According to West Africa's belief, the dead can be brought back by a sorcerer, or bokor. The creature then remains under the control of the bokor with no free will of their own. A piece of the zombies human soul, also known by zombi astral, is captured by the bokor and used to enhance his power.

The astral is often kept in a bottle and sold to their clientele for luck, business success or healing purposes. Legend has it, that this particular form of zombie will return to the grave by merely feeding it salt.

The undead in some South African communities are believed to be reanimated by a young child, and the only way the spell can be broken is with a very strong sangoma , a spiritual and medicinal healer, also known as a shaman.

Witches are also thought to be the creators of zombies in this particular region. By killing and possessing the body, they are able to force it into slavery. Trains in this area were once rumored to be ran by these zombies and controlled by a witch, giving them the name witch trains.

In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston was researching folklore in Haiti and came across the case of a woman named Felicia Felix-Mentor. The family of this woman said she had been dead and buried since 1907 at 29 years old, and yet she was still often seen roaming the village. Rumors of the use of psychoactive drugs were said to be used but no evidence was ever found by Hurston, as she was unable to find anyone willing to speak on the subject.

Decades later findings by Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist and author of book The Serpent And The Rainbow, discovered the use of TTX, a powerful and often fatal neurotoxin, was the cause of these so called walking dead phenomenons. Unfortunately for Wade the scientific community dismisses TTX as being a cause for this condition.