Damned Scared of Zombies

On My Fear of Zombies by J.G.

Few people can imagine themselves writing a treatise on their own fears without coming to some conclusion and change. After I write this I don’t know if I will come to some honest conclusion about my fears or if I’ll just sound a little more paranoid. I keep seeing the many different incarnations of the George Romero movies coming back to bite us on the ass & I wonder, “Is this a foretelling of the future or are we already zombies with our DSL’s, Wi-Fi, Mp3’s and the like swimming in our brains?” But, specifically, what do I dread? Is it the bite, or the rending of my body, my brains being consumed, or is it loss of brains from the cranial extraction? I am going to try answering this in my essay today, which has really taken some time for me to understand in my own soul and dread.

I have seen almost any zombie movie I could find, from the Bela Lugosi “White Zombie”, through Laura Gemser’s, “Erotic Night of the Living Dead” (which should not be seen by anyone! Trust me!), and of course, the Romero flicks giving us the main ideas of the mythos of zombie overruns. Then of course there are always the remakes of each of those movies, which were either close to the amazing fear-factor of the movies or more odd or depressing than the originals. “Night of the Living Dead” the original was good & creepy in a paranoid fashion with a tragedy of the sick (bitten) child versus the blandness of the remake where a woman played out the gun wielding role trying to lead the survivors.



So what am I afraid of? Logic dictates the idea that if can’t be seen or touched it doesn’t exist thus there should be no fear of the unknown or the unseen? And yet, we believe in God & Santa Claus, UFO’s and Atlantis, the Abominable Snowman & ‘la chupacabra’, in some form or another. I am not being sacrilegious or cruel to the idea of faith in our lives, and I still follow my beliefs and the hope of life after death being a glorious paradise where I’ll see my friends & family again. But if I can believe in that, then why can I not in believe in zombies? Why not a reanimated corpse arising from the grave to maul & haunt me? After all, there are cult-like fetish groups more numerous for this freakiness than there are Trekkies and people who dress in Halloween costumes. Some people feel themselves as vampires, or lycanthropes (were-creatures such as wolves, leopards and the like) or any other resurrected from-beyond persona including elves, faeries, and the types of people living from the past into this life. And I don’t just mean people dressing up for Renaissance fairs or such fun: I’m talking real people who feel the life of a real pirate from the days of the Spanish Main is acceptable.



So what am I afraid of? Thus, a definition of the fear is possible is necessary for the resolution of the problem isn’t it? In other words, what is a zombie? According to Dictionary.com website, the word ‘zombie’ means:

1. (In voodoo)
a. the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.
b. the supernatural force itself

2. (Informal)
a. a person whose behavior or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton.
b. an eccentric or peculiar person.

So I am afraid of a lifeless corpse reanimated for evil purposes? I actually am in all honesty. After all, people who believe they are vampires, lycanthropes, or even pirates have one flaw fatal to them and even hopeful to other: rest. When the moon is not full, or when dawn comes, they go back to their own skin, coffins or the pirate flag comes down and the magic goes away. Zombies are not going to rest, moving until their bodies collapse and die or they are killed; they have no will or conscience in any matter, thus they lack a soul, and thus they ARE to be feared.

Something my granddad used to tell us. You know Macumba? Voodoo. My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." – Ken Foree, -
Dawn of the Dead (1978)



In the old Greek mythos of Hades, which later became the biblical Hell, the word was a listing for a land where the dead roamed after their life. Hell was where people went after death to be punished by the fallen angel Lucifer, who ran the underworld as its' evil god. Thus there is a difference in the placement of the souls: one believing in the Greek philosophies would accept death calmly, knowing there is nothing more than quiet and darkness. In the oldest traditions, death and Hades was where you wanted to go, thus the money placed over the eyes to pay the ferryman Charon to carry the dead over the River Styx. Thus Hades was not bad, just dull. Hell, however, was where the souls of the damned went (and go) because of the punishment of sinners of this life against God & man. In other words, you are harvested from the grave by the soul, and tossed down among the flames to burn and suffer for all eternity. An everlasting heat of chaos & misery for those who have made their life of being cruel or selfish; kind of ‘get what you deserve’ in the end, no matter what happens now.

But zombies have risen from the grave, thus lacking a soul, and thus the punishment of Hell. And if there are that many souls and bodies that the flames overflow, then we’re seriously screwed! You have to accept and admit to yourself, that if the dead rise, then we the living have brought Hell to earth. Did we do it because of amoebas from space, Biblically, or through a misuse of biochemical agents? After all, aren’t those the premises of “Night of the Comet”, “House of the Dead”, or “28 Days Later”? So if the premise of the dead rising being a staple of fiction, shouldn’t that mean that someone somewhere has had this overwhelming them for some time? I Am Legend was more vampires than zombies, but undead is undead, and light is a variant deterrent to a bullet to the head. And, the weakness to the light was the only deterrent, but the overwhelming numbers scared the ungodly crap out of me.

Now what should I fear? A blow to the head will usually end the reign of the creature, but either physical strength of superior marksmanship is a must. After all, when a person is taught to shoot, they are taught to hit the target, just to know they can connect a bullet to a shape. Later you go into smaller targets, like a quarter or a head-shot. But for the average person, to collapse a head would require a shotgun blast to scatter the skull with a minimum of accuracy. After all, a blast would send buckshot everywhere, thus making a grotesque mess but allowing for the all-encompassing head shot. And if not, be honest – have you ever hit someone in the jaw or head? Have you ever rabbit-punched another person in a fight? Or clipped them in the jaw and knocked them down without getting bitten in return? That’s the small fear inside the fight with the zombie: any transmission of blood to your system, such as through saliva, bites, or spitting/spraying would mean eventually you’d turn into one of the undead, a walking corpse, and have no will of your own, destroying those you loved or protected. The only relief of this would be either you being killed or killing yourself. After all, zombies want brains more than flesh, blood or intestines. I have to assume that they want something ‘living’ from the person they’ve killed, such as still-moving corpuscles in the blood, something in the DNA from the heart charging through the dying, or the brains for something in the electro-thingies of the grey matter.

Zombies come from the old religion of voodoo, meaning they have died, and have been raised from the dead to be enslaved by an evil sorcerer. The zombie has no will of its’ own, as does what it has been programmed/ordered to do until such time as it’s released or dies. The case of Clairvuis Narcisse is the most famous one in the current times. He was put under his spell in the mid-60’s, and was released from his captor when the sorcerer died thus not injecting him constantly with the mind-altering drugs needed to keep him under control as a ‘zombie’. This has been the basis of many of the theories in modern times, thus the social commentary angle reaches into movies: ‘we are zombies to our needs, doing without thinking’ as a general idea correlating the movies to our existence. We are social beings, and in that sense, the zombies gather in mobs to attack us, roving and hunting in packs like hyenas. Even if they’re the slow-shambling zombies they will still swarms & overwhelm us as humans, and thus we’re either food or followers. And that’s the other fear: becoming one. After all, wouldn’t that be your personal Hell? Not the damnation of death itself but the lack of rest and peace the body would deserve in its immortal repose? Don’t you want to see your loved-ones again instead of shuffling or competing for sustenance on a daily basis? Don’t we all deserve to die peacefully?

I am still curious what I fear? The attack when they kill me? That I’d have to work at killing them? That there’d be too many, or they’d be too powerful or disgusting? That I could become one, maybe in the ultimate conformist society? After all, they kill and move. No one ever notes them sleeping or hiding in any way, thus making them terrifically frightening. Is it the loneliness that I use now for my art & time away from normal society, or that I can use it as an excuse to keep people at a distance? Could it be a combination of all those things?

Maybe it’s inside me to not want to live lonely, with the dead around me, lifeless people with no dreams or wasted lives. That could be the parallel to living as I do now: I am becoming a zombie as my dreams die a little more each day. I can’t force them onto the world or into people’s hearts and minds. They have to grow like a sapling in the dirt, fertilized with the crap of ennui and destitute feelings. I keep writing these blogs because that seems to be my lot currently: doing but not living, waiting but just hoping, creating but letting it rot in quiet solitude like the flesh of the undead.

Maybe that’s why I fear the zombies more than anything else. Anything else has a weakness; even a serial killer can change, be executed or die at the hands of a bigger predator. Zombies are, period. They exist for the lack of death, and that is our weakness: lacking.

I guess I have good reasons to be scared.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_%28disambiguation%29 – zombies everywhere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie - the living dead then & not & where they come from

http://www.zombiesurvivalwiki.com/ - Zombie survival site

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zombie - zombie definition

"Zombie" - Dictionary.com - Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 05 Jul. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zombie >
http://www.raptureready.com/ - it’s coming people!

http://www.raptureready.com/rr-special_place_in_hell.html - See A Special Place in Hell

http://www.swagga.com/voodoo.htm - religion not sensationalism

http://www.religioustolerance.org/voodoo.htm - religion with details including the zombie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvius_Narcisse - a real case of ‘zombification’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Serpent_and_the_Rainbow - sensationalism & fear

http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/I_Am_Legend - the books and movies, dealing more with vampires than zombies but still very creepy.

http://comicbooks.about.com/od/comicbookreviews/fr/iamlegendgn.htm - graphic novel

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/ - Yes, necessary reading today.

http://www.zombiejuice.com/zsurvival/index.html - more to learn: ‘Know your enemy’.

http://www.zombiejuice.com/zombies.htm - message board with lots of answers