Clairvius Narcisse (January 2, 1922 – 1994) was a Haitian man who claimed to have been turned into a zombie by a practitioner of Haitian Vodou, and forced to work as a slave.
One hypothesis for Narcisse's account was that he had been administered a neurotoxin such as the paralyzing pufferfish venom tetrodotoxin, which rendered him helpless and seemingly dead. The greatest proponent of this possibility was Wade Davis, a graduate student in ethnobotany at Harvard University.
Biography
Narcisse admitted himself to the Schweitzer Hospital (operated by American medical staff) in Deschapelles, Haiti, on April 30, 1962. He had a fever and fatigue, and was spitting up blood. Because the instigator of the poisoning was suspected to be Clairvius's brother, with whom he had quarreled over land and inheritance, Clairvius only returned home once he heard of his brother's death, 16 years later. When questioned, Narcisse told investigators that the sorcerer involved had "taken his soul".
It has been suggested that one reason that Narcisse had been targeted to become a zombie was because he had abandoned his children. inducing a coma that mimicked the appearance of death. He was then allowed to return to his home where he collapsed, "died", and was buried. Davis then hypothesized that Narcisse was dosed with Datura stramonium after his body was recovered to create a compliant zombie-like state until the bokor died and he stopped receiving Datura.
Davis does not suggest that the zombie powder containing tetrodotoxin was used for maintaining "mental slaves", but for producing the initial death and resurrection that convinced the victims and those who knew them that they had become zombies.
Skepticism
While these popular accounts suggested that tetrodotoxin was used in Vodou preparations of zombie poisons, subsequent analysis has repeatedly challenged earlier studies on technical grounds. Later research failed to identify the toxin in any such preparation, and discussion of tetrodotoxin in this context has all but disappeared from the primary literature since the early 1990s. In a paper published in 1986, toxicologists Chen-Yuan Kao and Toshio Yasumoto concluded that "the widely circulated claim in the lay press to the effect that tetrodotoxin is ... [the] causal agent" in a "zombification process" is "without factual foundation".