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Zombies are everywhere that you look, all over pop culture and in lot’s of comic books. Zombies have been around a very long time and with many films especially in recent years they look like they are here to stay. Films like Shaun of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, the Resident Evil movies, and 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later all feature Zombies. Zombies are good at finding opportunities and with that in mind it is not surprising that most Zombie outbreaks occur after the outbreak of natural disasters. Along with natural disasters hot weather Countries attract Zombies as well.

Even though Zombies have actually been portrayed as fictional they do actually exist in real life. A Harvard scientist offered an explanation of this in the Time magazine. In 1980 a stranger approached a woman named Angelina Narcisse in Haiti’s fertile Artibonite Valley. Although he didn’t look like the woman’s deceased brother he had been given the same name as him. This name was only known to the family and hadn’t been spoken of since his funeral in 1962.

There have been four other reports of Zombie’s since this report. The phenomenon Zombiism has been studied for 25 years by Dr. Lamarque Douyon, Canadian-trained head of the Psychiatric Center in Port-au-Prince. In recent years, Botanist E. Wade Davis has joined Douyon in his search for an explanation. According to Davis : “Zombiism exists and is a societal phenomenon that can be explained logically.”

15 individuals in rural Haiti who were classed as Zombie’s were found to have epilepsy, mental retardation, insanity or alcoholism. The case of Clairvius Narcisse was a little more complicated, but medical records reported that he was declared dead in 1962 after being poisoned in such a manner that his vital signs could not be found. The link connecting all these victims were that family and friends recognised these people after they re-emerged. The Psychiatrist was able to obtain a sample of a coma inducing poison that was used to punish victims after they had transgressed the will of their community or family. It was found that Narcisse had been killed by his brothers for not going along with the family to sell the family land. Another lady had been poisoned for refusing to marry the man her family arranged to marry her and giving birth to a child from another man.

After discovering the Zombie potion Douyon sent some to the U.S where Davis first found it. Davis who was a professional in the use of plants especially tribal uses of plants took a flight to Haiti where he started collecting his own samples. The common link was that the main ingredients were consistent in three of four localities. He also found that plants with skin irritants were used. Chemicals that have an affect on the heart and nervous system were used as well as a deadly ingredient that affects the nerves called tetrodotoxin.

Davis studied Japanese medical literature to find that each year the Japanese suffer from poisoning of tetrodotoxin. This happens as a result of eating incorrectly cooked puffer fish that contain the toxin and are also a delicacy in Japan. He then went on to find out how this affects certain individuals and the results were astounding. If the individual had not been given the correct amount of the toxin to kill them then they could survive. In fact, many victims recovered before they could be buried. The symptoms of tetrodotoxin matched those most closely associated with Zombification; Glassy eyed stare and reduced mental functioning.

A Haitian priest involved with voodoo named a bocor is the most likely individual to wake the Zombie. That individual is then used as a slave to carry out work for the bocor who revives them by offering a mixture of sweet potato and datura paste. The Zombie is then led away to carry out work which is what happened to Narcisse. Narcisse carried out work for several years on a sugar plantation. So, it is true that Zombie’s do actually exist and are not just the figure of imagination of a creative film maker.

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