosaurs walked the earth it is when a supernatural force or spirit reanimates and controls a corpse. When people talk about Zombies it is usually in assocation with voodoo, though I'm not saying everyone involved with this is going to be going around digging up bodies so they'll clean the kitchen or something. One case of zombification involved a guy called Clairvius Narcisse who died and was buried, only to turn up 18 years later with a disturbing story for his sister. Don't you just hate it when that happens? Apparently he had been turned into a zombie because he refused to sell land on the orders of his brothers. There's family loyalty for you huh? He had been forced to work in the fields with others like himself until his master died two years later and he was able to escape. He had kept his true identity secret for sixteen years wandering the lands as a beggar until he was sure those who had ordered him zombified had themselves gone to the grave and stayed there one would hope. Many of his claims were verified by the authorities. It was even noted that he had a scar on his cheek where a nail had been driven into his coffin.

 The threat of being zombified was used by the witch doctors to keep people in check, after all who would want to be raised as a mindless slave after death. Then again, I know some mindless people in college who I guess are technically still alive. This threat was given credence by a Dr E.Wade Davis who claimed that zombiism actually existed, after conducting research (in 1980) and speaking to people who claimed to be victims of this process, including Narcisse. He claimed that witch doctors used a specific potion of their concoction to induce a stupor which caused the belief that the person taking it was ready for burial. So, no drinking tea in the witch doctors house! Later the victim was dug up and an antidote was administered which usually resulted in brain damage. This theory was backed up further when he obtained samples of this zombification powder and it was found to contain bits of Japanese puffer fish, which in small quantities can induce full scale paralysis and had done so on two documented occasions. He ignored the fact that another anthropologist previous to himself had come up with the same theory and been ridiculed. He had found a logical explanation for the existance of zombies and that was enough for him. He concluded that witch doctors were very skilled in giving just the right amount of this powder to put the victim in the ground for a temporary period. Then, using some sort of magical powers as well as the antidote they would raise the zombie and then pump it full of more potions to keep it in a vegative state.