Warning. This episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing. Last week we explored the history of the zombie in Haitian lore and how the concept has spread to the United States, where the idea has evolved. There are still accounts of so-called zombies and zombies occasions in Haiti. To this day, Tracking down specific details of these zombies is difficult, but there are a handful we can and will explore.
There's no reason to doubt people's beliefs in the matter because there are explanations that might explain how a modern day real zombie is created. There are different theories, including psychiatric disorders, neurotoxins and mistaken belief of death. This is a study of strange. Welcome back to the show. I'm Michael May. And still with me talking about zombies is Molly Hoffman. Hi, Molly. Still trying to figure out The Walking Dead. Yeah, well. I need to find my answer.
I need to know what happens. I. I will. I will share some tales with you. This. This part is a bit different than part one. Part one. I was, you know, very kind of nerdy history stuff that I love to. To establish kind of the background for what zombies are. This part. I'm going to be sharing some tales from Haiti of supposedly real zombies. And the point of this episode is really just because I'm fascinated with these, there's no other point.
But I do think we can kind of learn and think about what this means, what it means to do zombies in the media, but also about how belief is so powerful. So when you brought me on because you thought that I might be the walking Dead, because I'm just mindlessly moving forward no matter what. All the time. All the time. And that's actually where we're going to start. Molly, you're a zombie, so we're going to you. What's it like to be a zombie?
Yeah, it's a great, you know, just go for a lot of walk. Sometimes I get hungry. My my wife, Amy. Who? Who? You know, But Amy has said for years that zombies, they don't actually want to eat you or your brains. They just want hugs. Casey. Just imagine them in that slow paced arms out in front. Yeah. And when you think about, you know, in part one, we talked about how zombies are victims, you know, and the Haitian lore. And so she might be onto something.
Honestly, they might just want to hug. Yeah. All these monsters just really want hugs. So when you get down to it, most monsters need a hug. It's true. It is true. Hugs could do a lot of good for the world.
I think we could all use more hugs, know where we left off is The history of Haiti is filled with slavery and rebellion and occupation, and this blending of cultures and religions and all this kind of stuff and they they have a belief called voodoo, and they believe someone can become a zombie, A soulless creature who does the work primarily for labor is where most of the stories are about.
And the thought from early on here is that a bokor can use a recipe or ingredients to take over one's mind and body to create a zombie. And we left off with the person who first presents recorded cases of a zombie. Bringing more than just anecdotal. It all kind of stories an actual experience. The writer and anthropologist Zora near Neale Hurston and she saw or who she saw or what she saw was allegedly a zombie.
And apparently it is a woman, or I should say, allegedly a woman named Felicia Felix, mentor. So I would like you to read from I think that's the number four in your email before you start here, just to set it up, Somali is going to read a portion from the book, Tell My Horse that Hurston wrote, and this is with a conversation with a doctor in 1936 that apparently had a zombie he knew about and he was telling Zora about to. Go ahead when you're ready. Oh, boy. Mm hmm.
I had his permission to make an investigation of the matter. He gave me letters to the officers of the hospital. The chief of the staff of the hospital was very kind and helped me in every way that he could. We found a zombie in the hospital yard. They had just set her dinner before her. They had just set her dinner before her. But she wasn't eating. She hovered against the fence in a sort of defensive position.
The moment that she sense their approach, she broke off a limb of a shrub and began to use it to dust and clean the ground and the fence and the table which bore her food. She huddled the cloth about her head closely and showed every sign of fear and expectation of abuse and violence. The two doctors with me made the kindly noises and tried to reassure her. She seemed to hear nothing. She just kept trying to hide herself.
The doctor had covered her head for a moment, but she promptly clapped her arms and hands over it to shut out the things that she dreaded. This wears on me. Yeah. I'm scared. Absolutely they are. So. Especially if. If the case of Felix or Felicia Felix meant or is true. If she was really somebody that someone took over her sort of mind and body to be a laborer, these people are probably beat, not treated well. I can understand being very scared.
And Hurston went on to work to take a picture of this supposedly zombie and apparently it took her kind of a bit to get like a good a good shot. And the woman kept trying to cover her face with this cloth. But eventually she was able to capture a picture and. Oh, do you want to see this real quick, Molly? I do. Let me pull this up this way. This is fun for Patrick. And you get to hear me kind of look. For a while to think of all these scary things and also the fact that she wasn't eating food.
Maybe that's where the whole idea of she doesn't want food, they must want to eat us. And it's like, wait, there's other steps that we could have gone to. Why did we jump here immediately? So just scroll down and. Wow. Yeah. It's also kind of like it's hard to make out her face. Was that because she was moving so much? It might be because she's moving. That's probably not. The cameras weren't great. A capture if you're moving. Well, and she was not a professional photographer.
And it's the thirties, you know, it's a bit harder and more cumbersome to take a photo back then. Yeah. So it's not the best photo. And I will say what's really interesting about researching zombie stories is you find this photo being used for Claire Vass. Narcisse Like the most famous story of a zombie that we'll talk about. You see it online as him. It is not him. The photo you see of a zombie in black and white is a woman, and it was taken by Hurston in 1936.
Yeah, it's a it's an amazing story. Yeah. So Hurston learns that Felicia Felix mentor so the person who this this woman the zombie in the photo is apparently that that's who she is was a native of a town called entry and she had died as a young woman in 1907. So this is the thirties now is a long time. She has aged and she was found by somebody who saw a naked woman kind of wandering down the road. And the police were called and they got her and eventually sent her to the hospital.
And Hurston described the zombie as being having a blank face and dead eyes and eyelids that were kind of pale, almost like something and may have burnt her eyes at one point. And she was walking with a limp. So she had a bit of a lame leg. And apparently that's one of the reasons why people thought she could be Felicia Felix mentor because she had a lame leg. Hurston describes her conversation with the local doctors. And the doctors don't believe in zombies like now.
We don't we don't believe in zombies that are zombie zombies. We believe people are taken advantage of and they're kind of reanimated by people with powers and and drugs. And they also think if this is Felix of Felicia Felix it's hard to say that there could be brain damage because if somebody is really buried for up to like three days, they're not breathing correctly. There's not enough oxygen.
You can you can suffer brain damage and that can actually have an effect on these zombie like behaviors. So can read trauma. By the way, the emotional trauma, I remember hearing of a case a long time ago about a woman who was sold into the sex trade and basically got out of it, but hid in the New York sewer system for a while. And when she came out, she had lost the ability to speak. Mm hmm. For it took a long time for her to bring that back.
But it also, like severe emotional trauma can affect you in many. I mean, we know this many ways physically, including things like this. Yes. Yes, I 100% true. And especially if, again, if these kind of stories are real there, you can imagine it's not just drugs because someone's trying to take control of these people for a long period of time. And his history shows us that the way you kind of do that is with physical and emotional abuse.
So it's a lot of there's trauma for for many things, not just the barrier, but it would continue is my point. Like it's just going to continue. However, if anybody's doubting stories or questioning this zombies fixation procedure, which I'll call it. There are beliefs that a lot of the stories that come out, including the ones we'll share today, are not actually zombie stories, and the accounts could fall under. The theories are that there's mistaken identity.
There's the power of suggestion where if someone's told enough that they are a zombie, they just start to believe there is something or that there's a combination of those kind of things. Mistaken identity. Maybe they were drugged, maybe someone did try to make them a zombie. And it's a combination of all of the above. The debate with Felicia Felix, Mentor, kind of comes to fruition. In 1945, a doctor named Louis P marrs who worked at the psychiatric hospital in Port au Prince.
He studied Felicia Felix mentor, and he noticed that this eye disease, this this eye thing was actually a disease, and it caused her eyelashes to fall out and this made her very susceptible to the sun, Like she was really like, you know, it's all your natural sunglasses are now gone, so you're more sensitive to the sun. And that might be why she was trying to cover her face with a cloth. He also had her X-rayed and there was no fracture in her left leg.
Her lameness was due entirely to dietary deficiencies. She also was much younger than Felicia Felix mentor would have been. She looked older when they found her, but because of the dietary issues, because of the health issues, she looked a lot older. So once she kind of regained her ability to eat well and to walk, she actually looked much younger. And he even wrote that she began to menstruate again. So she wasn't mistreated.
And that also implies she's younger than what Felix, Felicia, Felix, mentor, would have been. Marrs did say that Hurston's conclusion that this was a real zombie was just a simplistic way to look at it. And the woman didn't speak intelligently. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know how she got there. And Ma's believe that she was suffering from schizophrenia and yeah, and that also brings up there's not a lot of mental health services in Haiti, especially the thirties.
So you're based here now, are there exactly. Exactly. So so people like that could easily be mistaken or just immediately thought of as zombies. So she might not have actually been a zombie. So it's just an interesting story and wish. So yeah, so but they did believe that she was buried. Did they know how she got out of being buried? No. So they believe she's just an entirely different person, so they don't even think it's there. She's too young to be, Felicia. So there's.
But if somebody would have believed that she was a zombie, how did she get it? How did she get out? Yeah, Yeah. How are they getting out? So if this happened so the get out. Is theoretically the bokor gets them out of the grave. So if someone comes, they get them. So they don't, they don't like punch through the ground or anything. They, they are literally brought out by somebody seeing. Where I'm going next. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the images and all these zombie. That's right.
Hollywood Hollywood effects, are. They ready to make these. Things now? Next up, we're going to do the most famous case of a zombie. Clearly, it's nurses. And this actually starts with a prominent doctor in the sort of the study of zombies a guy named Lamar could do. John, who also studied at the psychiatric center in Port au Prince, Haiti. And he found clear veins, nurses
and or at least heard of the story and started looking into it. So. NARCISSE The story goes that this guy, Narcisse, he checked into the Sweitzer Hospital, which is kind of like, I want to say it's like 30 miles outside of the capital of Haiti. In 1962, he was sick. He had a fever. He was splitting up blood, and he died within three days. His death was was confirmed by at least two doctors and then he was buried.
Now, I'm going to point out an incorrect thing that always comes up with Narcissus story. You always hear that there's no cause of death that could be figured out. He just died mysteriously. That's not true. There's actually record of it. He had kidney failure. So we do know how this gentleman died. But here's where it gets strange. In 1980, a man, Carla, calling himself Clavius, approached Angelina Narcisse Clavius, his sister, and he was like, Hey, hey, what's up?
I'm your brother. It's been a long time. How are you doing? I don't think that's exactly what he said. I'm paraphrasing, but you know something like that. For your family, right? Yeah, but he claimed he was conscious that he had died and been turned into a zombie for all these years. He had been buried. He was buried for three days underground when his coffin suddenly opened and then he was beaten. He was hit, he was gagged, and he was given a drug.
And this was done by a bokor to take control of him. And he made clear voice work on a plantation in northern Haiti for two years. And then the Bokor died and Narcisse kind of regained his own, his own will, sense of control. But he didn't come home for all of these years because he suspected his brother had hired the Bokor to turn him into a zombie because Narcisse and his brother were fighting about various things, including a land dispute. Narcisse was not the most respected man in town.
We'll get a little more into this in a few minutes. And when he returned home, it was because he had heard his brother died. So he felt like he was it was a place he could now go back to. The family seemed to agree that this was Narcisse, but there was never a DNA test that I'm aware of that was given to him to confirm it. And Dr. Dujan, who came across this story, he contacted a colleague of Wade Davis Davis. He's an ethno biologist, I believe, or yeah, he's no biologist.
I think that's what he is. So, Doctor John Carter was a colleague of Davis's, and the colleague called Davis, who was living in the Amazon at the time, was like, Hey, can you go to Haiti and look into this? And Davis was like, Yeah, that sounds awesome. So he goes to to study this case. And his mission was to find a formula that both cores used to make zombies. He wanted to find out what's in them, are they real, what's going on? And he worked really hard at this.
He kind of had to, I guess, get some trust of some local because in order to have them give him examples or, you know, little little vials or cases of what they used to make a zombie. And he had these examples tested. Now every bokor has a different recipe. There's no like handbook and they all follow a specific thing. They're all kind of doing their own thing. And he did get various examples. Now, his theory, Davis says, was that a poison called tetrodotoxin was the culprit of this test.
Death like state and tetrodotoxin can be found in pufferfish and. Some other things as well. I hadn't heard of that before, and I was like, Wait, why do I know this? Yes. Yeah, this is this is a very kind of famous story. And this is The Serpent in the Rainbow was a movie that Wes Craven made that it covers this story. Yeah. And although it's kind of a fictionalized version of this story.
But yeah, so so Wade Davis was theorizing it's not just the tetrodotoxin that's important, but there's got to be another one in this like drug after they're brought back to life after the supposed death. And this other drug is probably a hallucinogenic type thing. And it could come from this zombie cucumber that has the right chemical compound to kind of do this. And we should try that. Yeah. Then again, why don't why don't you try it first and then tell me how it goes.
Now, there are plenty of scientists that kind of disagree with Davis's work because the studies done on these examples that he got said there wasn't enough or there was no tetrodotoxin in them. But Davis thinks that this phenomenon is real. And there actually I was able to find that tetrodotoxin is not always in puffer fish. So if somebody is catching them and trying to create this powder there, sometimes it's going to work, sometimes it's not. And it's also not a very scientific thing.
So to your point in part one of like there could be zombies that never became zombies, it could just be dead underground. If people really are using these things, they are having some effect on people. Sometimes if it has the toxin, you could give somebody too much and they'll die too little, won't do anything. So it's this balancing act that's really. You go and you dig them up for anything, you dig them up and you like them too much pepper fish. That's. There you go. It's wasted.
Evening. That's right. So it's. Yeah, but it seems to make sense and it makes sense theoretically, this idea of Davis of how this could happen makes sense because now for almost, almost 100 years as of this recording, people have been writing about the stories they're hearing of Bacau as using some kind of concoction, some sort of powder that they're giving to people to turn people into zombies.
According to Step Toit, though, I'm actually going to read this because they say it so much better than I ever will. There are doubts about clear vagus nerve sources story. And here, here's the quote from Geppetto Haiti is not known for its wealth. In 1962, a hospital stay was beyond the means of many residents. The hospital where Narcisse is alleged to have died, the Albert Schweitzer medical Center charged $5 a day for local residents at a higher rate for Non-locals.
But poor Non-locals got sick too, and it was not unheard of for them to check in under the name of a local to qualify for the lower rate. We have no evidence to rule out the likelihood that some unknown man developed a fatal kidney failure, checked in using Clearview Narcisse his name and subsequently died. It turns out there is a perfectly plausible reason that the real nurses might have been just fine with this. He had been something of a family black sheep.
He had a number of illegitimate children whose mothers demanded support and some other bad debts and was not well respected. In fact, during Dr. DU interviews, he learned that the family considered narcissist sends to be the reason that the brokers had punished him with some bifurcation. And for a man with narcissistic Wellingtons in the closet seeking a change of scenery is hardly unheard of. Perhaps in his later years he had a change of heart and wanted to reconnect with his family.
Considering the convenient circumstance, insist his zombie fixation was a perfect cover story. So yeah, so that is not proven. But it is. That's a good theory. That is a very, very good theory. It was funny because when you were first telling me the story, I was remembering, Do you remember the film Somersby? I remember the name. What happens in it?
I don't know if I. Really got I'm trying to remember exactly what happened, but basically it's this man comes back, says that he's this woman's husband and people say, No, you're not. That has been. And is he the husband or is he not? But it just reminds me of like you used to be able to do that. You used to be able to just and this person, yeah, I have his wallet. I must be, which is potentially more likely.
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. But that, that is something that used to happen that is very interesting. Once again goes to social issues which is on basic to love to be around. It's like yeah, 100%.
Yeah. And that leads into the last two examples of the zombie stories I'll give are both from there's there's a lot of writing about them but they are both and a documentary made in the nineties called Interview with the Zombie and I wanted to share these stories because again, it's really hard to get actual details of these stories from Haiti. There's a lot of them are just like, Oh, this guy, he was a zombie. And it's like, okay, who was he?
But, you know, it's just really hard here to find the details. Yeah. What boxes do you have to check to be officially classified? Yeah, exactly. And these are these stories. Now, I'll just get into them. I'll kind of circle back around to the point I want to make. So we're going to start with Wilfred, Doris Sont, and this is the you read a start of his story at the part at the top of part one to refresh. Oh, sorry. What was that.
Actually going on before? Yep. So to refresh Wilfred Doris Sont, he was a teenager that supposedly died in 1988, and then in 1989 there was a local cockfight. It's very popular. That's what happens. You know, we all I don't like the idea of cockfights, but I don't live there. And it's got to be it's a social function. It's a popular function. It gets people like a sporting events here. Like put aside your thoughts on cockfighting. It is it's like a sporting event. It's a big deal.
And Wilfred is seen by friends and relatives and acquaintances of his walking around and he's supposedly been dead for almost a year. So they're shocked. His family comes and meets this guy and they think it's Wilfred. And but they say that he's not normal, He's not speaking. Well, he doesn't seem to be very aware, aware of his surroundings. And they see this as a miracle. Like this is a obviously, they're they're mourning for for their son. So they see this as a miracle.
And he also had lost weight and he was speaking softly and the mother apparently identified him not just by, you know, the nature of of his face, but also Wilfred had a broken finger on his left hand. And apparently this guy also had a matching broken finger. And the thought here was that he was he had been a zombie.
And he may have either been because he was a zombie, he was acting this way, or if he had been turned into a zombie for a short period of time, he may have suffered brain damage is sort of the other thought that could happen here. And Wilfred said that he had been handcuffed and forced to work. And his dad, this quote from his dad is just like heartbreaking to me. But his dad said, that's why people say it's better to die once and for all than to become a zombie. So, yeah, it's very sad.
Now, that's actually very interesting. This says that the birth rebirth and this story. Yeah, we just. I was I was going to try to bring that up at the end of this episode, so I'm glad you said that. Well, yeah, Well, Doctor. What is Mary? What is life? So if Wilfred is a real zombie, who did this to him and why? Well, the family quickly concluded that it was.
It was Wilfred's uncle, a guy named Belvoir, and it was said that he did this because it was some sort of land dispute, another land dispute here that Wilfred's family was having and Belvoir being upset about this zombified Wilfred. And Belvoir is seen locally as a bit of like a Vodou doctor. He's he's tight with some sort of voted community. And the local magistrate, a police officer is notified about this. The family says Belvoir turned our son into a zombie as proof. Here's their son. And he.
Belvoir was arrested and in March of 1990, Belvoir was proven guilty of turning someone into a zombie, and he had confessed to doing it. Now, I will be quick to point out he later said that he was beaten and forced to confess. So yeah. Damn it. So there's always a problem. But there's a lot there's so many problems with this. So riddled with issues. Yeah. Now people outside of this that are like, no, this isn't this isn't sitting right with me. I don't believe in zombies.
They think there's a mistaken identity aspect to this story that we would that we heard potentially about with Claire vs Narcisse. Wilfred's family vehemently denied that this could be anybody but Wilfred. They believe it as Wilfred. During the documentary that I mentioned, they actually had Wilfred's DNA tested and it wasn't Wilfred, which means Belvoir was wrongly convicted. And we don't know who this guy is. Again, it kind of comes down to really he could have been turned into a zombie.
This could be somebody who was sort of zombified in the distances or, again, mental illness and people just assume it's someone and people are mourning. They want their son back. The other guy broke his pinkie. This is really sad and might as well end. And could this person speak? Could Wilfred speak? They can. And you can actually see him speak, but he speaks very quietly and really doesn't make a lot of sense when he does. And he seems to get very confused. So. Okay.
So that's why when they would have thought that he was a zombie version of himself, not necessarily some other person with mental illness. Right. Exactly. And I'm going to quickly kind of jump in here to Marie McCaw. So this is another story that's also in the same documentary. And the alleged story with her is that she died 12 years before being found again and the 1990s and Marie's brother Michelle found her and was, you know, told about her and claimed that it was a shock.
Like they he was just completely shocked and he mentioned that he cried a lot. It was a very strange thing, but he was so happy to see her and he recognized her because of various marks on her face and the way her teeth looked and things like this. And but Marie kept saying she doesn't think she was a zombie. Her her definition of a zombie is somebody that walks with her head down. I just realized I was acting that out for you, but I turned my face away from my microphone.
But so she says she wasn't a zombie. Similarly, she doesn't communicate very well. She gets confused easily. She doesn't communicate well, and I don't have much more detail about her story before being found, why she might have turned into a zombie who would have wanted to turn her into a zombie.
But in this document tree, they actually take her to the town where she was found, or the outskirts of the town where she was found, because they wanted to see if it might bring back a memory of like, why was she there? How did she get there? And they bring her to this town and it's Hassani. There will be links to this documentary. It is free online. This is an amazing scene. But they arrive at this area with Michelle, the brother and and Marie, and they get her out and they're talking to her.
And I'm like, okay, do you remember being here? Why were you here? And then people start gathering around and they're like, Hey, for fun. And some guy is like, That's my cousin for fun. And they're like, No, this is Marie McCaw. And he's like, No, that's my cousin. She's been lost for nine months and she's mentally disabled. And so people start like coming around like while they're filming this documentary, a big crowd comes in, you know, small town, small areas.
It's like the local market on this street. So there's a lot of people there and everybody's like, Yeah, that's, that's for food. And Michelle is like vehemently denies. It's like, No, this is Marie, This is my sister. This can't be correct. And so luckily they actually find for food daughter and they ask her like, who is this? And it's a really interesting scene because if if this is is is buffoon buffoon is mentally disabled, she might not be very emotionally connected to her daughter.
And so her daughter is just like, yeah, I recognize her. But like there wasn't a lot of emotional stuff to it. So it's really interesting to watch. And both families start accusing the other family of sorcery. So that's fun. And they luckily they they did a DNA test. It turns out Marie was not Marie. Marie was for food. And so she really was for food and mentally disabled. And this the all these stories I share.
I don't share these to, like, prove that there's no such thing as a zombie or something like that. I actually think people in Haiti are doing something. And I do think because have the ability to potentially make what they call zombies what they believe is zombies. But it this does bring up there's just so many questions. There's layers.
There's a lot of depth to this that I just find really interesting and a lot of the various theories about what a zombie if people claim somebody is a zombie, what they could be because it could be mistaken identity, it could be somebody that suffered something, it could be mental disability. Every theory can be true. Yeah. What's what's the most interesting in almost all of these cases?
And it centers around somebody who can't accept loss, who can't accept that somebody is gone and needs them to be there and is willing to believe wild extenuating circumstances in order to make sure that that person is still alive and even accept them in a form of half life in order to keep them around, because the idea of loss is just too extreme. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was going to say, I mean, this is I have some things that I've thought about a lot that we'll get to.
I have sort of the question I want to ask at the end of every episode now, which is like, what did we learn? But I think what you're talking about right now actually does tie into the film. You produced Birth Rebirth, which will be out on Shudder Later. So yeah, What do you what were your thoughts on that When I when you first were thinking about it? Yeah.
I mean, in terms of birth rebirth, the reason why I was always so drawn to this film that Laura and Brendan O'Brien wrote was, first of all, the idea of motherhood and how one could be a mother without necessarily birthing a child with their body. But then the other idea of what how far somebody would go to have their child back when dealing with loss.
So you have those two stories that are intertwined in the film and and the idea of I going through loss being such an extreme experience that is so hard to accept, especially the loss of a child, what lengths would you not go to? And the answer in this one is reanimating the dead, which is something that we do.
Which is funny because I was just realizing how much the Frankenstein lore is somewhat attached to the zombie lore and again, wanting to create life, wanting to create legacy, wanting something that is a servant or serves a purpose that you need and in birth, rebirth, the services not being able to accept that the mother missed the day that their child died and and not being there, and that it's just too much to bear. And that was a very interesting topic. I love that we got to explore that.
But it is interesting to see how that lore can just be taken in so many different ways. We went in a a motherhood legacy kind of and then tried to find ways of kind of with all that heavy material, finding some fun and some lightness and in it and that is in the reanimating of the dead that is you can control the thing that you absolutely cannot control, which all of these people are trying to do.
And all of these stories, they're trying to control other people and they're trying to control death. And it's just funny how many as we talk about this, it does actually connect to go slower in that way, which is just once again, us wanting to connect to things that we can't necessarily connect to or can. And as you know, I do believe in ghosts and I do believe in spirits and I do believe in that type of stuff. So it makes sense to me that this it exists.
It also makes sense to me that the people who have the power of doing this aren't exactly putting their stories on record because why would you? It's not necessarily something that is a good thing. That would be I mean, I think you would probably be jailed and imprisoned immediately.
So if you do have this power, that's probably why these stories, the stories that you're finding are the stories that are adjacent to you, because there are real stories that exist and the stories that are adjacent to are the ones that you're finding, and those are the ones that probably are mistaken identity, mental illness, that type of stuff. And I mean, it does sound what I've been fascinated by.
All of this is also if you can detach a piece of a human's mind, I mean, let's get into lobotomies for a mean Yeah, yeah. It's almost exactly the same. Right. And if the problem with any of that type of stuff is somebody decides that somebody else shouldn't have the power of their mind or the ability to access it in order to make it easier for them in one way or another. And how horribly wrong that is in every single instance that we see it. Right.
And so, yes, go right back to medical malpractice. Yeah. And I think that's kind of what occurred to me the more I looked into this is, you know, if there are things I learned from this one is that we're all the same. Human nature is the same. There's a universality to the idea to the fears of a zombie. And when you look at the history of it, part of the reason I like always looking at history as much as I'm a nerd about it, is I believe in the interconnectivity of everything.
And so you look at the zombie belief in Haiti still to this day, it still is connected to their terrible history with slavery and their fear of being controlled by somebody else. And wanting to suppress others for their own gain. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, and so you see, like the zombie there still represents their fears. And in Western society or in American society, I'll even say in in Hollywood, it's evolved.
It's evolved partly because just the nature of people being creative with ideas and stuff, but also we have our own separate fears. We don't have the same history that they have in Haiti and the Caribbean. So we're looking at viruses and pandemics and even race relations when, you know, in like the sixties, when those kind of zombie movies were being made. So it it represents the zombie has this amazing way to be used for whatever we're we're afraid of.
And and that was just one of the things that stood out to me. So looking at this there, there's a universality to it, really. And even even little locker rooms that we did. Yeah, that little one was all about my like little metaphor for health care. As long as you are just distracted enough with Instagram and TV and whatever it is that you're doing and all the rest of the world, and you will ignore something and you're absolutely fine until something goes wrong and then what are you going to do?
There is not a support system and going to get centered and then get stuck doing something over and over again. That's right. That's right. And so, yeah, here, you know, zombies have moved away and evolved from their original configuration, but you're still seeing them, seeing them tied in Haiti. I love what you said about lobotomy to like that's that's a really interesting that's that's a I think I listen to a podcast about the history of lobotomy.
I forget which one it was, but it was just horrendous. And it really is about trying to control somebody. So that's like as much as as people through the history of looking at Haiti or people that that that believe in voodoo or voodoo, there's that lens of like, oh, these crazy people. And there's that racist kind of attitude towards it. But then they're turning around and doing lobotomies and not hospital. And it's like, no, it's the same thing. You guys are doing the same thing.
You just look at you. Yeah. So again, universality. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, not to sound too, you know, professorial about these things, but I think it's a fascinating subject and I hope you enjoyed chatting about zombies. Marley. Did I learn so much more than I thought I was going to about zombies and just how much more I would actually connect with zombies and just what a mirror they are to society.
I mean, again, we're still saying that right now with it, but it's it's and it is always goes back to human beings and having to deal with things that are difficult to deal with. And also Hollywood loves to us. Oh, yeah. And over again. And they they take something, they take our fears and they manifest it into these monsters. And the monsters. So better if they do certain things, but I think would be so much more interesting to actually get into what a real zombie.
I mean, these stories are more terrifying than most of the zombies coming out of their graves inviting people. So I agree. I agree. Yeah. You know, when I was looking at this, too, when Romero made the first, is that the living dead? I said. The dead. Yeah. Yeah. He never referred to them as zombies. Like people put that onto it. Yeah. And I find that really interesting too, because he had kind of created his own little, little thing.
And that's that's a big evolution there of what zombies have become. You in media. I think the last of us. Just not that I want plug that I have nothing to do with it at all. But one of the things that I found so interesting that they did in one episode and again, I don't want to do any spoilers so they won't be part of it as a discussion of what zombie what everybody's talking about with zombies is what's wrong with death not wanting to die.
You're always trying to live or you're always trying to survive. How do you survive longer? But they never ask the question of how do you live? How do you live well? And then, more importantly, how do you die? Well, and I think that there can be death with dignity. And I think that it's important with all of this when all you're trying to do is survive this and talk about death, the thing that we're all the most afraid of, of of that are ways of not being as afraid of death.
And I think that's a huge problem in our society, especially America. It's just like when people say, if I die and it's like, that's a win. That's you know, you hear that all the time. But just like our inability to accept the reality of it and and that maybe there's some beauty with that. Absolutely. I think there always is. Well, thank you again, Molly. I don't want to keep taking up your time. Thank you for coming on. Yeah, And you did. You succeeded.
You brought a certain intellectual sort of nature to it and and saw the deeper meaning for zombies, which is what I was hoping would happen. So thank you so much. So again, you already did it in part one. But sometimes, you know, people only listen to one of these things. So where can people find your things coming out or find you? Absolutely. Birth Rebirth, directed by Laura moss, will be out later this year through Shudder and potentially other avenues as well. But we'll talk about that soon.
And next, I think it's available on demand right now and will be available in the UK February 20th. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon. And yeah, I don't have I don't know what else do I say to dig out be zombie. Hogs by Molly Bo. Thank you all for listening to our two parts on zombies. This was a topic I was really excited to learn more about and my research took me. It took me a different way than I intended, which is always a lot of fun for myself.
A special thank you to Molly Elfman and make sure you are subscribed to a study of strange wherever you listen to podcast. And if you're on a platform that you can rate and review, we would be very for that. Also, please check out our Patreon for additional content and unedited episodes and other special things. You can find that through our website. A study of strange sitcom. Follow us on Instagram and a study of strange and as usual, send me comments, likes, dislikes, things.
I miss things you want to hear about a study of strange at gmail.com. Next up, we will be covering the Connecticut Witch trials, getting into some witchy business for the first time on a study of strange. Then after that, you may have heard me bring this up at the end of the last episode, but it does look like there's interest. And I'm going to do a Bigfoot episode with my six year old son unless he backs out at the last minute because that's always possible with him.
But that was an idea my wife initially brought up and I thought could be a lot of fun because he is obsessed with Bigfoot. So that'll be a different sort of episode, but I'm looking forward to figuring that out. So stay tuned and thank you and good night.