| Clairvius Narcisse | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Haiti |
| Citizenship | Haitian |
| Known for | Being a zombie |
Clairvius Narcisse was a Haitian man said to have been turned into a living zombie by a combination of drugs. His case was the subject of a book, The Serpent and the Rainbow.
Clairvius Narcisse was declared dead on 2 May 1962, and yet in 1980 returned alive to his home village of L'Estère in Haiti.
After investigating reports of "zombis" (including Narcisse and a handful of others), researchers believed that Narcisse received a dose of chemical mixture containing Tetrodotoxin (pufferfish venom) and bufotoxin (toad venom) to induce a coma which mimicked the appearance of death. He was then allowed to return to his home where he collapsed, "died" and was buried. The Canadian ethnobotanist Wade Davis, who did the research on Tetrodotoxin[1] explains how this would have been done. The Bokor would have given Narcisse a powder containing the Tetrodotoxin through abraded skin. Narcisse fell into a comatose state, closely resembling death which resulted in his live burial.[2] His body was then recovered and he was given doses of Datura stramonium to create a compliant zombie-like state and set to work on a plantation. After two years, the plantation owner died and Narcisse simply walked away to freedom.
It was explained that Narcisse had broken one of the traditional behavioural codes and was made into a ‘zombi’ as a punishment; when questioned, Narcisse told investigators that the sorcerer involved had ‘taken his soul’. [3] The instigator of the poisoning was alleged to be his brother, with whom he had quarreled over land.[4] After his apparent death and subsequent burial on May 2, 1962, his body was recovered and he was given a paste made from datura which at certain doses has a hallucinogenic effect and can cause memory loss. The bokor (sorcerer) who recovered him then forced him, alongside others, to work on a sugar plantation until the master's death two years later. When the bokor died, and regular doses of the hallucinogen ceased, he eventually regained sanity (unlike others who had suffered brain damage from hypoxia while buried alive) and returned to his family after another 16 years, after finding his brother had died.[4]
Narcisse's story was popularized in the book The Serpent and the Rainbow by researcher Wade Davis, which met with some criticism in the scientific community.