The Serpent and the Rainbow

Today, I picked up a copy of The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis. It is an ethnobiologist's research into the Haitian phenomenon of zombiism. Now, as we know (from pages 19-22 of The Zombie Survival Guide), the Voodoo zombie is not the same as the undead threat of the zombie menance. The Haitian zombies are (as Wade Davis argues) live human beings who have been brain-damaged through a pharmacological cocktail, producing a zombie-like stupor, after a prolonged death-like state. These zombies, while not meeting the important qualification of being dead, are also not aggressive, not contagious, and can be killed through conventional methods.

So why study Haitian zombies? Other than that they present an interesting study of beliefs manifest, said research will provide valuable discretionary resources. While my focus is on the flesh-eating variety of zombie, I want to be thorough. It is important to understand all types of zombies, whether they be cultural, historical, or hell-spawn.

The Serpent and the Rainbow is still in print if anyone is interested. However, if you have a short attention span, you might want to watch the movie version of The Serpent and the Rainbow, a fictionalized, and much more dramaticized version.