Felicia Felix-Mentor

Folklore and mythUndead1900 to 1967

Felicia Felix-Mentor is the subject of one of the first investigated reports of a living zombi. The writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston met a woman in Haiti in 1937 who was said to have been dead for three decades. Medical examination indicated she was not the dead woman, and the case is now usually read as mistaken identity involving a vulnerable stranger. It marks the point where the zombi moved from travellers' tales into ethnography and medicine.1 2

Battle it

First recorded

1937

Encountered and reported by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937

Origin

Haitian

Haiti

What causes it

Never explained

Her family believed she had been raised from the grave; no mechanism was established.

When did it first appear?

Ancient world Middle Ages 1500 to 1899 1900 to 1967 1968 to 1999 2000 to 2009 2010 to today

1937

Encountered and reported by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937

field notes

What the sources say

The family said their relative had died and been buried in 1907, aged 291 2

The woman appeared in a village thirty years later and was claimed as the dead Felicia1 2

A doctor's X-rays showed she lacked the leg fracture Felix-Mentor was known to have had1 2

Hurston looked for the drug rumoured to be used on such victims but found few people willing to talk1 2

The psychiatrist Roland Littlewood later argued that such cases are mentally ill or homeless strangers adopted by bereaved families1 2

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at [email protected].

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Folklore from the same lands

Zombi (Haitian)Haitian (Vodou folklore), 1750

Clairvius NarcisseHaitian, 1980

The Lancet zombi cases (FI, WD and MM)Haitian, 1997

Same era: 1900 to 1967

AmalanhigVisayan (Philippines), 1967

Nyongo working deadCameroonian (Bakweri, Bakossi and neighbouring peoples), 1950