A History of Zombiism, Part One

When you hear the term “zombie,” what comes to your mind? Is it a walking corpse, shambling slowly in search of human brains? Is it a rabid person in a quest for violence or with a cannibalistic desire for flesh? In our culture, zombies have become incredibly popular, from the rapid psychopaths of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later to the shambling walkers/biters/chompers (pretty much every word other than “zombie”) of AMC’s The Walking Dead. And on the fringes of society (but becoming startlingly more commonplace) are those who, in real life, are preparing for some sort of zombie apocalypse or dead uprising.

But one trend I’ve found in zombie films is the tendency to let go of explanations, to see how characters respond to a world infested with dangerous monsters whose origin is simply unknown. Personally, I think that this popular “unknown origin” is just laziness on the part of the writers. Earlier zombie movies did, for the most part, look for solutions to this conundrum, but the cult classic Dawn of the Dead established the first hint at ambiguity in an origin, and subsequent zombie films have taken that to an extreme by embracing the “unknown origin” myth.

So I find myself wondering: where did the zombie myth come from? The answer: Voodoo. That’s right; it wasn’t shadow corporations or hidden military projects or mysterious supernatural issues relating to Heaven and Hell, but, rather, the practice of Voodoo witch doctors. You see, the first historical record of any sort of “zombie” derived from a practice by Voodoo witch doctors known as bokors. A bokor, containing in himself a vast knowledge of natural poisons, would derive a particular concoction that, when ingested, would cause the victim’s heartbeat to slow down so much their body would mimic death. The doctor would slip this poison (often, but not always, derived from the poison of a puffer fish) into the victim’s food or water, then hold back and wait for it to take effect. The victim would “die,” a funeral would be held and they would be buried. They would remain in this state until they really did die from asphyxiation or starvation…except that the witch doctor had other plans.

Under cover of darkness, the bokor – sometimes with the aid of an assistant – would dig the “dead” person up, administer the antidote and revive the victim (unfortunately, studies suggest the success rate at this might be as low as ten percent). Thereafter, the witch doctor would keep the victim constantly drugged with any manner of barbiturates, hypnotics or amnesia-inducing drugs and retain them as a slave. These revived and drugged slaves, who often behaved with highly-diminished brain functions, came to be known as “zombies.”

That’s all I’ll say about them for right now, but we’ll see in part 2 how these became the zombies we know today.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we’ll see how these real-life zombies made their way into popular culture and the silver screen!