by Bob Curran
Zombies
A Field Guide to the Walking Dead
By Dr. Bob Curran
Illustrated by Ian Daniels
Contents
Introduction
Out of the Tomb
Chapter 1
Back from the Beyond
Chapter 2
When Churchyards Yawn
Chapter 3
Le Gran Zombi
Chapter 4
The Living Dead
Conclusion
Figures from Beyond the Grave
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Introduction:
Out of the Tomb
The jaw is slack with a small trace of dribbling saliva about the lips, the eyes are glazed, and on the bone the skin is desiccated, rotting, and withered; the footsteps are shambling and hesitant. The creature lurches from side to side as it moves, perhaps not truly under its own volition, but certainly with some sort of dreadful purpose. Its movements are sharp and jerky, similar to those of an automaton directed by some power outside itself. It moves relentlessly forward, craving living human flesh.
This is perhaps the representation of the walking dead—the zombie—with which we are all most familiar. It has appeared on both film and television screens so often—in films such as George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead or the cartoon antics of Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, for example—that it has become almost ingrained into our psyche. But is this image an accurate one? Does it truly reflect what we believe the walking dead to be, or is it merely a reflection of a kind of cinematic belief—something that looks eerie and menacing on the big screen? And is the cultural perception of the risen dead a wider one than the slack-jawed zombie of celluloid fame?
The Zombie
Since earliest times, the return of the dead from beyond the grave has always been somewhat problematic. Some would no doubt welcome the return of their loved ones who have passed away; others might fear it. Some might welcome the dead back from the tomb; others might recoil from the returning cadavers. In some instances, the returning dead might signal good luck for a household; in others it might threaten immense and immediate danger. Other households take the return of a loved one from beyond the grave almost as a matter of course.
Strange Tales from Different Times
In 1993, my wife and I interviewed an old man, living in Wheathill (southwestern County Fermanagh in the north of Ireland). He was a well-respected figure in his community and a leader in the local church, but despite these things he told a strange story. As a boy, almost 80 years prior, he remembered his grandfather, who had been dead for less than a year, coming back to the house to sit at the fire and enjoy a pipe of tobacco, just as he had done in life. This had occurred at Halloween, when the dead were traditionally expected to return.
“He just lifted the latch of the door and came in,” the old man informed me, “but we had his pipe ready for him.” He also had a glass of whiskey in order to “warm him after nearly a year in the clay,” and sometimes even a meal (apparently he ate just as heartily as any living person). The old man remembered climbing on grandfather’s knee, but feeling the touch of his skin to be “very cold.”
“Were you not frightened?” I asked him. He shook his head.
“Why would I be?” he replied. “It was my own grandfather.” The only difference that he noticed was that the returning cadaver could not speak. He could, however, communicate by gesture and by facial expression, but very few members of the family seemed to speak to him. He simply sat and enjoyed the goings on around him—the bustle of his relatives and descendants—just as he would have done if alive.
As the evening drew to a close, the family retired to bed, leaving him sitting in front of the fire, smoking his pipe contentedly. When they came down the following morning, he had gone back to the tomb. No real fuss was made; it was just as if a favored relative had been visiting them.
Later, I spoke to the old man’s sister who, without any collaboration or prompting, described the event just as he had told it. The cadaver had returned only once as far as she could remember, but she too remembered seeing it. (She lived close by, but had not been present when the story was related. Moreover, we went straight from the old man’s house to hers.) After that, perhaps her grandfather’s body had been too decomposed for him to return.
A committed Christian, the old man firmly believed that on certain nights of the year, such as Halloween, God briefly permitted the dead to return to bring comfort to their loved ones and provide a reassurance of the Afterlife. Such corpses could only return, he was sure, with God’s permission.
My wife suggested that he and his sister might be playing some sort of joke on us, but, as I said, why should they? Both were respected elderly members of the community, both were well connected in the local church, both were extremely serious when they told the story, and what did they stand to gain by telling it? I, myself, felt inclined to believe them, but I come from traditions that believe the dead might return.
Growing up in an extremely rural and isolated region of the Mourne Mountains in County Down, I was well aware of the strong perception that death was simply not the end, and that those who lay in local churchyards might, from time to time, return to the houses in which they’d once lived to be among their families once more. Whether or not such a return was wholly welcomed is another matter, but it was treated as a fact. On Halloween night several families set an extra place at the supper table in case a dead relative would turn up unexpectedly. One old lady, who lived not very far from us, spread gleeshins (fine dust and residue) from the fire out on her hearthstone before she went to bed on Halloween night. If they were disturbed in the morning, she knew that her dead ancestors had been there the previous evening, and had danced in front of the fireplace as they had done in times past. She would also leave a piece of cake and a glass of whiskey by the fire in case the dead would be hungry when they gathered there—in very much the same way as we children left something for Santa Claus. I have no idea as to whether these items were consumed or not, but there were yet other instances of the returning dead.
The returning dead in these instances were more or less welcomed, but there were others who seemed to rise from the grave with a more malignant purpose. On the edge of the Sperrin Mountains in County Tyrone, a man showed me a coat that he claimed had been torn by the hands of the dead one night as he unadvisedly crossed a graveyard on his way home. Had the material of the coat not given, he assured me, the dead would have torn him limb from limb. The dead hated the living and were always trying to do them harm, he continued. Of course, it might be possible to argue that he had caught his coat on a briar or a low branch as he darted across the cemetery, but he was in no doubt that it had been the clutch of the waking dead, stirred in their graves by his presence above them.
In the same part of County Fermanagh in which I had interviewed the old man, I heard another story. In Arny, near the Cavan-Fermanagh border, another woman died in childbirth, but the child lived and was once again raised by the father. However, each night, the woman would return from the grave and attempt to steal the infant away, and take it back with her to the tomb. The distraught husband used a number of devices to divert the cadaver, including feeding it cheese (which was the woman’s favorite food when she was alive), but eventually he had to place a holy protection on the crib in order to keep the cadaver away. At this the woman stayed in her grave and troubled her house no more; the child was safe. A blind fiddler living near the village of Blacklion in County Cavan told this legend to me. The fiddler named several people who could actually verify it, including a descendant of the child. Some of the returning corpses, therefore, were not terribly friendly toward the living, and might return to th
e world in order to fulfil to their own dark agendas.
None of these dead were the insubstantial, vaguely transparent “ghosts” that passed easily and blithely through walls and doors, which were the legacies of the Victorian era. Rather, these were substantial and solid cadavers that behaved in the same ways that living people did. They could eat a meal, get drunk, perform conjugal rights, fight, and even kill people if they so chose. They could be violent if crossed, for they often had the same emotions as the living, such as love, hate, envy, and so on. They might also carry out tasks that they had left unfinished in life. A well-known story from Cork in the Irish Republic tells of Grace Connor, a seamstress who had been paid to make a wedding dress for a bride, but who died before the job could be completed. Each night she returned from the tomb in order to complete the stitching, working by candlelight to finish the dress that was ready for the wedding day as promised. There are similar stories from the west off Scotland and from many parts of England and Cornwall as well.
Grace Connor
Such beliefs confined are not solely to Western Europe, however. From Romania, for example, Professor Harry Senn recounts a story in his The Werewolf and Vampire in Eastern Europe concerning a traveler who lodged for a night in a rural farmhouse. While he was having a meal with the family, the door opened, and a stranger came in and sat down at a vacant place at the table. He was served a meal along the others, which he consumed. The traveler noticed that the stranger did not speak, though the other members of the family around the table seemed to know him. As each man got up and went back to the fields, he touched the stranger on the shoulder. Eventually the man himself got up and left without a greeting or a word of thanks. The mysterious man was said to have been one of the moroii, the walking dead of Romania, and a former member of the family with whom he was eating. The touching of him on the shoulder was done in order to bring good luck to the household. The moroii were therefore symbols of well being and good fortune for the living. Set against this in Romanian folklore, however, are the strigoii, the evil walking dead who seek to use every opportunity to bring the living harm. These creatures might supernaturally enter houses to violently attack sleepers, causing them injury, and they also went about spreading disease in local communities. They were the template for the idea of the vampire, common in many Eastern European countries and further afield. And there are examples, too, from other cultures where hostile and vicious cadavers return from the grave with the sole purpose of tormenting the living. The idea of dangerous and ambulant corpses is something of a cross-cultural phenomenon.
And there was a religious element to the return of the dead as well. This was tied in with the worship of ancestors, which, arguably, is one of the oldest types of religion there is. In many cultures, the dead were both venerated and looked upon for wisdom and protection. The great men of yore who had proved themselves particularly strong, brave, or possessed of great learning and foresight were often invoked by communities, long after their demise, hoping for their supernatural aid. Perhaps some element of this belief lies at the very roots of a belief in vampires and in zombies. In the latter, it is said, an entire religion—voodoo—has been partly built around such beliefs, as is reputedly the case with many Afro-Caribbean faiths. But it is not just in the Caribbean that such ideas flourish; other peoples around the world, in India, Japan, Tibet, and even in the early days of the Americas, all have looked to the dead and to those who have gone before. Maybe such an idea gives them a sense of continuity, and sanctions immortality and permanence in a rapidly changing and shifting world. It also gives them a sense of security against the worst that life can throw at them.
The concept of the walking dead is therefore a much more complex ideal than the celluloid ambling and slack-jawed zombie would seem to suggest. There are, for instance, both the friendly dead (those who were permitted by God to return to the existence that they had previously enjoyed before their demise, and to bring comfort to their families and descendants) and the hostile dead (those who rose from the tomb with some malignant purpose). There is also the religious element to be considered as well—those who might return to protect and advise their descendants or their communities.
But where do the origins of these beliefs lie and how have they been interpreted by the cultures in which they appear? Zombies seeks to explore how notions of the returning cadavers have come about and the traditions that they have evoked in the human mind. So, take a walk with us now down the dark pathways that are frequented by the ambulant dead in search of some answers. You’ll be in good company!
1
Back from the Beyond
Resurrection, the corporeal return of the body from the grave or from some realm beyond Death, is almost as old as time itself. The origins of the walking dead may lie in ancient mythologies dating far back into the past, describing the return of either gods or great men from the Afterlife. Indeed, if we look at the legends of a number of ancient cultures we find similar tales where such entities are either brought back or return on their own terms.
Today, a vast number of philosophies and religions maintain that when we die it completely marks the end of our involvement in the living world. No matter what Afterlife we imagine for ourselves, it usually marks the end of contact with all that we know and with those whom we know. The grave—however we conceive it—is our final resting place, and from it we cannot return.
Life After Death
In many respects, the world of the living and the dead were often kept separate in many ancient cultures. In Greek thought, for example, once the soul of an individual crossed the River Styx (one of three major rivers in the Underworld), he or she was not supposed to be able to return to his or her former life or to the living world. In some cultures, such as Roman and Greek, as soon as they crossed the River Lethe (another of the Underworld rivers and the one from which we get the word lethargic) and inhaled its vapors, they would forget their previous existence and live in the caverns of the Underworld for eternity, totally unaware of the living world, and all connections with it completely severed.
Greece
And yet in a number of other ancient beliefs, this separation was not always so clear-cut. Indeed, in some aspects of Greek myth, death was not an absolute certainty. A persistent story dating from the time of the Roman writer Virgil, for instance, tells the story of Orpheus, a celebrated musician and monarch of the Greek kingdom of Thrace, who ventured into the Underworld in order to bring back his wife, Eurydice, from the dead. It was said that, while fleeing from the unwelcome attentions of Aristeaus, son of Apollo, Eurydice (her name is sometimes given as Agriope) fell into a pit of venomous snakes, several of which bit her and killed her. Beside himself with grief, Orpheus who besides being a superb musician was also well skilled in the magical arts, resolved to travel into the land of the dead and bring her back to the world of the living. This he did, appearing in the dreadful Underworld court of Hades, king of the dead, and his wife, Persephone. In that terrible court, Orpheus played his lyre so sweetly that he charmed the heart of the awful king, and Hades agreed to let Eurydice go. There was one condition, however: Orpheus must walk ahead of her all the way to the living world and must not look back—if he did so, she would be lost to him and to the living forever. Orpheus led her out of the dark Underworld and toward the light, but he forgot the condition imposed upon him and stole a brief glance backward to make sure that she was following him. At this, Eurydice returned to the dark and to death forever.
River Lethe
Eurydice
This celebrated legend, which has become a classical Greek story, may have been indicative of a belief that was reasonably common in the ancient world: It might be possible to return (or to fetch relatives or loved ones back), from the dead in a corporeal state. The dead person might then continue to enjoy life as he or she had done before, death being only a minor interruption and inconvenience. In fact, a number of cultures believed that death was simply a transition from one form of living
to another, and that the dead frequently noticed little difference between the living world and the Afterlife.
Egypt
The ancient Egyptians, for example, believed that death was but a stage to another phase of existence, which was not all that different from our physical reality. This Afterlife lay in a land far away to the West. Consequently, great Pharaohs were buried with their treasures, so that they would be wealthy in this other existence; their favorite animals, so that they would continue to enjoy their company beyond Death; and their servants, who would continue to serve them in the Afterlife when the sun rose. Their bodies were preserved through a process of mummification, so that they would be whole and vigorous in the Afterlife. But once they had survived the transition from one phase to the other, there seems to have been no way back to the world of the living, in corporeal form at least, for the common Egyptian soul. Perhaps they did not wish to come back.
And yet Egyptian mythology—the ideas of gods and goddesses—is riddled with tales of return from the grave and resurrection. In Egyptian belief, even the act of transition from one world into the other through death involved a descent into the Underworld (and for the Egyptians, it was literally a journey into a subterranean world) and a reemergence, which was still in a corporeal form, just in a new existence. Some of the gods themselves had returned from the jaws of death in physical form.
Indeed one of the oldest gods in the Egyptian pantheon, Osiris, had been resurrected in such a fashion. The earliest reference to this god—who ultimately judged those who had died to see if they were fit for the Afterlife—comes from a group of writings known as the Pyramid Texts, which date from around 2400 BCE, when his cult was already well established along the Nile. In fact, the cult continued (as a mystery cult) for many centuries until its suppression during the Christian era.
