from American Weekly Magazine

"I Walked with a Zombie"

by Inez Wallace

Haiti, that dark island of mystery, where such incredible figures as Christophe, the Black Napoleon, rose to world fame as the Negro emperor, where Voodoo rites link man with the supernatural in a manner beyond understanding - Haiti has yet another phenomenon that baffles the greatest thinkers and scientists of our age.

When I first came to the island and heard the tales I am about to relate, I refused to believe.

I cannot blame you for doubting when you have finished reading this account. Yet, in cold type, placed on the lawbooks of the Republic of Haiti, is official recognition of the existence of a brand of metaphysical magic that is abhorrent beyond words.

Here is the law, found in Article 249 of the Criminal Code of Haiti:

'It shall be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made against any person of substances which, without causing death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the administering of such substances, the person has been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.'

In plain words, it is murder to bury a person as dead, and afterwards bring that person's body out of the grave to live again - no matter what result follows.

That law was put on the books because it has been proved that time and again the mysterious arts of the black people of Haiti have caused dead persons to rise from their graves and enter a soulless existence as slaves, their bodies moving about without any individual intelligence.

These living corpses are called zombies.

They are not ghosts, not phantom wraiths, but flesh and blood bodies which are dead, yet can move, walk, work and sometimes even speak.

The government prefers to say that these people have been drugged and buried, and then dug up again. But that is going a long way around to get out of admitting zombies as a reality.

When I first heard of the zombie, not a word would I listen to without an unbelieving smile. But I have come to look upon the weird legend of the zombie - those dead men and women taken from their graves and made to work by humans - as more than a legend.

I believe because I know from indisputable sources that these things have happened, and are happening today - not many miles from our highly civilised United States, down in the mysterious magic island of Haiti.

For I have heard weird tales from the lips of white men and women whose word I could not doubt, and I have read of zombies in more books than one.

What psychic power can make these dead bodies move, act and walk and dance as if they were alive? And what super-power can even make them talk at times?

From mysterious Haiti come other stories of the occult; mystic tales of voodoo, black magic, spells, hauntings, curses and animal magnetism.

On the dim background of this mysterious island are enacted strange voodoo rites, and the cult of the black he-goat and the white she-goat flourishes even in the most populous Haitian cities. Voodooism is beyond the law, though even the black Emperors of the island practised it and were afraid of voodoo.

But one phenomenon that the natives fear more - and not only the ordinary, ignorant natives, but the cultivated negroes, and also the voodoo doctors who are supposed to be all powerful - is the dread zombie.

For the zombie, and the weird magic that stands behind him is beyond even the understanding of the voodoo doctors with all their black rites.

And this superstitious fear of the zombie and of those who are familiar with the raising of these dead people is fully justified.

The natives of Haiti maintain that today there are zombies working in the cane fields, around lonely houses on the island, and some say that these mysterious dead workers exist even in the most populated cities. One may know them because, except in rare instances, they never talk, and they stare always straight ahead of them. If one is not certain he will know if he offers the suspected one some salted food, for the zombie may not taste salt, or he will know at once that he is dead, and will make his living corpse return to the grave no matter where it is, and no one can stop it!

Not many years ago there occurred near the famed Haitian city, Port-au-Prince, an incident that brought the zombie to my mind at once. A white man who had fallen on evil days and had come to Haiti under the name of George MacDonough, fell in love with a dusky native girl. His love for her lasted only until a white girl fell in love with him. Then he gave up Gramercie for Dorothy Wilson, and they were married.

But he had not finished with Gramercie, whose fierce primitive jealousy was something to be conjured with. He had not been married a year, when his young wife took mysteriously ill and died. Two nights after her burial her grave was found to be disturbed, but it did not warrant the examination which should have been given it.

Six months later a mysterious story began to trickle down into Port-au-Prince. It was said that on the eerie magic slopes of Morne-au-Diable, near the Dominican border, a band of slaves was suspected of being made up of zombies. The whisper spread and spread, and suddenly a new tense note was added to the story when it got around that a white girl was known to be working in the cane fields up there. George MacDonough heard the story as well as many others of the American colony.

He laughed at first, as his companions had done. But then he began to think of his wife's disturbed grave. It had meant nothing to him then, but now - could there be something to this story? He became nervous and frightened, for he remembered that vengeful Gramercie came from the very district that had sent the weird story to the city!

Acting on a sudden impulse, he had the grave of his wife opened. It was empty!

To his horror and despair, he found himself thinking with increasing belief of the weird story that had been whispered around for so many weeks now.

Again he took action on impulse, and went into the interior toward Morne-au-Diable, taking with him a trusted negro guide and two friends. He went secretly in the night, and no word of his expedition got about. His coming upon Gramercie's cane fields was a complete surprise to his former dusky sweetheart.

But the shocking sight he saw in her fields sent madness into his heart, and Gramercie went shrieking with terror into the jungle tracts to escape his vengeance. For in the fields, working with the negro slaves, was the corpse of George MacDonough's wife! Before his arrival, Gramercie, hidden by the tall canes, had been making weird passes in the air.

He went up to her, but her blue eyes stared at him blankly. They showed no recognition of her husband.

He understood at last, when his repeated cries brought no response from her, and in the dead of night he took her living-dead body home with him. And again in the dead of night, he took her to the cemetery, opened her grave, gave her salt to eat, and saw her fall, now truly dead, at his feet.

Then George MacDonough sought out Gramercie, but he was too late to take vengeance upon her, for the natives, who fear the zombie and those who put these men and women to work more than the white people, had heard of her crime, and before MacDonough could get to Morne-au-Diable to kill this witch whose power had used his dead wife's body, her own people had brutally murdered her.

I was told by an elderly man whom I shall call Major Hemingway that any white man who had lived for some time in Haiti and had been in touch with its mysterious native life would hesitate a good long while before denying the existence of the zombie.

'You know,' he said, 'once you're out of Haiti those things come back to you. For someone who's never been there - well, it all sounds pretty steep. Most people have a far back fear of voodoo, for it has cropped up even here in the southern part of our United States. But zombies seem hard for them to get near; but they exist, I know.' He then related the following story to me:

'For a time, during a native uprising, I was stationed in the Morne-au-Diable district - a mountainous country, where the natives are pretty ignorant, and superstitious as only negroes can be. Voodoo flourishes there. One night, a pretty negro girl came secretly to me, and entreated me to help her.

'It seemed that two weeks before, her brother had died and had been duly buried, and now she claimed to have seen him working about the house of one Ti Michel, a farmer in his own small way who lived not far from where I was stationed.

'I had heard of the spells and curses of voodoo, and had come to believe them, but this was something new.

'I said, "What can I do?"

'She smiled mysteriously, and handed me a packet of candy - a sort of taffy-like mixture. "Tomorrow," she said, "you go by Ti Michel. In fields you see men working - cane fields. Men stare, look straight ahead, no speak. You give candy."

'I said, "What good will candy do?"

'She said, "You give, you see. Candy fixed with salt."

'Well, I was curious enough to go and do as she asked, and I did. Next day I wandered around to old Ti Michel's place, and it struck me that he looked at me pretty suspiciously. I looked around a little, and finally wandered into his cane fields. All the time he watched me like a cat watches a mouse. I edged closer to the row of men hoeing in the fields, and he came after me.

'Then suddenly he was called across the field by his young son, who had gotten into trouble with one of his workers, and I was left not ten feet from two men and three women workers. I went rapidly over to them, spoke to them, touched them. They did not answer, but straightened up at my touch.

'I'll never forget their eyes! It was like looking into an old, used well at night - you get what I mean?

'Well, I gave them the candy, and they took it and began sucking at it. Then Ti Michel came racing towards me; he had seen me give his workers something, and he began shouting, "What you give 'um? What you give 'um?"

'I never got a chance to answer. Those workers suddenly let out a terrible shriek, dropped their tools, and turned suddenly toward the little town near which I was stationed and began to march in single file out of the fields. Ti Michel stared only for a minute - then he began to run the opposite way. He was never seen again - but two weeks later someone reported having found a bloodstained shirt identified as his. These natives have a way of taking care of people like Ti Michel!

'Well, I was more interested in the zombies, and I followed them. They came to the town, and people began screaming and running away. Some of the men of the town began to run in the direction of the cemetery, toward which the zombies were now running as fast as they could go.

'I could not keep up with them, and lost them. When I got to the cemetery I saw a group of half-hysterical negroes digging frantically at five graves - and near the mounds I saw black, shapeless heaps - the zombies now dead for good!

'I don't expect you to believe it, but I saw it.'

The story of the dancing zombies of Port-au-Prince is interesting from the point of view of throwing some light on the weird magic rites which are concerned in raising the dead from the grave to work in the cane fields.

A negro woman, named Breteche, had been conducting, only a short distance out of Port-au-Prince, a house in which she gave exhibitions in dancing. This woman, fairly well educated, had been known to have connections with the stage at one time in her early life, and for a time she drew some of the white people to her house.

After a while, only the negro element attended, and she began to attract notice by her daring, for she thought nothing of revealing secret voodoo rites from her stage. Suddenly a whisper started the rounds - La Breteche had Zombies dancing for her!

An unofficial investigation disclosed the presence on her stage of seven weird figures who danced at her command, followed every inflection other voice, but without emotional response - solely in an automatic manner. Never once was one of the strange dancers heard to speak. La Breteche was questioned.

To all questions she answered that she had not committed murder because all her dancers were already dead. She was asked how this could be, and replied that her dancers had once been buried, and she had dug them up with help and now they were helping her.

'What did you do?' she was asked.

'First, I make mud figure, so' - and she showed them rudely how she did it. 'Mud figure, he resemble man, so. Then I take and give him breath, like this.' She then held up an imaginary mud image and began to breathe upon it, mumbling at the same time a curious sort of ritual under her breath.

Then she looked up and said, 'Then I say "Dance," and show how. Then they dance for me.'

Cultured white people admit the existence of zombies as well as the government. The government, however, fears to concern itself with the psychic angle. In other words, the government of Haiti says:

'Zombies? Yes, they are here, but we cannot explain them. It is part of the mystery of Haiti.'

An official reply, yes. But it fails to convince me that there are not dead men working in the cane fields of Haiti today.