Monday, April 9, 2012

Living Zombies!

Clairvius Narcisse was a Haitian who was turned into a living zombie. As the extremely well documented story goes he checked himself into a hospital complaining of benign symptoms like headaches, a sore throat etc. Within two days he could no longer feel his body, his lips turned blue and he was shivering dramatically. A day later he was pronounced dead by two American educated doctors. 18 years later Clarise found his sister in a market. He claimed that instead of being dead he was actually in some form of a coma and although he was aware of everything happening he couldn't move. He was then dug out of his coffin by a bokor(witch doctor) who proceeded to some how revive the 'deceased' and put him to work at a plantation. Later an investigation showed that the bokor had many zombie slaves who managed to escape after one zombie retaliated from repeated abuse by the bokor. The investigation also revealed that the poison used to 'kill' Clarise was tetrodotoxin(puffer fish venom) and the chemical used to revive him was bufotoxin(toad venom). Although the final conclusion was that he did not technically die the toad venom put him in such a suggestive comatose like state that to the average person he was the very meaning of the word zombie, even though he didn't bite.

courtesy of Virtual Line
By Gio Aboujaoude

5 comments:

  1. I think that it's pretty unbelievable that someone was given some type of venom, and didn't die. But its also pretty cool to know that there are people who can actually survive those things. In the part where he tells his sister that he wasn't dead, but in some type of coma made me actually believe that he was considered a "zombie". I don't know why he didn't just kill himself.

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  2. This story reminds me of a book called "The house of the scorpins" they make people idiots like zomibies that obey the person who is controlling them. And make the work in the poppy fields.

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  3. I heard the Haitain zombies... I couldn't believe that these actually is possible to prove but it is amazing how these extraordinary stuff can happen...

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  4. This story reminds me of Romeo and Juliet when Juliet pretends to be dead. I wonder if Shakespeare wrote this act based on a true story.

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  5. It is going to be super creepy when there are zombies in Guatemala. Maybe Guatemalan zombies are violent and scary. And have super cool guns! I can't imagine zombies in the world..

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