Overview

There is much more to zombies than meets the eye, especially the eye that knows them only from popular horror films, video games, or any other product that has been part of the zombic and apocalyptic spawn of a five billion dollar per annum industry.1 Although there are moments in zombie cinema and English-language fiction that remain more or less true to one type of zonbi in Haiti, the vast majority of these horrific creatures that so captivate Americans and others around the world deviate tremendously from even that form, the zonbi kò kadav, literally, the “cadaver body zombie,” upon which “their” zombies are based. In Hollywood, furthermore, by 1968 zombies had become contagious agents and had developed an appetite for human flesh, ideas that are entirely unknown in Haitian zombic culture. That was also the fateful year that the zombie got tied to the apocalypse. Although other types of zonbi appear more frequently in Haitian culture, the zonbi kò kadav was the only one smuggled out of Haiti by Americans. These Americans, adventure writers, U.S. Marines, and anthropologists, seemed totally oblivious to the other kinds of zonbi that were all around them during their time in Haiti. These Americans are the subject of the following chapter, “How the Zombie Came to America.” In this chapter, our task is twofold: to explain the various types of zonbi in Haitian religious culture, especially Vodou, and to describe the various techniques and technologies that made them zombies in the first place.