[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Is this man a zombie, one of the living dead?
Do the witch doctors of Haiti know how to cheat death?
Can they raise corpses from the grave?
Can modern science at last expose
the secrets of zombification?
[BAT NOISES]
Mysteries from the files of Arthur C. Clarke,
author of 2001 and inventor of the communication satellite.
Now in retreat in Sri Lanka, he ponders the riddles
of this and other worlds.
[HORN FANFARE]
[CHORAL BACKING]
[DRUMS PLAYING]
[ANIMALS SQUEAKING]
The subject of this program comes straight
from the horror movies.
For decades, visitors to Haiti in the Caribbean
have returned with unnerving tales
of zombies, the living dead.
Travelers tell of men and women who are apparently
killed by some mysterious poison slipped
into their food or drink by a voodoo witch doctor.
But after the funeral, the witch doctor returns to the grave,
usually at night, digs up the coffin,
and revives his victim with another secret potion.
This creates a zombie, a creature half dead and half
alive, who can be sold as a slave
to blindly do its master's bidding.
Well, can we believe a word of this?
Haiti is a dangerous and spooky place
where the truth often lies hidden in darkness
of voodoo and superstition.
So it's not surprising that doctors
and scientists have been reluctant to investigate
the zombie phenomenon.
Yet if there's any truth in it, there
could be very important implications
for modern medicine.
[DRUM MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Voodoo possesses the hearts, minds,
and fears of all Haitians.
Their ancestors brought this mesmerizing mix of religion
and sorcery from Africa.
In Haiti, death is truly in the midst of life.
The graveyard dominates the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Everything here speaks of the Haitians' worst fear,
that their dead are not truly dead.
An unlocked tomb is an invitation to the sorcerers.
They steal skeletons, bones, and skulls for voodoo potions,
discarding the shattered coffins.
But the padlocks are there to deny them the ultimate prize.
Here, perhaps, is where the witch
doctors find their zombies.
Outside the capital, the people's fears
are even greater.
Father Jean-Philippe recognizes the power of voodoo and magic
over his congregation. FR.
CLAUDE JEAN PHILIPPE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: People believe in two forces.
They believe in God, and they believe in magic.
But to get a quicker response, they turn to magic.
NARRATOR: One of his congregation, Sagesse Ariste,
has an extraordinary confession to make.
Her sister died strangely and suddenly.
To prevent her being turned into a zombie,
her family had to take the most horrifying precautions.
FR.
CLAUDE JEAN PHILIPPE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: When you realized that your sister had died
in an unnatural way, what did your family do
to make sure she couldn't be raised from the dead?
SAGESSE ARISTE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: People say that when
you bury that kind of person, you have to cut them up
so they can't be raised from the dead
like they could be if the body was whole.
They cut off her feet, her hands, and her fingers.
They chopped off her head and split it in two.
And then they buried her with her head at her feet,
and her feet at her head.
And when they did, that she couldn't be taken.
FR.
CLAUDE JEAN PHILIPPE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: It's true, this thing about zombies.
It's a reality that confronts you every day.
Even if it's hard to believe, you
have to accept it as a fact.
NARRATOR: High in the remote hills
above the church, an even more extraordinary story awaits.
In this village lives Wilfred Dorissant,
once an intelligent student, now thought to be a zombie.
The villagers are convinced that he is the living
dead, a body without a soul.
Wilfred's loving family cares for him as best they can
with the help of Haiti's leading doctors.
He spends the day in stocks to keep him from coming to harm.
His scars point to a past as a zombie enslaved in chains.
MIGUEL DORISSANT: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: If you compare the way
he was with what he's like now, that's not my boy at all.
He's an empty shell.
He's a ghost.
NARRATOR: Wilfred's parents can't forget the day
they heard their son had died.
MIGUEL DORISSANT: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: When he started to get ill, his eyes went yellow.
ELEANOTTE DORISSANT: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: Then he started to lose consciousness.
He would shake his head.
And then at other times, he would
start bellowing like an ogre, and thrashing about,
and throwing himself around.
MIGUEL DORISSANT: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: After seven or eight days of sickness,
he died.
When we realized the body was smelling
terrible, starting to rot, we decided to bury him right away.
It was then we knew it wasn't a natural death.
MIGUEL DORISSANT: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: At that moment, I felt devastated.
If I'd been able to, I would have preferred to die myself.
I felt I had lost all my life.
NARRATOR: The coffin-maker who prepared Wilfred's
body was Renan Fevrier.
He was shocked by its appearance.
He had never seen anything like it.
RENAN FEVRIER: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: The smell was awful,
so we decided to put him in the coffin
and bury him immediately.
NARRATOR: Wilfred's body was hugely swollen.
RENAN FEVRIER: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: The body was this wide, and this high.
I'd made a coffin, but it wasn't big enough.
So I had to send for another bigger coffin.
But even then, we had to tie it up with rope.
NARRATOR: Wilfred's parents mourned their tragic loss.
They were inconsolable.
But 18 months later, the weekly village cockfight
was dramatically interrupted.
A disheveled figure appeared.
The spitting image of Wilfred stood before the crowd.
His friend, Verdieu Durozel, was amongst
the astonished witnesses.
VERDIEU DUROZEL: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
VERDIEU DUROZEL: When Wilfred saw me, he recognized me,
but he couldn't remember my name.
I was amazed, because I'd seen him dead,
and I'd gone to his funeral.
And then to see him alive, I just couldn't understand it.
It was a miracle.
NARRATOR: The news that Wilfred had returned as a zombie
spread like wildfire.
Soon, it reached the ears of his father.
MIGUEL DORISSANT: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: I saw him, and it was him.
I recognized marks on his body.
I was afraid, but I didn't want to show
this to my wife, or anyone.
I put on a brave face, even though I was dying in my heart.
NARRATOR: When she saw his hand, Wilfred's mother
knew it was her son.
ELEANOTTE DORISSANT: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: I recognized him by his feet,
and also by this finger.
When he was at school, he used to play football.
And one day, he broke his finger.
Then when he returned, I recognized
his finger and his feet.
So I knew it was him.
NARRATOR: The family set out to discover who could have
turned Wilfred into a zombie.
They suspected Wilfred's uncle, Bellavoix.
He's been involved in a bitter family land dispute.
Bellavoix was arrested.
He was brought to the provincial capital of Les Cayes
to face trial.
This unique case was heard by the chief
of the criminal court, Judge Jacques Pierre.
Haitian law takes zombification seriously.
The penal code runs it a crime.
It states that zombification should be treated like murder.
JUDGE JACQUES PIERRE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: I have heard a lot about these cases,
these zombies, these dead people who come back to life.
Bellavoix Doricent confessed that he had killed Wilfred
Dorissant with a powder.
He was found guilty, and was sentenced to life imprisonment
with forced labor.
NARRATOR: Wilfred's death certificate was used
as evidence during the trial.
Before his apparent death, he'd been doing
well as a student in Les Cayes.
By chance, Judge Pierre had a second job
as principal of Wilfred's college, and knew him well.
JUDGE JACQUES PIERRE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: I was amazed when I saw
this young man was still alive.
He had changed completely.
He'd lost his memory.
He could not speak.
He couldn't understand anything at all.
During the trial, Wilfred Dorissant
was classified as a zombie-- scientifically speaking,
defined as an individual raised from the dead,
and reduced to slavery by a sorcerer
who's taken away his soul.
NARRATOR: In this case, the Haitian state recognized
Wilfred as a true zombie.
But far more often, claims of zombification
turn out to be false.
In the 1930s, this woman was recognized
by her astonished family as Felicia Felix-Mentor.
She had apparently died nearly 30 years earlier,
but now she was alive.
The case was investigated by government
health officer and famous psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Mars.
The family told him they'd identified
the woman from her limp.
Felicia, who died, at been crippled by a broken leg.
DR. LOUIS MARS: I investigated about the broken leg
because it was a focal point where
something should be clear about what happened exactly, you see?
X-ray was made and there was not trace of fracture.
The leg was not broken.
NARRATOR: Mars suspected the limp
was caused by malnutrition.
She was well fed, and then she started to walk normally.
NARRATOR: The real Felicia could never have walked normally.
Mars realized this was an impostor, a mental patient.
DR. LOUIS MARS: A mental patient,
but without a broken leg, no direction-- a mental patient.
NARRATOR: But other extraordinary cases
are not so easily explained.
Angelina Narcisse always brings two bunches of flowers
when she visits the cemetery.
She comes to mourn her dead brother, Clervius.
She lays one bunch at the grave where Clervius
was finally interred in 1994.
The other is for the tomb where he was buried
more than 30 years earlier.
ANGELINA NARCISSE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: My brother was a zombie.
The first time he died, I was really upset.
NARRATOR: 18 years later, he reappeared.
ANGELINA NARCISSE: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: Someone told me that Clervius
was in the marketplace, so I went down there.
A crowd had gathered.
I went right into the middle of it, and there he was.
That was a big shock.
I was beside myself.
NARRATOR: Clervius Narcisse is also
remembered by two retired missionaries, Joy
and Eldon Ausherman.
They spent a lifetime caring not only for the poor of Haiti,
but also for its zombies.
ELDON AUSHERMAN: Now there is, there are the two
zombies, Tifam, it's not the total picture,
and Narcisse, together.
He was buried about a mile of two, two miles out
of Lestere in a country cemetery.
And it was quite a feeling standing there with him,
looking down at his own grave.
[CHUCKLE] That was really something else.
[SLIDE SHOW SOUNDS]
This is Narcisse and his wife, a dead man taking, you know,
legally dead and everything, taking
his-- taking a wife, a bride.
Was quite an event in in that area.
[CHUCKLE] It seemed rather strange to us, of course.
[SLIDE SHOW SOUNDS]
He was a very kindly gentleman, very nice gentleman.
We could sit by the hour and listen to him.
He could keep you spellbound for an hour, or two hours.
He'd tell you all about everything.
[SLIDE SHOW SOUND]
[INAUDIBLE] in the morgue, according to this-- the story
I heard him tell us.
He was conscious.
Yes, he was put in a coffin.
And that's when he said he could feel that nail in his cheek.
He was inside the box, and he said they
had driven a nail right in.
And it was stuck in his cheek, but he couldn't move.
And he could hear people talking and he didn't-- he
just couldn't move at all.
And I think this must be the spot where
the nail went in right there.
He was pretty proud of that.
NARRATOR: The man who hammered those nails into Clervius's
coffin was Antoine Veus, the morgue attendant
at the hospital where Clervius was certified dead.
ANTOINE VEUS: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: After 18 years, everybody said he's raised,
he's raised, Narcisse has come back to life.
I said no, it can't be true.
But afterwards, he was brought to the hospital.
When he arrived, I said, yes, that's him-- the man who died.
And he said, here's where you drove the nail into my cheek.
When you were nailing down the coffin,
this is where the nail hit me.
It made me jump, he said.
It was then I realized it was true,
that he really was a zombie.
NARRATOR: Clervius claimed he could remember his death,
burial and resurrection.
Today, Wilfred Dorissant finds it hard to talk.
But he was able to tell his story to his friend, Verdieu,
when he first came back.
VERDIEU DUROZEL: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: When he first came back, he could talk to people.
I used to go around to his house to play dominoes.
While we were playing, we used to chat.
He told me that while he was dead,
while he was in the coffin, he could hear everything.
He told me that during the wake, he
could hear his mother crying.
He heard his father speaking while his coffin
was being put in the tomb.
His father said, go, my son, go to God, if God has taken you.
But if an evildoer has done this, God will judge him.
All of this really happened.
I know because I was there, too.
[CHANTING]
NARRATOR: Patients believe the secrets of zombification
are hidden in black magic temples.
[CHANTING]
NARRATOR: This is the temple of one of Haiti's most
feared sorcerers, Altesse Paul.
[CHANTING]
[DRUM AND BELL MUSIC]
INTERPRETER: The witch doctors claim they work magic.
But perhaps a practical knowledge of natural poisons
lies behind their expertise.
It's rumored they have secret laboratories to prepare
poisonous potions which fool families
into burying their dead alive.
Altesse Paul it uses all kinds of plants and animals
in his potions.
But the exact ingredients are trade secrets.
His most closely guarded formula is
the recipe for making zombies.
ALTESSE PAUL: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: This secret I can never give you.
And the reason I can't give you this secret
is because it's a huge secret which I share
only with my voodoo brothers.
If I have anything to do with zombies,
I keep the secrets to myself.
It's very dangerous to give them to you just like that.
But if you were initiated, it would be my duty
to give you the secrets, because you
would be my legitimate child.
That's the only way I can reveal the secrets.
NARRATOR: But there's a catch-- anyone who has been initiated
is forever sworn to secrecy.
The witch doctors count on no one daring
to break the oath of silence.
This man was once a much-feared voodoo sorcerer.
But now he's a Christian evangelist.
As brother Dodo, he preaches against his old trade.
FRERE DODO: I used to make zombies, I regret it so much.
Sometimes I can't help crying.
NARRATOR: Brother Dodo can reveal how zombies are created.
FRERE DODO: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: The process is easy, even common.
It makes people swell up.
The main ingredient is crapaud la mer,
the sea toad, or puffer fish.
That's what you use.
You make a powder out of it.
You mix it with maximiate and with a lot of other powders.
You put ashes, water bugs, and earthworms in it.
You must have crapaud la mer.
All these ingredients, you use to knock people out.
When they take this puffer fish powder,
they swell up like a barrel.
The powder seeps through the pores of the skin
and destroys the blood.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE: Could these revelations
give a scientific explanation of the zombie phenomenon?
Perhaps we can reconstruct the witch doctor's secret recipe.
First into the mix, and apparently the most important
of all, is this creature, a puffer fish.
It's found in the tropical seas here off the coast of Sri
Lanka, and also in Haiti, where it's known as
crapaud la mer, the sea toad.
And I could see why it might come in useful
for zombification, because the skin and innards of puffer fish
contain a deadly nerve poison, 300
times more lethal than cyanide.
Despite this, its flesh is prized as a delicacy in Japan.
Every year, several unfortunate Japanese gourmets
die after eating puffer fish that
hasn't been properly prepared.
Others more fortunate have appeared dead,
only to come around just before their funeral,
telling amazed family and friends that they
were conscious all the time.
NARRATOR: Brother Dodo explains how
the puffer fish poison works on the witch doctor's victims.
FRERE DODO: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: You don't die.
If you were dead, I couldn't bring your physical body back.
You hear everything that's going on around you.
If your wife cries, you can hear her.
If your husband cries, you hear him.
It it's your children, you hear them.
When you're brought to the morgue,
you can hear the ambulance that takes
you there When you're put in the coffin, you're conscious.
When they take you to the cemetery, you're conscious.
When they close your grave, you're conscious.
You're not really dead.
Your heart still beats, but so low
that no doctor's instruments can tell that you're still alive.
It's an evil thing.
NARRATOR: As part of the continuing medical care devoted
Wilfred Dorissant by the Haitian medical profession,
neuro-psychiatrist Dr. Roger Mallory plans to take
Wilfred to Port-au-Prince.
He pronounces his patient fit to travel.
In the capital, he's arranged a brain scan for Wilfred.
This may show if there's any damage.
If there is, he'll try to pinpoint its cause.
Was Wilfred starved of oxygen in his tomb,
or could poison be responsible for his condition?
At the only computerized brain scanner in Haiti,
Wilfred is prepared for the investigation
by radiologist Dr. Gino Joachim.
For the first time, medical science
can penetrate the brain of a man said to be a zombie.
But doctors hope that the truth about Wilfred
will be revealed when they analyze the results.
[BEEP] [BEEP]
DOCTOR 1: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: So here we have the brain scan of Wilfred.
We didn't find any lesion of the cerebellum,
but in the ventricular system, we
can see that there is some damage
of the right frontal cone, which we find here, and here.
DOCTOR 2: [SPEAKING HAITIAN CREOLE]
INTERPRETER: Yes, Dr. Gino, I agree with you.
I've often come across this sort of case.
Shortage of oxygen could have been responsible
for this kind of brain damage.
Although it's true-- we might have expected larger lesions.
Nonetheless, the damage to the brain
is consistent with him having suffered a lack of oxygen.
NARRATOR: The doctors have found brain damage,
but can't yet establish its cause for certain.
Perhaps Wilfred was starved of oxygen in his tomb.
But other more natural reasons can't be ruled out.
Investigations continue into this most
extraordinary and poignant of all medical mysteries--
the riddle of the zombies.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE: So, what can we believe?
Perhaps the whole thing is a myth
created by unscrupulous dictators
to keep their people in check.
Perhaps zombies are simply suffering from mental illness,
or brain damage.
Or maybe a rare neurological syndrome
is embroidered by folklore and superstition
into something magical and sinister.
Yet I'm inclined to take some zombie stories seriously.
If the voodoo witch doctor's potions really do work,
scientists may be able to create powerful new drugs,
particularly anesthetics and painkillers.
Thus, out of evil may come forth good.
[HORN FANFARE]
[CHORAL BACKING]
[DRUMS PLAYING]