Clairvius Narcisse

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Clairvius Narcisse (January 2, 1922 – 1994) was a Haitian man who claimed to have been turned into a zombie by a Haitian vodou, and forced to work as a slave.

The hypothesis for Narcisse's account was that he had been administered a combination of psychoactive substances (often the paralyzing pufferfish venom tetrodotoxin and the strong deliriant Datura), which rendered him helpless and seemingly dead.

The greatest proponent of this possibility was Wade Davis, a graduate student in ethnobotany at Harvard University, who published two popular books based on his travels and ideas during and immediately following his graduate training.

However, subsequent examinations (using tools of analytical chemistry alongside critical review of earlier reports) have failed to support the presence of the key active compounds in the supposed zombie preparation, which was central to the phenomenon and mechanism reported by Davis.