1 Hurston ZN

2 Farmer P

Zombification became a subject of popular Western interest during the occupation of Haiti by the USA between 1915 and 1934.The current United Nations intervention has again focused attention on a phenomenon regarded as exotic and improbable by the media, yet one which is taken by most Haitians as empirically verifiable. Along with the related religious practice of vodu, it has been implausibly related by US physicians to the current epidemic of AIDS in Haiti.Haitian medical practitioners regard zombification as the consequence of poisoning; the clergy as the product of sorcery. Zombis are frequently recognised by the local population, and estimates of their number are of the order of up to a thousand new cases per year (L P Mars, personal communication).