Cultural Beliefs About the Murder of a Haitian Vodou Priest

This chapter examines the death of a Haitian Priest or Bokor in a hamlet in Haiti. It is an ethnographic account by an anthropologist who lived in the home of the Bokor and his family. It examines Haitians’ concept of death—and life—as inextricably linked to demands from the Lwa (e.g., family pantheon of spirits) and manipulated by human adversaries who use sorcery to leverage demons to their worldly advantage and, most of all, to seek revenge for wrongs, both worldly and spiritual. For death in rural Haiti is almost never considered natural. It is typically explained as a consequence of sorcery. In this way, the narratives that Haitians offer to describe, explain, and justify the use of sorcery, the resulting death, and the ensuing afterlife—zombification or complete death of the deceased—demarcate Haitian societal morality, fears, and conflicts.