William Booth

Wade Davis achieved fame and fortune with two memoirs documenting his infiltration of the Haitian underworld and his contention that zombies are real, if not supernaturally generated. The second of Davis's books, Passage of Darkness, featured detailed analysis of the compounds used to make "zombie powder." One drug enables the voodoo priest to poison his victim into a simulation of death. After the victim is buried, the voodoo priest digs the victim up and uses a second drug to resuscitate him for use as a slave. Here journalist William Booth compares Davis's testimony with that of several leading pharmacologists and raises questions concerning Davis's scientific methods, specifically whether Davis falsified or misreported chemical analyses to bolster his case. Booth also examines the ethics of Davis's ordering zombie powder through underworld channels, which...