Case file · High strangeness
Zora Neale Hurston photographs a 'zombie'
In 1937 Zora Neale Hurston photographed Felicia Felix-Mentor at the hospital in Gonaïves, a woman said to have died and been buried in 1907 and found wandering decades later.
1937 CE · 19.45, -72.69 · status: disputed
The account
Hurston published the picture in Tell My Horse (1938), her study of Vodou in Haiti and Jamaica, writing that she had seen a real zombi. The photograph became famous.
The sceptical view
Doctors who examined her thought she was a woman with a severe mental illness; identification rested on relatives' recognition, which other cases show can be mistaken.
Connections in the atlas
- Clairvius Narcisse, the man who came back
- Hurston among the Maroons
- Seabrook's The Magic Island brings 'zombie' to America