Clairvius Narcisse was a Haitian man who entered the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Deschapelles in April 1962, was pronounced dead on May 2, and was buried the next day — with his death documented by a hospital certificate in French.
In 1980 a man identifying himself as Narcisse returned to his village and was recognized by relatives and investigators. Wade Davis built much of The Serpent and the Rainbow around his case, treating it as the strongest bridge between legal record, family testimony, social conflict, and pharmacological speculation. Narcisse himself attributed his zombification to a family land dispute; he described being extracted from his grave, beaten, and put to work with other zombis in the north for two years. His case gave the modern zombi archive documentary force it had previously lacked, and illustrates why zombification cannot be reduced to chemistry alone — burial, kin conflict, forced labor, recognition, and legal identity are all at stake.
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Zora Neale Hurston