The Reverend Zombie of New Orleans
The many dreaded Zombies danced as commanded by their masters. In honor of the great snake Zombi, the symbol of the Voodoo god, the Zombies slithered at their masters' feet, and locals fervently believed in Voodoo-cursed zombies and the ability to capture a spirit in a Zombie Bottle.
Who Is The Real Reverend Zombie of New Orleans?
In 1962, according to his death certificate, the Haitian peasant Clairvius Narcisse died near his home village in the Artibonite Valley. Though physically strong and rarely ill, he had begun to have difficulty breathing after a dispute with his brother over a piece of land. Weakened and nauseated, he began to spit blood and died two days later. His body was buried in a small rural cemetery.
Eighteen years later, Narcisse strolled into the marketplace of his home village. Along with others who were found wandering near the city of Cap Haitian, he claimed that he had been dug out of the ground by men who beat him cruelly then forced him into slave labour as a Zombie. He was one of the infamous "Walking Dead," long considered to be mere figments of superstition in the island nation of Haiti where Voodoo is practiced.
In New Orleans, locals believed Zombies to be very real entities. They are not only the re-animated bodies from local cemeteries -- they can also be spirits of ghosts trapped in bottles. Many local ghost stories, urban legends, and olden-time tales do talk about real Zombies coming out of the oven-wall crypts in New Orleans cemeteries. And they also tell of cursed and hexed Zombie Bottles doing their sole masters' bidding.
This is an actual Zombie story from New Orleans, often told by many of the locals. This real Zombie Story predates the reign of Marie Laveau as Queen of the Voodoos by only a few years. The Voodoo Queen in this story is none other then Sanite Dede, the reigning Voodoo Queen just before Marie Laveau became the Voodoo Queen.
Who is Sanite Dede?
The Real Reverend Zombie
A long tall tale often told is how a white, rich, well-respected, married, and very handsome Reverend once was turned into a real Zombie because of his scorned slave girl mistress, with a little help from Sanite Dede, of course.
This young, handsome, black-bearded Reverend lived in new Orleans. With his striking blue eyes and and handsome German features, all the ladies that saw him instantly and hopelessly fell in love with him. However, for all practical purposes, he was a man of the cloth and faithful to his loving wife. Nevertheless, unknown to all, he was involved in a secret affair with the slave girl of a wealthy Bywater plantation owner.
The affair lasted more than three years and none knew of it except the slave girl and the Reverend. The slave girl fell in love with him the first time she saw him because his strikingly good looks overwhelmed her. She came to him one day and demanded that he take her as his own slave that day. The Reverend went to her owner that day and asked for her to be given to him.
However, the slave owner would not part with her. He demanded much more money than the Reverend could afford. Some say she was also the mistress to her owner and his greatest prize.
Then one day, two weeks after this event, another young slave girl from another plantation came to the Reverend and said that the one he was involved with was pregnant with someone's bastard child.
The Reverend hurried to her master and told her master that she was a Voodoo woman and she had put a spell or Hoodoo on him and his family for them to die. The Reverend went on and on, telling her owner and his wife how she had bewitched him, too, in order to try to take her as his slave.
Upon hearing the news, the master took her and brutally beat her. Her master then cut out her tongue and gouged out her eyes.
A fellow house slave who knew her secrets and affairs brought the story to the great Voodoo Queen Mama Sanite Dede, as she was called by many. And upon hearing this, the great Voodoo Queen was enraged. Dede told the slave that came to her, "I will fix him good this Reverend! This so-called good man of God will walk the French Quarter until the great Angel Gabriel sounds the last blast of his golden horn."
Three days later, the poor slave girl died from the beating. That same night the Reverend also died, for no apparent reason. Word spread quick as it always did in the old French Quarter. A congregation member donated a fresh white-washed tomb in the St. Louis Cemetery, and the Reverend lay in state, still as handsome as ever in his dark suit and white collar starched stiff and bright around his neck.
The wake began in the reverend's large parlor facing Bourbon Street, with the room draped in miles of expensive black crepe imported from France. His large congregation came to pay their last and final respects on this hot humid Friday afternoon. His wake was solemn, of course, and many shed real tears, not because he was known as a bad man but because he was actually deeply loved by his large congregation. However, the afternoon wore on and the sun began to set as the long procession continued to pass by the coffin. Then, in the midst of the crowd, a dark figure of a tall woman stopped and crouched over the Reverend's expensive black lacquered coffin, bending low as if kissing him with her hands covering and moving over his face. Many were in shock, including the Reverend's wife, sister, and the whole congregation over seeing such an act.
As the dark veiled figure moved away from the casket, a loud gasp filled the room. "The Dark Lady" had pried open the Reverend's mouth, bit off his tongue, and sucked out his eyes from their very sockets. No one moved as she turned and almost floated across the room. All were frozen in place as she headed out the door, too stunned to stop her. No one saw her face nor could identify her. However, many thought she was the Queen of the Zombies, the great Ghede, Mama Bridgett, come to exact some dark secret toll or pact that he may have made in confidence while still alive.
The dead Reverend was buried on Saturday early, long before the sun had time to rise over the Crescent City. But he did not stay in his new grave. As the Great St. Louis Cathedral bells struck noon on that very Sunday, he was seen with arms stretched out, wandering stiff-limbed behind the great Cathedral garden. Everyone in town knew he was a dead man walking, and they were very much afraid. Many slaves and creoles all ran to the Dumaine Street home of Mama Sanite Dede for help, because they knew that she alone would have a solution.
Dede listened to the pleas and cries for help of those that gathered in fear before her. "Please help us, Great Mama Dede," an old free man of color said, "you come see the dead man walk Bourbon Street to do no good!" "I seen him come out of the St. Louis Cemetery with my own two eyes," said a white woman dressed in her Sunday finery.
Dede shook her head slowly, looking at the cobble-stoned street and then at the crowd. She asked: "Does anyone here know who it is?" The crowd shouted "YES! It's the dead Reverend buried yesterday morning who has come back from the dead to kill us all!" Dede said, "This may take some time...I must prepare a Hoodoo Voodoo Veve and a strong hex so big to stop this. You good people need go lock your children and your selves behind closed double-locked and bolted doors. And tell all you see on the street to do the same." Within a few moments, the beat of the great Voodoo drums filled the French Quarter. So loud they were that they shook the statues in the great Cathedral.
The streets were emptied in minutes as word of the Reverend Zombie walking the French Quarter streets reached far and wide. Even the police stayed away, fearing that they too would become Zombies if they came in contact with him.
The pounding drums grew stronger and stronger and the beat faster than a man's heart before it burst in fear. All the French Quarter residents hid, just like when a terrible hurricane would hit the city.
The hot afternoon sweltered like it does only in New Orleans. A terrible squall blew in from the shores of Lake Ponchartrain. Some will still tell you of the the terrible great storm that lasted all that night. The thunder shook the city as the Voodoo drums did earlier. And many say they heard the drums still beating between the great rumbles and thunder claps of the storm. They pounded until the first light of day broke over the mighty Mississippi River.
No one really knows now what Mama Dede and the pounding of the Voodoo drums did that day to rid New Orleans of the Reverend Zombie. She kept her secrets well. And no one knows if she really did anything at all. As for the Reverend Zombie ... some say she had him bricked up in a wall in a building on Toulouse street, and others say on Orleans behind the Cathedral in a corner building of red new brick, because Zombies cannot cross a line of red new brick and everyone in New Orleans knew that.
The next day after that nigh's long hard rain was gone, so was the Reverend Zombie.
Three years went by and the story faded away ... until one day during Mardi Gras season someone saw him again stumbling his way down Bourbon Street in the cold morning light. Many ran once again to Mama Dede for help, knowing full well the strange figure was the Reverend come back again.
"I smelled the dead man walking" one man said. "Is it the Reverend Zombie?" Dede asked. One woman said, "Yes, Mademoiselle, I do know! Yes it's him! I recognize his clothes as a man of the cloth! And I smelled the stench of death!" "Don't be afraid," Mama Dede told the crowd, "it's just the dead Reverend Zombie looking for his eyes. He'll be gone by dawn!"
The Reverend Zombie Today In New Orleans
Some have said he was washed away in Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and others say Hurricane Katrina finally did him in. Some say he guards the tombs of Mama Dede and Marie Laveaus so that if another Voodoo Queen wants to come to pick their bones for a Hoodoo Voodoo hex and JuJu, he will kill them them on the spot.
But, when visiting New Orleans, please keep your eyes peeled! When you are in New Orleans ... Reverend Zombie might be seen. Always. Just looking for his eyes and tongue!
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