—"But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?"
—"No; the moun-mò are not zombis. The zombis go everywhere: the dead folk remain in the graveyard.... Except on the Night of All Souls: then they go to the houses of their people everywhere."
—"Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred you were to see entering your room in the middle of the night, a Woman fourteen feet high?"...
—"Ah! pa pàlé ça!!"...
—"No! tell me, Adou?"
—"Why, yes: that would be a zombi. It is the zombis who make all those noises at night one cannot understand.... Or, again, if I were to see a dog that high [she holds her hand about five feet above the floor] coming into our house at night, I would scream: Mi Zombi!"
... Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows something about zombis.
—"Ou! Mannam!"
—"Eti!" answers old Théréza's voice from the little out-building where the evening meal is being prepared, over a charcoal furnace, in an earthen canari.
—"Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;—vini ti bouin!"... The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in to tell me all she knows about the weird word.