Some of you may be thinking that zombies stemmed from the LSD era; close but wrong. Others think a zombie is the result of frying your brain on other drugs over a lifetime; again close, but wrong. Zombies started as part of Haitian Voodoo folklore where Voodoo priests would work black magic to turn unwanted tribe members into slave workers with no free will; today we call those unfortunate victims politicians who are under the spells of lobbyists. That is another story altogether. The zombie of 50 years ago does not resemble the zombie of today thanks to the 1968 cult movie hit called Night of the Living Dead.
The Modern Zombie Is Born
Night of the Living Dead changed our perception of the zombie forever. The zombie became a member of the walking dead; a creature that hungered for our brains; possibly to replace the ones they no longer had. The new version of the zombie fed our wildest imagination and turned our once savory dreams into nightmares. The new zombies had such a dramatic affect on zombie enthusiasts because for the first time we could see:
• a monster that lived up to our worst fears
• how man could make monsters out of all of us
• that those we laid to rest could walk the earth and eat us for lunch
• that a man made mistake could end in apocalypse
• our immortality confronted with frightening reality
The zombie of old was forgotten almost immediately. These were not people under magic spells; these were blood thirsty ghouls; dead humans with only one goal in mind and we don’t mean getting one million new friends on Facebook.
Feeding Our Fear Of Zombies
We know where zombies started and what they have transformed into over the last century. The question now is; where do they go from here? One of our greatest fears is that a zombie apocalypse could actually occur. The majority of people do not believe that vampires or werewolves our in our future; but could man kind finally create or fall subject too some type of affliction that could produce zombies. Even the most remote of possibilities is enough to add fuel to our fire of fear. Here may be a few of the things we fear:
• a zombie apocalypse would interrupt an episode of American Idol
• the reality show “Survivor” would take an entirely different twist
• zombies will sue for their own life insurance money
• the new phrase will be “he froze like a zombie in headlights”
As you can see there is plenty to be frightened of and it is a far cry from when zombies first started.