Hollywood has created a slew of movies about zombies whose bodies reanimate so they can kill the living. It’s entertainment, but it’s not real. The most terrifying zombie movie I’ve ever watched was Serpent and the Rainbow, starring Bill Pullman. What made this movie so good was its plausibility. Cases of witch doctors turning people into zombies has happened. I’ll illustrate a true case.

Angelina Narcisse was shopping in a Haitian market on a beautiful spring day in 1980 when a stranger walked up to her. His gait was heavy, and his eyes were vacant. He introduced himself by his childhood nickname of her dead brother, who had passed on in 1962. Angelina screamed in horror because no one else but she and her family knew that nickname. Her brother was alive!

The case of Clairvius Narcisse sparked an intense investigation into the voodoo and zombiism. Narcisse was declared dead at Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti in 1962. Yet more than 200 people recognized him on the day he approached his sister in that market. Narcisse told researchers that his brothers had “killed” him because he refused to help them sell the family land.

Researchers concluded that Narcisse had been poisoned with special herbal toxins that are a specialty of voodoo priests. This slowed his vitals down to the point where they couldn’t be detected by the hospital’s unsophisticated medical equipment. Like many victims of voodoo, Narcisse woke up with a certain degree of brain damage.

According to Haitian lore, zombies have no choice but to follow orders from their new masters, often the witch doctors who created them. Narcisse claimed that his master had him working at the sugar plantation from the time he woke up from his “death” up until he found his sister.

“Zombies lose their will and become mindless slaves,” author Wade Davis explained. “Voodoo practitioners aren’t afraid of zombies; they are afraid of being turned into zombies.”