The Magic Island is a book by American explorer and traveler William Seabrook. First published in 1929 by Harcourt, Brace & Company, The Magic Island is an account of Seabrook's experiences with Haitian Vodou in Haiti, and is considered the first popular English-language work to describe the concept of a zombie, defined by Seabrook as "a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive."

William Buehler Seabrook was an American occultist, explorer, traveler, journalist and writer, born in Westminster, Maryland. He began his career as a reporter and city editor of the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, worked at the New York Times, and later became a partner in an advertising agency in Atlanta. He is well-known for his writing on, and engaging in, cannibalism.