Audience member picks a billet that says which body part to stab a Voodoo doll with a long needle, and you, while blindfolded, in fact stab the right body part of the Voodoo doll.

Not just for Halloween. So I was remembering a trick of mine from an old newsletter called Kone Dum Blee which was a code so the way that your assistant handed you the handkerchief signaled which body part the spectator stabbed of the doll's body. If the spectator handed you the handkerchief by the corner it meant one thing, by the middle of an edge, another, and by the middle, another and crumpled up another. The head was #1, the body was #2, the body was #3 and the leg was #4. About 21 years ago!

You would be standing with your back to the action. She hands you the hank and you put it on before turning around and continuing with the effect.

Am trying to find a PDF of Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston about voodoo (vodoo) in Haiti.

The special on TV I watched about the history of zombies shows the difference between the old zombie stories, where a witchdoctor or someone turns them into a zombie. This is the Serpent and the Rainbow type of stuff.

Then it changed to that zombies were caused by some infection (from space?) (got out of a lab?) and if you got bitten by one, you got it too! It was interesting to see the change explained.

So, a voodoo doll is more the old Haiti and New Orleans style. What is popular with the Walking Dead and Resident Evil, etc. (World War Z) is the newer interpretation. There aren't really voodoo dolls in the new zombie stories. By-the-way, they were using the word Vodoo.in the TV show.

So the new Zombies are not related to the Vodoo Zombies.

I was thinking of a different presentation with a voodoo doll connection. Remember the trick where you had a huge hatpin that secretly held stage blood in the supposed jewel at the top, and it was hollow with a place in the middle for the stage blood to come out? There used to be something called 2 coat rubber cement. It could dry, but if two areas got together, they would still stick. Anyway, you put the 2 coat rubber cement on your forearm, and it could really look like you put the big needle through your arm, and a little blood leaked out as you squeezed the bulb.

My idea is to have a stooge put the voodoo doll's pin in the doll's arm, and then holding it hidden (behind their back). You match the location of the stab by putting your big pin in your own arm and everyone is shocked. It really looks creepy. For the right audience, powerful. (Like Walking Dead fans, even though it is the old New Orleans type of Voodoo.)

The Walking Dead is auditioning for some zombies in Georgia episode.

The old style Haiti type zombie was put in that state by diluting fugu poison in baked bread. They would seem dead but actually be alive. They were buried alive for a certain amount of time and then brought out and used as a slave. From the Serpent and the Rainbow.

There is a very good discussion of Vodou going on in the Bizarre section of this Café' now.