Zombie (folklore)

For other uses see Zombie (disambiguation).

A zombie is traditionally an undead person in the Caribbean spiritual belief system of voodoo. Essentially a dead body re-animated by unnatural means, the zombie creates dread among the living. Zombies have become a staple of horror fiction, where they usually engage in the consumption of human flesh. The term "zombism" is sometimes used to refer to the condition or disease associated with being a zombie.

Zombies in voodoo

According to the tenets of voodoo, a dead person can be revived by a houngan or mambo. After resurrection, it has no will of its own, but remains under the control of the person who performed the ritual. Such resurrected dead are called "zombies".

Zombi is also the name of the voodoo snake god of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god." It may also derive from the word zumbi meaning "fetish".

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Villagers believed they saw her wandering the streets in a daze thirty years later [1] (although this was subsequently found to be false [2]). Hurston pursued rumours that the affected persons were given powerful drugs, but was unable to locate anyone willing to offer much information. She wrote:

"What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."[3]

Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Canadian ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books - The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis travelled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person could be zombified by the ingestion of two special powders. The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike' - a wordplay on coup de foudre, 'lightning-strike'), induced a 'death-like' state, the key ingredient of which was tetrodotoxin (TTX). Tetrodotoxin is the same lethal toxin found in the Japanese delicacy fugu, or pufferfish (Tetraodontiformes). At near-lethal doses (LD50 of 1mg), it is said to be able to leave a person in a state of near-death for several days, while the person continues to be conscious. The second powder of dissociative hallucinogens held the person in a will-less zombie state. Davis popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. There remains considerable skepticism about Davis's claims, and opinions remain divided as to the veracity of his work.

Others have discussed the contribution of the victim's own belief-system, possibly leading to compliance with the attacker's will, and causing quasi-hysterical amnesia, catatonia, or other psychological disorders, which are then later misinterpreted as a return from the dead. Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing further highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.

See also: History of Haiti

Zombies in folklore

In the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed that the souls of the dead could return to earth and haunt the living. The belief in revenants (someone who has returned from the dead) are well documented by contemporary European writers of the time. The "draugr" of medieval Norse mythology were also believed to be the corpses of warriors returned from the dead to attack the living.

Zombies in fiction

Zombies are regularly encountered in horror- and fantasy-themed fiction, films, television shows, video games, and role-playing games. They are typically depicted as mindless, shambling, decaying corpses with a hunger for human flesh, and in some cases, human brains.

A zombie with his victim in cult movie Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

Prior to the mid-1950s, zombies were usually presented as mindless thralls controlled like puppets by mystical masters. Sometimes the zombies were reanimated corpses, and sometimes living humans, but never independently malevolent. This changed with the publication of I Am Legend by author Richard Matheson in (1954), the story of a future Los Angeles, overrun with undead cannibalistic/bloodsucking beings. One man is the sole survivor of a pandemic of a bacterium that causes vampirism. Continually, he must fight to survive attacks from the rambling, slow-witted creatures. Although ostensibly a vampire story, it had enormous impact on the zombie genre, particularly the film maker George A. Romero.

Many works of fiction feature zombies who spread their affliction from one to another, in a viral fashion. More often than not, the condition is spread through means of a bite or scratch, and the victim will most likely die and mutate soon after. In others, however, the condition is only acquired after death.

A common plot in zombie fiction is an outbreak of the zombie plague growing out of control, resulting in an apocalyptic scenario. The story then focuses around a small group of survivors attempting to either stop the plague, or merely survive and escape the destruction. In typical horror fashion, zombie fiction rarely has a happy ending, generally ending in a dark or ambiguous manner. Popular causes of zombie outbreaks in fiction include radiation or other toxic chemicals acting on the brains of the dead, evil magic or voodoo, aliens, nanotechnology, the use of drugs, viral infection, and telepathic control.

In fiction zombies can generally be disabled by dismemberment or destruction of the brain and/or upper spinal column. In a few cases the entire body of the zombie must be destroyed, generally by burning, as individual body parts continue to move after being severed from the body. Shotguns seem to be the stereotypical zombie-killing weapon.

Zombies in literature

Template:Spoiler In the novel Perelandra by C.S. Lewis, the zombie Professor Weston acts as the analog of the serpent in the Garden of Eden; this is a rare example of a zombie who can talk, as it is actually being controlled by a demon.

In the Xanth series by Piers Anthony the zombies are re-animated by a magical talent held by the "Zombie Master" Jonathan. He can re-animate any creature, human or otherwise, and have it under his personal control. Even when he kills himself, he returns to life as a member of the undead. The zombies of Xanth can continually fall apart without losing any mass.

The character of Reginald Shoe in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books becomes a zombie by refusing to stay dead after being shot and killed. He later forms a support group for other undead, claiming they are merely "differently alive". Several other Discworld zombies, including Mr. Slant, work as unsympathetic lawyers. This is one of the few areas of fiction where zombies retain all memory and cognitive function. Indeed according to Mr Slant it increases. They can however only return if they have sufficient reason.

In contemporary horror fiction, Leisure Books has published Brian Keene's debut novel The Rising and its sequel City of the Living Dead, which deal with a worldwide apocalypse of intelligent zombies, apparently caused by demonic possession. Walter Greatshell's novel Xombies is about a plague that turns women into the undead.

In popular fiction: The 2005 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling, an Inferius is essentially a zombie, a dead body controlled by a dark wizard's spells. The 2006 Stephen King novel, Cell, involves a zombie invasion or takeover caused by radiation emitted by mobile phones (commonly called cell phones, hence the title).

In comics, ZombieWorld: Winter's Dregs and its sequel Champion of the Worms feature the undead, as well as Steve Niles' Dawn of the Dead adaptation and Walking Dead series. In the comic series The Goon by Eric Powell the prominent villain is a necromancer who constantly rejuvenates his undead army by employing lepers to rob the graves of the town cemetery.

Zombies in film

Although the depiction of zombies in film has recently become much more varied, they were originally presented in White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932) as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician/overlord. This depiction continued through the 1930s until they started to move around more of their own accord, as in I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943).

A young zombie (Kyra Schon) feeding on human flesh, from Night of the Living Dead (1968)

In 1968, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead premiered. Critics initially reacted negatively to its depiction of cannibalism, gore, and pessimism, but the film soon developed a strong following and is now considered a modern classic. Though cannibalism in horror was nothing new at the time, the movie standardised the practice of eating human flesh in zombies, and created new rules still in use today, such as a severe head injury being the only way to kill a zombie. Romero's even more successful sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978), can be regarded as the father of the modern zombie movie subgenre. The third entry in the series was Day of the Dead (1985), followed two decades later by the fourth entry Land of the Dead (2005).

Internationally, Dawn of the Dead was released under the name Zombi, inspiring Italian director Lucio Fulci to create Zombi II (1979), an unofficial sequel to Dawn of the Dead, which would be released in North America as Zombie and spawn its own series. In America, Dan O'Bannon's 1985 movie, Return of the Living Dead, took a more comedic approach to distinguish his movie from George Romero's; it had the zombies hunger specifically for brains instead of all human flesh.

After the mid-1980s, the subgenre became mostly relegated to the underground. Although director Peter Jackson made a notable entry with the ultra-gory Braindead (1992), and Michele Soavi received rave reviews for Dellamorte Dellamore (1994), it was not until the next decade's box office successes (the Resident Evil movies (2002, 2004), 28 Days Later (2002), the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004), and homage/parody Shaun of the Dead (2004) ) that the zombie subgenre began to resurface, even allowing George Romero to create a fourth part to his zombie series.

Although 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle claims it is not a zombie film (the 'Infected' are not dead), it shares all of the basic characteristics of a zombie movie, and references the genre. modern variety is much faster than the shambling hordes of the earlier generation.

Around the turn of this century, there have been numerous direct-to-video (or DVD) zombie movies made by extremely low-budget filmmakers using digital video. These can usually be found for sale online from the distributors themselves, rented in video rental stores or released internationally in such places as Thailand.

See also: List of zombie movies

Zombies in gaming

Zombies are common foes in horror-themed computer and video games. One of the earliest zombie video games, Lucasarts' Zombies Ate My Neighbors was a Sega Genesis favorite. And the influential Resident Evil for Sony Playstation and Nintendo Gamecube has spawned at least 5 sequels, as well as 3 remakes.

Many other genres, especially fantasy role-playing and adventure games, also prominently feature zombies as enemies. Some titles, such as Stubbs the Zombie and the browser-based Urban Dead, put the player into the role of the zombie itself.

Zombies also frequently appear in fantasy-themed trading card games like Magic: The Gathering, as well as in traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. There is also an award-winning tile-based strategy boardgame entitled Zombies!!! in which players attempt to escape a zombie-infested city.

See also: Zombies in computer and video games

External links

• Howstuffworks: How Zombies Work - discusses voodoo origins of zombies.
• The Ultimate Zombie Book List A listing of many zombie-related works of fiction.