[MUSIC PLAYING]
HAMILTON MORRIS: I've spent
months reading every
anthropological and ethnographic
report of the
Haitian Zombie, researching the
pharmacology, toxicity,
and biosynthesis of TTX, poring
through books on occult
magic, medicinal plants of the
Caribbean, animal sacrifice,
vodou theology, and African
folklore, hoping to grasp the
strange phenomenon
of zombification.
WADE DAVIS: You always have to
investigate the belief system
that mediates the
pharmacological event or the
pharmacological possibility.
So that really led to the
second phase of the
investigation, what
is a zombie?
And the quintessential act
of making a zombie
is a natural act.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Haiti was once
one of the most valuable
pieces of land in the world,
exporting well over 100
million pounds of sugar each
year, in addition to the
finest indigo, coffee, and
tobacco plants with the
largest leaves in
the Caribbean.
Today, after centuries of
kleptocratic politicians and
religious oppression, Haiti is
the poorest country in the
Western hemisphere.
The city is unimaginably
chaotic.
The streets, alleys, and canals
are littered with the
skin of organic matter.
Peels, husks, and shells of
every imaginable food line the
sides of the road, waist
high, like snowbanks.
The past 100 years have been
especially turbulent for
Haiti, including more than 10 US
military interventions and
an occupation from
1915 to 1934.
US Marines returned home with
weird tales of potions, black
magic, and the living dead.
They published their stories in
pulp novels, which serve to
inspire a series of horror
movies, in doing so, sculpting
the American concept
of the zombie.
[OMINOUS MUSIC]
I arrive at my luxurious
hotel.
Charles Addams was a frequent
guest at the Oloffson Hotel,
and he used its architecture
to inspire the
Addams Family mansion.
The Gothic gingerbread facade
bursts with every sort of
Victorian ornamentation
imaginable--
fretwork spandrels, dentate
bargeboard pendants, openwork
lentils, turned wood balusters,
gabled dormers, and
spires clad in corrugated
iron.
Essentially, it looks like
a giant haunted doily.
Each night, I sleep in the
Jean-Claude Van Damme suite,
named in honor of the great
Belgian martial artist and
star
of "Time Cop." [THUNDER]
I walk downstairs and meet my
guide and bodyguard, Alex,
who's going to take me to a
vodou ceremony deep in the
hills of Port-au-Prince.
Hey, what's going on?
ALEX LEGROS: It's a pleasure
to be with you.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Yes, yes.
ALEX LEGROS: How's everything?
HAMILTON MORRIS: Good.
How are you?
ALEX LEGROS: All right.
HAMILTON MORRIS: He's
a very large man.
He tells me that he was shot
in the face 14 times,
twice in the eye.
And it makes it difficult for
him to drink alcohol.
He also tells me Haiti is the
only place on Earth where
people can fly.
What time is it that
the show starts?
ALEX LEGROS: It's 10 to 7:00.
HAMILTON MORRIS: In Haiti,
conversations vacillate
between rational and utterly
fantastical.
WADE DAVIS: I remember the
first week or so I was in
Haiti, I just felt I was
just blown away by the
sense of the spiritual.
Where did we get this idea
of vodou as kind of
evil or black magic?
It really goes back to the fact
that, if you're to name
the great religions of the
world, what do you say?
Christianity, Judaism,
Buddhism,
Islam, Hinduism, whenever.
There's always one continent
left out.
Sub-Saharan Africa.
And the tacit assumption
being that black
people had no religion.
Well of course, by ethnographic
definition, they did.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Vodou
is much more than
zombification and poisoning.
In fact, these are fringe
matters most priests do not
concern themselves with.
Tonight, we've been invited to
attend a bi-yearly ceremony to
celebrate Baron Samedi, the
god of the graveyard.
They paint sacred symbols, or
veves, on the ground with
powdered cornmeal.
Each veve symbolizes a different
Loa, or god.
Each room of the peristyle has
a shrine adorned with human
skulls, swords, crutches,
potions, and bottles of Carlo
Rossi filled with the extract
of 21 hot peppers.
The Loa must be fed.
I smoke several fat Js and begin
to appreciate the power
of the music even more.
[DRUMMING AND SINGING]
A woman straddles a child's
chair, her face contorted.
She's wincing and bouncing,
as if the
chair itself were possessed.
For reasons that are slightly
unclear, the Loa of love,
Erzulie, asks for my
hand in marriage.
I'm hesitant at first.
Alex informs me that if I ever
have sex on a Thursday again
for the rest of my life,
I will be killed.
I ask for a moment to consider
my options, but am given no
choice and accept Erzulie's
hand in marriage.
As an offering to the Petro
Loa, a well fed sow is led
into the center of
the peristyle.
The music stops.
[SOW SQUEALING]
They saw open the pig's throat
with a dull knife, digging
around in its neck, pulling out
veins and arteries like
wires from a circuit breaker,
while draining its blood into
a large ceramic dish.
This is a sacred act, not of
animosity but of love and
tenderness.
The pig is now an ambassador,
serenely ascending into the
heavens with a message
for the gods.
[DRUMMING AND SINGING]
A man is mounted by a Loa.
He fills his mouth with a
cheeseburger-sized pile of
burning embers and begins to
wildly spit sparks with
strands of black saliva dripping
down his face.
He eats not just a piece of coal
but a three-course meal
consisting entirely
of burning embers.
It would be a great
understatement to say I am
very impressed.
