Clairvius Narcisse

Clairvius Narcisse
Born	January 2, 1922 L'Estère, Haiti
Died	1994 (aged 71–72) Haiti
Resting place	L'Estère
Nationality	Haitian
Other names	The Living Zombie
Known for	Allegedly being a zombie

Clairvius Narcisse (January 2, 1922 – 1994) was a Haitian man who claimed to have been turned into a zombie by a Haitian Vodou, and forced to work as a slave.

One hypothesis for Narcisse's account was that he had been administered a combination of psychoactive substances (often the paralyzing pufferfish venom tetrodotoxin and the strong deliriant Datura), which rendered him helpless and seemingly dead. The greatest proponent of this possibility was Wade Davis, a graduate student in ethnobotany at Harvard University.

However, subsequent examinations (using tools of analytical chemistry alongside critical review of earlier reports) have failed to support the presence of the key active compounds in the supposed zombie preparation, which was central to the phenomenon and mechanism reported by Davis.

Biography

Narcisse admitted himself to the Schweitzer Hospital (operated by American medical staff) in Deschapelles, Haiti, on April 30, 1962. He had a fever and fatigue, and was spitting up blood. Doctors could find no explanation for his symptoms, which gradually grew worse until he appeared to die three days later. He was pronounced dead, and held in cold storage for about a day before burial.

In 1980, a man identifying himself as Clairvius Narcisse approached Angelina Narcisse, the deceased's sister, in the city of L'Estère. Narcisse was immediately recognized by his family and several other villagers, and he further convinced them of his identity by using a childhood nickname and sharing intimate family information. He recounted that he had been conscious but paralyzed during his supposed death and burial, and had subsequently been removed from his grave and forced to work at a sugar plantation.

Per his account, after his apparent death and subsequent burial on May 2, 1962, his coffin was exhumed and he was given a paste (possibly made from Datura, which at certain doses has a hallucinogenic effect and can cause memory loss). The bokor who recovered him then reportedly forced him, alongside others, to work on a sugar plantation until the bokor's death two years later. When the bokor died (and, potentially, regular doses of the hallucinogen ceased), he eventually regained sanity. Because the instigator of the poisoning was suspected to be Clairvius's brother, with whom he had quarreled over land and inheritance, Clairvius only returned home once he heard of his brother's death, 16 years later.

When he told them the story of how he was dug up from his grave and enslaved, the villagers were surprised, but they believed his story that he had been a zombie. When questioned, Narcisse told investigators that the sorcerer involved had "taken his soul".

It has been suggested that one reason that Narcisse had been targeted to become a zombie was because he had abandoned his children.

Investigation and hypothesis

This case puzzled many doctors because Narcisse's death was documented and verified by the testimonies of two American doctors. The case of Narcisse was argued to be the first verifiable example of the transformation of an individual into a zombie.

Narcisse's story intrigued Haitian psychiatrist Lamarque Douyon. Though dismissing supernatural explanations, Douyon believed there was some degree of truth to tales of zombies and he had been studying such accounts for decades. Suspecting zombies were somehow drugged and then revived, Douyon reached out to colleagues in America. Canadian ethnobotanist Wade Davis traveled to Haiti, where he obtained samples of powders purportedly used to create zombies.

After various anthropological investigations of "zombie" stories, Davis hypothesized that a bokor had given Narcisse a dose of a powdered chemical mixture containing tetrodotoxin (a pufferfish toxin) and bufotoxin (a toad toxin) through abraded skin, inducing a coma that mimicked the appearance of death. He was then allowed to return to his home where he collapsed, "died", and was buried. Davis based this claim on the presumption that tetrodotoxin and related toxins are not always fatal, but at near-lethal doses can leave a person in a state of near-death for several days with the person remaining conscious. Davis then hypothesized that Narcisse was dosed with Datura stramonium after his body was recovered to create a compliant zombie-like state until the bokor died and he stopped receiving Datura.

Subsequent research has discredited Davis's tetrodotoxin-zombie hypothesis by using analytical chemistry-based tests of multiple preparations, and review of earlier reports (see below).

Skepticism

While in these popular accounts, and in Haiti, tetrodotoxin is thought to have been used in Vodou preparations, in so-called zombie poisons, subsequent careful analysis has repeatedly called these accounts and early analytical studies into question on technical grounds; moreover, they have failed to identify the toxin in any such preparation, such that discussion of the matter of tetrodotoxin use in this way has all but disappeared from the primary literature since the early 1990s. Kao and Yasumoto concluded in the first of their papers in 1986 (and remained unswerving on the matter in their later work) that "the widely circulated claim in the lay press to the effect that tetrodotoxin is ... causal agent" in a "zombification process" is, in their view, "without factual foundation".

Kao, of the State University of New York, when interviewed on the matter in 1988, stated, "I actually feel this is an issue of fraud in science". A supporter of Davis, Bo Holmstedt of the Karolinska Institute, more restrained, stated that it was "not deliberated fraud," rather that it was "withholding negative data" (i.e., data which fails to support the desired conclusions) and therefore "simply bad science".

Davis responded formally to the charges, arguing the variability of the preparations (as cause for Kao's inability to find the toxin in any) and possible ineptitude in dissolving the toxin by the otherwise admittedly expert Kao, and speculating on the presence of "other ingredients" in the preparations to "enable transport across the blood–brain barrier" thus providing the needed "reduction of three orders of magnitude" of the amount needed to result in the claimed effects, and arguing that "only when the bokor ... causes others to believe the victim is dead and then revived" do his efforts become apparent, and that only a single "success ... would be sufficient to support the cultural belief in the ... phenomenon." As of 1990, his critics were unpersuaded, and no literature to support the original contentions has yet appeared as of 2015, although lively popular description, especially on the web, continues.

Cinema

Narcisse's story was loosely adapted into The Serpent and the Rainbow, a 1988 American horror film directed by Wes Craven.

Zombi Child, a 2019 French drama film, is also inspired by his story.