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Speaker 1: few lines more familiar to fans of American horror cinema

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Speaker 1: than They're coming to get to you, Barbara. The line

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Speaker 1: uttered by Barbara's brother Johnny at the beginning of George A.

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Speaker 1: Romero's The Night of the Living Dead surely before he

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Speaker 1: is killed by a zombie, sets the tone for what

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Speaker 1: some consider to be one of the most influential films

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Speaker 1: ever made. Released in nineteen sixty eight, the film is

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Speaker 1: celebrated for bringing the previously much maligned genre of horror kicking, tearing,

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Speaker 1: and screaming into the twentieth century. The film's potency has

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Speaker 1: much to do with the year it was released, coming

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Speaker 1: out at the height of public disillusionment with the American

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Speaker 1: Vietnam War, but also in the immediate aftermath of both

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Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior and Robert Kennedy's assassinations. For many,

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Speaker 1: Romero's film, with its portrayal of uneasy alliances, not so

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Speaker 1: casual racism, and the endless march of a moronic, ghoulish

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Speaker 1: horde intent on devouring anyone with a fully functioning brain,

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Speaker 1: appeared to reflect the entire state of a nation. However,

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Speaker 1: The Night of the Living Dead will perhaps mostly be

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Speaker 1: remembered for its portrayal of the humble zombie. Though somewhat

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Speaker 1: ironic since the term zombie is never used in it,

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Speaker 1: Romero's film, none the less set the template for almost

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Speaker 1: all subsequent iterations of these hapless creatures. It was there

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Speaker 1: that we were first introduced to the flesh hungry, cannibal

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Speaker 1: version of the zombie that could only be defeated by

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Speaker 1: destroying its head. Romero zombies have become so ubiquitous as

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Speaker 1: a modern day monster, it is often easy to forget

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Speaker 1: just where the notion of the zombie originated from in

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Speaker 1: the first place. Some perhaps are aware of the figure's

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Speaker 1: origins in Haitian folklore and its associations with the ancient

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Speaker 1: practice of voodoo. What you might not know, however, is

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Speaker 1: that for many the zombie is not merely a figment

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Speaker 1: of folklore, but is in fact considered to be something

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Speaker 1: very real. In nineteen eighty, a man walked into a

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Speaker 1: village market place in Haiti claiming to be a local

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Speaker 1: landowner named Clavius Narcisse. After interviewing the man and his family,

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Speaker 1: local authorities confirmed that he was indeed who he said

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Speaker 1: he was, the only problem being that Clervius was supposed

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Speaker 1: to have been dead and buried for eighteen years. Two

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Speaker 1: years later, inspired by Clervius's story, ethnobiologist Wade Davis was

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Speaker 1: sent to Haiti on a research trip to find out

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Speaker 1: just how exactly this could have happened. What he eventually

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Speaker 1: discovered was far more bizarre than anything he could possibly

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Speaker 1: have imagined. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClain Smith.

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Speaker 1: Before gaining entry to Harvard University to study anthropology in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, where Davis had barely been out of

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Speaker 1: his home province of British Columbia in Canada, all that

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Speaker 1: changed However, when he signed up to a course led

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Speaker 1: by Professor Richard Schultz, a pioneer in the field of ethnobotany,

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Speaker 1: the scientific study of how different cultures and societies relate

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Speaker 1: to and utilize plants, Schultz held somewhat of a mythical

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Speaker 1: status among its students. Schultz had devoted much of his

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Speaker 1: early career to investigate in the ritualistic use of pyote

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Speaker 1: and iowaska. He was also known for a tendency to

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Speaker 1: disappear into the Amazon rainforest for months, sometimes years at

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Speaker 1: a time in his quest to better understand the secrets

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Speaker 1: hidden within it. It was Schultz who first encouraged Davis

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Speaker 1: to take his own trip to the Amazon, where in

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Speaker 1: his early twenties he also tried iowaska and soon proved

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Speaker 1: himself to be an outstanding field researcher. By nineteen eighty two,

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Speaker 1: then twenty nine year old Davis, now a fully fledged

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Speaker 1: ethnographer in his own right, was teaching a course at

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Speaker 1: Harvard University alongside Schultz when he was called into his

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Speaker 1: mentor's office late one Monday evening, finding the professor on

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Speaker 1: the phone. When he entered, Davis quickly took a seat

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Speaker 1: opposite and waited for him to finish. As he continued

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Speaker 1: the conversation, Schultz quickly scribbled something onto a notepad and

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Speaker 1: handed it to his colleague. It was an address in

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Speaker 1: Manhattan belonging to a doctor Nathan Kline. Kline was well

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Speaker 1: known to Davis as a pioneer in the field of psychopharmacology,

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Speaker 1: having been one of the first psychiatrists in the US

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Speaker 1: to use medication to treat individuals with psychiatric disorders. With

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Speaker 1: the call finally coming to an end, Schultz put down

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Speaker 1: the phone and asked Davis if he was free to

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Speaker 1: travel to Haiti in two weeks time. Having never been

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Speaker 1: to the country before and intrigued by Schultz's playful tone,

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Speaker 1: Davis took up the gauntlet and agreed to contact Kline

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Speaker 1: to find out more. Two nights later, Davis arrived at

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Speaker 1: doctor Clyne's Manhattan apartment, where he was introduced to both

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Speaker 1: Kline and his colleague, professor Heinz Lehmann, who also happened

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Speaker 1: to be the head of psychopharmacology at Montreal's mc gill University.

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Speaker 1: With Davis still unshore as to why he'd been invited over,

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Speaker 1: the men made the usual pleasantries before quickly turning to

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Speaker 1: the subject of death, or more specifically, how you determine

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Speaker 1: that a person has well and truly died, As both

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Speaker 1: Lehman and Klein noted, there had been countless examples over

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Speaker 1: the years of individuals being declared dead only to seemingly

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Speaker 1: reanimate days later, not to mention the various horror stories

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Speaker 1: of people believed to have died later a wake up

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Speaker 1: to find themselves trapped in a coffin deep underground. Interesting

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Speaker 1: as that all was, however, Davis, growing impatient, demanded what

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Speaker 1: it had to do with his being there. Klein promptly

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Speaker 1: got up and left the room, returning moments later with

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Speaker 1: the slim file, which he handed to Davis and invited

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Speaker 1: him to take a look at. Inside, and, now even

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Speaker 1: more perplexed, Davis found a death certificate for a man

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Speaker 1: named Clavius Narcis from Lestaire in Haiti, dated May nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty two, twenty years ago. I don't understand, said Davis.

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Speaker 1: Layman took a sip of his drink, then invited Klein

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Speaker 1: to elaborate. Clavius, he explained, had been declared dead by

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Speaker 1: two separate physicians, only to reappear eighteen years later in

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Speaker 1: his home village, very much alive. Davis was unimpressed, however,

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Speaker 1: clearly it had just been some kind of administrative error,

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Speaker 1: But then Kleine elaborated further. It was late in the

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Speaker 1: evening of April thirtieth, nineteen sixty two, when a man

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Speaker 1: approached the front desk of Haites Albert Scheitzer Hospital suffering

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Speaker 1: from a high fever and spitting blood. The man, who

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Speaker 1: was forty two and gave his name as Clevius Narcis,

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Speaker 1: had been struggling with chest pains and muscle aches for

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Speaker 1: a few days before taking himself to hospital. By now

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Speaker 1: in a desperate state, the medical staff immediately rushed him

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Speaker 1: through to an operating theater to examine him further. Unable

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Speaker 1: to determine the exact cause of his ailment, the man

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Speaker 1: was kept in for further observation, only for his condition

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Speaker 1: to deteriorate rapidly over the next few days. But shortly

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Speaker 1: after one pm on May the second, with his sister

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Speaker 1: Angelina watching on from his bedside, Clavius Narcis died, having

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Speaker 1: been pronounced dead by two separate doctors. Clavius's older sister,

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Speaker 1: Mary Claire, arrived soon after to identify the body and

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Speaker 1: signed the official death certificate. The man's lifeless body was

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Speaker 1: then placed in cold storage at the hospital Morgue before

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Speaker 1: being released for burial the following morning. At ten am

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Speaker 1: on May third, in a cemetery just north of the

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Speaker 1: man's hometown of Leicsterre, a small handful of friends and

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Speaker 1: family members gathered together as a coffin containing Clavius's body

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Speaker 1: was lowered six feet into the ground and buried under

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Speaker 1: a mound of soil. Ten days later, a hefty memorial

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Speaker 1: stone commissioned by the family was placed over the unfortunate

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Speaker 1: man's grave, and that it seemed was that. It was

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Speaker 1: eighteen years later that a relative of Clervius's was walking

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Speaker 1: through the market place in Lesterre when a commotion erupted

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Speaker 1: before him, and soon a large crowd had started to gather.

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Speaker 1: Pushing through to the front, the relative soon found the

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Speaker 1: subject of its attention, a stranger that had just entered

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Speaker 1: the village who looked surprisingly similar to the long dead Clervius.

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Speaker 1: The relatives soon realized with horror the man didn't just

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Speaker 1: look like him, it was him. Clervius's sister, Angelina, who

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Speaker 1: still lived in the village, was quickly summoned to speak

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Speaker 1: with the man now openly claiming to be her long

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Speaker 1: dead brother. Though incredulous at first, Angelina found herself standing

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Speaker 1: before the man, who, though much older and a little

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Speaker 1: frailer than he was before, looked undeniably like Clervius. When

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Speaker 1: he gave her his nickname, only something she and her

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Speaker 1: siblings had ever called him, her legs threatened to crumble

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Speaker 1: beneath her. There was no denying it anymore. It was

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Speaker 1: Clavius back from the dead, and there could only be

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Speaker 1: one reason that that was possible. Her brother, or what

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Speaker 1: was left of him, was a zombie. Are you always

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Speaker 1: taking care of your family? Do you often take care

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Speaker 1: of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take

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Speaker 1: podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash

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Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcast. The figure of the zombie is deeply ingrained

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Speaker 1: in Haitian culture and folklore. To understand why, you have

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Speaker 1: to understand the history of Haiti, or, as uc Irvin

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Speaker 1: Professor Amy Wilence puts it more specifically, you have to

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Speaker 1: understand the concentration camp culture of the slave plantation. Haiti

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Speaker 1: is located on the island of his Biola in the Caribbean,

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Speaker 1: which is also home to the Dominican Republic. The island

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Speaker 1: is believed to have been inhabited for over fifteen hundred years,

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Speaker 1: having once been home to the Arawak, who migrated there

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Speaker 1: from South America. It was descendants of these people, the Tyinho,

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Speaker 1: who are thought to have been the first indigenous people

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Speaker 1: that Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered on their maiden

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Speaker 1: voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in fourteen ninety two. Soon

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Speaker 1: after arriving, Columbus attempted to establish a settlement on the

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Speaker 1: northwest of the island, known as La Navidad. The following year, however,

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Speaker 1: some of the Tayino burned it down, having become convinced

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Speaker 1: that Columbus and his men had in fact been sent

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Speaker 1: from the underworld to consumed them. When Columbus returned to

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Speaker 1: find Le Navedad destroyed, he responded by establishing another settlement

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Speaker 1: in what would later become the Dominican Republic, on the

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Speaker 1: opposite side of the island, which he named La Isabella.

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Speaker 1: When gold was discovered shortly after, the European settler population

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Speaker 1: began steadily to increase, partly in retribution for what some

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Speaker 1: of the Taino population had done to Le Navedad, but

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Speaker 1: also as an inevitable consequence of the ever expanding European population.

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Speaker 1: The settlers slowly began to exert more authority. The indigenous

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Speaker 1: population of what is now Ispiola before Columbus's arrival is

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Speaker 1: estimated to have been somewhere between several hundred thousand to

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Speaker 1: a million people. Over the next ten years, as the

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Speaker 1: colonialists enslaved, massacred, and fatally infected the Taino, this population

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Speaker 1: had dropped to thirty five thousand. As rampant colonial expansion

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Speaker 1: into the Caribbean continued over the next few hundred years,

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Speaker 1: Ispaiola became increasingly important as a gateway to the other islands.

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Speaker 1: When buccaneers from France succeeded in settling on the west

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Speaker 1: side of it. Rather than become embroiled in an endless fight,

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Speaker 1: the governments of France and Spain decided instead to divide

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Speaker 1: the island between them. In sixteen ninety seven, the government

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Speaker 1: of France assumed ownership of its western third and named

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Speaker 1: the territory Sant de Mingue. What appealed most about Sant

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Speaker 1: Deming to the French government and the colonial families that

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Speaker 1: lived there was its abundance of sugar cane. As the

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Speaker 1: crop became increasingly lucrative, Sant Deming in turn and became

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Speaker 1: France's most profitable territorial holding. But in order to make

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Speaker 1: and keep it so required thousands and thousands of slaves abducted,

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Speaker 1: mostly from Africa. By seventeen twenty, as many as eight

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Speaker 1: thousand a year were being brought to the island. Conditions

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Speaker 1: in the slave colonies were so harsh and their treatment

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Speaker 1: by slave owners so brutal, that a third of all

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Speaker 1: slaves died within two years of arriving. By the mid

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Speaker 1: seventeen eighties, it is estimated that as many as four

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand slaves lived in San Domingue, with

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Speaker 1: as many again having died as a result of their

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Speaker 1: bondage since the colonies were first established. But then in

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Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine, something extraordinary occurred thousands of miles away

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Speaker 1: on the other side of the ocean. The spirit of

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Speaker 1: revolution had been unleashed in the French homeland. Back in

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Speaker 1: San Deming, a small section of the population, known to

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Speaker 1: the colonial powers as the free people of Color, inspired

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Speaker 1: by the French Revolution, began to wander if they could

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Speaker 1: achieve the same. This group, which occupied a unique place

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Speaker 1: in San Deming society, was composed largely of children whose

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Speaker 1: mothers had been raped by slave owners and had been

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Speaker 1: granted some minor freedoms in return. Emboldened by the size

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Speaker 1: of the island slave population, which outnumbered European settlers, by

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Speaker 1: nine to one. The free people of color succeeded in

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Speaker 1: organizing a mass slave revolt, as plantations were torched and

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Speaker 1: colonialists killed off one by one. The French government were

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Speaker 1: eventually forced to relinquish control of the country. On January first,

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Speaker 1: eighteen o four, taking the original Tayino word for the island, Haiti,

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Speaker 1: the newly freed people declared their independence. Despite gaining independence,

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Speaker 1: the deep rooted history of slavery, which so horrifically underpinned

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Speaker 1: the founding of the nation, has continued to haunt the

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Speaker 1: people of Haiti. It is from out of this history

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Speaker 1: that the zombie, as an icon of Haitian folklore first emerges. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: it isn't difficult to see the similarity between the image

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Speaker 1: of a zombie and the basic horror of servitude to

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Speaker 1: be robbed of all personality and agency and reduced to

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Speaker 1: your most basic functions. Over time, as the anxieties of

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Speaker 1: slavery became more entwined with the culture of voodoo that

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Speaker 1: had been brought to the island from West Africa, a

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Speaker 1: new idea of the zombie materialized, becoming something that could

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Speaker 1: be conjured up with the power of voodoo and treated

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Speaker 1: like a at the beckoned call of its master. Voodoo,

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Speaker 1: meaning spirit in the Fond language of Dahomey, a kingdom

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Speaker 1: which once occupied parts of today's Togo, Benin, and Nigeria

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Speaker 1: in West Africa, was first brought to Haiti by slaves

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Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century. Those who followed the religion centered

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Speaker 1: their beliefs around the divine creator Mawu, a female being who,

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Speaker 1: in one tradition, bore seven children, each gods in their

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Speaker 1: own right, governing the forces of nature and human society. Further,

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Speaker 1: spirits are considered to be embodied in various elements of

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Speaker 1: the natural world, such as streams, trees, and stones, with

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Speaker 1: all creation being divine. In this sense, the religion is

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Speaker 1: particularly fascinating from an ethnobotany perspective with regard to medicines

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Speaker 1: and herbal remedies, since they are also believed to contain

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Speaker 1: the power of the divine. It is this under standing

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Speaker 1: that gives rise to the ritualistic use of talismans known

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Speaker 1: as fetishes, that many who are otherwise unfamiliar with the

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Speaker 1: religion might recognize, such as the use of dolls, statues,

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Speaker 1: and even in some cases, human body parts. Voodoo priests

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Speaker 1: known as Houngans, have traditionally played a vital part in

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Speaker 1: Haitian society, occupying all manner of roles, from community leaders

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Speaker 1: to psychologists and spiritual healers. And then there are the Bokour.

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Speaker 1: Although once considered simply priests, they have since come to

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Speaker 1: be known more specifically as sorcerers capable of using voodoo

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Speaker 1: to conduct black magic. Though many consider the zombie to

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Speaker 1: be little more than a feature of Haitian folklore, there

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Speaker 1: are many others who know them to be real, and

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Speaker 1: it is the Bocour who create them. Having been deeply

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Speaker 1: unsettled by her brother Clervius's sudden reappearance, Angelina Narses offered

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Speaker 1: him money to go away and leave the family alone.

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Speaker 1: As the other villagers grew equally unsettled by the reappearance

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Speaker 1: of a man who had been dead and buried eighteen

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Speaker 1: years ago, the police were eventually forced to arrest him

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Speaker 1: for his own safety. A short time later, Clavius was

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Speaker 1: brought to the attention of Lamarque de Joune, a one

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Speaker 1: time student of doctor Kleins, who had now returned to

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Speaker 1: his home country of Haiti to practice as a psychiatrist.

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Speaker 1: Doyjune carried out a number of extensive interviews with both

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Speaker 1: Clervius and his family and concluded incredibly that he was

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Speaker 1: indeed who he said he was. Once More, Clervius wasn't

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Speaker 1: the only one to suddenly reappear under such circumstances as

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Speaker 1: it happened. Douyune had been systematically investigate eating reports of

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Speaker 1: zombies since nineteen sixty one, with a number of cases

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Speaker 1: being of particular interest. In nineteen seventy nine, for example,

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Speaker 1: one bereaved mother spotted someone that looked exactly like her

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Speaker 1: thirty year old daughter walking aimlessly near her village. The

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Speaker 1: woman was later identified as the daughter through a matching

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Speaker 1: scar on her forehead, and after the coffin she was

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Speaker 1: supposedly buried in was found to contain nothing but rocks.

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Speaker 1: The following year, another woman, Nattiget Joseph, was found wandering

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Speaker 1: around her village by a local police officer, the same

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Speaker 1: officer who had pronounced her dead fourteen years previously. All

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Speaker 1: the subjects had been not only clinically determined to have died,

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Speaker 1: but had also been buried, only to seemingly reanimate and

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Speaker 1: reappear alive many years later. Although he was convinced that

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Speaker 1: the phenomenon was very real. Indeed, do Yune didn't believe

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Speaker 1: that these zombies had risen from the dead either way,

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Speaker 1: he had so far been unable to explain it. The

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Speaker 1: relatives of the unfortunate victims of whatever it was that

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Speaker 1: was taking place remained adamant, however, that these individuals had

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Speaker 1: been first murdered and then brought back to life without

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Speaker 1: their souls. Like Lamarque Doiune, Klein and his colleague Laymen

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Speaker 1: were also convinced that the phenomenon was real, but that

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Speaker 1: there had to be a rational, scientific explanation behind it.

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Speaker 1: But just how, thought Davis, could these individuals have been

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Speaker 1: declared dead, buried alive, then somehow kept alive long enough

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Speaker 1: for them to later be dug up again. And what

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Speaker 1: on earth would account for them having been kept in

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Speaker 1: their supposed zombie state for so long? Well, said Kleine

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Speaker 1: as he handed Davis a sealed envelope. That is precisely

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Speaker 1: what we want you to find out. Later that night,

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Speaker 1: Davis made his way to Grand Central Station and took

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Speaker 1: a train back to Boston. Once on board, he opened

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Speaker 1: the envelope that Klein had given him, finding inside it

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Speaker 1: a smaller envelope filled with cash, a ticket to Haiti,

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Speaker 1: and a polarid photograph of Clavius Narcisse. Over the next

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Speaker 1: few days, he made the necessary arrangements for the trip

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Speaker 1: and began formulating his own ideas about the apparent zombie phenomenon.

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Speaker 1: It was doctor Kleine's theory that some kind of drug

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Speaker 1: was at the center of it, something that could give

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Speaker 1: the appearance of death. Klein had in fact come across

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Speaker 1: something similar thirty years previously, after being given a possible

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Speaker 1: sample of it by a film crew from the UK's

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Speaker 1: BBC who had making a documentary about voodoo at the time.

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Speaker 1: Despite carrying out a number of promising tests with the substance,

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Speaker 1: Klein was unable to ascertain precisely what it was made of,

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Speaker 1: and so it was in April nineteen eighty two, armed

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Speaker 1: with little more than a photo of Clavius Narcisse and

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Speaker 1: contact details for three individuals, Max Bouvoir, a local authority

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Speaker 1: on voodoo religion, Marcel Pierre, the Bocour who had given

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Speaker 1: the sample to the BBC, and lastly the psychiatrist Lamarque Deyune.

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Speaker 1: Davis boarded a flight to Haiti and his adventure was

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Speaker 1: just about to begin. You've been listening to Unexplained, Season four,

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Speaker 1: Episode eight, Death's Pale Flag, Part one of two. You

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Speaker 1: can hear the second and final part next week on Friday,

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Speaker 1: seventeen of May. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and

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Speaker 1: would like to help support us, you can now go

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Speaker 1: to Unexplained podcast dot com Forward Slash Support. All donations,

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Speaker 1: no matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All

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Speaker 1: elements of Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain smith.

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Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes, and feel

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Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas

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Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you

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Speaker 1: have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.

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Speaker 1: You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com

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Speaker 1: or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com,

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Speaker 1: Forward Slash Unexplained. Now it's time to take care of yourself.

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