In her book, Haiti, History, and the Gods, Joan Dayan traces the origins of the Haitian concept of zombies. Born in Dahomean mythology, in Africa, the zombi is a creature that embodies the ultimate fear of lost control and ultimate slavery. The original zombi was a being “whose death was not real but resulted from the machinations of sorcerers who made them appear as dead, and then, when buried, removed them from their grave and sold them into servitude in some far-away land.” During the Haitian revolution, zombiism gained a new depth through the visceral assaults of Jean Zombi.

Supporting the revolutionary leader, Jean-Jacque Dessaline’s, goals of ridding Haiti of the white man, Jean Zombi used this permissive mandate to become a butcher of Caucasians. In 1804 his reputation grew to brutally effective. On numerous occasions he would run across a white man in the street, accost him and force him to strip naked, march him to the foot of the government palace, and stab him with a dagger. According to Dayan, “Zombi crystallizes the crossing not only of spirit and man in vodou practices but the intertwining of black and yellow, African and Creole in the struggle for independence.”

For Haitians, there is nothing more terrifying than the threat of succumbing to a zombi transformation. In its representation of complete dispossession, Haitians see the entire “history of colonization” taken form. “The phantasm of the zombi-a soulless husk deprived of freedom-is the ultimate sign of loss and dispossession.” It is the symbol of their historic slavery and a macabre reminder of what they escaped through their revolution of 1804.