The History Of the Zombie

Like lots of monsters, Zombies have their roots in folklore. According to some researchers, the walking dead originated in Haiti, a country also known for their witchcraft, voodoo and black magic trickery. There are several possible origins for the word “zombie”.  These include jumbie, the West Indian term for “ghost”, and nzambi, the Kongo word meaning “spirit of a dead person”. A law condemning zombie creation went into effect in Haiti in 1835. Article 246 of the Haitian Penal Code classifies the administration of a substance that creates a prolonged period of lethargy without causing death as attempted murder. If the substance causes the appearance of death and results in the burial of the victim, the act is classified as murder.

Although zombies appeared in movies as early as 1919  many people credit George A Romero with setting the standard for modern zombies. In the classic movie “Night of the Living Dead,” Romero portrayed zombies as slow-moving, flesh-eating corpses, reanimated by radiation from a satellite returning from Venus. The radiation affected the recent, unburied dead, and the resulting zombies were invulnerable until someone destroyed their brains or separated their heads from their bodies. In “Night of the Living Dead,” zombies were neither intelligent nor self-aware. They had a very limited use of tools, mostly confined to using blunt objects as cudgels. In Romero’s later work, zombies became somewhat capable of thought, and in some cases self-aware. They still generally moved slowly and had minimal intelligence.

Many movies and video games have used Romero’s concept of zombies. For the most part, zombies are:

  ·        Newly dead corpses reanimated by radiation, chemicals, viruses, sorcery or acts of God

  ·         Human, although some depictions include zombie animals

·         Very strong, but not very fast or agile

·         Impervious to pain and able to function after sustaining extreme physical damage

·         Invulnerable to injury, except for decapitation or destruction of the brain

·         Relentlessly driven to kill and eat

·         Afraid of fire and bright lights

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