Haitian Voodoo faithful follow a man reportedly in a trance in the main cemetery of Port-au-Prince, during celebrations for the Day of the Dead. AFP PHOTO

Driven by voodoo and the widespread belief that the dead have supernatural powers, the festival is ingrained in Haiti's turbulent history.

This year the celebrations seemed better attended than in the recent violence-ridden past, in particular by Haitian emigres visiting their families from overseas.

The election earlier this year of President Rene Preval, ushered in a period of relative peace and safety after the turbulence and bloodshed that followed the ouster of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.

Crowds flocked to street festivals known as Rara, marching and dancing to voodoo music, which is a blend of brass band-style jazz and frenetic samba-like drumming.

Above all Haitians visited the graveyards.

Bearing flowers and other gifts, many begged their deceased relatives for guidance about the future and a change of fortune in their deeply impoverished homeland.

"I'm confident the spirit of mother will show me the way out of my problems," 35-year-old Magaline Gerome told Reuters, as she laid a bouquet on her mother's grave in a Port-au-Prince cemetery.

"I live in Boston but I come here every year to talk to and to thank my mother Josiane," said Marc-Jeune Macillon, 46, who visited his mother's grave in the Petion-Ville cemetery.

"When I had to apply for a U.S. visa 10 years ago, I came here to talk to her and she told me in a dream that she would help me to get it," said Macillon, adding that he then got the visa without any difficulty.

Roughly half of all Haitians practice voodoo, which is a blend of West African religions that their ancestors brought over on slave ships and later combined with tribal Indian traditions.

"You have to receive the Lwa in the best possible way, because if you make them happy they'll make you happy too," voodoo practitioner, Joanel Mondestin, told Reuters, referring to the pantheon of more than 400 voodoo spirits venerated across Haiti.