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Airport Home Appliance unbeatable price selection and people. There are few lines more familiar to fans of American horror cinema than They're coming to get to you, Barbara. The line uttered by Barbara's brother Johnny at the beginning of George A. Romero's The Night of the Living Dead surely before he is killed by a zombie, sets the tone for what some consider to be one of the most influential films
ever made. Released in nineteen sixty eight, the film is celebrated for bringing the previously much maligned genre of horror kicking, tearing, and screaming into the twentieth century. The film's potency has much to do with the year it was released, coming out at the height of public disillusionment with the American Vietnam War, but also in the immediate aftermath of both
Martin Luther King Junior and Robert Kennedy's assassinations. For many, Romero's film, with its portrayal of uneasy alliances, not so casual racism, and the endless march of a moronic, ghoulish horde intent on devouring anyone with a fully functioning brain, appeared to reflect the entire state of a nation. However, The Night of the Living Dead will perhaps mostly be
remembered for its portrayal of the humble zombie. Though somewhat ironic since the term zombie is never used in it, Romero's film, none the less set the template for almost all subsequent iterations of these hapless creatures. It was there that we were first introduced to the flesh hungry, cannibal version of the zombie that could only be defeated by
destroying its head. Romero zombies have become so ubiquitous as a modern day monster, it is often easy to forget just where the notion of the zombie originated from in the first place. Some perhaps are aware of the figure's origins in Haitian folklore and its associations with the ancient practice of voodoo. What you might not know, however, is that for many the zombie is not merely a figment of folklore, but is in fact considered to be something
very real. In nineteen eighty, a man walked into a village market place in Haiti claiming to be a local landowner named Clavius Narcisse. After interviewing the man and his family, local authorities confirmed that he was indeed who he said he was, the only problem being that Clervius was supposed to have been dead and buried for eighteen years. Two years later, inspired by Clervius's story, ethnobiologist Wade Davis was sent to Haiti on a research trip to find out
just how exactly this could have happened. What he eventually discovered was far more bizarre than anything he could possibly have imagined. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClain Smith.
Before gaining entry to Harvard University to study anthropology in nineteen seventy one, where Davis had barely been out of his home province of British Columbia in Canada, all that changed However, when he signed up to a course led by Professor Richard Schultz, a pioneer in the field of ethnobotany, the scientific study of how different cultures and societies relate to and utilize plants, Schultz held somewhat of a mythical
status among its students. Schultz had devoted much of his early career to investigate in the ritualistic use of pyote and iowaska. He was also known for a tendency to disappear into the Amazon rainforest for months, sometimes years at a time in his quest to better understand the secrets hidden within it. It was Schultz who first encouraged Davis to take his own trip to the Amazon, where in his early twenties he also tried iowaska and soon proved
himself to be an outstanding field researcher. By nineteen eighty two, then twenty nine year old Davis, now a fully fledged ethnographer in his own right, was teaching a course at Harvard University alongside Schultz when he was called into his mentor's office late one Monday evening, finding the professor on the phone. When he entered, Davis quickly took a seat opposite and waited for him to finish. As he continued the conversation, Schultz quickly scribbled something onto a notepad and
handed it to his colleague. It was an address in Manhattan belonging to a doctor Nathan Kline. Kline was well known to Davis as a pioneer in the field of psychopharmacology, having been one of the first psychiatrists in the US to use medication to treat individuals with psychiatric disorders. With the call finally coming to an end, Schultz put down the phone and asked Davis if he was free to
travel to Haiti in two weeks time. Having never been to the country before and intrigued by Schultz's playful tone, Davis took up the gauntlet and agreed to contact Kline to find out more. Two nights later, Davis arrived at doctor Clyne's Manhattan apartment, where he was introduced to both Kline and his colleague, professor Heinz Lehmann, who also happened to be the head of psychopharmacology at Montreal's mc gill University.
With Davis still unshore as to why he'd been invited over, the men made the usual pleasantries before quickly turning to the subject of death, or more specifically, how you determine that a person has well and truly died, As both Lehman and Klein noted, there had been countless examples over the years of individuals being declared dead only to seemingly reanimate days later, not to mention the various horror stories of people believed to have died later a wake up
to find themselves trapped in a coffin deep underground. Interesting as that all was, however, Davis, growing impatient, demanded what it had to do with his being there. Klein promptly got up and left the room, returning moments later with the slim file, which he handed to Davis and invited him to take a look at. Inside, and, now even more perplexed, Davis found a death certificate for a man named Clavius Narcis from Lestaire in Haiti, dated May nineteen
sixty two, twenty years ago. I don't understand, said Davis. Layman took a sip of his drink, then invited Klein to elaborate. Clavius, he explained, had been declared dead by two separate physicians, only to reappear eighteen years later in his home village, very much alive. Davis was unimpressed, however, clearly it had just been some kind of administrative error,
But then Kleine elaborated further. It was late in the evening of April thirtieth, nineteen sixty two, when a man approached the front desk of Haites Albert Scheitzer Hospital suffering from a high fever and spitting blood. The man, who was forty two and gave his name as Clevius Narcis, had been struggling with chest pains and muscle aches for a few days before taking himself to hospital. By now in a desperate state, the medical staff immediately rushed him
through to an operating theater to examine him further. Unable to determine the exact cause of his ailment, the man was kept in for further observation, only for his condition to deteriorate rapidly over the next few days. But shortly after one pm on May the second, with his sister Angelina watching on from his bedside, Clavius Narcis died, having been pronounced dead by two separate doctors. Clavius's older sister, Mary Claire, arrived soon after to identify the body and
signed the official death certificate. The man's lifeless body was then placed in cold storage at the hospital Morgue before being released for burial the following morning. At ten am on May third, in a cemetery just north of the man's hometown of Leicsterre, a small handful of friends and family members gathered together as a coffin containing Clavius's body was lowered six feet into the ground and buried under
a mound of soil. Ten days later, a hefty memorial stone commissioned by the family was placed over the unfortunate man's grave, and that it seemed was that. It was eighteen years later that a relative of Clervius's was walking through the market place in Lesterre when a commotion erupted before him, and soon a large crowd had started to gather.
Pushing through to the front, the relative soon found the subject of its attention, a stranger that had just entered the village who looked surprisingly similar to the long dead Clervius. The relatives soon realized with horror the man didn't just look like him, it was him. Clervius's sister, Angelina, who still lived in the village, was quickly summoned to speak with the man now openly claiming to be her long
dead brother. Though incredulous at first, Angelina found herself standing before the man, who, though much older and a little frailer than he was before, looked undeniably like Clervius. When he gave her his nickname, only something she and her siblings had ever called him, her legs threatened to crumble beneath her. There was no denying it anymore. It was Clavius back from the dead, and there could only be one reason that that was possible. Her brother, or what
was left of him, was a zombie. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make time for you. You deserve it. Tele adoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best to feeling like yourself again. With tele adoc, you can speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video. Therapy appointments are available seven days a week from seven am to nine
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podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained Podcast. The figure of the zombie is deeply ingrained in Haitian culture and folklore. To understand why, you have to understand the history of Haiti, or, as uc Irvin Professor Amy Wilence puts it more specifically, you have to understand the concentration camp culture of the slave plantation. Haiti is located on the island of his Biola in the Caribbean,
which is also home to the Dominican Republic. The island is believed to have been inhabited for over fifteen hundred years, having once been home to the Arawak, who migrated there from South America. It was descendants of these people, the Tyinho, who are thought to have been the first indigenous people that Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered on their maiden
voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in fourteen ninety two. Soon after arriving, Columbus attempted to establish a settlement on the northwest of the island, known as La Navidad. The following year, however, some of the Tayino burned it down, having become convinced that Columbus and his men had in fact been sent
from the underworld to consumed them. When Columbus returned to find Le Navedad destroyed, he responded by establishing another settlement in what would later become the Dominican Republic, on the opposite side of the island, which he named La Isabella.
When gold was discovered shortly after, the European settler population began steadily to increase, partly in retribution for what some of the Taino population had done to Le Navedad, but also as an inevitable consequence of the ever expanding European population. The settlers slowly began to exert more authority. The indigenous population of what is now Ispiola before Columbus's arrival is estimated to have been somewhere between several hundred thousand to
a million people. Over the next ten years, as the colonialists enslaved, massacred, and fatally infected the Taino, this population had dropped to thirty five thousand. As rampant colonial expansion into the Caribbean continued over the next few hundred years, Ispaiola became increasingly important as a gateway to the other islands. When buccaneers from France succeeded in settling on the west
side of it. Rather than become embroiled in an endless fight, the governments of France and Spain decided instead to divide the island between them. In sixteen ninety seven, the government of France assumed ownership of its western third and named the territory Sant de Mingue. What appealed most about Sant Deming to the French government and the colonial families that lived there was its abundance of sugar cane. As the crop became increasingly lucrative, Sant Deming in turn and became
France's most profitable territorial holding. But in order to make and keep it so required thousands and thousands of slaves abducted, mostly from Africa. By seventeen twenty, as many as eight thousand a year were being brought to the island. Conditions in the slave colonies were so harsh and their treatment by slave owners so brutal, that a third of all
slaves died within two years of arriving. By the mid seventeen eighties, it is estimated that as many as four hundred and fifty thousand slaves lived in San Domingue, with as many again having died as a result of their bondage since the colonies were first established. But then in seventeen eighty nine, something extraordinary occurred thousands of miles away on the other side of the ocean. The spirit of
revolution had been unleashed in the French homeland. Back in San Deming, a small section of the population, known to the colonial powers as the free people of Color, inspired by the French Revolution, began to wander if they could achieve the same. This group, which occupied a unique place in San Deming society, was composed largely of children whose mothers had been raped by slave owners and had been
granted some minor freedoms in return. Emboldened by the size of the island slave population, which outnumbered European settlers, by nine to one. The free people of color succeeded in organizing a mass slave revolt, as plantations were torched and colonialists killed off one by one. The French government were eventually forced to relinquish control of the country. On January first, eighteen o four, taking the original Tayino word for the island, Haiti,
the newly freed people declared their independence. Despite gaining independence, the deep rooted history of slavery, which so horrifically underpinned the founding of the nation, has continued to haunt the people of Haiti. It is from out of this history that the zombie, as an icon of Haitian folklore first emerges. Certainly, it isn't difficult to see the similarity between the image of a zombie and the basic horror of servitude to be robbed of all personality and agency and reduced to
your most basic functions. Over time, as the anxieties of slavery became more entwined with the culture of voodoo that had been brought to the island from West Africa, a new idea of the zombie materialized, becoming something that could be conjured up with the power of voodoo and treated
like a at the beckoned call of its master. Voodoo, meaning spirit in the Fond language of Dahomey, a kingdom which once occupied parts of today's Togo, Benin, and Nigeria in West Africa, was first brought to Haiti by slaves in the seventeenth century. Those who followed the religion centered their beliefs around the divine creator Mawu, a female being who, in one tradition, bore seven children, each gods in their
own right, governing the forces of nature and human society. Further, spirits are considered to be embodied in various elements of the natural world, such as streams, trees, and stones, with all creation being divine. In this sense, the religion is particularly fascinating from an ethnobotany perspective with regard to medicines and herbal remedies, since they are also believed to contain
the power of the divine. It is this under standing that gives rise to the ritualistic use of talismans known as fetishes, that many who are otherwise unfamiliar with the religion might recognize, such as the use of dolls, statues, and even in some cases, human body parts. Voodoo priests known as Houngans, have traditionally played a vital part in Haitian society, occupying all manner of roles, from community leaders to psychologists and spiritual healers. And then there are the Bokour.
Although once considered simply priests, they have since come to be known more specifically as sorcerers capable of using voodoo to conduct black magic. Though many consider the zombie to be little more than a feature of Haitian folklore, there are many others who know them to be real, and it is the Bocour who create them. Having been deeply unsettled by her brother Clervius's sudden reappearance, Angelina Narses offered him money to go away and leave the family alone.
As the other villagers grew equally unsettled by the reappearance of a man who had been dead and buried eighteen years ago, the police were eventually forced to arrest him for his own safety. A short time later, Clavius was brought to the attention of Lamarque de Joune, a one time student of doctor Kleins, who had now returned to his home country of Haiti to practice as a psychiatrist.
Doyjune carried out a number of extensive interviews with both Clervius and his family and concluded incredibly that he was indeed who he said he was. Once More, Clervius wasn't the only one to suddenly reappear under such circumstances as it happened. Douyune had been systematically investigate eating reports of zombies since nineteen sixty one, with a number of cases
being of particular interest. In nineteen seventy nine, for example, one bereaved mother spotted someone that looked exactly like her thirty year old daughter walking aimlessly near her village. The woman was later identified as the daughter through a matching scar on her forehead, and after the coffin she was supposedly buried in was found to contain nothing but rocks. The following year, another woman, Nattiget Joseph, was found wandering around her village by a local police officer, the same
officer who had pronounced her dead fourteen years previously. All the subjects had been not only clinically determined to have died, but had also been buried, only to seemingly reanimate and reappear alive many years later. Although he was convinced that the phenomenon was very real. Indeed, do Yune didn't believe that these zombies had risen from the dead either way,
he had so far been unable to explain it. The relatives of the unfortunate victims of whatever it was that was taking place remained adamant, however, that these individuals had been first murdered and then brought back to life without their souls. Like Lamarque Doiune, Klein and his colleague Laymen were also convinced that the phenomenon was real, but that there had to be a rational, scientific explanation behind it.
But just how, thought Davis, could these individuals have been declared dead, buried alive, then somehow kept alive long enough for them to later be dug up again. And what on earth would account for them having been kept in their supposed zombie state for so long? Well, said Kleine as he handed Davis a sealed envelope. That is precisely what we want you to find out. Later that night, Davis made his way to Grand Central Station and took
a train back to Boston. Once on board, he opened the envelope that Klein had given him, finding inside it a smaller envelope filled with cash, a ticket to Haiti, and a polarid photograph of Clavius Narcisse. Over the next few days, he made the necessary arrangements for the trip and began formulating his own ideas about the apparent zombie phenomenon. It was doctor Kleine's theory that some kind of drug was at the center of it, something that could give
the appearance of death. Klein had in fact come across something similar thirty years previously, after being given a possible sample of it by a film crew from the UK's BBC who had making a documentary about voodoo at the time.
Despite carrying out a number of promising tests with the substance, Klein was unable to ascertain precisely what it was made of, and so it was in April nineteen eighty two, armed with little more than a photo of Clavius Narcisse and contact details for three individuals, Max Bouvoir, a local authority on voodoo religion, Marcel Pierre, the Bocour who had given the sample to the BBC, and lastly the psychiatrist Lamarque Deyune. Davis boarded a flight to Haiti and his adventure was
just about to begin. You've been listening to Unexplained, Season four, Episode eight, Death's Pale Flag, Part one of two. You can hear the second and final part next week on Friday, seventeen of May. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now go to Unexplained podcast dot com Forward Slash Support. All donations, no matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain smith.
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To make time for you, teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video any time between seven a m to nine p m Local time. Seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app, or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained podcast Today to get started. That's t e l a d oc dot com slash Unexplained podcast