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104-403: A zombie walk is an organized public gathering of people who dress up in zombie costumes. Participants usually meet in an urban center and make their way around the city streets and public spaces (or a series of taverns in the case of a zombie pub crawl ) in an orderly fashion. Zombie walks can be organized simply for entertainment or with a purpose, such as setting a world record or promoting

208-550: A Russian zombie walk in support of Pussy Riot in Omsk , Siberia was banned by the local government. In October 2015, a shooting occurred at the ZombiCon in Fort Myers, Florida . 1 person was killed and 5 others were wounded. Lawsuits led to cancellation of the event the next year. Zombie A zombie ( Haitian French : zombi ; Haitian Creole : zonbi ; Kikongo : zumbi )

312-504: A Zombie (1943) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Frankenstein by Mary Shelley , while not a zombie novel per se , foreshadows many 20th century ideas about zombies in that the resurrection of the dead is portrayed as a scientific process rather than a mystical one and that the resurrected dead are degraded and more violent than their living selves. Frankenstein , published in 1818, has its roots in European folklore, whose tales of

416-661: A charitable cause. Originating in North America during the 2000s, zombie walks have occurred throughout the world. Zombie walks are relatively common in large cities, especially in North America. Some have been established as annual traditions, though others are organized as spontaneous flash mob events or performance art . The complexity and purpose of zombie walks varies. As an advanced technique to heighten interest and realism, some zombie mobs will "eat" victims to create new zombies, in sight of onlookers. Some participants occasionally dress up as soldiers who are called in to contain

520-634: A charity event helping to raise awareness and money for the Brain Foundation of Australia. On October 30, 2009, zombie walkers in Grand Rapids , Michigan attempted a second run at the zombie mob world record. An estimated 8,000 participants braved rainy weather to gather in Calder Plaza outside of Grand Rapids City and County buildings. The event was coordinated by Rob Bliss, organizer of Grand Rapids's first zombie walk. Volunteers collected signatures from

624-507: A crowd of over 1,100 zombies, a number confirmed by Toronto Police Services. At the time, this was the largest zombie walk on record. A zombie march in Brisbane on May 25, 2008 set an unofficial record of over 1,500 participants, according to media reports. On June 21, 2008, a zombie march took place in Chicago with over 1,550 zombies estimated, setting a new unofficial record. On October 31, 2008,

728-463: A dead person can be zombified by a small child. It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma . It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can zombify a person by killing and possessing the victim's body to force it into slave labor. After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombified workers controlled by

832-468: A girl and his love for human flesh, and Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) (released as Cemetery Man in the U.S.). In 1980s Hong Kong cinema , the Chinese jiangshi , a zombie-like creature dating back to Qing dynasty era jiangshi fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, were featured in a wave of jiangshi films , popularised by Mr. Vampire (1985). Hong Kong jiangshi films were popular in

936-465: A lease renewal agreement with the building owners. Despite the film festival's change of venue, TFO continues the walk as part of a free all-ages event, the "Carnival of the Dead", which includes food trucks from local vendors, make up stations, live bands, contests, games, and a projected movie in the park at the end of the night. The streets in downtown Sacramento comprising the walk's route are shut down by

1040-827: A local Pittsburgh late night horror and science fiction television program. The Pittsburgh festival plays host to the annual Walk of the Dead as well as a zombie ball , costume contest, concerts, and celebrity guest appearances, and also serves as the headquarters of The It's Alive Show 's World Zombie Day, a world hunger charity event. Zombie walks are also a regular occurrence at ZomBcon, "the world's first zombie convention" which takes place every October in Seattle . Apart from zombie walks, ZomBcon also features panel discussions with zombie authors, actors and artists, workshops, film screenings, and other activities for zombie fans . ZomBcon also organizes Seattle's annual Red, White and Dead zombie walk every July. The first zombie walk world record

1144-419: A modest success, nearly outstripping Romero's Day of the Dead for box office returns. After the mid-1980s, the subgenre was mostly relegated to the underground. Notable entries include director Peter Jackson 's ultra-gory film Braindead (1992) (released as Dead Alive in the U.S.), Bob Balaban 's comic 1993 film My Boyfriend's Back , where a self-aware high-school boy returns to profess his love for

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1248-688: A new record for the largest gathering of zombies. The record was set at the Big Chill Festival in Ledbury , England, on August 6, 2009. There were 4,026 zombie mob participants. On October 25, 2009, the biggest recorded gathering of zombies in the Southern Hemisphere occurred in Brisbane, with over 5,000 participants reportedly in attendance as reported by the Queensland Police . The walk was also

1352-603: A one kilometer course downtown. Another zombie march was organized the next year by the same group in Sherbrooke, with nearly 200 participants. In subsequent years, the Toronto Zombie Walk has grown tremendously in size, with the 2014 event playing host to more than 15,000 participants. The Zombie Walk has spread to Vancouver , creating the zombie walk tradition in that city. On August 27, 2005, over 400 participants proceeded through Vancouver's Pacific Centre mall, travelled on

1456-506: A powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (family Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of deliriant drugs such as datura . Together these powders were said to induce a deathlike state, in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse , who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. The most ethically questioned and least scientifically explored ingredient of

1560-517: A publicly unadvertised event where zombies showed up at bars, unexpectedly, to simulate an actual zombie apocalypse. In 2007, zombies used bicycles to travel around town in the initial Ride of the Living Dead event in Kenosha, Wisconsin . An offshoot of the non-zombie summer Handlebars and Bars bicycle pub crawl, this event began with about 40 riders in its debut, and has since grown exponentially. In 2014,

1664-728: A reported 10,000-strong zombie walk took place in Brisbane. As with previous years, the event raised money for the Brain Foundation of Australia. Guinness officially recognized a new record for the world's largest gathering of zombies on October 30, 2010, at the third annual New Jersey Zombie Walk on the Asbury Park Boardwalk in Asbury Park . Guinness recorded 4,093 zombies at the event, though organizers, police, and fire officials estimate more than 5,000 zombies were in attendance. In July 2011, more cities would attempt to break this world record. On July 2, 2011, Seattle attempted to take back

1768-427: A slave after death, as a zombie. A zombie could also be saved by feeding them salt . English professor Amy Wilentz has written that the modern concept of Zombies was strongly influenced by Haitian slavery . Slave drivers on the plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes voodoo priests, used the fear of zombification to discourage slaves from committing suicide. While most scholars have associated

1872-707: A state of catatonia . Roland Littlewood , professor of anthropology and psychiatry, published a study supporting a social explanation of the zombie phenomenon in the medical journal The Lancet in 1997. The social explanation sees observed cases of people identified as zombies as a culture-bound syndrome , with a particular cultural form of adoption practiced in Haiti that unites the homeless and mentally ill with grieving families who see them as their "returned" lost loved ones, as Littlewood summarizes his findings in an article in Times Higher Education : I came to

1976-422: A state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years. Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis — particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm — unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a deathlike trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines , the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state, and Davis' assessment of

2080-457: A vampire story, had a great impact on the zombie genre by way of George A. Romero . The novel and its 1964 film adaptation, The Last Man on Earth , which concern a lone human survivor waging war against a world of vampires, would by Romero's own admission greatly influence his 1968 low-budget film Night of the Living Dead , a work that was more influential on the concept of zombies than any literary or cinematic work before it. The monsters in

2184-460: A variety of sources. Many films have zombies that are people infected with a zombie virus, while other films give different causes for the zombie outbreak. It's unknown what causes the dead to attack the living in Night of the Living Dead , though hypotheses are provided such as an irradiated space probe. In Train to Busan (2016), the zombie outbreak is caused by a chemical leak. In The Girl with All

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2288-517: A wave of low-budget Asian zombie films such as the zombie comedy Bio Zombie (1998) and action film Versus (2000), and then a new wave of popular Western zombie films in the early 2000s, the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films, the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake , and the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004). The " zombie apocalypse " concept, in which the civilized world

2392-471: A witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be zombified or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location. Several decades after Hurston's work, Wade Davis , a Harvard ethnobotanist , presented a pharmacological case for zombies in a 1983 article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology , and later in two popular books: The Serpent and

2496-447: A zombie astral to enhance his spiritual power. A zombie astral can also be sealed inside a specially decorated bottle by a bokor and sold to a client to bring luck, healing, or business success. It is believed that God eventually will reclaim the zombie's soul, so the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity. The two types of zombie reflect soul dualism , a belief of Bakongo religion and Haitian voodoo . Each type of legendary zombie

2600-501: A zombie walk took place in the Old Market Square of Nottingham , England, with 1,227 attendees. The event was organized by GameCity , and the zombies did dances to zombie-related songs such as " Thriller ", " Disturbia ", and " Ghostbusters ", and featured a performance from American singer Jonathan Coulton . The event achieved a new official Guinness World Record for largest zombie walk. In June 2009, Pittsburgh zombie fans won back

2704-483: A zombie, since they "knew" that they were dead and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect . Davis's claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep "zombies" in

2808-402: Is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse . In modern popular culture, zombies are most commonly found in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore , in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magical practices in religions like Vodou . Modern media depictions of the reanimation of

2912-475: Is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft . The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey , in the form of "zombi", actually referring to the Afro-Brazilian rebel leader named Zumbi and the etymology of his name in "nzambi". The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as Central African and compares it to

3016-651: Is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has since become a staple of modern zombie media, seen in such media as The Walking Dead franchise . The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and romanticization of the zombie archetype , with the zombies increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans. Notable examples of the latter include movies Warm Bodies and Zombies , novels American Gods by Neil Gaiman , Generation Dead by Daniel Waters, and Bone Song by John Meaney , animated movie Corpse Bride , TV series iZombie and Santa Clarita Diet , manga series Sankarea: Undying Love , and

3120-652: Is held on Easter Sunday in celebration of Jesus , "the world's most famous zombie". Zombie pub crawls are now a regular occurrence in cities all over the world. The New York City Zombie Crawl has involved attendees walk all over Manhattan and drink at different pubs. In 2007, the Viking Hats group organized a Halloween zombie walk in London that ended at the Tate London. London's Zombie Pub Crawl has become an annual Halloween weekend event. Winona Zombie Crawl started out in 2006 as

3224-485: Is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Vodou in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony." A Central African origin for the Haitian zombie has been postulated based on two etymologies in the Kongo language , nzambi ("god") and zumbi ("fetish"). This root helps form the names of several deities, including

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3328-413: Is often cited as the first zombie film. A number of zombie films were produced in the late 1930s and 1940s, including I Walked with a Zombie (1943). Inspired by the zombie of Haitian folklore, the modern zombie emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the twentieth century, with George A. Romero 's seminal film Night of the Living Dead (1968). The film received a sequel, Dawn of

3432-498: Is still pending from Guinness World Records. October 2011 also saw multiple attempts to break the New Jersey world record. Over 7,000 zombies are believed to have attended the 9th Annual Toronto Zombie Walk on October 22. Both the annual Denver Zombie Crawl on October 22 and the annual Brisbane Zombie Walk on October 23 claim to have had over 12,000 zombie participants. On October 29, the city of Long Beach, California , set out to break

3536-534: Is therefore missing one half of its soul (the flesh or the spirit). The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa (" Guinea "), unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever

3640-469: The Chicago Sun-Times chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film. "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them", complained Ebert, "They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately: The kids in the audience were stunned. There

3744-636: The Epic of Gilgamesh . One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was The Magic Island (1929) by W. B. Seabrook . This is the sensationalized account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls. Time commented that the book "introduced 'zombi' into U.S. speech". Zombies have a complex literary heritage, with antecedents ranging from Richard Matheson and H. P. Lovecraft to Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein drawing on European folklore of

3848-621: The English-speaking Caribbean , considered to be of the same etymology; in the French West Indies also, local "zombies" are recognized, but these are of a more general spirit nature. The idea of physical zombie-like creatures is present in some South African cultures, where they are called xidachane in Sotho / Tsonga and maduxwane in Venda . In some communities, it is believed that

3952-417: The Kongo words " nzambi " (god) and " zumbi " (fetish). A Kimbundu -to-Portuguese dictionary from 1903 defines the related word nzumbi as soul, while a later Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary defines it as being a "spirit that is supposed to wander the earth to torment the living". How the creatures in contemporary zombie films came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. The film Night of

4056-644: The Monroeville Mall outside of Pittsburgh , which served as the set of George A. Romero's classic zombie film Dawn of the Dead , to participate in Pittsburgh's first annual Walk of the Dead. In addition to setting a Guinness World Record , the event was a benefit for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Pittsburgh's zombie walk has since grown into an annual horror festival called Zombie Fest and organized by The It's Alive Show ,

4160-527: The SkyTrain (referred to for the event as the "SkyBrain" or the "BrainTrain"), and continued 35 blocks to Mountain View Cemetery . The mid to late 2000s saw an exponential gain in popularity for zombie walks, due largely to the success of zombie films at the time, such as the Resident Evil movies , 28 Days Later , Zack Snyder 's Dawn of the Dead , Shaun of the Dead , George A. Romero 's Land of

4264-476: The United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), when a number of case histories of purported "zombies" began to emerge. The first popular book covering the topic was William Seabrook 's The Magic Island (1929). Seabrooke cited Article 246 of the Haitian criminal code , which was passed in 1864, asserting that it was an official recognition of zombies. This passage was later used in promotional materials for

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4368-453: The 1920s and early 1930s, Lovecraft wrote several novellae that explored the undead theme. " Cool Air ", " In the Vault " and " The Outsider " all deal with the undead, but Lovecraft's " Herbert West–Reanimator " (1921) "helped define zombies in popular culture". This series of short stories featured Herbert West , a mad scientist , who attempts to revive human corpses, with mixed results. Notably,

4472-445: The 1932 film White Zombie . Also shall be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made by any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the administering of such substances, the person has been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows. In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered

4576-479: The 1970s. Zombie films created in the 2000s have featured zombies that are more agile, vicious, intelligent, and stronger than the traditional zombie. These new fast running zombies have origins in video games, including Resident Evil ' s running zombie dogs and particularly The House of the Dead ' s running human zombies. In the late 2010s, zombie films began declining in the Western world. In Japan, on

4680-486: The 2006 Vancouver Zombie Walk, an incident occurred in which two impatient drivers attempted to drive their cars through a crowd of zombies headed down Robson Street: this resulted in some severe injuries among the zombies, but no damage to the vehicles. Another incident involved a pair of zombies using a brick to shatter the window of a man's car; both zombies were arrested. In 2010, the annual Zombie Shuffle in Melbourne saw

4784-919: The Asbury Park event reclaimed the world record with 9,592 zombies. In October 19, 2013 an estimated 15,000 Chileans took to the streets of Santiago to take part in the city's fourth annual Zombie Walk. The zombies limped two kilometres along the Alameda , one of the main thoroughfares in the Chilean capital. Charity work continues to be a common component of zombie walks across the planet. Community service organizations such as Zombie Squad have used zombie walks as demonstrations to raise funds and awareness for local and global issues, such as world hunger. Both world record walks at Pittsburgh's Zombie Fest have included food drives. In 2008, The It's Alive Show initiated World Zombie Day. The It's Alive Show encouraged cities all over

4888-525: The Chinese jiangshi , a zombie-like creature dating back to Qing dynasty era jiangshi fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, was featured in a wave of jiangshi films, popularised by Mr. Vampire (1985). Hong Kong jiangshi films became popular in the Far East during the mid-1980s to early 1990s. Another American zombie film, The Serpent and the Rainbow , was released in 1988. A zombie revival later began in

4992-489: The Dead (1978) and The Return of the Living Dead (1985)—the latter of which introduced the concept of zombies that eat brains—as well as Michael Jackson 's music video Thriller (1983), the genre waned for some years. The mid-1990s saw the introduction of Resident Evil and The House of the Dead , two break-out successes of video games featuring zombie enemies which would later go on to become highly influential and well-known. These games were initially followed by

5096-607: The Dead (1978), including once in dialog. According to Romero, film critics were influential in associating the term "zombie" to his creatures, and especially the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma . He eventually accepted this linkage, even though he remained convinced at the time that "zombies" corresponded to the undead slaves of Haitian voodoo as depicted in White Zombie with Bela Lugosi . Zombies are featured widely in Haitian rural folklore as dead persons physically revived by

5200-415: The Dead (1978), which was the most commercially successful zombie film at the time. It received another sequel, Day of the Dead (1985), and inspired numerous works such as Zombi 2 (1979) and The Return of the Living Dead (1985). However, zombie films that followed in the 1980s and 1990s were not as commercially successful as Dawn of the Dead in the late 1970s. In the 1980s Hong Kong cinema ,

5304-525: The Dead films and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. These films also adopted an action approach to the zombie concept, which was also influenced by the Resident Evil and House of the Dead video games. Films featuring zombies have been a part of cinema since the 1930s. White Zombie (directed by Victor Halperin in 1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (directed by Jacques Tourneur ; 1943) were early examples. With George A. Romero 's Night of

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5408-443: The Dead , and Zombieland . Documentation of zombie walks consequently began to appear more often in mainstream news media and blogs. Zombie walks soon spread across North America and to cities around the globe, such as Mar del Plata , Argentina. Rio de Janeiro had its first zombie walk on November 2, 2007 ( Day of the Dead ) and the event has become annual since then. On October 29, 2006, nearly 900 "zombie walkers" gathered at

5512-420: The Dead . The success of these two 1996 zombie games inspired a wave of Asian zombie films. From the late 1990s, zombies experienced a renaissance in low-budget Asian cinema , with a sudden spate of dissimilar entries, including Bio Zombie (1998), Wild Zero (1999), Junk (1999), Versus (2000) and Stacy (2001). Zombie films Victor Halperin 's White Zombie was released in 1932 and

5616-438: The Dead inspired a new wave of Western zombie films in the early 2000s, including the Resident Evil film series , the British film 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), House of the Dead (2003), a 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake and the British parody movie Shaun of the Dead (2004). The success of these films led to the zombie genre reaching a new peak of commercial success not seen since

5720-485: The Far East during the late 1990s, inspired by the 1996 Japanese zombie video games Resident Evil and The House of the Dead , which led to a wave of low-budget Asian zombie films, such as the Hong Kong zombie comedy film Bio Zombie (1998) and Japanese zombie-action film Versus (2000). The zombie film revival later went global, as the worldwide success of zombie games such as Resident Evil and The House of

5824-496: The Far East from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Prior to the 1990s, there were not many Japanese films related to what may be considered in the West as a zombie film. Early films such as The Discarnates (1988) feature little gore and no cannibalism, but it is about the dead returning to life looking for love rather than a story of apocalyptic destruction. One of the earliest Japanese zombie films with considerable gore and violence

5928-642: The Gifts (2016), the zombie disease is caused by a fungus. The transformation from human to zombie is also different from film to film. The transformation process can take only seconds, such as in World War Z , or it can take several hours, such as in Night of the Living Dead . In Friend of the World (2020), zombies can morph their bodies to merge with people. Zombies also have different weaknesses in different films. In most films, zombies can only be killed by destroying

6032-431: The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. The second World Zombie Day took place October 11, 2009, with even more participation from cities all over the world. October 21, 2012 saw over 12,000 participants march through the city of Brisbane. With a new music festival format added to the event, Brisbane Zombie Walk raised $ 55,000 for the Brain Foundation of Australia, making them the most successful zombie charity event in

6136-714: The Guinness World Record after Guinness verified that the Zombie Fest 'Walk of the Dead' at Monroeville Mall on October 26, 2008, had 1,341 participating walkers. On July 3, 2009, a zombie walk organized by Fremont Outdoor Movies in Seattle beat all previous zombie walk records. Guinness World Records officially recorded 3,894 zombies at the Red, White and Dead zombie event, though local news claimed 4277 participants. In October 2009, Guinness World Records officially recorded and approved

6240-464: The Haitian zombie with African cultures, a connection has also been suggested to the island's indigenous Taíno people , partly based on an early account of native shamanist practices written by Ramón Pané  [ es ] , a monk of the Hieronymite religious order and companion of Christopher Columbus . The Haitian zombie phenomenon first attracted widespread international attention during

6344-618: The Kongo creator deity Nzambi Mpungu and the Louisiana serpent deity Li Grand Zombi (a local version of the Haitian Damballa ), but it is in fact a generic word for a divine spirit. The common African conception of beings under these names is more similar to the incorporeal "zombie astral", as in the Kongo Nkisi spirits. A related, but also often incorporeal, undead being is the jumbee of

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6448-412: The Living Dead (1968) made no spoken reference to its undead antagonists as "zombies", describing them instead as " ghouls " (though ghouls, which derive from Arabic folklore, are demons, not undead). Although George A. Romero used the term "ghoul" in his original scripts, in later interviews he used the term "zombie". The word "zombie" is used exclusively by Romero in his script for his sequel Dawn of

6552-403: The Living Dead (1968), the zombie trope began to be increasingly linked to consumerism and consumer culture. Today, zombie films are released with such regularity (at least 50 films were released in 2014 alone) that they constitute a separate subgenre of horror film. Voodoo-related zombie themes have also appeared in espionage or adventure-themed works outside the horror genre. For example,

6656-456: The Living Dead began the shift away from Haitian dark magic, though did not give scientific explanations for zombie origins. A more decisive shift towards scientific themes came with the Resident Evil video game series in the late 1990s, which gave more realistic scientific explanations for zombie origins while drawing on modern science and technology, such as biological weaponry , genetic manipulation , and parasitic symbiosis . This became

6760-458: 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 introduced into the bloodstream (usually through a wound). The first, French: coup de poudre ("powder strike"), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX),

6864-591: The Zombies (1966). Romero was also inspired by Richard Matheson 's novel I Am Legend (1954), along with its film adaptation, The Last Man on Earth (1964). The modern conception of the zombie owes itself almost entirely to George A. Romero 's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead . In his films, Romero "bred the zombie with the vampire, and what he got was the hybrid vigour of a ghoulish plague monster". This entailed an apocalyptic vision of monsters that have come to be known as Romero zombies . Roger Ebert of

6968-421: The act of necromancy of a bokor , a sorcerer or witch. The bokor is opposed by the houngan (priest) and the mambo (priestess) of the formal voodoo religion. A zombie remains under the control of the bokor as a personal slave, having no will of its own. The Haitian tradition also includes an incorporeal type of zombie, the "zombie astral ", which is a part of the human soul . A bokor can capture

7072-478: The case of a woman who appeared in a village. A family claimed that she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. The woman was examined by a doctor; X-rays indicated that she did not have a leg fracture that Felix-Mentor was known to have had. Hurston pursued rumors that affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug , but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote: "What

7176-568: The city in order to safely accommodate the large numbers of participants. The first gathering specifically billed as a "Zombie Walk" occurred in October 2003 in Toronto , organized by local horror movie fan Thea Munster and with only seven participants. A "zombie demonstration" occurred in Sherbrooke , Quebec , on November 1, 2003, organized by a local grassroots organization, with 60 participants walking on

7280-678: The city, though no Guinness record was broken. On October 28, 2012, Buenos Aires gathered 25,000 zombies. The zombie walk occurring November 2012, in the Twin Cities ( Minneapolis–Saint Paul ) holds the current world record for zombie gathering, recognized by Guinness at a count of 8,027 at Midway Stadium in Saint Paul on October 13, 2012. Estimates of the entire Twin Cities crawl put the zombie event upwards of 30,000 zombie participates, surpassing any other gathering of its kind, official or not. In 2013,

7384-505: The conclusion that although it is unlikely that there is a single explanation for all cases where zombies are recognised by locals in Haiti, the mistaken identification of a wandering mentally ill stranger by bereaved relatives is the most likely explanation in many cases. People with a chronic schizophrenic illness, brain damage or learning disability are not uncommon in rural Haiti, and they would be particularly likely to be identified as zombies. Pulliam and Fonseca (2014) and Walz (2006) trace

7488-456: The crowd, though the record is currently unverified by Guinness. Organizers of the fifth annual Denver Zombie Crawl in Denver counted more than 7,300 zombie walkers in the event. This is considered to be a low figure, as up to one third of the total participants did not walk through the counter. The crawl took place on October 23, 2010, in downtown Denver at the 16th Street Mall . On October 24, 2010,

7592-417: The dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as fungi , radiation , gases , diseases , plants , bacteria , viruses , etc. The English word "zombie" was first recorded in 1819 in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey , in the form of "zombi". Dictionaries trace the word's origin to African languages, relating to words connected to gods, ghosts and souls. One of

7696-536: The early 1950s EC Comics , which George A. Romero would later claim as an influence. The comics, including Tales from the Crypt , The Vault of Horror and Weird Science , featured avenging undead in the Gothic tradition quite regularly, including adaptations of Lovecraft's stories, which included "In the Vault", "Cool Air" and "Herbert West–Reanimator". Richard Matheson 's 1954 novel I Am Legend , although classified as

7800-535: The event attracted over 400 zombie bicyclists and featured indie-rock bands from the Milwaukee-Chicago corridor as entertainment throughout the day. In 2006, a young woman in Bloomington, Indiana reported to police that a group of "zombies" attacked her car by covering the vehicle in "purple goo"; the zombies in question turned out to be participants in a small, local zombie walk, and several arrests were made. At

7904-472: The film and its sequels, such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), as well as the many zombie films it inspired, such as The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and Zombi 2 (1979), are usually hungry for human flesh, although Return of the Living Dead introduced the popular concept of zombies eating human brains. There has been an evolution in the zombie archetype from supernatural to scientific themes. I Am Legend and Night of

8008-400: The first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. B. Seabrook 's The Magic Island (1929), the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls. A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian folklore, emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the 20th century. This interpretation of

8112-418: The globe to celebrate World Zombie Day by holding zombie walks to raise awareness of global hunger. The first World Zombie Day took place October 26, 2008, the same day as Pittsburgh's Zombie Fest, when more than 30 cities worldwide took part. Food drives for local hunger-related charities took place at each participating city's zombie walk. Pittsburgh's walk alone brought in more than one ton of food to benefit

8216-495: The largest attendance in its five-year history, but some locals complained of the mess that the zombie "gore" left behind, as well as the walk's disruption of a play for preschoolers . In 2011 and 2012, participants in the Minneapolis Zombie Pub Crawl broke store windows and caused other damage to the area in which the event was held. Many residents see the event as disruptive to the life of the neighborhood. In 2012,

8320-504: The late 1970s. The mid-1980s produced few zombie films of note. Perhaps the most notable entry, the Evil Dead trilogy, while highly influential, are not technically zombie films, but films about demonic possession , despite the presence of the undead. 1985's Re-Animator , loosely based on the Lovecraft story, stood out in the genre, achieving nearly unanimous critical acclaim and becoming

8424-436: The light novel Is This a Zombie? In this context, zombies are often seen as stand-ins for discriminated groups struggling for equality, and the human–zombie romantic relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation and taboo breaking (given that zombies are subject to wild desires and free from social conventions). In Haitian folklore , a zombie ( Haitian French : zombi , Haitian Creole : zonbi )

8528-415: The nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is viewed as overly credulous. Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification. Particularly, this suggests cases where schizophrenia manifests

8632-490: The original Jonny Quest series (1964) and the James Bond novel Live and Let Die as well as its film adaptation both feature Caribbean villains who falsely claim the voodoo power of zombification to keep others in fear of them. Romero's modern zombie archetype in Night of the Living Dead was influenced by several earlier zombie-themed films, including White Zombie , Revolt of the Zombies (1936) and The Plague of

8736-540: The other hand, the low-budget Japanese zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead (2017) became a sleeper hit, making box office history by earning over a thousand times its budget. Characteristics of zombies vary from film to film. Each filmmaker gives their zombies a unique set of qualities for the universe of that film. While zombies are often portrayed as slow-moving, such as in Night of the Living Dead , other films such as World War Z (2013) depict fast-moving zombies that can run. The zombie outbreak can also be caused by

8840-447: The outbreak, or survivors who are trying to defend themselves from the onslaught of the zombie horde. Some events are staged as spoof political rallies organized "to raise awareness of zombie rights", with participants carrying placards. Some zombie walks have also been staged as " hunger marches " with the intent of raising awareness of world hunger and collecting items for food banks . The earliest zombie walk styled event on record

8944-485: The player. Later the same year, Sega 's arcade shooter The House of the Dead introduced running human zombies, who run towards the player and can also jump and swim. The running human zombies introduced in The House of the Dead video games became the basis for the "fast zombies" that became popular in zombie films during the early 21st century, starting with 28 Days Later (2002), the Resident Evil and House of

9048-441: The powders is part of a recently buried child's brain. The process described by Davis was an initial state of deathlike suspended animation , followed by re-awakening — typically after being buried — into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to reinforce culturally learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of

9152-545: The record at the 3rd annual Fremont Red, White and Dead Zombie Walk hosted by Fremont Outdoor Movies. The zombie count according to Fremont organizers was 4,522 in attendance with estimations of over 4,800–5,000 after the official stop point for counting zombies. Representatives from Guinness did not attend the event. On July 23, 2011, the Dublin Zombie Walk in Dublin had an estimated 8,000 zombies in attendance, but confirmation

9256-430: The resurrected dead are uncontrollable, mostly mute, primitive and extremely violent; though they are not referred to as zombies, their portrayal was prescient, anticipating the modern conception of zombies by several decades. Edgar Rice Burroughs similarly depicted animated corpses in the second book of his Venus series , again without using the terms "zombie" or "undead". Avenging zombies would feature prominently in

9360-555: The standard approach for explaining zombie origins in popular fiction that followed Resident Evil . There has also been shift towards an action approach, which has led to another evolution of the zombie archietype, the "fast zombie" or running zombie. In contrast to Romero's classic slow zombies, "fast zombies" can run, are more aggressive and are often more intelligent. This type of zombie has origins in 1990s Japanese horror video games. In 1996, Capcom 's survival horror video game Resident Evil featured zombie dogs that run towards

9464-405: The undead. Victor Halperin directed White Zombie (1932), a horror film starring Bela Lugosi . Here zombies are depicted as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician. Zombies, often still using this voodoo-inspired rationale, were initially uncommon in cinema, but their appearances continued sporadically through the 1930s to the 1960s, with films including I Walked with

9568-535: The vengeful dead also informed the evolution of the modern conception of the vampire . Later notable 19th century stories about the avenging undead included Ambrose Bierce 's " The Death of Halpin Frayser " and various Gothic Romanticism tales by Edgar Allan Poe . Though their works could not be properly considered zombie fiction, the supernatural tales of Bierce and Poe would prove influential on later writers such as H. P. Lovecraft , by Lovecraft's own admission. In

9672-728: The world record as part of its fourth annual zombie walk, produced by community organizations Long Beach Cinematheque and Mondo Celluloid, and partnered with Michael Jackson -inspired flash mob " Thrill the World ", who set out to break a world record of their own with the world's biggest " Thriller " flash mob. By night's end, an estimated 14,000 participants had taken over the entirety of the downtown area, breaking local business sales records and all but shutting down traffic for hours. In November 2011, Mexico City counted 9,806 for their large zombie gathering. The zombie walk of October 20, 2012 in Santiago , Chile had more than 12,000 zombies walking in

9776-1028: The world. In 2011, the Brisbane Zombie Walk made over $ 25,000 for the Brain Foundation. Some zombie walks incorporate pub crawling , during which participants visit multiple bars over the course of the walk. The first large-scale zombie pub crawl was held in Minneapolis on October 15, 2005. The crawl consisted of roughly 150 participants in zombie costumes moving from bar to bar in the city's Northeast district. The Minneapolis "Zombie Pub Crawl" has since become an annual event and attendance has grown exponentially. It has been held in Downtown Minneapolis since 2015. Similar large-scale zombie-themed pub crawls have developed in New Orleans , Providence, Rhode Island , Reno , Houston , Eau Claire , Chicago, Winona , and Philadelphia . Philadelphia's zombie pub crawl

9880-474: The zombie lineage back to ancient Mesopotamia . In the Descent of Ishtar , the goddess Ishtar threatens: If you do not open the gate for me to come in, I shall smash the door and shatter the bolt, I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors, I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living: And the dead shall outnumber the living! She repeats this same threat in a slightly modified form in

9984-448: The zombie revival of the 2000s. The 1981 film Hell of the Living Dead referenced a mutagenic gas as a source of zombie contagion: an idea also used in Dan O'Bannon 's 1985 film Return of the Living Dead . Return of the Living Dead featured zombies that hungered specifically for human brains. Zombie films in the 1980s and 1990s were not as commercially successful as Dawn of the Dead in

10088-400: The zombie, as an undead person that attacks and eats the flesh of living people, is drawn largely from George A. Romero 's film Night of the Living Dead (1968), which was partly inspired by Richard Matheson 's novel I Am Legend (1954). The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead , but was applied later by fans. Following the release of such zombie films as Dawn of

10192-492: Was Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay (1991). According to Kim Newman in the book Nightmare Movies (2011), the "zombie revival began in the Far East" during the late 1990s, largely inspired by two Japanese zombie games released in 1996: Capcom 's Resident Evil , which started the Resident Evil video game series that went on to sell 24 million copies worldwide by 2006, and Sega 's arcade shooter House of

10296-568: Was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying. Romero's reinvention of zombies is notable in terms of its thematics; he used zombies not just for their own sake, but as a vehicle "to criticize real-world social ills—such as government ineptitude, bioengineering, slavery, greed and exploitation—while indulging our post-apocalyptic fantasies". Night

10400-473: Was later recorded in the book 40 Years of Gencon with photos and recollections from the organizers. While it was rumored that the organizers were arrested and thrown out of the convention for their flash mob of zombies, they were simply questioned by security before being told to disband. Another early zombie walk was held in Sacramento, California on August 19, 2001. The event, billed as "The Zombie Parade",

10504-620: Was put together rather last-minute at the Gen Con gaming convention in Milwaukee in August 2000. The event was created to poke good-natured fun at the Vampire: The Masquerade LARPers that were taking over large portions of the convention, and disrupt their games. Michael Yates, Mark Stafford, Jacob Skowronek and several others organized the event with roughly 60 participants. The event

10608-415: Was set on October 29, 2006 at Monroeville Mall outside of Pittsburgh, during the city's first annual Walk of the Dead. Guinness World Records certified that 894 people participated in the walk. The second zombie walk at Monroeville Mall during the 2007 Zombie Fest was also verified by Guinness World Records as the largest gathering of zombies to date, with 1,028 participants. The 2007 Toronto Zombie Walk drew

10712-449: Was the first of six films in Romero's Living Dead series . Its first sequel, Dawn of the Dead , was released in 1978. Lucio Fulci 's Zombi 2 was released just months after Dawn of the Dead as an ersatz sequel ( Dawn of the Dead was released in several other countries as Zombi or Zombie ). Dawn of the Dead was the most commercially successful zombie film for decades, up until

10816-480: Was the idea of Bryna Lovig, who suggested it to the organizers of Trash Film Orgy as a way to promote their annual midnight film festival. It was held again on July 27, 2002, and has since become an annual event, drawing over 1,000 participants in 2012. The event was traditionally held as the kick off to the six-week film festival at Sacramento's historic Crest Theatre until 2014 when the theatre's general manager of 28 years, Laura "Sid" Garcia-Heberger, could not reach

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