Anybody who's ever watched a zombie movie knows how to define the term: we're talking living dead; walking corpses; brainless ghouls who prey upon the living.
According to lexicographer Grant Barrett, the word "zombie" is over two centuries old with deep roots in African religious traditions. Even now, practitioners of the Afro-Caribbean religion popularly known as Voodoo (aka Vodou, Voudou, Vodun, etc.) believe sorcerers can resuscitate the dead and force these essentially mindless revenants to do their evil bidding. Some anthropologists think the belief is based an actual phenomenon involving the administration of stupefying drugs.
The concept has so permeated American popular culture that new zombie-related jargon pops up all the time. A zombie PC, for example, is one infected with a malicious program that allows hackers to control it from afar. Zombie debts are forgotten financial obligations revived by money-grubbing debt collectors. There are zombie companies that somehow stay in business despite total insolvency, and zombie marriages in desperate need of counseling from Dr. Phil.
Perhaps the surest sign of the utter zombification of American culture is the existence of a Facebook application enabling members — all in fun, mind you — to recruit one another into the legions of the living dead. Paradoxically, it boasts over 145,000 "active" users.
Read more:
• Interview: Zora Neale Hurston on Zombies
• Back from the Dead
• Zombie History and Haitian Folklore
• Zombies in Popular Culture
• Zombie Movies 101
• Swine Flu + Zombies = Global Ghoul Pandemic!
• Become a Facebook Zombie
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Comments
Personally I am sick to death of zombies and especially zombie movies.That genre has been overdone by Hollywood and TV. Doesn’t anyone have an imagination anymore? That goes double for vampires!!!
Zombies are real, but they aren’t really dead. An evil medicine person captures a person and drugs them into a state similar to sleepwalking. There are neurotoxin extracts of certain plants and animals that can do this. The drugs are periodically re-administered, perhaps in the zombie’s food or drink. In that state, the person does the evil one’s work. Since the person isn’t really dead, sometimes they can be “de-zombified” by removing them from the evil one’s influence. Then, the person can be cleansed of the neurotoxins and restored to health. Often they must go through a (for want of a better word) a de-programming, similar to cult survivors, as well.
Traditionally, the evil one administers these toxins, and the person appears to be dead. The person is buried alive, and, the next night they are dug up and told they are dead and they must do the evil one’s will because they have no will of their own. Drugged and terrified, they believe this.
Most people have nothing to fear from zombies or zombie masters unless you happen to live in a culture which supports these practices. Then, if you do, it’s good to know zombies aren’t really dead. They’re victims of kidnapping and cult abuse, and, as such, they can be rescued and restored.
How do you know this as factual?
How do I know these things? Good question, thanks for asking. I was born and raised in a major city on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, have traveled in the Carribean, and have studied anthropology and natural medicines. In fact, I know what some of these zombie-making substances are, but I won’t say them here because someone out there might read this and try a DIY project.
What I’ve said here is fairly well known in certain circles. As the article said, some anthropologists know about these practices also. The movie “The Serpent and the Rainbow” is based on a true story, of a scientist who went to the Carribean to investigate the plant / animal substances that are used to “make zombies.” He befriended a zombie master, and said he wanted to see if these substances could be used “for good.” The scientist learned what he had come there to learn, although he had to pay dearly for this knowledge, becoming a zombie for a while himself.
In areas where these arts are practiced, people live in fear that they may become zombies, or be harmed by a zombie or a zombie master. Most people there think that zombies really are dead, and that the zombie master has the power to raise the dead. So it is important to realize that zombies are simply victims of kidnapping and cult abuse, and that the only powers that the zombie master has are the powers of fear and of knowing things that most people don’t know.
you remind me of a man
what man?
a man with a power
power of what?
voodoo
who do?
you do?
do what?
remind me of a man
what man?
etc, etc, ad nausea um
thanks to lou and abbot
ZOMBIES ARENT REAL ZOMBIES ARENT REAL YOU GUY ARE REALLY WEIRD MY UNCLES A COP AND HE SAID ONCE YOUR DEAD YOUR DEAD!!!!
I remember watching a documentary AGES ago about the “zombie” medicines. It takes a truly evil person to do such a thing to another person and their family.