Zombies have long been represented in Hollywood films as the depleted husks of people who have had their souls removed, but that is not necessarily how they function in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

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The term ‘zombie’, or zonbi in Haitian Creole, derives from the Central African Kikongo word for spirit, and Haitian talk about zonbis is more centrally concerned with the work done with the disembodied souls rather than the soulless bodies themselves.

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