The Living Dead

Horror stories featuring blood-sucking vampires and soulless, brain-eating zombies figure prominently in world folklore, writes Colorado State University grad student Meg Burd, because they tap into our collective fears. Vampires are dominating intruders ('outsiders') who seduce and overpower their victims in a manner at once erotic and pathological. Zombies roam the night like drug-addled automatons, wreaking a kind of havoc we associate with mindless rage in the living. Both creatures spread their feverish compulsion to victims like some incurable, contagious disease. In the end, Burd argues, what we really fear is the inhumanity we suspect lurks deep within our fellow human beings. More...