structural:expansion, structural:scholar_edition
Funerals, the dead, and zonbis

Vodou features complex funerary customs. Following an individual's death, the desounen ritual frees the gwo bonnanj from their body and disconnects them from their tutelary lwa. The corpse is then bathed in a herbal infusion by an individual termed the benyè, who gives the dead person messages to take with them. A wake, the veye, follows. The body is then buried in the cemetery, often according to Roman Catholic custom.

In northern Haiti, an additional rite takes place at the ounfò on the day of the funeral, the kase kanari (breaking of the clay pot). In this, a jar is washed in substances including kleren, placed within a trench dug into the peristil floor, and smashed. The trench is then refilled. The night after the funeral, the novena takes place at the home of the deceased, involving Roman Catholic prayers; a mass for them is held a year after death. Vodouists fear the dead's ability to harm the living; it is believed that the deceased may for instance punish their living relatives if the latter fail to appropriately mourn them.

Many Vodouists believe that a practitioner's spirit dwells in the land of Ginen, located at the bottom of a lake or river, for a year and a day. A year and a day after death, the wete mò nan dlo ("extracting the dead from the waters of the abyss") ritual may take place, in which the deceased's gwo bonnanj is reclaimed from the realm of the dead and placed into a clay jar or bottle called the govi. Now ensconced in the world of the living, the gwo bonnanj of this ancestor is deemed capable of assisting its descendants and guiding them with its wisdom. Practitioners sometimes believe that failing to conduct this ritual can result in misfortune, illness, and death for the family of the deceased. Offerings then given to this spirit of the dead are termed manje mò. The notion of a spirit being encased in a vessel and then used for workings likely derives from Bakongo influences, and has similarities with the Bakongo-derived Palo religion from Cuba.

Another belief about the dead, that of zonbis, is one of the most sensationalized aspects of Haitian religion. Zonbi are often regarded as the gwo bonnanj of the recently deceased that have been captured and forced to work for their master. The gwo bonnanj may then be kept inside a bottle or other vessel. The practice is often linked to Chanpwèl (secret societies), which are suspected of murdering the individual they wish to turn into a zonbi. To achieve this, they may obtain the bones of a deceased person, especially their skull, sometimes by bribing cemetery workers; the skull will often be baptised, given food, and set a particular task to specialise in, such as healing a specific malady. Those intending to take a gwo bonnanj as a zonbi may have to borrow or buy them from Baron Samedi.

An alternative idea in Haitian lore is that it is the body that is turned into a zonbi, in which case a bòkò has seized an individual's ti bonnanj and left the body as an empty vessel that can be manipulated. The reality of this phenomenon is contested, although the anthropologist Wade Davis argued that this was based on a real practice whereby Bizango societies used poisons to make certain individuals more pliant. Haitians generally do not fear zonbis, but rather fear becoming one themselves. The figure of the zonbi has also been interpreted as a metaphor for the enslavement central to Haitian history.