Clairvius Narcisse pronounced dead at Deschapelles hospital

On 2 May 1962 a man named Clairvius Narcisse was pronounced dead at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles. He had come in on 30 April with fever, aching and spitting blood. His body was held in cold storage and buried the next day near L’Estère, in the Artibonite. In 1980 a man walked up to his sister Angelina in L’Estère, used his childhood name, and said his own brother had paid a bòkò to zombify him over an inheritance; the family and neighbours recognised him. The ethnobotanist Wade Davis later argued he had been dosed with tetrodotoxin, the pufferfish poison, which can leave a living person paralysed and looking dead. Whatever the chemistry, the story is about a man turned back into property, which is the oldest fear this country has.