Are Zombies Real? Part 2 - With Mali Elfman

In part 2 of “Are Zombies Real?”, we discuss accounts of zombification in Haiti. These include the dramatic experience of Clairvious Narcisse which inspired “The Serpent and the Rainbow”, the strange zombie tale of Felicia Felix-Mentor, and more.    Writer/Director, Mali Elfman, of the new film NEXT EXIT, and producer of the film BIRTH/REBIRTH joins the podcast.    Visit our sponsor here: https://www.audibletrial.com/strange   Listen to the episode unedited and commercial free on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/astudyofstrange Theme Music by Matt Glass https://www.glassbrain.com/ Instagram: @astudyofstrange Website: www.astudyofstrange.com Hosted by Michael May Email stories, comments, or ideas to [e-mail]!  ©2022 Convergent Content, LLC ----- Books: https://www.google.com/books/edition/THE_AMERICAN_MEDITERRANEAN/pUiToxfB3Y4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=victim https://tinyurl.com/2p9d328k https://tinyurl.com/59mendhe https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Haitian_Revolution.html?id=C3HnDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description https://www.amazon.com/1804-Hidden-History-Haiti-Wyclef/dp/B075TSFKKT/ref=asc_df_B075TSFKKT/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312152579167&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10350078240651898399&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031201&hvtargid=pla-568748063226&psc=1 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Haitian_Vodou/_smB9MocN0kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=vodou+in+haiti&printsec=frontcover https://www.amazon.com/Zombies-Cultural-History-Roger-Luckhurst/dp/1780236697/ref=asc_df_1780236697/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=385641680285&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2528799625666126412&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031201&hvtargid=pla-564752502945&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=79288120715&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=385641680285&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2528799625666126412&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031201&hvtargid=pla-564752502945   Links: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2017/10/are-zombies-real https://travelnoire.com/clairvius-narcisse-haitian-zombie https://www.historicmysteries.com/clairvius-narcisse-zombie-story/ https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m_moreman_the_dark_history_of_zombies?language=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7EOTLpDSzs https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-trial-that-gave-vodou-a-bad-name-83801276/ https://womrel.sitehost.iu.edu/REL%20300%20Spirit/REL%20300_Spirit/Hurston_Zombis.pdf https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326871#5.-Human-zombies? https://mindhacks.com/2012/01/11/a-medical-study-of-the-haitian-zombie/ https://sites.duke.edu/ginalisgh323/zombification-process/
there are explanationsthat might explain how a modern day
real zombie is created.

(00:42):
There are different theories,including psychiatric disorders,
neurotoxins and mistaken belief of death.
This is a study of strange.

(01:11):
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Michael May.
And still with metalking about zombies is Molly Hoffman.
Hi, Molly.
Still trying to figure out The WalkingDead.
Yeah, well.
I need to find my answer.
I need to know what happens.
I. I will.
I will share some tales with you. This.
This part is a bitdifferent than part one.

(01:31):
Part one.
I was, you know, very kind of nerdyhistory stuff that I love to.
To establish kind of the backgroundfor what zombies are.
This part.
I'm going to be sharing some talesfrom Haiti of supposedly real zombies.
And the point of this episode is reallyjust because I'm fascinated
with these, there's no other point.
But I do think we can kind of learnand think about what this means,

(01:55):
what it means to do zombies in the media,
but also about how belief is so powerful.
So when you brought me onbecause you thought
that I might be the walking Dead,because I'm just mindlessly moving forward
no matter what. All the time.All the time.
And that's actually wherewe're going to start.
Molly, you're a zombie,so we're going to you.
What's it like to be a zombie?

(02:17):
Yeah, it's a great,you know, just go for a lot of walk.
Sometimes I get hungry.
My my wife, Amy. Who? Who?
You know,
But Amy has said for years that zombies,they don't actually want to eat you
or your brains.They just want hugs. Casey.
Just imagine them in that slowpaced arms out in front.
Yeah.
And when you think about,you know, in part one, we talked about how

(02:39):
zombies are victims,you know, and the Haitian lore.
And so she might be onto something.
Honestly,they might just want to hug. Yeah.
All these monsters just really want hugs.
So when you get down to it,most monsters need a hug.
It's true.
It is true.
Hugs could do a lot of good for the world.
I think we could all use more hugs,know where we left off

(03:01):
is The history of Haiti is filledwith slavery and rebellion and occupation,
and this blending of culturesand religions and all this kind of stuff
and they they have a belief called voodoo,
and they believe someone can becomea zombie, A soulless creature
who does the work primarily for laboris where most of the stories are about.

(03:22):
And the thought from early on hereis that a bokor can use a recipe
or ingredients to take over one's mindand body to create a zombie.
And we left off with the person whofirst presents recorded cases of a zombie.
Bringing more than just anecdotal.
It all kind of storiesan actual experience.

(03:43):
The writer and anthropologistZora near Neale Hurston and she saw
or who she sawor what she saw was allegedly a zombie.
And apparently it is a woman,or I should say, allegedly
a woman named Felicia Felix, mentor.
So I would like you to read

(04:04):
from I think that's the number fourin your email
before you start here, just to set itup, Somali is going to read
a portion from the book, TellMy Horse that Hurston wrote,
and this is with a conversationwith a doctor in 1936
that apparently had a zombie he knew aboutand he was telling Zora about to.

(04:25):
Go ahead when you're ready.
Oh, boy.
Mm hmm.
I had his permissionto make an investigation of the matter.
He gave me lettersto the officers of the hospital.
The chief of the staff of the hospitalwas very kind
and helped me in every way that he could.
We found a zombie in the hospital yard.
They had just set her dinner before her.

(04:49):
They had just set her dinner before her.
But she wasn't eating.
She hovered against the fencein a sort of defensive position.
The moment that she sense their approach,she broke off a limb of a shrub
and began to use it to dust and cleanthe ground and the fence and the table
which bore her food.
She huddled the cloth about her headclosely and showed every sign of fear

(05:11):
and expectation of abuse and violence.
The two doctors with me made thekindly noises and tried to reassure her.
She seemed to hear nothing.
She just kept trying to hide herself.
The doctor had covered her head
for a
moment, but she promptly clappedher arms and hands over it to shut out
the things that she dreaded.

(05:34):
This wears on me.
Yeah. I'm scared.
Absolutely they are. So. Especially if.
If the case of Felix or Felicia Felixmeant or is true.
If she was really somebodythat someone took over her sort of mind
and body to be a laborer, these people areprobably beat, not treated well.
I can understand being very scared.

(05:57):
And Hurston went on to work
to take a picture of thissupposedly zombie
and apparently it took her kind of a bitto get like a good a good shot.
And the woman kepttrying to cover her face with this cloth.
But eventuallyshe was able to capture a picture and.
Oh, do you want to see this real quick,Molly? I do.
Let me pull this up this way.

(06:19):
This is fun for Patrick.
And you get to hear me kind of look.
For a whileto think of all these scary things
and also the factthat she wasn't eating food.
Maybe that's where the whole idea ofshe doesn't want food,
they must want to eat us.
And it's like, wait, there's other stepsthat we could have gone to.
Why did we jump here immediately?
So just scroll down and. Wow.

(06:39):
Yeah.
It's also kind of like it'shard to make out her face.
Was that because she was moving so much?
It might be because she's moving.
That's probably not.
The cameras weren't great.
A capture if you're moving.
Well, and she was nota professional photographer.
And it's the thirties, you know,
it's a bit harder and more cumbersometo take a photo back then.

(07:00):
Yeah.
So it's not the best photo.
And I will say what's really interestingabout researching zombie
stories is you find this photobeing used for Claire Vass.
Narcisse Like the most famous storyof a zombie that we'll talk about.
You see it online as him. It is not him.
The photo you see of a zombie in blackand white is a woman,

(07:21):
and it was taken by Hurston in 1936.
Yeah, it's a it's an amazing story.
Yeah.
So Hurston learns that FeliciaFelix mentor so the person who this
this woman the zombie in the photois apparently that that's who she is
was a native of a town called entryand she had died as a young woman in 1907.

(07:42):
So this is the thirtiesnow is a long time.
She has aged and she was found by somebody
who saw a naked womankind of wandering down the road.
And the police were called
and they got herand eventually sent her to the hospital.
And Hurston describedthe zombie as being having a blank face
and dead eyes and eyelidsthat were kind of pale,

(08:03):
almost like somethingand may have burnt her eyes at one point.
And she was walking with a limp.
So she had a bit of a lame leg.
And apparently that's one of the reasonswhy people thought
she could be Felicia Felix mentorbecause she had a lame leg.
Hurston describesher conversation with the local doctors.
And the doctors don't believe in zombieslike now.

(08:23):
We don't we don't believe in zombiesthat are zombie zombies.
We believe people are taken advantage ofand they're kind
of reanimated by peoplewith powers and and drugs.
And they also think if this is Felixof Felicia Felix it's hard to say
that there could be brain damagebecause if somebody is really buried

(08:43):
for up to like three days,they're not breathing correctly.
There's not enough oxygen.
You can you can suffer brain damage
and that can actually have an effecton these zombie like behaviors.
So can read trauma.
By the way, the emotional trauma,I remember hearing of a case
a long time ago about a woman who was
sold into the sex trade and

(09:05):
basically got out of it,but hid in the New York
sewer system for a while.
And when she came out,she had lost the ability to speak.
Mm hmm.
For it took a long time for herto bring that back.
But it also, like severeemotional trauma can affect you in many.
I mean, we know this many ways physically,including things like this.

(09:25):
Yes. Yes, I 100% true.
And especially if, again,if these kind of stories are real
there, you can imagine it's not just drugs
because someone's trying to take controlof these people for a long period of time.
And his history shows usthat the way you kind of do
that is with physical and emotional abuse.

(09:51):
So it's a lot of there's traumafor for many things,
not just the barrier,but it would continue is my point.
Like it's just going to continue.
However, if anybody's doubting storiesor questioning
this zombies fixation procedure,which I'll call it.
There are beliefs thata lot of the stories that come out,

(10:12):
including the ones we'll share today,are not actually zombie stories, and
the accounts could fall under.
The theoriesare that there's mistaken identity.
There's the power of suggestion whereif someone's told enough
that they are a zombie,they just start to believe
there is something or that there'sa combination of those kind of things.

(10:32):
Mistaken identity.
Maybe they were drugged, maybe someone didtry to make them a zombie.
And it's a combinationof all of the above.
The debate with Felicia Felix, Mentor,kind of comes to fruition.
In 1945, a doctor named Louis P marrs
who worked at the psychiatrichospital in Port au Prince.
He studied Felicia Felix mentor,
and he noticed that this eye disease, thisthis eye thing was actually a disease,

(10:57):
and it caused her eyelashes to fall outand this made
her very susceptible to the sun,Like she was really like, you know, it's
all your natural sunglasses are now gone,so you're more sensitive to the sun.
And that might be why she was tryingto cover her face with a cloth.
He also had her X-rayedand there was no fracture in her left leg.

(11:17):
Her lameness was dueentirely to dietary deficiencies.
She also was much younger than FeliciaFelix mentor would have been.
She looked older when they found her,but because of the dietary issues,
because of the health issues,she looked a lot older.
So once she kind of regained her abilityto eat

(11:38):
well and to walk,she actually looked much younger.
And he even wrotethat she began to menstruate again.
So she wasn't mistreated.
And that also impliesshe's younger than what Felix,
Felicia, Felix, mentor, would have been.
Marrs did say that Hurston's conclusion
that this was a real zombiewas just a simplistic way to look at it.
And the woman didn't speak intelligently.

(12:01):
She didn't know where she was.She didn't know how she got there.
And Ma's believethat she was suffering from schizophrenia
and yeah, and that also brings upthere's not a lot of mental health
services in Haiti,especially the thirties.
So you're based herenow, are there exactly.
Exactly.
So so people like thatcould easily be mistaken

(12:24):
or just immediately thought of as zombies.
So she might nothave actually been a zombie.
So it's just an interestingstory and wish.
So yeah, sobut they did believe that she was buried.
Did they know how she gotout of being buried? No.
So they believeshe's just an entirely different person,
so they don't even think it's there.

(12:45):
She's too young to be, Felicia.So there's.
But if somebody would have believedthat she was a zombie, how did she get it?
How did she get out?
Yeah, Yeah.
How are they getting out?
So if this happened so the get out.
Is theoreticallythe bokor gets them out of the grave.
So if someone comes, they get them.
So they don't, they don't like punchthrough the ground or anything.
They, they are literallybrought out by somebody seeing.

(13:07):
Where I'm going next. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the images and all these zombie.
That's right.
Hollywood Hollywood effects, are.
They ready to make these. Things now?
Next up, we're going to do the most famouscase of a zombie.
Clearly, it's nurses.
And this actually startswith a prominent doctor
in the sort of the study of zombiesa guy named Lamar could do.

(13:28):
John, who also studied at the psychiatriccenter in Port au Prince, Haiti.
And he found clear veins, nurses
and or at least heard of the storyand started looking into it. So.
NARCISSEThe story goes that this guy, Narcisse,
he checked into the Sweitzer Hospital,which is kind of like,
I want to say it's like 30 miles outsideof the capital of Haiti.
In 1962, he was sick.

(13:50):
He had a fever.
He was splitting up blood,and he died within three days.
His death was was confirmed by at leasttwo doctors and then he was buried.
Now, I'm going to point out
an incorrect thingthat always comes up with Narcissus story.
You always hear that there's nocause of death that could be figured out.
He just died mysteriously.That's not true.
There's actually record of it.He had kidney failure.

(14:12):
So we do know how this gentleman died.
But here's where it gets strange.
In 1980, a man, Carla, calling himselfClavius, approached
Angelina Narcisse Clavius, his sister,and he was like, Hey, hey, what's up?
I'm your brother. It's been a long time.
How are you doing?
I don't think that's exactly what he said.
I'm paraphrasing,but you know something like that.

(14:33):
For your family, right?
Yeah, but he claimedhe was conscious that he had died
and been turned into a zombiefor all these years.
He had been buried.
He was buried for three days undergroundwhen his coffin suddenly opened
and then he was beaten.
He was hit,he was gagged, and he was given a drug.
And this was done by a bokorto take control of him.

(14:54):
And he made clear voicework on a plantation in northern Haiti
for two years.
And then the Bokor died and Narcissekind of regained
his own, his own will, sense of control.
But he didn't come home for allof these years because he suspected
his brother had hired the Bokorto turn him into a zombie
because Narcisse and his brother

(15:16):
were fighting about various things,including a land dispute.
Narcisse
was not the most respected man in town.
We'll get a little more into thisin a few minutes.
And when he returned home, it wasbecause he had heard his brother died.
So he felt like he wasit was a place he could now go back to.
The family seemed to agreethat this was Narcisse,

(15:37):
but there was never
a DNA test that I'm aware ofthat was given to him to confirm it.
And Dr.
Dujan, who came across this story,he contacted a colleague of Wade Davis
Davis.
He's an ethno biologist,I believe, or yeah, he's no biologist.
I think that's what he is.
So, DoctorJohn Carter was a colleague of Davis's,

(15:58):
and the colleague called Davis,
who was living in the Amazon atthe time, was like,
Hey, can you go to Haitiand look into this?
And Davis was like,Yeah, that sounds awesome.
So he goes to to study this case.
And his mission was to find a formulathat both cores used to make zombies.
He wanted to find out what's in them,are they real, what's going on?

(16:18):
And he worked really hard at this.
He kind of had to,I guess, get some trust of some local
because in order to have them give himexamples or, you know,
little little vials or cases of whatthey used to make a zombie.
And he had these examples tested.
Now every bokor has a different recipe.
There's no like handbookand they all follow a specific thing.

(16:40):
They're all kind of doing their own thing.
And he did get various examples.
Now, his theory, Davis says,was that a poison
calledtetrodotoxin was the culprit of this test.
Death like state and tetrodotoxincan be found in pufferfish and.
Some other things as well.
I hadn't heard of that before,and I was like, Wait, why do I know this?

(17:00):
Yes. Yeah, this isthis is a very kind of famous story.
And this is The Serpent in the Rainbow
was a movie that Wes Cravenmade that it covers this story.
Yeah.
And although it's kindof a fictionalized version of this story.
But yeah, so so Wade Davis was theorizingit's not just the tetrodotoxin
that's important, but there's got to beanother one in this like drug after
they're brought back to lifeafter the supposed death.

(17:23):
And this other drugis probably a hallucinogenic type thing.
And it could comefrom this zombie cucumber
that has the right chemical compoundto kind of do this.
And we should try that.
Yeah.
Then again, why don't why don't youtry it first and then tell me how it goes.
Now, there are plenty of scientiststhat kind of disagree with Davis's work

(17:46):
because the studies done on these examplesthat he got said
there wasn't enoughor there was no tetrodotoxin in them.
But Davis thinks thatthis phenomenon is real.
And there actually
I was able to find thattetrodotoxin is not always in puffer fish.
So if somebody is catching themand trying to create this powder
there, sometimes it's going to work,sometimes it's not.

(18:07):
And it's also not a very scientific thing.
So to your point in partone of like there could be zombies
that never became zombies,it could just be dead underground.
If people really are using these things,they are having some effect on people.
Sometimes if it has the toxin,you could give somebody too much
and they'll die toolittle, won't do anything.

(18:28):
So it's this balancing act that's really.
You go and you dig them up for anything,you dig them up and you like them too
much pepperfish. That's. There you go. It's
wasted.
Evening. That's right.
So it's.
Yeah, but it seems to make senseand it makes sense theoretically,
this idea of Davis of howthis could happen makes sense because now

(18:49):
for almost, almost 100 yearsas of this recording,
people have been writing about the storiesthey're hearing of Bacau
as using some kind of concoction,some sort of powder
that they're giving to peopleto turn people into zombies.
According to Step Toit, though,I'm actually going to read this
because they say itso much better than I ever will.
There are doubts about clear vagusnerve sources story.

(19:13):
And here, here's the quote from Geppetto
Haiti is not known for its wealth.
In 1962, a hospital stay was beyondthe means of many residents.
The hospital where Narcisse is allegedto have died, the Albert Schweitzer
medical Center charged $5 a day for local
residents at a higher rate for Non-locals.

(19:34):
But poor Non-locals got sick too,and it was not unheard of for them
to check in under the name of a localto qualify for the lower rate.
We have no evidence to rule outthe likelihood that some unknown
man developed a fatalkidney failure, checked in using Clearview
Narcisse his name and subsequently died.
It turns outthere is a perfectly plausible reason

(19:55):
that the real nursesmight have been just fine with this.
He had been something of a familyblack sheep.
He had a number of illegitimate childrenwhose mothers demanded support
and some other bad debtsand was not well respected.
In fact, during Dr.
DU interviews, he learned that the familyconsidered narcissist sends
to be the reason that the brokers hadpunished him with some bifurcation.

(20:16):
And for a man with narcissisticWellingtons in the closet
seeking a change of sceneryis hardly unheard of.
Perhaps in his later yearshe had a change of heart
and wanted to reconnect with his family.
Considering the convenient circumstance,insist
his zombie fixationwas a perfect cover story.
So yeah, so that is not proven.

(20:37):
But it is.
That's a good theory.
That is a very, very good theory.
It was funny because when you were first
telling me the story, I was remembering,Do you remember the film Somersby?
I remember the name. What happens in it?
I don't know if I. Really
got I'm trying to rememberexactly what happened, but basically it's
this man comes
back, says that he's this woman's husbandand people say, No, you're not.

(20:58):
That has been. And is he the husbandor is he not?
But it just reminds me of like
you used to be able to do that.
You used to be able to just
and this person, yeah, I have his wallet.
I must be,
which is potentially more likely.

(21:19):
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.
But that, that is something thatused to happen that is very interesting.
Once again goes to social issueswhich is on basic to love to be around.
It's like yeah, 100%.
Yeah.
And that leads into the last two examplesof the zombie stories
I'll give are both from there'sthere's a lot of writing about them

(21:41):
but they are both
and a documentary made in the ninetiescalled Interview with the Zombie
and I wanted to share these storiesbecause again,
it's really hard to get actual detailsof these stories from Haiti.
There's a lot of them are just like,Oh, this guy, he was a zombie.
And it's like, okay, who was he?
But, you know, it's just really hard hereto find the details.
Yeah.
What boxes do you have to checkto be officially classified?

(22:05):
Yeah, exactly.
And these are these stories.
Now, I'll just get into them.
I'll kind of circle backaround to the point I want to make.
So we're going to start with Wilfred,Doris Sont, and this is the
you read a start of his story at the partat the top of part one to refresh.
Oh, sorry. What was that.

(22:25):
Actually going on before? Yep.
So to refresh
Wilfred Doris Sont,
he was a teenagerthat supposedly died in 1988,
and then in 1989there was a local cockfight.
It's very popular. That's what happens.
You know, we all I don't like the ideaof cockfights, but I don't live there.

(22:49):
And it's got to be it's a social function.
It's a popular function.
It gets people like a sporting eventshere.
Like put asideyour thoughts on cockfighting.
It is it's like a sporting event.It's a big deal.
And Wilfred is seen by friendsand relatives and acquaintances
of his walking around and he's supposedlybeen dead for almost a year.
So they're shocked.

(23:09):
His family comes and meets this guyand they think it's Wilfred.
And but they say that he's not normal,He's not speaking.
Well, he doesn't seem to be very aware,aware of his surroundings.
And they see this as a miracle.
Like this is a obviously, they'rethey're mourning for for their son.
So they see this as a miracle.
And he also had lost weightand he was speaking softly and

(23:33):
the mother apparently identified himnot just by, you know, the nature
of of his face, but also Wilfredhad a broken finger on his left hand.
And apparently this guyalso had a matching broken finger.
And the thought here was that
he was he had been a zombie.
And he may have either been becausehe was a zombie, he was acting this way,

(23:53):
or if he had been turned into a zombiefor a short period of time,
he may have suffered braindamage is sort of
the other thought that could happen here.
And Wilfred said thathe had been handcuffed and forced to work.
And his dad, this quote fromhis dad is just like heartbreaking to me.
But his dad said, that's
why people say it's better to die onceand for all than to become a zombie.
So, yeah, it's very sad.

(24:15):
Now, that's actually very interesting.
This says that the birth rebirthand this story.
Yeah, we just.
I was I was going to try to bring that upat the end of this episode,
so I'm glad you said that. Well, yeah,Well, Doctor.
What is Mary? What is life?
So if
Wilfred is a real zombie,who did this to him and why?
Well,the family quickly concluded that it was.

(24:38):
It was Wilfred's uncle,a guy named Belvoir,
and it was said that he did thisbecause it was some sort of land
dispute, another land dispute herethat Wilfred's family was having
and Belvoirbeing upset about this zombified Wilfred.
And Belvoir is seenlocally as a bit of like a Vodou doctor.

(24:58):
He's he's tightwith some sort of voted community.
And the local magistrate,a police officer is notified about this.
The family says Belvoirturned our son into a zombie as proof.
Here's their son.
And he.
Belvoir was arrested and in March of 1990,Belvoir was proven guilty
of turning someone into a zombie, and he

(25:18):
had confessed to doing it.
Now, I will be quick to point out
he later said that he was beatenand forced to confess.
So yeah.
Damn it. So there's always a problem.
But there's a lotthere's so many problems with this.
So riddled with issues.

(25:40):
Yeah.
Now people outside of this that are like,no, this isn't
this isn't sitting right with me.
I don't believe in zombies.
They think there's a mistaken identityaspect to this story
that we would that we heard potentiallyabout with Claire vs Narcisse.
Wilfred's family vehemently deniedthat this could be anybody but Wilfred.
They believe it as Wilfred.
During the documentary that I mentioned,they actually had Wilfred's DNA tested

(26:04):
and it wasn't Wilfred,which means Belvoir was wrongly convicted.
And we don't know who this guy is.
Again, it kind of comes down to reallyhe could have been turned into a zombie.
This could be somebody who was sort ofzombified in the distances or, again,
mental illnessand people just assume it's someone and

(26:27):
people are mourning.
They want their son back. The other guybroke his pinkie.
This is really sad and might as well end.
And could this person speak?
Could Wilfred speak?
They can.
And you can actually see him speak,
but he speaks very quietly and reallydoesn't make a lot of sense when he does.
And he seems to get very confused.So. Okay.
So that's why when they would have thoughtthat he was a zombie version of himself,

(26:50):
not necessarilysome other person with mental illness.
Right. Exactly.
And I'm going to quicklykind of jump in here to Marie McCaw.
So this is another storythat's also in the same documentary.
And the alleged story with heris that she died
12 years before being found againand the 1990s and Marie's brother Michelle

(27:11):
found her and was, you know, toldabout her and claimed that it was a shock.
Like they he was just completely shockedand he mentioned that he cried a lot.
It was a very strange thing,but he was so happy to see her
and he recognized herbecause of various marks on her face
and the way her teeth lookedand things like this.
And but Marie kept sayingshe doesn't think she was a zombie.

(27:32):
Her her definition of a zombieis somebody that walks with her head down.
I just realizedI was acting that out for you,
but I turned myface away from my microphone.
But so she says she wasn't a zombie.
Similarly,she doesn't communicate very well.
She gets confused easily.
She doesn't communicate well,and I don't have much more detail
about her story before being found,why she might have turned into a zombie

(27:56):
who would have wantedto turn her into a zombie.
But in this document tree,they actually take her
to the town where she was found,or the outskirts of the town
where she was found,because they wanted to see
if it might bring back a memory of like,why was she there?
How did she get there?
And they bring her to this townand it's Hassani.
There will be links to this documentary.

(28:17):
It is free online.
This is an amazing scene.
But they arrive at this areawith Michelle, the brother and and Marie,
and they get her outand they're talking to her.
And I'm like, okay, do you rememberbeing here? Why were you here?
And then people start gathering aroundand they're like, Hey, for fun.
And some guy is like,That's my cousin for fun.
And they're like, No, this is Marie McCaw.

(28:37):
And he's like, No, that's my cousin.
She's been lost for nine monthsand she's mentally disabled.
And so people start like coming aroundlike while they're filming
this documentary, a big crowd comesin, you know, small town, small areas.
It's like the local market on this street.
So there's a lot of people there
and everybody's like, Yeah, that's,that's for food.
And Michelle is like vehemently denies.

(28:58):
It's like, No, this is Marie,This is my sister.
This can't be correct.
And so luckily they actually find
for food daughterand they ask her like, who is this?
And it's a really interesting scenebecause if if this is is is buffoon
buffoon is mentally disabled,
she might not be very emotionallyconnected to her daughter.
And so her daughter is just like,yeah, I recognize her.

(29:19):
But like there wasn'ta lot of emotional stuff to it.
So it's really interesting to watch.
And both families start accusingthe other family of sorcery.
So that's fun.
And they luckily they they did a DNA test.
It turns out Marie was not Marie.
Marie was for food.
And so she really was for foodand mentally disabled.

(29:42):
And this the all these stories I share.
I don't share these to, like,
prove that there's no such thingas a zombie or something like that.
I actually think people in Haitiare doing something.
And I do think because have the ability
to potentially make what they call zombieswhat they believe is zombies.
But it this does bring upthere's just so many questions.

(30:05):
There's layers.
There's a lot of depth to thisthat I just find really interesting
and a lot of the various theoriesabout what a zombie if people claim
somebody is a zombie, what they could bebecause it could be mistaken identity,
it could be somebody that sufferedsomething, it could be mental disability.
Every theory can be true.
Yeah.
What's what's the most interestingin almost all of these cases?
And it centers around somebodywho can't accept loss, who can't accept

(30:30):
that somebody is gone and needs them to bethere and is willing to believe
wild extenuating circumstancesin order to make sure that that person
is still alive and even accept themin a form of half life
in order to keep them around, becausethe idea of loss is just too extreme.

(30:51):
Yeah. Yeah.
No, I was going to say, I mean, this isI have some things that I've thought
about a lot that we'll get to.
I have sort of the question
I want to ask at the end of every episodenow, which is like, what did we learn?
But I think what you're talking aboutright now actually does tie into the film.
You produced Birth Rebirth,which will be out on Shudder Later.
So yeah, What do youwhat were your thoughts on that When I

(31:13):
when you first were thinking about it?Yeah.
I mean, in terms of birth rebirth,
the reason why I was always so drawn
to this filmthat Laura and Brendan O'Brien wrote was,
first of all, the idea of motherhoodand how one could be a mother
without necessarilybirthing a child with their body.

(31:35):
But then the other idea of whathow far somebody would go
to have
their child back when dealing with loss.
So you have those two storiesthat are intertwined in the film and
and the idea of
I going through lossbeing such an extreme experience

(31:56):
that is so hard to accept,especially the loss of a child,
what lengths would you not go to?
And the answer in this oneis reanimating the dead, which is
something that we do.
Which is funny because I was justrealizing how much the Frankenstein lore
is somewhat attached to the zombie lore
and again, wanting to create life,wanting to create legacy,

(32:18):
wanting something that is a servant
or serves a purpose that you need
and in birth, rebirth, the services
not being able to accept that the mothermissed the day that their child died
and and not being there,and that it's just too much to bear.
And that was a very interesting topic.

(32:40):
I love that we got to explore that.
But it is interestingto see how that lore can
just be taken in so many different ways.
We went in a a motherhood legacy kind of
and then tried to find ways of kind of
with all that heavy material,finding some fun and some lightness
and in it and that isin the reanimating of the dead that is

(33:02):
you can control the thingthat you absolutely cannot control,
which all of these peopleare trying to do.
And all of these stories,
they're trying to control other peopleand they're trying to control death.
And it's just funnyhow many as we talk about this,
it does actually connect to go slowerin that way, which is just once again, us

(33:22):
wanting to connect to things that we can'tnecessarily connect to or can.
And as you know, I do believe in ghostsand I do believe in spirits
and I do believe in that type of stuff.
So it makes sense to methat this it exists.
It also makes sense to me that the peoplewho have the power of doing this aren't
exactly putting their stories on recordbecause why would you?

(33:45):
It's not necessarilysomething that is a good thing.
That would be I mean,
I think you would
probably be jailedand imprisoned immediately.
So if you do have this power, that'sprobably why these stories,
the stories that you're findingare the stories that are adjacent to you,
because there are real stories that existand the stories that are adjacent
to are the ones that you're finding,and those are the ones that probably are

(34:07):
mistaken identity, mental illness,that type of stuff.
And I mean, it does soundwhat I've been fascinated by.
All of this is also if you can detacha piece of a human's mind,
I mean, let's get into lobotomiesfor a mean Yeah, yeah.
It's almost exactly the same. Right.
And if the problem with any of thattype of stuff is somebody decides that

(34:29):
somebody else shouldn't have the powerof their mind or the ability to access it
in order to make it easier for themin one way or another.
And how horribly wrong that isin every single instance that we see it.
Right.
And so,yes, go right back to medical malpractice.
Yeah.
And I think that's kind ofwhat occurred to me the more I looked into

(34:52):
this is, you know, if there are thingsI learned from this one is that
we're all the same. Human natureis the same.
There's a universalityto the idea to the fears of a zombie.
And when you look at the history of it,part of the reason
I like always looking at historyas much as I'm a nerd about it,
is I believein the interconnectivity of everything.

(35:14):
And so you look at the zombiebelief in Haiti still to this day,
it still is connected to their
terrible historywith slavery and their fear
of being controlled by somebody else.
And wanting to suppress othersfor their own gain.
Yeah, absolutely.
And yeah, and so you see, like the zombie

(35:36):
there still represents their fears.
And in Western societyor in American society, I'll even say in
in Hollywood, it's evolved.
It's evolved partlybecause just the nature of people
being creative with ideas and stuff,but also we have our own separate fears.
We don't have the same historythat they have in Haiti and the Caribbean.
So we're looking at viruses and pandemicsand even

(35:59):
race relations when, you know, in
like the sixties, when those kind ofzombie movies were being made.
So it it representsthe zombie has this amazing way
to be used for whateverwe're we're afraid of.
And and that was just one of the thingsthat stood out to me.
So looking at this there, there'sa universality to it, really.

(36:20):
And even even little locker roomsthat we did.
Yeah, that little one was all about mylike little metaphor for health care.
As long as you are just distractedenough with Instagram and TV
and whatever it is that you're doingand all the rest of the world,
and you will ignore something and you'reabsolutely fine until something goes wrong
and then what are you going to do?
There is not a support systemand going to get centered

(36:40):
and then get stuckdoing something over and over again.
That's right.
That's right.
And so, yeah, here, you know,zombies have moved away and evolved
from their original configuration,
but you're still seeing them, seeing themtied in Haiti.
I love what you said about lobotomyto like that's that's a really interesting
that's that's a I think I listen toa podcast about the history of lobotomy.

(37:02):
I forget which one it was,but it was just horrendous.
And it really is about tryingto control somebody.
So that's like as much as as peoplethrough the history of looking at Haiti
or people that thatthat believe in voodoo or voodoo,
there's that lens of like,oh, these crazy people.
And there's that racistkind of attitude towards it.

(37:24):
But then they're turning aroundand doing lobotomies and not hospital.
And it's like, no, it's the same thing.You guys are doing the same thing.
You just look at you.
Yeah. So again, universality. Yeah.
Well, cool.
Well, not to sound too, you know,professorial about these things, but
I think it's a fascinating subject andI hope you enjoyed chatting about zombies.
Marley.

(37:45):
Did I learn so much more than I thoughtI was going to about zombies
and just how much moreI would actually connect with zombies
and just what a mirrorthey are to society.
I mean, again,we're still saying that right now with it,
but it's it's and it is always goes back
to human beings and having to deal withthings that are difficult to deal with.
And also Hollywood loves to us.

(38:06):
Oh, yeah. And over again.
And they
they take something, they take our fearsand they manifest it into these monsters.
And the monsters.
So better if they do certain things,but I think would be
so much more interestingto actually get into what a real zombie.
I mean, these stories are more terrifyingthan most of the zombies
coming out of their gravesinviting people.
So I agree.
I agree. Yeah.

(38:27):
You know, when I was looking at this, too,
when Romeromade the first, is that the living dead?
I said.
The dead.
Yeah. Yeah.
He never referred to them as zombies.
Like people put that onto it. Yeah.
And I find that really interesting too,because he had kind of created
his own little, little thing.

(38:48):
And that's that's a big evolutionthere of what zombies have become.
You in media.
I think the last of us.
Just not that I want plugthat I have nothing to do with it at all.
But one of the things that I foundso interesting
that they did in one episode and again,I don't want to do any spoilers
so they won't be part of itas a discussion of what zombie

(39:08):
what everybody's talking aboutwith zombies is what's wrong with death
not wanting to die.
You're always trying to liveor you're always trying to survive.
How do you survive longer?
But they never ask the question ofhow do you live?
How do you live well?
And then, more importantly,how do you die?
Well, and I think that there can be deathwith dignity.
And I think that it's importantwith all of this

(39:28):
when all you're trying to do is survivethis and talk about death,
the thing that we're all the most afraid
of, of of that are waysof not being as afraid of death.
And I think that's a huge problemin our society, especially America.
It's just like when peoplesay, if I die and it's like,
that's a win.
That's you know,you hear that all the time.

(39:49):
But just like our inabilityto accept the reality of it
and and that maybe there's some beautywith that.
Absolutely. I think there always is.
Well, thank you again, Molly.
I don't want to keep taking up your time.
Thank you for coming on. Yeah,And you did.
You succeeded.
You brought a certain intellectualsort of nature to it and

(40:10):
and saw the deeper meaning for zombies,which is what I was hoping would happen.
So thank you so much.
So again, you already did it in part one.
But sometimes, you know,people only listen to one of these things.
So where can people find your thingscoming out or find you?
Absolutely.
Birth Rebirth, directed by Lauramoss, will be out later this year

(40:30):
through Shudderand potentially other avenues as well.
But we'll talk about that soon.
And next,I think it's available on demand right now
and will be available in the UKFebruary 20th.
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much.
I'll talk to you soon.
And yeah, I don't have I don't know
what else do I say to dig out be zombie.

(40:53):
Hogs by Molly Bo.
Thank you all
for listening to our two parts on zombies.
This was a topic I was really excited tolearn more about and my research took me.
It took me a different way
than I intended,which is always a lot of fun for myself.
A special thank you to Molly Elfmanand make sure you are subscribed

(41:13):
to a study of strangewherever you listen to podcast.
And if you're on a platformthat you can rate and review,
we would be very for that.
Also, please check out our Patreonfor additional content
and unedited episodesand other special things.
You can find that through our website.
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Follow us on Instagram
and a study of strange and as usual,send me comments, likes, dislikes, things.

(41:37):
I miss things you want to hearabout a study of strange at gmail.com.
Next up, we will be coveringthe Connecticut Witch trials,
getting into some witchy businessfor the first time on a study of strange.
Then after that,
you may have heard me bring this upat the end of the last episode,
but it does look like there's interest.
And I'm going to do a Bigfoot episodewith my six year old

(41:59):
son unless he backs out at the last minutebecause that's always possible with him.
But that was an ideamy wife initially brought up
and I thought could be a lot of funbecause he is obsessed with Bigfoot.
So that'll be a different sort of episode,but I'm looking forward
to figuring that out.
So stay tunedand thank you and good night.