Departures of note

William Seabrook, an American journalist and explorer, became notorious for his claim of participating in ritualistic cannibalism during a 1920s trip to West Africa. In his travel book Jungle Ways, he described the taste of human flesh as resembling veal. However, he later admitted that the tribe had not allowed him to join their ritual, and he had instead obtained a chunk of human meat from a medical intern at the Sorbonne University in Paris, taken from a man who had died in an accident. He also recounted a later incident at a garden party hosted by socialite Daisy Fellowes, where a piece of supposedly human flesh was grilled and eaten, though he never learned the truth behind that meal.

Seabrook began his career as a reporter for the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia and later worked for the New York Times. He served as an ambulance driver during World War I and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. His travels took him to Arabia, where he lived with Bedouin tribes and converted to Islam, and to Haiti, where his experiences with Vodou led to his 1929 book The Magic Island, which is credited with introducing the concept of zombies to popular culture. He also wrote about his time in a mental institution in Asylum (1935), after committing himself for treatment for alcoholism.

Seabrook had a lifelong fascination with the occult, which he explored in books like Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today (1940), where he concluded that everything he witnessed had a rational scientific explanation. He married three times, and his second wife, Marjorie Worthington, later wrote a biography of him. Seabrook died by suicide from a drug overdose in 1945 in Rhinebeck, New York.