Wet Brain: Zombie Infection Linked to Alcoholism

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI –  Research at the University of Haiti College of Medicine has uncovered strong evidence linking Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome or “Wet Brain” to the phenomena of zombiism.

Long term alcoholism causes chronic wet brain syndrome which has 3 prominent symptoms.

1. Confusion, drowsiness and paralysis of eye movements
2. Ataxia or a staggering gait
3. Mental Disturbance

Researchers in Haiti have linked a special brand of Haitian alcohol known as tafia, a cheap form of rum produced from sugar cane, to a newly discovered form of Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome which they believe to be the cause of zombiism.

WHAT IS A ZOMBIE?
The term Zombie commonly refers to a dead person restored to life.  Although the body is re-animated, the brain does not function as it did previously. Only when zombies are unfed and uncared for do they begin to deteriorate and revert to the cannibalistic behavior they are famous for in American and European cinema. When well fed, Zombies are unusually docile creatures who obey the every command of their caretakers.

As a result, it is not unusual for sugar cane farmers in Haiti to purchase the services of the voodoo sorcers known as bokor to create tireless, zombie slave workers as a low cost alternative to wage employees.

How the bokor do this is a mystery that has baffled researchers for decades.

OVER 80 YEARS OF ZOMBIE RESEARCH
Established in the 1820’s, University of Haiti is the foremost authority on zombies. Since 1937,  researchers there have been studying zombiism, when author Zora Neale Hurston became a driving force in the establishment of their Department of Zombie Research (DZR).

Hurston traveled to Haiti researching Haitian folklore for a new book when she learned of a woman named Felicia Feli-Mentor who had died in 1907 at age 29. During Hurston’s stay, the woman re-appeared in the village, a shambling zombie, after a 30 year disappearance. During her absence, Feli-Mentor had worked as a zombie slave on a sugar cane plantation. When the owner fell ill and stopped caring for his zombie slave workers, they became wild and wandered into town to cannibalize residents.

Felicia was the first of 14 zombie workers to visit the town that year, and one of 11  put to rest in front of their horrified families. Hurson herself witnessed several of these killings. The affect was so profound that not only did she work to establish the DZR, but upon her death in 1960 she left the University her fortune to fund the department.

THE SECRET OF THE BOKOR
New brain scan facilities at University of Haiti have allowed DZR access to parts of the brain they only before dreamt about.

Rusty Graingis, researcher at the facility claims, “For the first time in a zombie we can see, in vivo, in real time, the brain’s blood, oxygen and neuron flows as it responds to stimuli. We can see distinct brain elements “light up” as they are brought into play. The exciting news is that we finally understand the zombification process, a process the bokor have been practicing for 250 years. It’s all has to do with the consumption of tafia.”

It’s a vicious cycle.  The area economy is poor. The farmers need the zombies to farm the sugar cane, which is in turn used to produce the tafia. They go to the bokor for zombie workers.  The bokor own the bars and peddle tafia to migrant workers who can’t find jobs.  The workers spend their unemployment on tafia, become alcoholics, and contract wet brain. The bokor just have to wait for the wet brain to do it’s work, visit migrant camps at night, harvest the zombies and sell them to the farmers.

Graingis sums it up best, “Zombies are not killing machines. They are drinking machines that kill.”