Zumbi, and the European wight: the same powers on both shores

SUMMARYZumbi, and the European wight: the same powers on both shores (Nov 6, 2026; user: "see if it connects to the wight"). ZUMBI, Record: Zumbi of Palmares (king 1680–1695), leader of a confederation of 11 towns and 30,000+ people in Pernambuco that held about 90 years (from about 1605). Killed Nov 20, 1695; his head was put on a pike "to dispel any legends of his immortality." Brazil's Day of Black Consciousness is Nov 20. The name ties to the zombi word chain (Kimbundu nzumbi, Kongo nzambi, P795). Pattern: the rulers answered "no death" with the head on display: Zumbi (1695), Boukman at Le Cap (1791, wording to verify). EUROPE'S WIGHTS, Record: Old English wiht means a being or creature; "barrow-wight" is the English word for the Norse haugbúi, the mound-dweller. Norse draugar: undead mound-guards, sometimes immune to weapons, stopped by beheading or burning (sagas; Glámr in Grettis saga). England, 1190s (William of Newburgh, Walter Map): dead men who rose and walked at night; townspeople dug them up, cut out the heart, burned them or cut off the head. Europe's shape-shifters: Thiess of Kaltenbrun (Livonia, trial 1691–92) said he was a werewolf, one of "God's hounds," who fought witches in Hell for the harvest; flogged and banished. The benandanti of Friuli (1570s–1640s) left their bodies to fight for the crops; the Inquisition recast them as witches (Ginzburg). Pattern: Europe's own people held the same knowledge (shape-shifting, spirit battles for the harvest, walking dead). The Church called it witchcraft and tried them, then carried the same label to the Americas. Lens: the power stories are world-wide; who got to keep them and who got called "superstitious" was decided by the courts of church and empire.