Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse. Brad Steiger

      Mary Ellen Pleasant was a nineteenth-century female entrepreneur of partial African descent who used her fortune to further the abolitionist cause. She worked on the Underground Railroad, aiding escaped slaves and eventually helping to expand routes to California during the Gold Rush Era (art by Ricardo Pustanio).

      Madame LaLaurie was thought to have claimed many lives, and, with her diabolical physician husband, tortured dozens of helpless slaves and others in her attic on Governor Nichols Street and Royal Street in New Orleans.

      “Recent new discoveries are starting to surface from my research that these poor, gruesome-looking individuals that many witnesses saw with organs outside of their bodies were actually zombies that Madame LaLaurie had hidden away so her husband could experiment on them,” Lisa Lee Harp Waugh stated. “As far-fetched as it sounds, it might just be the truth.”

      On April 10, 1834, the New Orleans fire department, responding to a call that a fire had broken out at the LaLaurie Mansion, discovered a boarded door on the third floor. Forcing the door open to be certain no smoldering fire lurked behind it, the firemen were horrified to find a number of slaves in the room. Some were dead, but some were restrained on operating room tables, their bodies hideously and cruelly cut open. Firemen were shocked as they found human body parts and organs scattered about the room. In a cage they found a slave whose bones had been broken and reset to make her look like a human crab. Other slaves had been the victims of sex change operations. Some had their faces slashed and distorted so that they were transformed into hideous monsters.

      While the firemen were dealing with their terrible discovery, Mary Ellen Pleasant is said to have been seen leaving the house carrying some charred papers bound tightly with the skin of a cotton mouth snake. Mama Sallie of Compton, California, a present-day member of Mary Ellen Pleasant’s secret society, claims that all Mary Ellen left them regarding zombification is one document that contains three spells that would turn a living man into a zombie on the spot. According to zombie lore, the most famous blackroot magic hex and spell book of Dr. John’s zombification techniques is said to have been walled up in a secret place by Mama Mary Ellen.

      “One sheet is all that Mama Mary she left us,” Mama Sallie said. “If more spells existed and they were in her possession, then they are hidden fast away.”

      The dark book of powerful Voodoo secrets, “The Pleasant Book of Dark Deeds,” is said to be kept under lock and key in a secret vault in Marin County, California. The book is reported to contain spells handed down from generations past, and some on zombification are said to be found therein, including the personal writing of how Mary Ellen Pleasant made an army of zombies help build a city.

      In 2007, actor Nicolas Cage bought the legendary LaLaurie Mansion for $3.5 million. Cage was well aware that the LaLaurie Mansion had long been known as the most haunted house in New Orleans—some say, the United States.

      Cage sold the house in 2008, admitting that he had never slept there. At any given moment, he said, he was aware of six ghosts in the mansion. He and his family had dinner in the mansion on occasion, but he allowed no one to sleep there. He had respect for the spirits, and he said that he had turned down half-a-dozen requests from parapsychologists to come to the house to research the ghostly inhabitants.

      

Zombie Brides for Sale

      Zombie brides were the most sought-after creatures throughout the South after the U.S. Civil War. Creole zombie brides were considered the most beautiful; and after men saw Little Sister Sally on Dr. John’s arm, every rich man in the city wanted to have a Zombie Bride of his own to show off at the next major social event.

      Of all the women who gained Dr. John’s special attention, his favorite may have been a very young Voodoo Queen of great beauty. He called her “Little Sister Sally” just because he liked that name, and the way it rolled off his tongue. Sally, whose real name was Alice Slowe Jefferson, was the youngest Voodoo Queen ordained, and she was personally taught by Dr. John, who also zombified her alive.

      Though he was advanced in age and she was a mere girl of 12 when he took her into his fold, some believe that it was Little Sister Sally who had taken possession of Dr. John’s dark book of all the 100-plus spells on how to zombify someone. Even today, members of the Secret Society of Dr. John believe that Sister Sally is the only complete Zombie Queen who ever existed. Through some dark, mysterious spell that Dr. John perfected in St. Louis Cemetery Number One, the exotic Creole beauty, the daughter of a rich plantation owner, remains alone as the world’s most perfect youthful living Zombie Queen. Zombified on her seventeenth birthday, Little Sister Sally has never had to fear the passage of time.