Tricky Tueasday: Zombie Explained (Rage of the Walking Dead)

Zombie crowd walking at night,halloween concept -illustration

The repeated reports of zombies, people in a trance like state working as slaves in the fields of Haiti, gain credence by virtue of a firsthand report by a former victim named Clairvius Narcisse from the village of L’Estere. (His story was related by the National Enquirer in 1982.) Narcisse, who had always been in excellent health, suddenly and inexplicably took sick in 1962. His sister brought him to the Albert Schweitzer Memorial Hospital in Deschabelle:

I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs [Narcisse said]. My heart was running out of strength. My stomach was burning. Then I felt myself freeze up. I heard the doctor tell my sister, “I’m sorry he’s dead.” I wanted to cry out, to tell her that I was alive, but I was unable to move.

Clairvius Narcisse points to his name on the grave from which he believes he emerged as a zombie slave. One investigator suggested that Narcisse may have been drugged, buried, and later disinterred.

The doctor examined him, pulled a sheet over his head, and signed a death certificate. Later in the day friends came to pay their respects, and Narcisse said that although he could see them and hear them, he felt no emotion. At the cemetery he heard the mourners lament and heard the dirt falling on his coffin. The next thing he remembered was standing next to the grave in a trance like state. There were two men who refilled the grave, tied a rope around his wrists, and took him to a farm where he became a slave working in the fields with about 100 other unfortunate souls.

According to Dr. Lamarque Douyon, director of the Psychiatric Center in Port-au-Prince, the so-called zombies are people who have been drugged by a voodoo sorcerer, pronounced dead, buried, dug up from their graves, and kept drugged during their enslavement as agricultural workers.

Narcisse thinks he had been enslaved for about two years when one day the overseer evidently failed to administer the dose of drugs that kept the victims in their subservient condition. Some of the zombies regained their faculties, realized the state they were in, and killed the overseer. Released from the effects of the drug, Narcisse soon became his normal self. He did not go back to his native village because he believed that the brother who lived there had made the arrangement to have him drugged by a voodoo sorcerer. But when in January 1980 he heard that his brother had died, he decided to return to L’Estere.

So 18 years after he was thought to be dead and buried, Clairvius Narcisse walked back into the lives of friends and relatives who had mourned his passing nearly two decades before.

#zombie #zombies #livingdead #haiti #haitianzombie #ClairviusNarcisse

Mad Monday Discussions; Demonic Possession, Epilepsy, or Hysteria? Mystery behind the mystery

''Paranoia'' by Ankel Volkov (Buy this art from the link)

As far as many doctors and psychiatrists are concerned, the diagnosis of demonic possession is one that reeks of medieval superstition and ignorance, and the symptoms that lead to it are subject either to a wide range of medical and psychiatric interpretations or to being dismissed as misperceptions or hallucinations.

Other medical and psychological conditions likely to produce symptoms confused with those of possession are epilepsy, hysteria, and multiple personality. During a convulsive seizure, a person with epilepsy can experience extreme muscular rigidity and foam at the mouth and is sometimes subject to rapid back-and- forth head movements. The face may be distorted, and strange, guttural noises may be produced by a spasm of the throat muscles. During the period immediately before a seizure, the patient may experience auditory and visual hallucinations and various sensory distortions. Most seizures last no more than five minutes.

All these symptoms may also be present in a person diagnosed by the church as suffering from possession. But there are distinguishing characteristics. The first of these is that a demonic attack can continue for many hours. Extreme liveliness, rather than rigidity, is characteristic and muscular reflexes tend to be strong.

According to the Roman Ritual, other signs of possession include “the ability to speak with some familiarity in a strange tongue or to understand it when spoken by another; the faculty of divulging future and hidden events; and the display of powers which are beyond the subject's age and natural condition.”

Hysteria also produces many of the symptoms of possession. The following description of a female hysteric was recorded at the turn of the century by Prof. Paul Richter, a doctor at La Salpetriere, a famous hospital in Paris for mental disturbances:

Suddenly, we heard loud cries and shouting. Her body, which went through a series of elaborate motions, was either in the throes of wild gyrations or catatonically motionless. Her legs became entangled, then disentangled, her arms twisted and disjointed, her wrists bent. Some of her fingers were stretched out straight, while others were twisted. The body was either bent in a semicircle or loose-limbed. Her

head was at times thrown to the right or left or, when thrown backward with vehemence, seemed to emerge from a bloated neck. The face alternately mirrored horror, anger, and sometimes fury; it was bloated and showed shades of violet in its coloration....

One of the most striking details in this description is that of the body “bent in a semicircle.” This is also known as the hysterical arch and is frequently seen in cases of possession. All the other symptoms described above have been observed by exorcists. In addition, the appearance of livid marks on the skin — sometimes resembling bites, letters, or graphic symbols — are also known to be produced by hysterics. Given this partial duplication of symptoms, how does the church distinguish between hysteria and possession? The determining factor is the context in which the symptoms occur. If they arise in relationship with a hatred of religious objects, and if they are accompanied by paranormal phenomena (the ability to detect religious objects that have been hidden, to understand languages never learned, to levitate, and so on), the church is likely to consider them manifestations of the Devil.

As mysterious as hysteria, and as likely to be confused with possession, is the multiple personality, in which the patient may at different times manifest one, two, three, or even more different personalities — each with its own goals, likes, dislikes, speech patterns, and memories. Each personality may be indifferent or opposed to the others, or ignorant of them. If one or more should have a diabolic cast, the church has no means of determining whether to treat the case as possession other than the criteria it applies to distinguish hysteria from possession.

Those criteria are the hatred of religious objects and the paranormal phenomena referred to earlier, and they are precisely the phenomena that many doctors and psychiatrists are likely to reject as misperceptions or hallucinations on the part of witnesses. Those less skeptical, on the other hand, are likely to view such things as para psychological but not as the work of demons. Again, the church’s test is likely to be whether or not the paranormal manifestations occur in the context of a general hatred of religion.

#possession #exorcism #poltergeist #epilepsy #hysteria #parapsychology #phenomena #paranormal #paranormalphenomena

Daily Strange's Spooky Sunday: The Demon's Daughter

Daily Strange's Spooky Sunday: The Demon's Daughter

The victim of one of the most detailed instances of demonic possession in 20th-century America was a mid western woman whose real name was never made public. As a child she had been notably pious, but when she was 14, blasphemous inner voices interfered with her religious practice, frightened her, and caused her much shame. In the years that followed she was examined by several doctors. Finding no physical illness or abnormality, they unanimously concluded that her personality was neither nervous nor hysterical — she was “normal in the fullest sense.”

Despite this diagnosis, Mary (a pseudonym) began to manifest the recognized signs of demonic possession. She would become furiously enraged and would foam at the mouth when a priest blessed her, and could infallibly tell when an object had been secretly blessed or sprinkled with holy water. She also understood languages she had never been taught.

In 1928, when she was 40 years old, Mary agreed to undergo exorcism. Her exorcist was to be Father Theophilus Riesinger, a 60-year-old Capuchin monk in the community of St. Anthony, at Marathon, Wisconsin, a man with considerable experience in the application of the ancient rite. For the place of exorcism, Father Theophilus chose a Franciscan convent in Earling, Iowa, where the pastor, Father Joseph Steiger, was an old friend of his.

On her first night in the convent, Mary became furious when she realized that holy water had been sprinkled on her food. She purred like a cat and refused to eat until unblessed food was put before her.

The next morning Father Theophilus and Father Steiger began the exorcism, for which a large room had been made ready. A number of nuns who were physically strong stood by to help, and Mary was laid on a mattress on an iron bed. The exorcism had scarcely begun when she became unconscious, with her eyes closed so tightly that they could not be forced open. They remained in this state throughout the service. A shrill cry filled the room, loud but seemingly far-off at the same time. And then a din of howling, like wild animals, came from Mary’s lips. “Silence, Satan!” Father Theophilus shouted, but the unearthly tortured clamor continued unabated.

Neither Father Steiger nor the nuns could long endure the howling or the sight of the woman’s body and face, hideously twisted and distorted by the onslaught. From time to time they had to leave the room, but Father Theophilus, accustomed to the screaming of devils at the pain of exorcism, remained constant and attentive throughout.

Day after day the exorcism continued, and with it the howling, the twisted limbs, and excrement and vomit in vast quantities. Although the victim had taken only a spoonful of milk or water during the entire day to sustain her, she sometimes disgorged bowlfuls of what seemed to be shredded tobacco leaves or other unsavory materials.

At last Father Theophilus learned the names of the devils infesting his patient. One, calling himself Beelzebub, told him that Mary had been possessed since she was14andthatshehadbeencursedbyherownfather, who had joined the company of possessing demons after his own death and damnation. This demon — Mary’s father, Jacob — spoke with Father Theophilus, revealing that he had frequently tried to force his daughter into an incestuous relationship but that she had always resisted him and that he had uttered a curse that she be entered by devils to destroy her chastity. A female demon, who gave her name as Mina, in life Jacob's mistress, joined the colloquy. She was damned, she said, because she had murdered four of her own children. A fourth demon, Judas, confessed that he had intended to drive Mary to suicide.

Whatever was expressing itself in these voice sat times demonstrated an uncanny knowledge of things that could not have been known to Mary. On one occasion, as a test, a piece of paper with a Latin inscription was placed on Mary’s head. The nuns, thinking the words were a prayer, were surprised to see that the demons tolerated its presence. In fact, the words had no religious content at all; but when a second piece of paper, which had been secretly blessed, was placed on the woman’s head, it was immediately torn to pieces.

As the painful weeks of exorcism continued, relations between the two priests deteriorated and Father Steiger began to wish he had never allowed the exorcism to take place in his parish. But Father Theophilus viewed this development as the work of the Devil, who seemed to regard Father Steiger with special malice.

“Just wait,” a demonic voice said to Father Steiger one day,“until the end of the week! When Friday comes, then ...”

On his way back from visiting a sick parishioner on Friday, Father Steiger, remembering the demon’s threat, drove with special care. Suddenly, just as he was about to cross a bridge over a deep ravine, a black cloud seemed to descend on his car. He could see nothing, but he felt the car smash violently into the railing of the bridge and then teeter on the edge. A farmer plowing a nearby field heard the crash and came running. Slowly, the pastor crawled out of the debris. He had no serious injuries despite the fact that even the cars steering wheel had been crushed.

When he reached the convent, a chorus of malicious laughter greeted him in the exorcism room.

“Today,” the demon screeched, “he pulled in his proud neck and was outpointed! I certainly showed him up today. What about your new auto, that dandy car that was smashed to smithereens? It served you right!” Was it true, the nuns and Father Theophilus asked? “Yes, what he says is true. My auto is a complete wreck. But he was not able to harm me personally.”

“Our aim was to get you,” the demon said, “but somehow our plans were thwarted. It was your powerful patron saint (Saint Joseph) who prevented us from harming you.”

(During these and all other conversations, the lips of the possessed woman did not move at all she - was unconscious, and her lips almost never parted. The voices seemed to come from within her.)

For two weeks the solemn exorcism was repeated without any sign of success. Father Theophilus decided to continue the exorcisms throughout the night, giving Satan (and himself) no respite. For three days and nights he prayed, but the demons held their ground; by the 23rd day Father Theophilus was near collapse. But now a change began to occur in the demons’ behavior. They were less aggressive and more apt to moan about the tortures the exorcism inflicted on them. Then, after Father Theophilus had demanded in the name of the Trinity that the demons depart, they agreed.

On December 23 at about 9 p.m., the possessed woman broke free from the grip of her attendants and stood before them. “Pull her down! Pull her down!” Father Steiger cried, while Father Theophilus blessed her and declaimed, “Depart ye fiends of hell! Begone, Satan! The Lion of Juda reigns!”

Then the stiffness left Mary's body, and she fell onto the bed. A sound arose, so piercing that the room vibrated, and then a babble of voices, repeating the names “Beelzebub, Judas, Jacob, Mina,” again and again, more and more faintly until, with the final words “Hell—hell—hell!” they disappeared.

Then, Mary sat up, opened her eyes and quietly smiled. “My Jesus, Mercy!” she said. “Praised be Jesus Christ!”

SOURCES:

I - Exorcism: Fact Not Fiction, Martin Ebon, ed., pp.212-45

II - Rev. John J. Nicola, Diabolical Possession and Exorcism, pp.126-31)

#possession#demon #demonicpossession #poltergeist #exorcism