InsaneJournal

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Zombies
Title: Untitled
Essay

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This essay was written mid 2005 and first posted in October of that year. It was well researched with the emphasis being on factual happenings in Voodoo and extrapolation of these facts into legend.

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Ever since the beginnings of the collective unconscious, perhaps even before, humans have wondered about death. Specifically, they have wondered what happens next. Stories of the dead rising from their graves permeate most mythologies, from the god Osiris to the rising of Jesus. However, one culture has managed to take myth and turn it into a reality: Voodoo and the zombie.

The correct method for the creation of a zombie requires some set up. First the Voodoo Master, known as a Houngan, carefully crafts a potion, the coupe poudre, the active ingredient of which is a highly lethal dose of puffer fish spines. The victim is chosen and the potion is forced down his or her throat. The victim dies and is left for three days. After these three days have passed the Houngan returns for the body and begins setting up for the next stage. Rituals are performed to bind a willing spirit, called a Loa, into the body.

What is created is a sustained zombie. Its requirements are little different from a human’s. In the native zombie areas of the Caribbean and pockets of Africa, zombies are not feared. A wandering zombie happening upon a helpless family is likely to be adopted and cared for by that family as one of their own and the zombie returns emotions in kind. It is the Houngan who is feared for the Houngan is the one with the power to strip away a person’s soul and create the zombie out of the shell that remains.

But what of other zombie reports? What of reports of the walking dead hobbling about and consuming brains? Are these all myth? Do these creatures belong in the realm of myth along with Osiris, Jesus, and a hundred other prophets, gods, and emperors? What if they aren’t? The idea of Voodoo’s zombie has been under attack by skeptics ever since Voodoo was brought to the Americas through the slave trade. Scientists concede that the potion created by the Houngan is many times fatal. Doctors allowed to observe the zombification process have admitted that the victims are invariably declared clinically dead within minutes of the potion taking effect. They have even taken note of rot setting into the bodies over the three day waiting period.

If the scientifically observed Voodoo zombie is discounted by skeptics as smoke and mirrors, well, murder and deception actually, then why couldn’t other types of zombies exist?

There are two major events in the creation of a Voodoo zombie that could be duplicated or explained. First, allow me to address the binding ritual, in which a Loa possesses the body of the victim and the body rises as a zombie. The Houngan calls forth a Loa, asking them, pleading with them, begging them to come and animate this body. Religions everywhere abound with stories of spirits rising up out of their own accord and terrorizing townsfolk, offering advice, or speaking with descendents. Depending on the religion these entities are called angels, ghosts, leprechauns, Ancestor Spirits, and a thousand other names. It stands to reason that one of these spirits could, like a Loa, desire a human body and take a recently deceased specimen for its own inhabitance.

A Voodoo zombie follows the orders of the Houngan not out of obligation but out of gratitude. The Loa is grateful to inhabit a body where it can feel, touch, taste, and in general experience the physical world the way only a human can. Most exorcists have been called forward to work on cases where a spirit has inhabited a body, usually a child, in order to feel and experience the world as a human does. Therefore it stands to reason that a particularly powerful spirit would try to inhabit a dead body, granting the dead flesh mobility using its own psychokinetic powers.

But why feed on human flesh? Outside of the Voodoo religion zombies have a reputation for feeding on the flesh of the living. Is it possible that all spirits powerful enough to grant motion to the inanimate are really “evil” enough to try and subsist entirely on human flesh? Considering they’re here to experience the pleasures of life wouldn’t they try to sample a variety of foods? For example, why drink blood every day when you can experience a sample of 100 year old Scottish whiskey?

These questions tie into the second major aspect of the Voodoo ritual that I’ll address. This aspect is the potion used to initially kill the intended victim. The ground puffer fish spines first ease the victim into death via a “death-like state,” eventually causing death through respiratory paralysis. Though they are the active ingredient, the ground spines are only one ingredient of a plethora. Other ingredients are often various plants, animal parts, and herbs with hallucinogenic properties. As one might guess, different ingredients lead to different grades of potions. For example, not enough hallucinogen and the body tends to rot, causing the Loa to leave in disgust and the remaining empty body to collapse into a shallow grave.

From this singular fact one can extrapolate the mysterious behavior that non-Voodoo zombies exhibit: the consumption of human flesh. Without the potion as cause of death, there are no hallucinogens circulating through the system of the zombie. The body starts to die as cells wear out and cannot be replaced. This presents a problem for the zombie. How is one to replace those cells when they cannot be made on their own?

The answer is simple. The zombie becomes forced to consume human flesh. This leads to questions though. Why not just muscle tissue? If a zombie is already dead, why doesn’t it just trip down to the morgue and gorge to its heart’s content?

Zombies are unable to change cells from one type to another. In order to recreate a muscle, a zombie needs to consume a muscle. In order to recreate an organ, a zombie needs to consume that organ. Thus, since the brain contains the most fragile cells in the human body, logic states that a zombie would be forced to consume mass amounts of living brain tissue to stay mobile. This also explains why zombies are none too bright. A zombie’s brain is constantly decomposing and therefore is incapable of holding many complex thoughts. Indeed the majority of a zombie’s brain is focused on keeping muscles working enough for it to shuffle along at its slow, ambling stumble, arms outstretched to feel for obstacles unseen by its rotted eyes.

As such, a zombie is not a monster per say. A zombie is a spirit who has chosen to try and experience life through the senses of a dead body, the same way a possession is caused by a spirit attempting to experience life though the senses of a living body. A zombie is more curious than malicious, taking only what it needs to continue shuffling along.

Of course, what it needs is to consume your brain, then your eyes, maybe a few organs…