William Seabrook – journalist & occultist

William B. Seabrook was a travel writer in the early 20^th century.  Before embarking on a career as a journalist, he served as an Ambulance driver for the French army in WWI, driving to the front lines to ferry wounded back to hospitals.   That was certainly a horrific experience, but not equal to being gassed during the battle of Verdun, the longest battle of the conflict.

A meeting with Aleister Crowley, an English occultist, in 1919 may have laid the foundation for Seabrook’s interest in the supernatural.  Wherever his travels took him, he immersed himself in the exotic.  He participated in voodoo ceremonies, communed with cannibals, and most notably, popularized the term zombie to western culture, not the type we know today but the actual zombies of Haitian origins steeped deep in Voodoo lore.  His interest in the subject was shared with the public in his many bestselling books. 

One of Seabrook’s journalistic adventures took him to Timbuctoo in the early 1930s.  He traveled in a Farman-Loraine from Paris across the 1,600 Trans-Saharan route with refueling stops in Columb Bechar, Reggan, Bindon Cinq, and Gao, the same path Moye Stephens flew in his Stearman dubbed the Flying Carpet.  The air journey was treacherous.  Fierce sand storms could destroy an airplane in a matter of minutes or a fuel top could be missed.  Seabrook’s mission was to retrieve valuable documents about the remote city from Father Yakouba, a former missionary monk of the White Fathers and specialist in the history of West Africa.  The research, steeped in valuable history,  was destined for the French government.