Origin of the Zombie

A zombie or zombi is an animated human body devoid of a soul. In contemporary versions these are generally reanimated or undead corpses, which were traditionally called "ghouls." Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodoun.

According to the tenets of Voodoo, a dead person can be revived by a bokor or Voodoo sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Voodoo snake god Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god." There also exists within the voudon tradition the zombi astral which is a human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie

Types of Zombies

1.Philosophical: Found in literature on philosophy and consciousness, these zombies appear to be normal human beings, yet they are completely devoid of subjective consciousness. They sort of shuffle around like they are on a heavy dose of Thorazine.

2. Haitian zombies were once normal people, but underwent zombification by a "bokor" or voodoo sorcerer, through spell or potion. The victim then dies and becomes a mindless automaton, incapable of remembering the past, unable to recognize loved ones and doomed to a life of miserable toil under the will of the zombie master. Voodoo zombies are of three varieties:

# ZOMBI ASTRAL - an aspect of the soul that can be transmogrified at the discretion of its possessor

# ZOMBI CADAVRE - a flesh zombie, which can be made to work

# ZOMBI SAVANE - a former zombie, someone who has gone to ground, became a zombie and later returned to life.

3. Chemical: empowered by some sort of toxic waste/chemical.

4. Radioactive: brought to life through the clever or accidental use of nuclear energy.

5. Techno Zombie: Dead corpse animated by means of some sort of technology that usually goes haywire.

6. Electro Zombie: a freak electrical storm/accident causes the dead to rise.

7. The Infected: a rogue microorganism/virus that causes the living to act a lot like Chemical zombies.

8. OCD zombies: These undead come back for a very specific reason. To finish something they started. Once the task is completed, they usually R.I.P.

9. HellSpawn: the dead are usually controlled by a spirit/demon/evil entity.

10. AlienControl: ET's use the legions of the dead to do something dastardly to the living.

11. Cursed: The afflicted are undead until the curse is broken.

12. Hollywood zombies: Originate in Hollywood B movies; they are dead, but "reanimated". One can recognize them by the slow and clumsy walk and the dull expression of their eyes. Totally absent, they seem to follow the sole quest of of human flesh.

Source:
http://www.squidoo.com/zombie
http://zombies.monstrous.com/hollywood_zombies.htm

Archetypal Symbolism

A discussion of zombie symbolism could require the writing of a thesis. However, there are four main themes present with the zombie archetype:

1. Death. To be confronted with a zombie is to be confronted with our own mortality. Humans go to great lengths to obscure the remains of our dead, especially our loved ones. Our dead are made up and dressed up to hide the ugliness of decomposition. Zombies remind us that no one will escape the inevitable death experience.

2. The Unknown Familiar. In many zombie movies, we see the transformation of a friend, brother, sister, mother, or father into a decayed, rotten walking death that attacks and devours. All familiarity is lost when the loved one dies and comes back to life; all morality vanishes and is replaced by taboos such as cannibalism and incest.

3. Monster of Modern times. The Night of the Living Dead was one film that provided an existential mockery of the horror and utter lack of regard for human life apparent in the Viet Nam war in the 1960s. Zombies reflected the same motiveless and absurd gruesome behavior and carried on in the same nihilistic fashion as was perpetuated by this senseless war.

3. Power and Exploitation. Zombies are easily worked by their owners for long hours and are often seen exploited in this fashion in zombie movies. Zombies of the Haitian variety illustrate a loss of conscious control and free will, and thus, a reduction to the level of animal. Deprived of their humanity by their master, they are forced into slavery through exploitation.

4. Apocalypse. Movies reflect the consciousness of the culture in which they are produced. Japan had Godzilla in the wake of nuclear attack; the United States had zombies that appeared at the height of the Cold War paranoia. Due to the decadence of humankind, zombies struck a society spiritually void and consumed by violence. Unlike the Godzilla archetype of a great strange "other" bringing death and destruction to the innocent, zombies are the manifestation of the personal and collective shadow of a society that is capable of perpetuating such devastation. One by one, friends and loved ones are zombified, and their numbers increase exponentially until we are all consumed by a psychic, spiritual, and physical plague of our own making.

http://zombies.monstrous.com/symbolism.htm#exploitation

MOTHER GOOSE & GRIMM

By Mike Peters © 1996 Grimmy Inc.

1996 Grimmy's Home Page

Hollywood Zombie Archetype

Other more macabre versions of zombies have become a staple of modern horror fiction, where they are brought back from the dead by supernatural or scientific means, and eat the flesh (or the cerebral matter) of the living. They have very limited intelligence, and may not be under anyone's direct control. This type of zombie, often referred to as a Romero zombie for the filmmaker that defined the concept, is archetypal in modern media and culture.

Zombies are very popular in horror- and fantasy-themed entertainment. They are typically depicted as mindless, shambling, decaying corpses with a hunger for human flesh, usually created or re-animated through scientific means. Fictional zombies have a long history in Western culture, dating back to the 1600s, with many evolutions of the concept from literature to films and beyond. Zombies have appeared in countless films and media.

Photo by Joel Friesen. This photo is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
In short: you are free to distribute and modify the file as long as you attribute its author(s) or licensor(s).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie

Zombie Powers

1. Zombies never sleep, and they are incapable of fatigue.
2. Zombies are impervious to pain and require no air to breathe.
3. As the undead, they have an insatiable desire to consume life.
4. They are immune to drugs, poisons, gases, extremes of temperature and pressure, high voltage electricity, suffocation, and drowning.
5. Zombies can suffer great damage to their bodies (including dismemberment) without being adversely affected. Dismembering the legs will render the zombie immobile, but the creature will still continue to subsist. Likewise, decapitation will incapacitate the body, but the head will still "live".
6. Zombies don't possess any superhuman strength, nor do they have a night vision, a characteristic usually common to undead monsters.
7. Zombies come in disguise and brutally tear you to pieces (Yikes!)
8. Some zombies are also vampires (double yikes!)
9. Zombies can quickly spread their undead scourge through contamination.
10. Zombies are the greatest threat when they present in numbers.

Becoming a Zombie

Haitian Penal Code:

Article 249. It shall also be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made against any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the person had been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.

The methods of creating and controlling zombies vary among bokors. Some bokors use blood and hair from their victims in conjunction with voodoo dolls to zombify their victims. Others methods of zombification involve a specially prepared concoction of mystical herbs, in addition to human and animal parts (sometimes called "coup padre").

Ingestion, injection, or even a blow dart may be used to administer the potion variety. When these substances come into contact with the victim's skin, bloodstream or mucous membranes, the victim is rendered immobile within minutes, succumbing to a comatose-like state resembling death. The victim retains full awareness as he is taken to the hospital, then perhaps to the morgue and finally buried in a grave.

The bokor then performs an ancient voodoo rite; taking possession of the victim's soul, and replacing it with the loa that he or she controls. The victim's "trapped" soul is usually placed within a small clay jar or some other unremarkable container. The container is wrapped in a fragment of the victim's clothing, a piece of jewelry, or some other personal possession owned by the victim in life, and then hidden in a place of secrecy known only to the bokor.

The bokor raises the victim after a day or two and administers a hallucinogenic concoction, called the "zombi's cucumber," that revives the victim. Once the zombi has been revived, it has no power of speech, its past human personality is entirely absent, and the memory is gone. Zombis are thus easy to control and are used by bokors as slaves for farm labor and construction work. One case in 1918 involved a voodoo priest named Ti Joseph who ran a gang of laborers for the American Sugar Corporation, took the money they received & fed the workers only unsalted porridge. Indeed, giving a zombi salt is supposed to restore its personality, and send it back to its grave and out of the bokor's influence.

Source: http://zombies.monstrous.com/becoming_a_zombie.htm

Canadian ethnobotanist, Wade Davis, 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 traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), induced a 'death-like' state because of tetrodotoxin (TTX), its key ingredient. Tetrodotoxin is the same lethal toxin found in the Japanese delicacy fugu, or pufferfish. At near-lethal doses (LD50= 5-8µg/kg)[2], it can leave a person in a state of near-death for several days, while the person continues to be conscious. The second powder, composed of dissociatives like datura, put the person in a zombie-like state where they seem to have no will of their own. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. There remains considerable skepticism about Davis's claims,[3] and opinions remain divided as to the veracity of his work,[citation needed] although there is wide recognition among the Haitian people of the existence of the "zombie drug". The Voodoon religion being somewhat secretive in its practices and codes, it can be very difficult for a foreign scientist to validate or invalidate such claims.

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Haitian Zombie Lexicon List

• LOUP GAROU - werewolf; the bizango roaming queen is supposed to be a loup garou.
• DJAB - Devil, evil force, baka
• MANGÉ MOUN - "to eat people", and euphemism for killing someone
• PWIN - the magic force invoked to carry out the wishes of a witch or of the bizango society
• REINE VOLTIGE - the roaming queen, known to be a werewolf; the four reines voltiges carry the sacred coffin during bizango processions.
• SHANPWEL - a term used in reference to secret societies; misused as a synonym for bizango, but more properly applied to the bizango's members
• TETRADOXIN - a neurotoxin found in blowfish and other animals, whose effect is to block nerve signals by stopping the transportation of sodium ions at cells
• ZOMBI ASTRAL - an aspect of the soul that can be transmogrified at the discretion of its possessor
• ZOMBI CADAVRE - a flesh zombie, which can be made to work
• ZOMBI SAVANE - a former zombie, someone who has gone to ground, became a zombie and later returned to life.
• CIANOSE - blue skin tone caused by oxygen deprivation

How to Destroy Zombies

The manner in which a zombie is destroyed depends on the type of zombie it is.

Hollywood Zombies

Fire. Extreme amounts of electric current. Direct and extreme trauma to the brain, such as driving a bullet, a drill, a long knife, a hammer, or some other blunt object into the creature's skull.

Source: http://www.squidoo.com/zombie

Voodoo Zombie

The proper incantation and treatment of a the zombie artifacts such as the voodoo doll can harm the zombie and even destroy it. He can also be put to final rest through the appropriate voodoo ceremony, which forces the loa from its body. When a zombie tastes either salt or meat, he recovers his past personality and becomes aware of his state, immediately returning to the grave.

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