The White Darkness

Richard Stanley's Voodoo Diary

(Originally appeared in Fortean Times #140, 2000.)

17th July - Saturday night in Port au Prince

"Do you know who you are?" the possessed woman leans closer to me, her voice becoming a high pitched nasal squeak. I nod slowly, meeting her gaze and it is Gede who stares back at me now, brave Gede in black and purple, the guardian of the graveyard who wears this young woman's face like a mask.

"I been waiting a long time for you..."

We shake hands in the elaborate manner of a formal Voudou introduction, the first of many such introductions that would have to be made if I were to pass through all the stages of initiation to become a houn'gan in my own right.

"Ayi Bobo."

"Ayi Bobo", I repeat touching my hand to my heart.

With Frisner on his way back to New York I have been left in the care of Edelle, a manbo and highly respected Koongo initiate who comes across a bit like Whoopie Goldberg on D.M.T.

"Where did you get this great guy who's already got so much Gede in him?" she asks my interpreter as she flings her arms about me. "He's mine!" I return her embrace and the guardian of the graveyard cracks a lascivious smile. "Are you happy to see me because I'm sure happy to see you?" "It's a pleasure."

She raises a bottle of what looks like fermented chilli peppers and pickled rat embryos, drinking a welcoming toast. Then squatting beside me she pushes back her long, purple dress and parts her legs, rubbing the clear, fiery liquid over her hands and genitalia.

"You've got nothing like this in the States. All power and weirding...you and me..." She taps my chest. 'Natural born loup garou...you and me both..."

She tosses me the bottle and steeling myself I take a deep swig. No turning back now. No half measures in Voudou.

The mouthful of fluid impacts like nitro-glycerine in the pit of my stomach and I stagger to my feet, helping her unbutton my shirt, abandoning myself to a ritual that began just after nightfall when Edelle first took me by the hand and lead me to the sacred tree at the bottom of her garden, teaching me to pour the water, to light the candles and say the words, opening the way for the spirits. Her possession followed quite naturally, letting Gede do the rest.

"You will not have to pay for what your forefathers did. You are saved already." She weaves around me, massaging the burning fluid into my skin and I find myself thinking of fly ointment, belladonna and scraps of testimony from mediaeval werewolf trials. Its funny how these things come back to one.

"It is not your skin that burns. You are not white. Your faith will save you. Gede will never allow you to cry. You will be shipwrecked. When you need me all you have to do is light a candle and throw the water on the ground and Gede will save you. Every family has a head and I will make you the head of this travelling society. You are already with the spirits. You will travel far and spread the word. Its time. Time to extend the family. That is why you came here. This world's in a lot of trouble and we're going to have to work hard to keep things together. Gede will help you. I work for all of you. It was your good luck to find me..."

I bow my head as she splashes raw alcohol in my eyes, her face swimming before me as if seen through a milky ring of fire, her eyes blazing like windows on another world. "You are welcomed..."

She tells me that we will have to make a second, more dangerous pilgrimage, this time to the northern part of the island, to a remote mountain in the middle of the rainforest that is considered to be the seat of Ogoun Fera, the warrior, the god of iron. We will have to ride horses and wear red scarves in honour of Ogoun and although the way will be hard the spirits will protect us on the trail so long as I remember to say the words, light the candles and pour the water, once for Marassa, the mysterious twins, once for Legba, the opener of the way and once for all the other Loa who follow afterwards.

Then, the ritual complete, Gede abruptly leaves her, Edelle's exhausted body collapsing like a marionette that's just had its strings cut.

After making certain that Edelle is alright I go in search of water, eventually plunging into the swimming pool at the Hotel Olaffson in the vain hope of soothing the burning muscles, banishing even the most remote possibility of sleep. Whatever the substance is that she has coated me with it only reacts all the more strongly with water, my skin blazing as if it were made from pure potassium. Floating like a red hot ember between the black waters and the distant stars I null over the events that have brought me to this point, to my first intimate encounter with the spirits and the start of my real initiation.

Edelle has shown me one face of Voudou yet within the faith, as with all religions, there are two sides, light and dark, cold and hot, Rada and Petro. She has introduced me to the mysteries but we are still no closer to understanding the death magic that brought us here. In the days to come we will have to dig a lot deeper and I can only hope that Edelle's white magic proves strong enough to keep us out of trouble.

July 18th - Carrefour

Altes Paul, the bad bou'ko, smiles thinly, revealing some pretty nifty gold work.

"I am the pope", he laughs, "The pope of Voudou and you are a general of spirits".

Altes is a sorcerer, a man who has worked closely with both the underworld and the island's military leadership, fixing things when needed but only ever for a price. Before meeting him we are warned he could have all of us killed with a snap of his fingers but after I slip him a third degree masonic handshake he takes an immediate shine to us, calling for his son, Jackson, to break out the rum.

Years ago Altes sold his soul to the devil, personified as a hot Loa named Kapitan Kriminal and has at his service a personal guardian, a daemon named Kriminal Lakwa who is represented by the familiar sign of the skull and bones. Judging from the extent of his lands, the numerous animals grazing beneath the surrounding mango trees and the impressive scale of the two temples he presides over it has turned out to be a very profitable deal.

His glory years behind him now he has however something of a hunted look in his eyes as if he knows all too well that sooner or later the devil's bound to come to collect. Twelve months ago he accidentally set himself on fire during a ceremony when he spilled rum on his gown, sustaining third degree burns to his legs which have failed to heal properly, his pronounced limp adding to the impression that he is not long for this world.

When it comes time for us to enter his kongo temple we are forced to enter backwards, shuffling nervously across the threshold into a waiting darkness that reeks of incense, raw alcohol and dried blood. It is here that the ageing bou'ko is said to work the death magic that has made him notorious and here too that according to the rumour mill he manufactures zombies, the proverbial walking dead, one of the most potent of all the island's mythological exports.

Coloured by American propaganda from the period of the first occupation and the inevitable western fears of African culture the legend of the zombie was first popularised by one lieutenant Faustin Wirkus, a renegade marine who went spectacularly bush declaring himself the "white king" of the tiny island enclave of La Gonave, his sensationalised autobiography providing the inspiration for the creaky Bela Lugosi programmer White Zombie released in 1932. But then, that was only a movie.

The interior of the kongo temple is like a bad acid trip. An orange lump of olibanum sends its yellow vapours creeping out across a chamber strewn with skulls and bodyparts, the snarling frozen faces of unwelcoming idols glaring down at waiting altars already clogged with blood, feathers and candlegrease.

The oppressive crimson walls are lined with rickety shelves bearing an impressive collection of ceremonial daggers and assorted cutlery, the incense's cloying vapours seething over the husks of starfish, the moult of a tarantula, speckled seabird eggs and countless amber and green bottles stopped with what look likes the thumbs of apes. There are two large coffins propped up on trestles near the back of the chamber where a large door has been set into the ground beyond which I catch a glimpse of a flight of narrow stone steps leading steeply down into blackness.

Altes knocks three times on the portal to let the spirits know he has company, a mischievous smile creasing his skull like face and for a moment I cannot help but imagine there is something strangely familiar about him.

Altes breaks into a low moan, shivering as he begins to emit a series of slow motion snarls and stutters. He falls to his knees, possessed by the devil, at least so Jackson tells us as he rushes to attend to his stricken father, doing his best to interpret the strangled words so that we might understand them.

Something unimaginable has Altes in its grip now, speaking through him in slurred, selpuchral tones, his body quivering with the effort. Devil or not, whatever it is, it promises it will open the gates of hell itself and raise fire and voices from the pit to welcome us but first we have to promise something in return. We have to consent to take Altes and his son with us on our journey to the holy mountain and so on our return we must furnish the sorcerer with a black goat so that he might work the ritual and call up the magic.

Reluctantly we have little choice but to agree to his terms. Altes begins to slowly relax in Jackson's arms and as the spirit leaves him I suddenly realise why he seems so familiar. In his dark glasses, purple shirt and black felt hat this bony little man is a dead ringer for the deceased dictator and rogue anthropologist Papa Doc Duvalier, who once used his intimate knowledge of the workings of Voudou to hold the magic island in his undisputed sway, whose sombre dress sense and nasal voice seemed to indicate that he too was in permanent thanatophillic thrall to Baron Samdi and the ubiquitous Gede family who have thus far dogged out tracks at every step. Now it seems the devil himself has decided to hitch a ride with us on the journey north.

July 19th - Hotel Oloffson

"Papa Doc was a monster", sighs Aubelin nostalgically, starring out at the thunderheads that have cast the city into premature darkness. "The original monster..."

Aubelin Jolicoeur, dapper as ever in a spotless white suit complete with carnation in the lapel and the inevitable silver headed cane, sits beside us on the long veranda, cradling a mint julep. Aubelin has been here longer than anyone can easily imagine, long enough to have a suite named after him and to appear as a character, Petit Pierre, in Graham Greene's novel, The Comedians.

How he avoided the firing squads hinted at in Greene's fiction and the predatory attentions of the Ton Ton Macoutes, the black garbed bogie men who policed Papa Doc's traumrepublik is anyone's guess but now, like so many other Haitians, he looks back on those days as a halcyon period, a time of strength when the country was still the in-destination for international jet setters and life was even cheaper than it is now.

"But his son was no good!" he adds dismissively, shaking his head at the thought of the old man's weak successor, Baby Doc, who ended up giving away the keys to the kingdom. "He was a bisexual! Not that I have anything against bisexuals I just don't like them holding my country hostage..."

He grins and from somewhere, not far off comes the familiar sputter of gunfire, riding on the coat-tails of the thunder. The rain follows a moment later, coming down by the bucket load as if heaven is sinking and all the angels are frantically bailing out water.

Within Rada, the cool Voudou, the pantheon is fixed, the rollcall of Loa unchanging and immutable but within Petro, the hot Voudou as practised by Altes Paul and his kin, the pantheon is highly unstable with new and ever more exotic Loa cropping up all the time.

Some of the heroes of the original uprising such as Makandal the poisoner, whom the French sentenced to be burned at the stake outside the main church in Port au Prince and the great general Desaline have already returned as Loa to mount the faithful and live again, and I have seen the faces of Stephen Lawrence and Lady Diana adorning sequinned Voudou flags and the backs of brightly coloured taps in the downtown traffic.

"DUVALIER WILL RETURN IN 2001" reads the current crop of neighbourhood graffiti, a thought that no longer seems particularly far fetched.

July 20th - Port au Prince

"The holy sprit cannot compromise with Satan and essentially that's what you do when you compromise with Voudou." Colonel Walker, the head of the American armed forces currently occupying the island, blinks into our camera lens as he effectively dissess Catholicism. The camera is currently riding on Mr Horn's shoulder while Benedict does his best to look like a television anchorman. In the background a group of Special Forces marines loiter in the shade of a palm tree, waiting to board their humvees. Some of them openly sport what appear to be neo-nazi tattoos.

"It's the light and the darkness basically," continues the Colonel, a little red faced now as he tries to clarify his position. "I believe you need a Christian consensus in the nation before you can have a democracy."

The Americans are not popular here and the purpose of their mission to the island is far from clear, presumably something to do with the cocaine trade and the current ambitions of the Bush family. This year 75 tons of the drug were believed to have been moved through Haiti and up to a thousand Colombians working for the big Cali and Medelin cartels are thought to be somewhere in the country.

The Americans are no angels of course. Ever since the young ethnobotanist Wade Davis did his groundbreaking work in the early eighties, isolating the drug used by the secret societies to manufacture zombies and proving the existence of an extraordinary reality lurking behind the outlines of the myth, this country has been perceived by American pharmaceutical companies as something of an adventure playground complete with a ready source of human experiment. Studies involving brain washing, mind control and illicit drug testing are said to be ongoing on several fronts, mostly under the cover of U.N approved charities.

Experimental AIDS vaccines have been tested as a matter of course on some citizens of Port au Prince while others have been deliberately denied treatment so that they might be monitored for long range studies of the diseases progression. If a successful vaccine ever were to be produced the Haitians would invariably be the very last to benefit from it.

Over a hundred children recently died in the festering, harbour front slums of Citie de Soleil after being inoculated by aid workers with a new flu vaccine and up to a thousand adults suffered uncontrollable menstrual bleeding and incapacitating illnesses brought on by an experimental birth control device named NORPLANT, a sort of hormonal version of a nicotine patch that had been implanted beneath their skin during check ups at American backed clinics. Although these reports are routinely denied the truth on the ground is plain to see, as are the psychological problems and escalating suicide rate amongst the armed forces personnel stationed on the ground.

Colonel Walker and his men were recently called out when a Baptist missionary was hacked to death by his congregation in Citie de Soleil and even now seems genuinely bemused by the hostility with which he was met. "We came under spiritual attack. That's the only way I can put it but even when they started rocking the vehicles and throwing stones I knew Christ was on our side. Christ was working in our group."

He tails off, thanking us as a shifty looking American cultural attaché appears behind him, breaking up the interview. The newcomer wears civilian clothes, the image of the Empire State building emblazoned on his tie, a thoroughbred Ivy League spook who is plainly very unhappy about the somewhat candid remarks the Colonel just made to our camera although he swiftly abandons the thought of confiscating our tapes when we flash our BBC accreditation.

Britain is still perceived as an ally and he's rightly confident that the BBC is solid enough not to broadcast anything contentious. "Religious programming", Benedict reassures him. "Strictly non-political." And he means it.

There is more gunfire tonight and I am just preparing to bed down beneath my shroud of mosquito netting on the Olaffson's long upstairs veranda, lighting the candles on the makeshift shrine beside my bed and pouring the water the way Edelle told me when a pigeon comes fluttering in out of the darkness, circling me as I make my various prayers.

There is a rush of displaced air and the momentary sensation of wing tips beating against the side of my face. I raise my hands, palms outstretched and the bird goes soaring away from me, circling around the partition halfway down the veranda and vanishing into the suite next door.

Moments later there is a piercing shriek, closely followed by the crash of falling furniture. I open my door and a slender, young Haitian girl pushes straight past me, scampering into the presumed safety of my room, her eyes wide with fear. She is stark naked, blood streaming from a wound in her leg.

I slowly close the door and reach for a cigarette, trying to get my head around the situation. I try to offer her a towel but she is still too agitated to make any attempt at covering herself, explaining in broken English that she was just drifting off to sleep next door when she was startled by the sensation of falling, as if all her muscles had relaxed at once and she was plunging backwards, right out of her body. She came violently awake, her eyes snapping open to see a shadowy bird circling above her, flying round and round her as if demented. Still half asleep she had been so convinced that the spirits had come for her soul that she had tumbled out of the bed, striking a chair as she fell.

Reaching instinctively for a can of STAY AWAY EVIL (100% genuine SPOOK SHOO with seven advertised Indian powers), a weird little aerosol I picked up in a botannica in New Orleans, I spray it around the eaves of the roof which makes the young Haitian girl feel much relieved. Fafun, for that is her name, lies back on the couch, her sweat streaked body visibly relaxing as the sickly scent of daemon repellent wafts across the veranda.

July 21st - Downtown

When Edelle hears about the incident the night before she becomes very agitated, insisting that Altes Paul is to blame. Sorcerers often send spirit animals out to spy for them, seeing through their eyes at a distance and she suspects that the pigeon that startled Fafun was just such an animal. Absurd as it seems her explanation calls to mind an old pulp story by Robert E. Howard, luridly entitled "Pigeons from Hell", a far-fetched tale of hoodoo in the Louisiana bayous that was based around just such a notion.

Edelle is even more disturbed to hear that Altes and his son will be travelling with us on the journey north. Altes is a "malfetter" she explains, "a guy who just loves to do bad things". Fearing that no good will come of it she busies herself with casting spells and weaving blessings over the red scarves that we are supposed to wear on the trail tomorrow.

Personally I am more than happy to be leaving Port au Prince. Things have gotten a little weird for my liking lately. There were a couple of Americans scrounging around the Olaffson this afternoon, blonde guys with crew cuts, asking too many questions.

I have the distinct impression that someone is keeping an eye on us alright only I don't know if it's just Altes.