Zombies in Real Life

One of my all-time-favorite TV shows was a minor gem from the mid-1970's entitled "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" featuring Hollywood veteran Darrin McGavin as an undercover reporter who continually stumbles across enough weird cases involving the supernatural that it would make even the producers of "X-Files" jealous. My favorite Night Stalker episode was about zombies -- and even now -- some 30 years later I remember Kolchak tracking a zombie to its resting place in an old car junkyard where he had to pour salt in the zombie's mouth and then sew its eyelids shut in order to kill it. If I remember correctly, the zombie awoke in mid-stream (or maybe I should say scream) -- scarring the livin' daylights out of Kolchak and myself. Come to think of it, zombies are already dead, so the whole salt-and-sewing thing would have been pretty futile.

Needless to say, I wondered back then and I still wonder now - do zombies exist? There are some people that say zombies exist in real life. Heck, if you've ever seen my mother-in-law without makeup on you know the truth is out there, but I'm not going to give up quite so easily.

Paranormality.com describes zombies as "...a very real phenomenon typically associated with voodoo practicing in the West Indian country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola..." More to the point, zombies are persons who have "died" but aren't really dead. And this is where the term "undead" is derived from. Paranormaility.com goes on to say that zombie life "...is not a full life but a weird half-life where the zombie is incapable of thinking for itself, and it has no prior knowledge as to who it was..."

Oddly enough I saw a lot of those same symptoms surface in young kids when they joined the military - but that's a story for another time.

All kidding aside, TIME magazine -- that respected tome of journalistic integrity -- published a great article back on Monday, Oct. 17, 1983 entitled "Zombies: Do They Exist?" in which shed some much needed light on the topic of zombies. According to the TIME article, back in 1978, a man called Clairvius Narcisse turned up alive and well and a little worn around the edges after having been declared dead and buried nearly 2 decades before. Seems Clairvius refused to sell his share of the family land holdings after which a witch doctor put some heavy juju on him. Like I said, he was dead and buried, but apparently "unburied" a short time later and was actually working as a zombie slave on a sugar plantation with many other zombies. The Time article goes on to say that in 1964, Clairvius' zombie master died and Clairvius wandered across the island in a psychotic daze for the next 16 years. The drugs that made him nearly catatonic were gradually wearing off. (Those must be some pretty strong drugs). In 1978, he accidentally stumbled across his long-lost sister in a public market, identifying himself to her by repeating his secret childhood nickname that only she knew.

Sounds like a great plot for "Night of the Living Dead" Pt IV -however, Harvard researcher Wade Davis discovered that - far from raising the dead -- witch doctors were using a strong haullucinain containing tetrodotoxin - obtained from puffer fish - an effective nerve poison, inducing deep paralysis. Also, according to the TIME article, a fluid -- secreted by the skin glands of the highly poisonous cane toad Bufo marinus - can act as an effective hallucinogen and strong anesthetic. Other drugs such as 'zombie cucumber' Datura stramonium were thought to aid in the resuscitation and mind control of the victim. So guess what, get a few sips of this "zombie cocktail" coursing through your veins and the next thing you know your lying 6 feet under ground in a wooden box.
I don't think society has to worry about being attacked by legions of the undead. But you just never know. You can learn more about the controversies regarding Haitian zombies and Davis's research in the April 15, 1988 issue of the journal Science or the October 11, 1997 issue of The Lancet