Travel: On the Vodun Trail in Benin

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Joshua Hammer

Dancing in Ouidah.

BENIN -  The figure cowered against a wall, and began babbling in an eerie metallic voice. The man was a revenant, an important figure in the indigenous, animist religion known as vodun. Also called Egunguns in the local Fon language, these hooded men, whose identities remain a secret even to their neighbors, are believed to be intermediaries between the living and the dead and often parade through villages, summoning the spirits of departed ancestors. Touching a revenant during a trance, it is believed, can be fatal. Despite the efforts of Christian missionaries, this ancient belief system still has millions of adherents along West Africa’s former Slave Coast, from Ghana to the Yoruba-speaking parts of Nigeria, but especially in Benin. [link]