Writer Sees “Dead Men” Work in Fields.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18467, 19 May 1928, Page 19 (Supplement)

Writer Sees “Dead Men” Work in Fields.

Sorcery Suspected Cause of Haitian Mystery

W■ B. Seabrook . American writer, who recently spent months in Haiti , investigating Voodoo and Haitian witchcraft culls, has written his experiences exclusively for the “ Star " and associated newspapers of the North American Newspaper Alliance. This is the third and last article of the series.

By

W. D. SEABROOK.

PORT AU PRINCE, (Haiti), , March 27. PRETTY mulatti Julie liad taken baby Marianne to bed. Constant Polvnice and I sat late before the door of his thatched, clay--\valled house, talking of fire-hags, demons, werewolves and vampires, while a full moon slowly flooded the ravines and mountain gorges. His habitation, high among the central mountains of La Gonave, marked one of the most isolated spots in the West Indies. X.o maps or surveys, old or new, marked the narrow trail by which Faustin Wirkus and I had climbed on unshod Haitian horses the week before. Constant Polvnice, however, was no common jungle peasant. He made frequent trips across the bay to Port-au-Prince, and spoke sometimes of installing a radio set. A Haitian fanner, born and bred, he was familiar with every superstition of the mountains and the plain, yet too intelligent to believe them literally true—or at least so I gathered from his conversation. Halt Vs Special "Hatti.” As Polvnice talked on. T reflected that these tales ran closely parallel not only with those of the negroes in Georgia and the Carolinas, but with 1 he mediaeval folk-lore of white Europe. Werewolves, vampires and demons were certainly no novelty. But I recalled one creature I had been hearing about in Haiti, which seemed to me exclusively local—the zombie. Tt seemed (or so I had been assured l*v negroes more credulous than Polynice), that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost, nor yet a person who had been raised from the Head. The zombie, they said, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sor- j eery with a mechanical semblance of life- it is a dead body which is make to walk and act and move as if it were alive. . People who have the power to . do thi c . go to- a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galva#i*?e it into movement, and then make of it a servant cr slave, occasionally for the commission of some

crime, more often simply as a drudge . around the habitation or the farm, setting it. dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb, beast if it slackens. As this was revolving in my mind, I said to Polvnice: "Let us talk of zombies for a little while. T wonder if you can tell me something about this zombie superstition? I would like to get at some idea of how it originated.’.’ Zombies Fact, Says Polynice. MV rational friejid, Polynice. was deeply astonished and hurt. He leaner! over and put his hand in protest "Superstition. Mr Seabrook? But J atire you that this is not a. matter of superstition. Alas, these things—and other evil practices connected with the dead—exist. Tbe.v exist to an extent that .you whites do not dream of, though evidences are everywhere under your eyes. “At this moment, in the moonlight, there are zombies working on this island, less than two hours’ ride from my own habitation. Jf you will ride with me to-morrow night, yes, I will show you dead men working in the canefields. Close even to the cities, there are sometimes zombies. When you also have seen these zombies, with their faces and their eyes in which there is no life, you will not only be lievp in the poor zombies who should be resting in their graves, you will pit’ them from the bottom of your heart. ’ A strange thing is that before finally taking leave of La Gonave, I did see these “walking dead men” and I did, in a sense, “believe” in them and pitied them, indeed, from the bottom of my heart It was not the next night, though Polynice, true to his promise, rode with me through the Bois Noir, across the Plaine Mapou, to the deserted, silent canefields where he had hoped to show me zombies labouring. Writer Sees Zombies. It was not on any night at all. It was in bread daylight one afternoon, when we passed that way again, on Jig iowc* trail to Picmy* Polynice j

reined in his horse and pointed to a rough, stony, terraced slope—on which four labourers, three men and a woman, were chopping the earth with machetes, among straggling cotton stalks, a hundred yards distant from the trail. “Wait while I go up there,” he said, excited and eager because a chance had come to fulfil his promise. “I think it is Lamercie with the zombies. If I wave to' 3 r ou, leave your horse and come.” Starting up the slope, he shouted to the woman, “Tt is I, Polynice,”’ and when we waved later I followed. As I clambered up, Polynice was whispering to the woman; 1 imagine he was reassuring her about me. She had stopped work— a big-boned, hardfaced black girl, who regarded me with surly unfriendliness. My 'first impression of the three supposed zombies, who continued dumbly .at work was that here was an indefinable “ something ” unnatural and strange. They were plodding like brutes, like automatons. Without stooping down, I could not Lilly see their faces, which were bent, expressionless, over their work. Imbecile or Dead Man? Polynice tapped one of them on the shoulder, motioned him to get up. Obediently, like an animal, he slowly stood erect—and what I saw then, coupled with what I had previouslyheard. or despite it, came as a rather sickening shock. The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They- were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocussed, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of expression. I had seen so much previously in Haiti that was outside extraordinary, normal experience, that for the flash of a second, I had a sickening almost panicky lapse in which I thought, or rather felt, “ Maybe this stuff is really true, and if it is true, it is rather awful, for it upsets everything.” By “ everything,” I meant the national, fixed laws and processes on which all modern human thought and actions are based. Then suddenly I my mind seized the memory as a man about to drown clutches a solid plank

the face of a dog I had once seen in the medical school laboratory at Columbia. Its entire front brain had been removed in an experimental operation weeks before, and its eyes were like the eyes I now saw staring. I recovered from my mental panic. 1 reached out and grasped one of the dangling hands. It was calloused, warm, solid, human. Holding it, J said: “ Bonjour, compere.” The “zombie ” stared without re spending. The black wench, Lamercie, who was their keeper, now more sullen than ever, pushed me away. But I had Enigma. "Keeper was the key .to it “Keeper” was the word that had popped naturally into my mind as she protested, and just as naturally the zombies were nothing but poor, ordinary demented human beings, idiots, forced to toil in the fields. It was a good rational explanation, but it is not the end of this story'. It satisfied me then, and I said as much to Polynice as we went down the slope. At first he did not contradict me, even said doubtfully, “ perhaps,” but as we reached the horses, before mounting, he stopped and said: “Mr Seabrook, 1 respect vour distrust of what, you call superstition and your desire to find truth, but, if what you were sgyjng now were the whole truth, how could it be that over and over people who have stood by and seen their own relatives buried, have months or years afterward found their relatives working as zombies, and have sometimes killed the man who held them in servitude?” Polynice,” I said, “ that’s just the part of it that I can’t believe. The zombies in such cases may have resembled the dead persons, or even been ‘ doubles ’ —you know what doubles are, how two people resemble each other to a startling degree. But it is a fixed rule of our reasoning, that we will never accept the possibility of a things being * supernatural ’ long

as any natural explanation, even farfetched, seems adequate.” “ Well,” said he, “ if you spent many rears in Haiti, you would have a very hard time .to fit this white reasoning into some of the things you have encountered here.” An Island Law. As 1 have said, there is more, to. this story -and I think it is best to tell it very* simply: Among the Haitians themselves, there is no clearer scientifically trained mind, no sounder, pragmatic rational ist than Dr Price Mars, of Petionville. When I sat later with him in his study, surrounded by hundreds of scientific books in French, German, and English, and told him of what J had seen and of my conversations with Polynice, he said: “Mv friend, I do not believe in miracles nor in supernatural events, and I do not want to shock your Anglo-Saxon intelligence, but this Polynice of vours, with all his superstition, mav have been closer to the partial truth than you were. Understand me clearly. Ido not believe that any one has ever been raised literally from the dead, yet T am not sure, paradoxical as it. may sound, that, there is? not something sinister, something in the nature of criminal sorcerv if you like, in some cases at least, in this matter of zombies. “ I am by no means sure that some of them, who now toil in the fields were, not dragged from the graves in which they' lay in their coffins, piously buried bv their mourning families!” “ It is then something like suspended animation?” I asked.

“ I will show you,” he replied, “ a thing which mav supply' the key to what you are seeking,” and standing on a chair, he . pulled down a paper bound book from a top shelf. It was nothing mysterious or esoteric. It. was the official “ Code Penale ” of the Republic of Haiti. He thumbed through it and pointed to a paragraph which freely translated, read: ARTICLE 249: The employment of substances which do not kill yet produce in a person a lethargic state more or less prolonged, shall be considered an attempt upon his life, no matter how these substances have been administered, nor what have been the consequences. If in conseauence of this lethargic state a person has been buried, the attempt shall be held murder. (Copyright, 1928, in all countries by North American. Newspaper Alliance.)