Speaker 1Due to the sensitive nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes graphic descriptions of death and the desecration of bodies. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. On April 30th, 1962, 40-year-old Clairvius Narcisse checked into a hospital in Des Chapelles, Haiti. He told the staff he'd been suffering from body aches and fevers. Before long, he began coughing up blood. Doctors tried to save his life, but they couldn't identify the illness and his symptoms only got worse. Two days after his intake, Narcisse experienced difficulty breathing and felt extremely weak. Finally, on May 2nd, two physicians declared him dead. Later, his sister Angelina identified the body, which was placed into a cold storage room for 20 hours. Then, Narcisse's body was brought to his home and lay stair and buried just north of the village. His family held a small service and slid a large concrete memorial slab over his grave. As far as they were concerned, he had moved on to the afterlife. 18 years later, a mysterious man walked into lay stair. He moved with a heavy gait, looking around with vacant eyes. The man approached Angelina Narcisse and introduced himself using a childhood nickname. Angelina reeled back. The man in front of her was her brother, Clairvius, back from the dead. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at TheConspiracyPod. For the month of October, we're examining classic monsters and the conspiracy theories around them. Today, we're digging up the graves of the undead monsters known as zombies. We'll meet an ethnobotanist who's been a fan of the conspiracy theory. and her eyes were dead, her eyelids looked as if they'd been burned with acid. She didn't speak, she only made incoherent sounds. Hurston snapped a photo, which was later published in Life magazine, and deemed the first known photograph of a zombie. Doctors at the hospital told Hurston they believed a bokor fed Felicia a poison that simulates death and damages part of the brain that controls speech. Then, after she was buried, the bokor dug her up and gave her a concoction to bring her back to life. Bokors put Felicia and other zombies to work as a slave on a plantation or as a thief. The doctors had no idea what drugs were used to kill and revive Felicia. Hurston offered to dig deeper with a connection sheet. Her body was already made in voodoo, but before she could, she fell ill and returned to the United States. In 1938, she wrote an acclaimed non-fiction book based on her experience titled, Tell My Horse. Nearly 50 years later, Wade Davis wanted to find the potion Hurston hadn't. But he was skeptical such a thing existed. So the pharmacologist assured him there was proof the poison worked. Davis could travel to Haiti and speak with a living zombie. Once in Haiti, Wade Davis met a man named Max Beauvoir. Every night, Beauvoir held commercial rituals in his temple for tourists. Davis attended one to learn more about the belief system. To help illuminate the experience, Beauvoir introduced Davis to a bokor named Marcel Pierre. To some, Pierre was a voodoo priest. To others, he was a ruthless militant who'd served a group that killed thousands of Haitians. Many believed Pierre lacked any real spiritual knowledge and faked his voodoo powers to scare his enemies. Beauvoir sent Davis to a town called Saint-Marc, where Pierre owned a local drinking spot called the Eagle Bar. A young boy led Davis to the back of the establishment. Outside, through a series of doors and past a few small houses, they arrived at a temple. After the boy knocked on the gate three times, Pierre appeared. He stood tall, wearing dark glasses that hid his eyes. eyes. Pierre motioned to follow him inside. Davis entered into the temple's inner sanctum. A large altar nearly filled the room. It held brightly colored powders, feathers, doll heads, and two human skulls. The head of a pufferfish and a whip were mounted on the wall above him. Davis introduced himself as a powerful, influential man from New York who wanted a sample of the zombie poison. Pierre understood that Davis would pay handsomely for it. Pierre told Davis they would be handling dangerous substances. To illustrate, Pierre pointed at a scar on the side of his face, explaining the potion had caused it. He was lucky. The mixture could kill if they weren't careful. If that still didn't scare him off, Pierre agreed to make the potion. He asked Davis to come back that night, alone. Later, under the cover of darkness, Davis, Pierre, and Pierre's assistant met at a cemetery. Pierre handed his assistant a shovel. They were going to rob a grave. Apparently, the most important ingredients for the poison. were the bones of a child. The assistant dug until he uncovered a three-foot-long coffin. When he cracked it open, the smell was ghastly. In disbelief, Davis watched Pierre's assistant hoist the coffin above his head to take with them. As they left the gravesite, Pierre told Davis it would take a few days to find the remaining ingredients. Later that week, Pierre invited Davis to a distant scrubland, far away from his temple. When he arrived, Davis saw the carcasses of two blue lizards and a large toad hung on a clothesline. The toad had something wrapped around its leg. It looked like a worm or a centipede. According to Pierre, its presence had helped the amphibian secrete potent chemicals before it died. Other ingredients were: potentially toxic plants, like a Haitian shade tree, and the itching pea, which has prickly hairs that can penetrate someone's skin and cause an irritating pain. The potion also utilized a dried, flattened puffer fish, which Davis knew was extremely poisonous. Once ready, Pierre's assistant pulled out a metal grater and collected the shavings from a human bone. He then roasted the animals on a grill until they were slick with oil. He transferred everything to a mortar, added the two plants, and ground everything together. Once finished, Pierre held up the poison. It had a sickly, corrosive odor. He told Davis to sprinkle a little across a walkway so his enemy would absorb it through their bare feet. Alternatively, he said, Davis could slip it into their shoe or sprinkle it down their back. Davis had the zombie potion. But now, he needed its antidote. After a victim was poisoned, they had 15 days to take the antidote. If they did so, they wouldn't fall into a death-like state. They wouldn't become a zombie. If 15 days passed and they became a zombie, they would become a zombie. They would need to be buried alive before they could be revived. Even then, they'd come back a shell of themselves, under the bokor's control. To make the antidote, Pierre ground six different plants, seawater, cane alcohol, bone, and other ingredients in his mortar. None were as potent as anything that went into the zombie powder. In fact, Davis knew most were chemically inactive. But after everything he'd witnessed, Davis seemed to wonder if there was more to life than science. Pierre supported this idea. He told Davis voodoo involved magic and folk belief. The antidote could only work if the bokor used it the right way. After paying the agreed-upon amount for the concoction, Davis headed to a neurology and psychiatry institute in Port-au-Prince with a man named Lamarck Duyon. Intelligent and soft-spoken, Duyon had grown up in Haiti, having heard stories of people returning from the dead. As an adult, he realized many Westerners dismissed zombies as fiction. So he made it his mission to let others know, zombies were real. Here's what he explained to Davis. Among practitioners of voodoo, when a person commits a crime, a tribunal sometimes punishes an individual by sentencing them to life as a zombie. It's like trying a case in a court of law, except everything is decided in secret. People in a voodoo society were supposed to follow a code of social ethics. If they didn't, the tribunal could hire a bokor to steal a transgressor's soul. It was an extreme verdict, arguably worse than death, as a zombie's life of hard labor could potentially last for years. Duyon knew of at least one case where this had happened. A Haitian man named Clairvius Narcisse. And soon, Davis would have the chance to interview the zombie face-to-face. As Narcisse shuffled into Duyon's office, Davis couldn't help but notice that the man seemed physically fit, and robust. Not what he assumed a zombie would look like. But he listened to Narcisse share his story anyway. Over the course of several interviews, this is what he learned. Back in 1962, a secret tribunal declared Clairvius Narcisse would be turned into a zombie. A bokor poisoned him, and Narcisse's body slowed down. After Narcisse was pronounced dead, he was buried near his hometown, in the town of L'Estere. But according to Narcisse, he was lying in his grave, aware of everything happening around him. It felt like living in a waking nightmare. No matter how hard he tried to move or speak, he couldn't. During his funeral, he heard his sisters crying, As they closed the casket, a coffin nail scraped his face and left a scar. At some point after his burial, Narcisse felt as though his soul was separated from his physical form. He found himself floating above his grave, and for reasons he didn't understand, he lingered near his body. He couldn't move on. Narcisse didn't know how long he remained in that state, but at some point, a bokor and the bokor's assistant returned to reclaim his body. They snatched his soul back down to earth and called Narcisse by his name. From underground, he heard a drum and a loud vibration. His grave opened up, and a hand pulled him up. He was free, but his suffering was far. Far from over. It was night. Narcisse could barely see. As he recalled, the bokor and his assistant bound, gagged, and whipped him. They wrapped him in black cloth and forced him to walk through the darkness. For days, Narcisse was passed from trafficker to trafficker, marching bound and gagged the entire way. He couldn't say how far he walked, but finally he arrived at a sugar plantation. Where he was put to work. In that time, Narcisse was transferred between an unknown number of traffickers. Finally, he arrived at a sugar plantation in a northern Haitian village, where he was put to work. Narcisse remained a field hand on an estate for the next two years. He wasn't alone. He worked with others who shared the same fate. All zombies. Narcisse was trapped in a strange nightmare that he couldn't escape. He could only do as he was told. Oftentimes, the bokor would reportedly feed the zombies a hallucinogenic powder to keep them compliant and subdued. One morning, two years after his arrival on the plantation, Narcisse witnessed a fellow zombie being whipped for insubordination. In and of itself, this wasn't unusual. But on this occasion, the enraged zombie grabbed a hoe and fought back. He killed the bokor. Suddenly, it was like a spell had been broken. The zombies slowly regained their wills. Narcisse was finally free to go home. But he wasn't sure it was a good idea. He believed he knew who'd arrange for him to be zombified. His brother. For the next 16 years, Narcisse wandered the country without a home. Then, one day, he learned his brother had died. He returned home in 1980, but was shunned as an outcast. Eventually, he found his way to Le Marc du Yon, who arranged for this meeting with Davis. After hearing Narcisse's account, Wade Davis headed to Narcisse's home. He also fought with his brothers over land. Narcisse had apparently done well for himself financially, but refused to share his wealth with his family. When one brother asked for a $20 loan, Narcisse refused. An argument ensued, and the brothers ended up fighting. The brawl was so bad, law enforcement hauled them off to jail. Over time, these brotherly disputes got worse. When Narcisse and his brother inherited a piece of land, Narcisse refused to go along with a plan to sell the property. This was why Narcisse believed his brother slipped him the zombie poison. But Angelina denied her brother's version of events. She didn't believe he'd taken the zombie potion. She said Narcisse was sick for a year before he died. And she said, She insisted that she'd never heard of any tribunal taking up his case. Angelina didn't, however, have a good explanation for how Narcisse had returned from the grave. That remained a mystery. To complicate matters further, her brother's return from the dead had thrown his family's finances into chaos. They took over his fields after they buried him, but when Narcisse returned, he demanded they give back his land. His sister refused. She didn't want anything to do with him. It seemed like the only fact anyone agreed on was that Narcisse had died, and now he was alive again. Davis still had the potion he'd bought from Marcel Pierre shortly after his arrival in Haiti, but by now he was skeptical. He doubted the authenticity of Pierre's poison, but he had no real way to test it. He wasn't committed to science enough to attempt a murder. He'd have to investigate other ways. On April 11th, 1982, Davis returned to Boston with his samples. He and his fellow researchers analyzed the specimens. They determined Pierre's plants were pharmacologically active compounds, but they weren't potent enough to induce a death-like coma. However, the toad's glands held a reservoir of blood. They ruled a reservoir of toxins that could stimulate a person's heart muscles, making it pump until it collapsed. If applied to the skin, it could also affect a person's blood pressure. The toad also secreted a compound with the ability to trigger hallucinations when combined with certain plants. Often, users reported burning sensations, muscle spasms, delirium, and immobilization. It sounded a lot like the mysterious illness Narcisse came down with. But Davis still wasn't sure he'd cracked the code of the zombie poison. Some ingredients didn't have any apparent purpose, like the chemically inert lizards. Another key ingredient was the puffer fish, named for its unique defense mechanism. When threatened, these fish will swallow large amounts of water and inflate their bodies to become too large for predators to get their jaws around. Some are covered in tiny specks. Many are highly toxic. In Japan, the puffer fish happens to be a delicacy. Known as fugu, the fish is primarily served in fine dining establishments. Certified chefs, trained to avoid the toxins, serve it as sashimi. But dining on fugu can be like playing Russian roulette: if it isn't prepared properly, it can make customers very sick. As he explains in his book, "The Serpent and the Rainbow," Davis wanted to know what was going on with the fish, and what was going on with the fish. Davis wanted to know what role the fish played in the zombification process, so to better understand it, he sent a sample to a toxicologist. He learned that puffer fish used in the zombie potion had an extremely lethal poison in its skin, liver, ovaries, and intestines. Tetrodotoxin, as it's known, is 160,000 times stronger than cocaine and can be up to 1,200 times more potent than cyanide. Tetrodotoxin poisoning can cause someone to struggle to breathe or have an out-of-body experience. Clairvius Narcisse's account sounds consistent with the symptoms of tetrodotoxin poisoning. Once buried, he remembered floating over his gravesite. But how did the bokors get the dosing right? It couldn't have been easy. Too much of the fish's venom and the target could die from respiratory failure. Too little, and they would never enter a comatose state. They may only feel a little numb or lose control of some of their motor functions. One way to ensure the proper dosage would have been to add the precise amount to someone's food or drink and make sure they consumed all of it. But when Davis visited Haiti, he learned the bokors made the poison into a powder. Allegedly, they'd sprinkle it on the ground for their victims to unwittingly step on. Occasionally, they'd blow the substance in their faces. And what about the revival potion? There's no known antidote for tetrodotoxin poisoning. Patients are usually given oxygen, and sometimes their stomachs are pumped, So what could the bokors possibly put in their antidote? Had they perfected these concoctions through years of trial and error? Or was there something more spiritual at play? Wade Davis wanted scientific proof of how the zombie potion worked. To achieve that, he needed replicable results in a lab. He enlisted the assistance of Professor Leon Roizen, a New York-based neuropathologist and expert on drugs and their effects on the human nervous system. Davis didn't tell Roizen what he knew about pufferfish or any of the other toxins in the potion. He didn't want the professor's research to be impacted by bias. Davis and Roizen poisoned a group of lab rats with the powder from Haiti and observed their behavior. About 40 minutes later, the rodents' movement slowed. They became sluggish. To test their responsiveness, Roizen pointed a light in their eyes. The animals reacted, but not as strongly as Roizen expected. Within an hour, the rodents practically stopped moving altogether. After six hours, the rodents stopped reacting to stimuli. When Roizen stuck their tails with pins, they didn't respond. They didn't wake up. They were comatose, not dead. Roizen could detect faint heartbeats and brainwaves. It was the breakthrough Davis had been looking for. He concluded that pufferfish venom, along with other ingredients he'd identified, like secretions from a poisonous toad, played a key role in the zombie potion. But major questions loomed over his research. Roizen never published his findings. And was disappointed. He was disappointed in Davis for using his work. Davis' subsequent attempts to replicate the experiment failed. Most importantly, Davis didn't understand how the antidote worked. After weeks in a laboratory, he hadn't made any real headway. He kept thinking about what Marcel Pierre told him. The antidote only worked with the proper spells. So he decided to travel back to Haiti's Vodou Society to learn more about their rituals. And to learn more about their rituals. And hopefully unlock the secret behind the antidote. But by 1984, a lot had changed. The pharmacologist who sent Davis on his first trip to Haiti had died. Marcel Pierre, the bokor who made Davis the zombie powder to take back to the States, now spent his days caring for his sick wife. Searching for new guides and contacts in Haiti, Davis found a Vodou priest named Erard Simon. And Simon shared a surprising fact with a scientist. He learned that the Vodou powder had been used by the Vodou community for a long time. Davis knew that zombification was only a small part of Vodou religion. A severe punishment reserved for extreme circumstances. But Davis wasn't the only one lacking insight in the process. According to Simon, most practitioners didn't understand how it worked themselves. Priests and bokors knew how to make the powders. But they weren't allowed to use them unless a special tribunal sanctioned the zombification. These tribunals were made up of members of various secret societies. Davis asked Simon if he could connect with the groups, but Simon brushed him off. Outsiders could only learn the superficial elements of Vodou. They weren't allowed to dive deeper into the mysteries of the underworld. If Simon violated this rule, both of their lives would be in jeopardy. Undeterred, Davis asked Simon about one particular society he had heard rumors of during his travels. A powerful group whose influence extended across the world. But it wasn't enough to cross much of rural Haiti. The Bizongos. Simon warned Davis not to get involved. The Bizongos weren't welcoming to outsiders. But Davis was unfazed. So Simon found a way to help him. One day, while Davis was watching a movie, Simon showed up at the theater unannounced. He approached the ethnobotanist and told Davis to follow him into the night. The pair walked through the city's winding streets until they reached the town. Then a woman opened the door. She led them into a dimly lit compound. Davis squinted to take in his surroundings. Through the dark, he saw a few small huts and a temple with flickering lights. An eerie calm ran through the compound. People passed by in total silence without any words of acknowledgement. After several uneasy minutes, Davis and Simon entered a private room. The room was empty. It was a private room with bamboo walls and a tin roof. Inside, about two dozen people waited for them with wary eyes. A human skull decorated the room. Simon had brought Davis to a Bizongo ceremony. Soon, a man with a soft voice stepped forward. Simon explained that this was President Jean-Baptiste, a local leader of the Bizongos. He was a man of his mind, powerful but understated. Apparently, he was willing to share his group's secrets with Davis. According to Baptiste, the Bizongos existed to maintain order and combat the efforts of the devil, thieves, and other evildoers, who they believed did most of their work at night. No one could be out after dark without incurring the Bizongos' judgment. The group protected their members as well as their families. They gave them spells and powders to trap enemies. But their rituals weren't intended to harm. They were meant to bring justice. During the ceremony, members placed candles and velvet hats at the foot of a coffin. A tall woman wearing a buccaneer's hat and long satin dress walked through the temple. Song and dance filled the air. For hours, Davis lost himself in the Vodou ritual. Davis also learned more. And he learned more about Clairvius Narcisse, the zombie he'd interviewed during his first trip to Haiti. The accusations against Narcisse didn't come from his brother like he'd originally believed. They actually came from his uncle, who might have been a member of the Bizongos. Apparently, the uncle claimed that his nephew had broken one of the laws that bound members of the society. Whatever it was, it must have been a grave offense, enough for the group to turn Narcisse into a zombie. But even with access to more information, Davis hadn't made headway on the mystery that drew him to Haiti in the first place: the zombie antidote. Those secrets were buried deep in oral tradition and early texts that might take years to fully comprehend. To understand them, he'd have to immerse himself in the Bizongo culture and become a high-ranking, full-fledged member. Davis wasn't ready to take that final step. And even if he did, the researcher wasn't sure he'd ever know the whole truth. When Davis returned to America and published his findings, he faced a lot of criticism. Some said Davis' studies perpetuated stereotypes about Haitian Vodou. Others questioned his toxicology findings, suggesting that even though pufferfish are immensely poisonous, they'd be pretty ineffective in powder form. The concentration couldn't possibly be the same. They'd probably be enough to cause the intense reactions described in Davis' accounts. Some thought zombification wasn't real at all. Perhaps when the dead seemed to come back to life, it was simply a case of mistaken identity and wishful thinking. Haiti's mental health system wasn't always effective, and some untreated people found themselves without homes, wandering the streets with little sense of who or where they were. It was suggested that grieving people may be taking in strangers with severe mental health conditions, declaring their loved one had come back from the dead. Davis maintained his original stance. But of course, his emphasis on some unknown spiritual component didn't necessarily help his reputation as a scientist. Neither did his lack of hard evidence. During his brief time in Haiti, Davis did manage to watch some of his friends and family die. At the time, he wasn't sure if someone prepared the alleged zombie poison from start to finish, but he never witnessed someone return from their grave. To this day, it's unlikely that any researcher ever has. So in spite of Davis' studies, many still question the authenticity of these accounts. Whether humans can actually be put into a death-like state, buried, and brought back to life. Researchers have tried to get to the bottom of that question. The poison Davis found remains controversial. But scientists have explored other ways zombies could be created. Take The Last of Us, which we mentioned earlier in our episode. The fungus that created those zombies is real. It's a parasite known as Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, shortened to Cordyceps, for the video game and television series. The fungus usually attacks carpenter ants. When an ant is infected, Cordyceps takes over control of its body. The newly zombified ant leaves its colony for a more humid environment so the fungus can grow. The ant permanently locks its jaw onto a leaf, then dies. Then the parasite feeds on the body and grows spores from its host's head. These spores then spread to other ants, spreading the zombie population. It all sounds really terrifying. But according to parasitic fungi researcher Joao Araújo, jojo, in order to affect humans, cordyceps would have to undergo genetic changes that would take millions of years. So we likely won't see humans growing spores from their heads in our lifetimes. Other researchers say the answers may lie in a social phenomenon. Back when Wade Davis couldn't make headway on understanding the antidote through chemistry, he tried to expand his research. And in doing so, it's very possible he stumbled upon a psychological phenomenon that had several qualities in common with zombification, called voodoo death. One of the earliest accounts of voodoo death comes from 1906. An Irish soldier and ethnographer named Arthur Glen Leonard was working in southern Nigeria when he met a local warrior suffering from an illness. The warrior claimed, someone had cast an evil spell on him that made him sick. Leonard didn't believe that magic had caused the man's illness, but the truth was undeniable. The warrior was dying, almost as if his belief in a supernatural curse made it real. Like some strange black magic version of the placebo effect. Something similar happened to soldiers who fought in World War I, men who never suffered any injuries on the battlefield. Some of the soldiers who had been killed would mysteriously die after returning home. The trauma they experienced had been mental, watching their fellow soldiers suffer and die on the front lines. The horrors of war seemed to send them into physical shock. Their bodies manifested disease-like symptoms before they literally died of fear. Perhaps, like these afflictions, fear was a necessary ingredient in the zombification ritual. Practitioners of voodoo grew up hearing stories of criminals sent to live the rest of their days as undead laborers, working in dehumanizing, often terrifying, conditions. So if someone ever received that sentencing, the power of their own fear may have played a pivotal role in the ritual's so-called "magic." And maybe it's fear that brought the zombie apocalypse into 2023. From the pandemic, many people have been afraid. People carried fear about the impact it would have on them and their families. As author Max Brooks said about the popularity of zombie movies, "People have a lot of anxiety about the future. I think a lot of people think the system is breaking down, and people need a safe place to explore their apocalyptic worries." In the end, researchers say the idea of a zombie apocalypse is not impossible, but highly unlikely. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the thought experiment that asks "What would you do in a zombie apocalypse?" is worth exploring. In 2011, the CDC made a blog post titled "Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic." In it, they recommended planning an evacuation route, preparing a kit with food and water, and finding shelter. It was tongue-in-cheek, but the advice was solid for any emergency. If you're prepared for the zombie apocalypse, you're prepared for anything. And, you'll feel much less afraid. Anyway, I'll talk to you all next week. I'm off to buy some water jugs and non-perishables. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram @theconspiracypod. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and click the subscribe button. We'll see you next week. Bye! give us your thoughts or email us at conspiracystories at spotify.com. For more information on zombies, amongst the many sources we used, we found The Serpent in the Rainbow by Wade Davis, extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written by Drew Dugal and Chelsea Wood. Edited by Angela Jorgensen, Connor Sampson, and Maggie Admire. Researched by Josephine Cahugh, fact-checked by Bennett Logan and Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Kelly Gary. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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