Haitians Celebrate Annual Festival Of The Dead

Hundreds of revelers attended the Day of the Dead festival in the main cemetery of Port-au-Prince.

The festival in Haiti is known as Fet Gede. Vodou practitioners dress in white and paint their faces to represent the "spirits" called gede, "the dead".

Many in the crowd surrounded the tomb of the first person buried in the Port-au-Prince cemetery, believing it contains the guardian of the dead, known in Haitian Vodou as Baron Samedi.

Revelers offer candles and money to a Vodou priest as he spits moonshine on the faces of practitioners with some of them shaking and stumbling as they receive the spirit of the dead.

The moonshine is known as cleren, rum laced with hot peppers marinating inside.

Wooden bowls with plantains, fish, bread, avocados and anything decorated with human skulls are offered to dead relatives or friends.