Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist from Harvard whose real-life adventures sound like the fictional forays of Indiana Jones, says there's a scientific explanation for zombies.
His book, "The Serpent and the Rainbow," documents the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who walked into his native Haitian village 18 years after his death certificate was signed by medical doctors at the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Deschappelles.Davis, who met Narcisse two years after his reappearance, had dozens of interviews with the Haitian native.
A "liberally fictionalized" version of the book, which tells the story of Narcisse's zombie life and Davis' research of voodooism and the recipe for creating a zombie, was made into a movie that was released last year.
Davis, describing what he calls his "provocative, not proven" documentation of zombies, said he's now become the world's foremost zombie expert.
A Harvard doctoral student in 1982, Davis was hired by a group of scientists to go to Haiti for two weeks to look into the Narcisse story and zombie recipes.
The two weeks, however, turned into "four years of my life," said Davis.
With numerous slides to illustrate his story to a Weber State audience this past week, Davis began by giving an explanation of voodooism, a religious sect that gives its practitioners a "totally different view of the world and a joy."
But there is also the evil side - sorcery and the secret societies of Haiti, said Davis.
"The dolls and pins and needles are voodoo myths. They don't exist . . . but sorcery does exist in voodoo. And to ask `Why?' is to ask why evil exists in the universe," said Davis.
It was into this black world of magic that Davis said he traveled to discover the potion for creating a zombie.
It begins, he said, with digging up a corpse, grinding up the bones into a powder, then adding such ingredients as toads and plants of numerous variety.
But the one constant "ingredient," said Davis, is the puffer fish, which contains tetrodotoxin, a poison that can induce a deathlike sleep when rubbed into the skin.
Davis said the puffer fish, which is a Japanese delicacy most often eaten after the poison is carefully removed, is responsible for the deaths of 100 or more unlucky diners each year.
"And because of its known effects of producing only a deathlike state, some people known to have consumed the toxin are laid up by their graves for three days before being buried," said Davis.
But although the tetrodotoxin is the probable ingredient for producing a zombie, Davis said the Haitians believe the important thing is the capturing of a person's soul. And so there are magic rituals that go along with the poisoning.
"Because of the fear of losing one's soul, becoming a zombie is a fate worse than death," said Davis. He said that fear has been used to gain and keep political power in Haiti.