[THEME MUSIC]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Since leaving
Crescent's peristyle, I've
been plagued by questions
regarding the man I saw locked
in the shed.
Unlike classic descriptions of
the zombie, this man was not
shy nor sullen.
Indeed, he was screaming.
It would be equally foolish to
blindly trust or completely
dismiss what I have seen.
But I can say with certainty
that it chilled me to the very
threads of my cultural
tapestry.
Today, I'm going back to the
rice fields of Artibonite to
collect the potions that
Crescent has promised.
I meet with Alex, who fears
Crescent may attempt to rob us
and so has brought his friend
from the special forces.
Hamilton.
SERGE: Serge.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Serge serves
as the personal bodyguard to
the president's sister's
husband.
Alex has brought along a magical
potion to protect us.
Serge has brought a duffel bag
full of guns and takes a
moment before we leave
to hide one under
each seat in the car.
Again, we drive for many hours
and find the roads completely
blocked with a large
funeral procession
supporting a wooden coffin.
As we walk through the fields,
I am facing the unknown.
I have no idea what to
expect from Crescent.
He could give me the poison, or
poison me with the poison,
or shoot me in the
face 14 times.
We are deep in the country, and
should we need help, it
will be unavailable.
At first, I find this
frightening, but I'm comforted
knowing that Alex's lithe, agile
body will be quick to
respond to any threats.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: We arrive at
Crescent's, bearing gifts of
Barbancourt rum to show
our goodwill.
He seems pleased, but I'm
anxious to see this new poison
and how it might differ from the
last, seemingly inactive
powder he gave me.
Can we see the powder, then?
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: They call it the weapon.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Does he
still have any of the
ingredients left over?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He said you
can go with him.
HAMILTON MORRIS: OK.
Fantastic.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
SERGE: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Crescent offers
to let me see if a
laboratory, where he concocts
his leaf medicines.
But he says that I must
accompany him alone, so Alex
stays behind.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Can you ask
if I can come closer?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Can you
ask him what he was
just crushing up?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Ah.
The skull of the boy.
Can you ask him if he has
the zombie cucumber?
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: The powder is
retrieved from a child's
coffin and presented to me.
I'm delighted to find he's given
not only a poison but
also a new powered antidote.
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: That's
the brown container?
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: How much money
does he want for those
two bottles?
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: 15, 16,
17, 1,000 US dollars.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: At last, my
mission is accomplished.
Yet, the man holding the poison
has a face strikingly
similar to the zombie
I saw yesterday.
-[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Would Crescent
make so shameless an
attempt to fool me?
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: I went to
Haiti to investigate a
mystery, and a mystery is
exactly what I found.
Upon my return to New York,
I bring the powders to the
laboratory of my friend,
Jason Wallach.
Hello.
I've brought some samples of
zombie poison from Haiti.
JASON WALLACH: All right.
We can look and see
what's in these.
HAMILTON MORRIS: He subjects
the powder to extensive
chemical analysis.
JASON WALLACH: Let's say
100 milligrams is
probably good to start.
HAMILTON MORRIS: First filtering
material to find it
contains a large quantity of
sand and numerous unidentified
hairs, likely of goat origin.
The remaining material is then
extracted to detect alkaloids
and run through TLC and GCMS.
When he's finally finished, we
can say that we know for
certain the secret ingredients,
allele alcohol
and methylparaben, two
non-psychoactive chemicals
commonly found in cosmetic
products.
And so our powder is inactive.
Fake is too certain of a word to
use, but pharmacologically
speaking, it's certainly
inactive.
And in terms of TTX content,
the potions Davis collected
were practically inactive
as well.
So what can one make of
an inactive powder?
Within the magical belief system
of Haiti, zombification
would be possible in the absence
of any active drug.
That is to say, the pure power
of their belief in magic could
produce self-induced,
psychological zombification.
I saw a man in a shed, making
some unusual sounds.
Whether his condition was caused
by a Bizango bokor, I
cannot say.
In Haiti, I know the placebo
can take on new heights of
untold potency.
And whether my inactive poison
is truly inactive cannot be
said outside of that strange
Caribbean island.
I watched a man in the throes
of spiritual possession, and
swam with the puffer, and
had a mysterious powder
transdermally applied
to my forearm.
But my search is not yet over.
I promised the goddess Erzulie
that I would return to Haiti.
And I have no intentions of
breaking her vengeful heart.
WADE DAVIS: We never could prove
that Narcisse had gone
through this experience.
My research was totally
misinterpreted by the media.
What I had or had not discovered
was always kind of
exaggerated.
I was sent down to Haiti by a
linear, rational, Descartian
scientist, to quote unquote,
"Find the drug that's used to
make zombies." Well, no drug can
make a social phenomena.
And in the end, instead of
finding the drug used to make
zombies, I found myself
investigating the social and
psychological and spiritual and
political and historical
dimensions of a chemical
possibility.
And the whole purpose of the
research, in the end, was not
prove zombies existed, which it
did, but really to take a
phenomena, that as I say, had
been used in this explicitly
racist way and turn it on its
head, make sense of the
sensation, and in doing so, try
to draw attention to the
preconceptions and
misconceptions that we had
about this extraordinary
worldview, of Haitian vodou,
and that this was not a black
magic cult, but this was an
amazingly complex metaphysical
world.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
