8018: 8006 Vodou (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JHUDICOURTB@aol.com

amedard wrote:
"I began to feel
very uncomfortable about Vodou.  I'm not sure why, though I think that it 
probably
had something to do with the realization that Vodou was not as simple as my 
husband
had initially made it out to be.  My handyman (who said he was Christian and 
did not
practice Vodou, but knew a lot about Vodou) used to tell me stories about the 
powers
of Voudou, stories about snakes following people upon command & such.  He 
also said
something about the wife of the original owner of our home having been turned 
into a
zombi ... he claimed to have seen her after her death.  (I understand one that
woman's daughters later wrote a book on Vodou, but I never read it.)"



I know the house and the family you are talking about.  I assure you that 
Ghyslaine Desquiron did not become a zombi.  She had lung cancer, she was 
sick for more than a year and no zombi owner could have any use for a person 
in such weak shape.  Her daughter Desqiron Lilas has done a lot of research 
on Vodou and written a book called Loco-Miwa (Les Chemins du Loco-miroir?) 
that has been translated in English.  It is based on a family story or legend 
from an earlier generation about a young bourgeois woman who dies....  but 
that's a very old story from Jeremie.  I think your handyman was playing with 
your mind.

Corbett interjects:  for more on that novel see:

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/desquiron.htm