Zombie Memang Ada!!

Hwooo…Hwoo…
Hwoo…Hwooo….
Yang sudah pernah nonton atau main gamenya Resident Evil pasti sudah tau apa itu zombie. Ternyata zombie itu memang benar adanya, bukan di film atau di game saja.
Zombie sebenarnya berasal dan muncul dari pulau Haiti di Karibia.Mereka adalah orang2 yang hampir mati,lalu dihidupkan kembali dari tubuh yang hampir mati tsb oleh para pendeta/dukun Voodoo (semacam ilmu ghaib/supranaturalnya suku-suku indian,tentunya ini pakai mantera-mantera).
Mereka biasanya digunakan sebagai budak selama sisa2 hidup mereka yang sangat meyedihkan.Seperti halnya manusia,zombie pun dapat bergerak,makan,mendengar,dan berbicara,namun mereka tidak memiliki ingatan dan wawasan tentang kondisi mereka.
Legenda tentang zombie telah beredar selama berabad-abad,namun baru pada tahun 1980 sebuah kasus baru didokumentasikan.
Cerita ini dimulai pada thn 1962 di Haiti.Seorang pria yang bernama Clairivius Narcisse dijual kepada salah satu Dukun Voodoo oleh saudara laki2-nya,karena Clairvius menolak menjual bagian warisannya berupa tanah keluarga.
Segera saja Clairvius dibuat meninggal dan dikuburkan.Namun,sebenarnya ia tidak benar2 mati,namun malah dijadikan zombie dan diperkejakan di perkebunan tebu bersama para pekerja zombie lainnya.
Pada thn 1964,setelah pemilik zombie tsb meninggal,para zombie2 itu akhirnya menyebar dan mengembara melintasi pulau dalam keadaan “linglung” selama kurang lebih 16 tahun lamanya sebelum mereka2 ini ditangkap.


Dr.Wade Davis,seorang ahli etnobiologi dari Harvard University,memutuskan pergi Ke Haiti untuk meneliti kebenaran cerita tsb dan ketika tiba disana ia benar2 menemui beberapa dukun2 voodoo yang mempraktekkan cara pemuatan zombi.
Intinya,buatlah mereka “mati” dan buatlah mereka “gila”,sehingga pikiran mereka dapat ditundukkan.Seringkali dukun2 tsb secara diam2 memberikan semacam obat2-an utk mencapai hal ini.
Cara membuat mereka mati tidak seperti yang kita bayangkan,misalnya dibacok pakai celurit,atau dipukul pake benda tumpul ,dsb.Namun dengan cara yang cukup unik,yaitu dengan campuran kulit katak yang biasa disebut “bufo bufo bufo” dan ikan puffer (jadi intinya mereka ini tidak benar-benar mati,alias nyawanya masih ada).Campuran ini dapat ditambahkan pada makanan,atau dioleskan pada kulit,terutama pada kulit yang lembut dan tidak rusak dibagian dalam lengan dekat siku.
Kemudian setelah beberapa menit,para korban akan “terlihat” seperti mati,dengan napas dan detak jantung yang sangat lambat dan lemah.
Nah kalau sudah begitu,maka orang2 yang melihatnya mengira ia telah mati dan segera dikuburkan.Tapi ingat,mereka ini belum benar2 mati,mungkin hanya dukun2 yang menyebabkan mereka seperti itulah yang benar2 mengetahui kondisi sebenarnya.
Kemudian,setelah ia dikubur oleh keluarganya,para dukun harus menunggu terlebih dahulu selama kira2 beberpa jam untuk menggali dan kemudian mengambil jasadnya (tapi jangan terlalu lama karena mereka bisa mati beneran karena sesak napas didalam sana).
Lalu bagaimana cara membuat mereka “gila”?,yaitu dengan memaksa mereka memakan sejenis pasta yang terbuat dari datura (rumput jimsons).Karena datura ini sifatnya memutus hubungan pikiran dengan realitas,dan kemudian menghancurkan seluruh ingatan yang ada.Setelah mengkonsumsi itu mereka akan kebingungan,tidak tahu ini hari apa,dimana mereka berada,bahkan dirinya sendiri ia tidak tahu.
Nah,sekarang zombie yang telah berada dalam kondisi semipermanen menjadi gila,dijual ke perkebunan tebu sebagai budak pekerja.Mereka diberi datura lagi jika perasaan mereka terlihat mulai pulih.
Jadi intinya,zombie yang sebenarnya itu bukan seperti yang digambarkan ddidalam game maupun film2 yang umumnya telah benar2 mati kayak vampire2 china yang bisa bangkit kembali, berjalan , lalu kemudian dapat bergerak menyerang manusia.Hal itu salah besar,zombie yang sebenarnya adalah seperti yang aku ceritakan diatas tadi.

             

Zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means, such as witchcraft.^[1] The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli. Since the late 19th century, zombies have acquired notable popularity, especially in North American and European folklore.
In modern times, the term "zombie" has been applied to an undead race in horror fiction, largely drawn from George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.^[2] They have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows.

West African Vodun

According to the tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be revived by a bokor, or sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Vodou snake lwa Damballah Wedo, of Niger–Congo origin; it is akin to the Kikongo word nzambi, which means "god". There also exists within the West African Vodun tradition the zombi astral, which is a part of the human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power. The zombi astral is typically kept inside a bottle which the bokor can sell to clients for luck, healing or business success. It is believed that after a time God will take the soul back and so the zombi is a temporary spiritual entity.^[3] It is also said in vodou legend, that feeding a zombie salt will make it return to the grave.

Haitian Vodou and alleged pharmaceutical explanation

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village, and a family claimed she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote:

What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.^[4]

Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: "powder strike"), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (order Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of dissociative drugs such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice.
The process described by Davis was an initial state of death-like suspended animation, followed by re-awakening — typically after being buried — into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to re-inforce culturally-learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" they were dead, and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect.
Davis' claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep "zombies" in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.^[5] Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis — particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm — unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a death-like trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines, the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state, and Davis' assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is viewed as overly credulous.^[6]
Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.^[7]

South Africa

The idea of zombies is present in some South African cultures. In some communities it is believed that a dead person can be turned into a zombie by a small child.^[8] It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma.^[9]
It is also believed in some areas that witches can turn a person into a zombie by killing and possessing the victim's body in order to force it into slave labor.^[10] After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombie workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be turned into a zombie worker, or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location.^[10]

In popular culture

See also: Zombie (fictional)

The figure of the zombie has appeared several times in fantasy themed fiction and entertainment, as early as the 1929 novel The Magic Island by William Seabrook. Time claimed that the book "introduced 'zombi' into U.S. speech".^[11] In 1932, Victor Halperin directed White Zombie, a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. This film, capitalizing on the same voodoo zombie themes as Seabrook's book of three years prior, is often regarded as the first legitimate zombie film ever made, and introduced the word "zombie" to the wider world.^[12] Other zombie-themed films include Val Lewton's I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow, (1988) a heavily fictionalized account of Wade Davis' book.
A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian religion, has also emerged in popular culture in recent decades. This "zombie" is taken largely from George A. Romero's seminal film The Night of the Living Dead, which was in turn partly inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend.^[13] The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead, but was applied later by fans.^[14] The monsters in the film and its sequels, such as Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, as well as its many inspired works, such as Return of the Living Dead and Zombi 2, are usually hungry for human flesh although Return of the Living Dead introduced the popular concept of zombies eating brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story. Although this modern monster bears some superficial resemblance to the Haitian zombie tradition, its links to such folklore are unclear,^[13] and many consider George A. Romero to be the progenitor of this creature.^[15] Zombie fiction is now a sizeable sub-genre of horror, usually describing a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies — a zombie apocalypse.