Zombies and Their Mirrored Societies

Zombies and Their Mirrored Societies

Ongoing research and opinion from Ray Reasoner Jr.

Zombies are an idea from antiquity. The earliest known references are from "The Descent of  Ishtar", a Middle Eastern story and then in another "The Epic of Gilgamesh" from around 2100 BCE. The ancient Greeks also feared the undead. Multiple graves have been excavated and revealed skeletons that had stones or pieces of amphora on them to keep them from rising. The thought of the dead returning to life and terrorizing us with their incessant groaning, moaning, and of course, biting has been around since long before medieval times. Whether they are the slow moving Romero style zombies, the varying zombies of the Walking Dead, or the high speed shredders from the 28 days series, RUN! because zombies are everywhere. To some they are just a scary idea; to others their meaning is that they represent a mindless existence in our modern societies. The brainless sheep feeding off from the ideas and thoughts of the competent. We will look at different meanings and usage within different cultures.

Now, there are all sorts of undead beings permeating the mythologies of the world. From Draugr to Voodoo slaves there are many variations drifting between folklore and facts of perception. With this being said, we must determine what can be considered a "zombie". In pop-culture the zombie can be anything from a mindless mass of flesh vagrantly bumping about until it smells blood, to a high speed killer with mid level problem solving skills, to a soccer mom eating her neighbors before making the kids' lunch and sending them off to school.

Modern popular culture has made classifying a zombie a bit more complicated so I think that I'll go with a more traditional definition for the beginning of this article: a reanimated corpse with a lusting for blood, meat, or brains. I'll more than likely end up going into the modern variations as well, just because they are kind of a fun way to look at different societal perspectives. Almost all of the modern zombie perspectives will have a more obvious reflection on the culture of the USA, since I feel like we have more zombies than most countries, this makes perfect sense. :)

Also, many cultures have a blurred line between zombies, vampires, and demons. What some cultures call a vampire is closer to a zombie with particular urges and the same can be said of certain demons.

Draugr

 Let's start with the Draugr, an undead from the Scandinavian mythos. They are kind of like a super zombie since they can cast magic. Otherwise, they are slow moving and vicious, use weapons, and are occasionally intelligent. They tend to guard their graves so that no one steals their stuff, but as with all lore, there are exceptions and some wander about their entire property. They are typically hateful, killing and eating anything that comes within their realm.

In the Scandinavian culture it is safe to say that this is a perceived punishment for the evil, greedy, or unliked. Though not all that have these aspects to their personality become draugr, all draugr have at least one of them. These traits are counter productive to a thriving society in the sometimes harsh north where cooperation and sharing, at least among your own, are so important to survival. There are rituals that can be used to prevent a corpse from returning.

These myths would then encourage positive behavior since there would definitely be no Valhalla, nor any decent afterlife, for them if they behaved this way. Grave robbing is also frowned upon among one's own people so if they thought that there might be a rabid not so dead and not so easy to kill draugr hanging out at the crypt it would at least keep the not so hardy away. Speaking of killing them; iron could hurt them, but only decapitation would stop them. Sound familiar?

 Another Scandinavian myth, the Gjenganger, seems to be a more generalized term for the vicious undead that return for a variety of reasons. These can include suicide, murder, being a murderer, having unfinished business, etc. They seem to have a tendency to look more human but focus on their friends and family as targets. This may be directly tied to them needing help with something before they can find peace. Unlike Draugr they apparently need no food, and will go back to death once they are sufficed in their goal or fail and rot. So, Gjenganger are not zombies by the classification that I put forth earlier yet still undead.

 Ghoul

Though the ghoul lore didn't start out with them as reanimated corpses eventually over time and many, many mutations of the stories they have become that in some of the stories.

 From Arabic folklore, ghul for male and ghulah for female. Originally, they were desert dwellers or they lived in abandoned regions and lured people in to eat them. These are evil humanoids that could be the way that they are for a multitude of reasons, depending on lore. Considered in pre-Islam to be a demon possibly the "Gallu" of Mesopotamia; it is likely that the Bedouin tribes heard this story from the Akkadians and the legend of the "ghoul" was born. 

In Islam The Prophet Muhammed also refers to them as demons and gives advice on how to avoid or dispel them with specific prayers yet denies their existence later, stating that God had removed them from being. In medieval times the legend of the ghoul resurged and took on the persona of the transformed djinn. It was said that the djinn (male) or si'lwah (female) would become  ghouls if they shapeshifted in order to lure travelers into misfortune. These extremely magical and powerful beings could "fall" and become devious flesh eaters.

They must be killed in one single blow from a sword or one-thousand and two if the first fails. There are many mentions of how to be saved from or protected from the fallen djinn. These almost always involve a recitation of prayer or the invoking of one's servitude to Allah. 

There are realistically so many different stories of the ghul and ghulah in Middle Eastern lore that it would take pages to reference them all. There is overlap, depending on the period, where the si'lwah are a separate species that is witchlike rather than a shapeshifter, but these things happen in lore. It does seem that it is far more common for the fallen female genies to be a problem. I think that it is fairly obvious how that reflects in the mostly Islamic societies of the region. Women were, and are in some places, considered to be in need of taming, controlling, or to be mischievous and full of betrayal. On the other hand, as si'lwah they are born of fire, made by God, and fire is something that we are all drawn to. 

Eventually these stories made their way into western Europe and took on a less demonic theme and more aspects of monsters. others undead, others just plain wicked living people that mutate into their ghoulish form. They typically live in or near cemeteries and consume the dead, unless a better meal comes along.

Basically the ghoul has taken on every form between magically powerful being to bottom dwelling fiend. They are djinn, vampire, and zombie, yet none of them. This legend is far, far older than I expected and has mutated repetitively over the ages. It is quite easily one of the earliest boogie monsters haunting the nightmares of children that won't go to bed on time.

Haitian Voodou Slaves

This seems to be where the term zombie actually originated as zombi. The idea of zombies is part of Haitian Voodou, a blend of Islam and native belief systems. It is believed that through the magical practices of a bokor (sorcerer) that people may be brought back from the dead as mindless servants. This was later tied to a concoction known as zombie powder. Analysis of the powders from various bokor showed that even though some ingredients varied that they all had human remains, hyla tree frog, marine toad, and puffer fish in them. The powder would be administered to the skin, the victim would appear dead due to a chemical in the puffer fish, they would be buried, and then dug up by the bokor and convinced that they had died and now belonged to the bokor.

Apparently, in later years the slave masters used the fear of being turned into zombies as a control mechanism. The thought of losing their minds and eternally serving the masters was terrifying enough to keep most of the slaves in line. So it is pretty easy to understand that in this society that the mind, even if enslaved, was far more important than anything. You can also see a common reality throughout the globe and throughout most of the human race's time here, fear brings more power to the rulers. In this case both the bokor and the slave masters were taking advantage of other people for personal gain. It is ironic to me that the later zombie stories in modern times seem to show the opposite, where the zombies get the upper hand over most of their victims. It's a case of the victim becoming the victimizer and a cycle of perpetual violence.

According to some research done in the 1940's (Man, Vol. 45 (Mar. - Apr., 1945), pp. 38-40 Louis P. Mars, MD) it was believed that successful peasants or farmers had zombis working for them. There were two types of helpers for the farmers, the zombi and the werewolf. The werewolves could fly and had red fire that emanated from their underarms. The zombis were fairly mindless and just carried out the wishes of their master.

"In the remote areas of the country, the belief is pre-
valent that some rich peasants are fortunate in their
undertakings because they are helped by mysterious
beings who work on their farms; who go and steal
money for them; who travel at a fantastic speed
faster than automobiles, and who fly through the air
as planes do. These are supposed to be former dead
men and women who were brought back to life
through the application of some potent drugs "Wanga")."

Mars goes on to explain the curious story of "Felicia Felix Mentor"; a poor, feeble, sick woman that seemed to be afflicted with schizophrenia. It was unlikely that her name was actually Felicia since it was a name applied to her by a local family that thought she was one of their dead relatives. He discusses the effects of mass hysteria on the population and the difference between the lore of the region and the true medical afflictions that people endure.

All of the information gleaned by multiple researchers still does nothing to quench the belief in these tales of sorcerers taking lives and feeding them to evil Gods or raising them for their own purposes.

 Mummy

Undead that are wrapped in bandages and typically in the tradition of the ancient Egyptian burial rites. The only traces of mummies as monsters that I have found are fairly modern. Almost entirely in stories starting in the nineteen-hundreds. Early forms were undead romance novels from the eighteen-hundreds where the wife or female lover would die and come back to their still live or the unknowing male character would fall in love with an undead woman. Later stories involve many revenge plots and play heavily on the fear of the unknown. This can easily be tied to the European exploitation of Egypt in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds.

Nachzehrer

This Germanic/Eastern European undead is a hybrid of the vampire/ghoul/zombie as far as creature types are concerned. They seem to have many more traits in common with the ghoul really. They are undead that eat the dead, and every once in a while they also eat the living. They cannot turn the living into more nachzehrer, and the shapeshifting form seems to be a small scale mutation. For some reason though people seem to associate them more with vampires, I really don't understand why. They are typically the product of suicide victims or occasionally those of accidental death. The sorrow and tragedy of their death seems to drag them back to "living after". Now, physically the nachzehrer feeds on corpses, and itself, as well as its death shroud. They drain the life force of their loved ones and neighbors though. The chances of being affected by a nachzehrer is more likely if you have given something to the individuals funeral hoard. There is another train of thought where the initial victim of a pandemic also becomes a nachzehrer.

The nachzehrer first feeds on its shroud, then starts on itself if no other corpses are present, and finally starts going after friends and family once its own flesh and any other food is gone. This of course makes the weakened individual eventually succumb to death.

These undead are apparently very easy to identify since they lie in their grave holding one of their thumbs with their left eye open. Once identified it can be decapitated in order to kill it. Prevention of one becoming a nachzehrer can be achieved by either placing a stone in its mouth, driving a spike into its mouth, or by just decapitating the corpse before it has any chance of returning. 

This zombie type is definitely an easy way to explain to tiredness and sadness that often comes from losing one to suicide or unexpectantly. I've had a difficult time tracing the absolute origins on this one but I would imagine that it developed during a time with a high rate of depression leading to suicidal actions.

Orek

I attempted to research this Turkic zombie, but alas, there is very, very little information on it in English, (I need to learn German and Russian apparently...) other than a girl in a white dress can make them and they are mindless human eaters. I will revisit this later...perhaps with help.

Ro-langs

First off, the s at the end of ro-langs is not plural, this was my first misconception as well. The Tibetan "risen corpse"; ro meaning corpse and langs meaning risen. Ro-langs is similar then to the word deer in English; it is both singular and plural. Now that that is out of the way, let's proceed:

Laying between China and India, Tibet has a multi faceted lore about zombies.  Rather than their lore mutating through different forms over time like the ghul of the Middle East they exist simultaneously. There are two main forms, the tantric and the demonic.

The "tantric" ro-langs are the product of necromancy. Similar to the Haitian zombi, a necromancer raises the deceased in order to use its power. The power is typically used for personal gain.

In one story a "heretic" Na-ra-da seeks the aid of a "votary" with the nine traits of a hero, courageous, of good health, honest, knowledgeable in all the arts (Buddhist), keen of mind, sincere, and strong. The votary initially refuses, but after coaxing from the heretic he consults with his teacher. Once this votary's teacher gives him permission to aid the heretic in his quest so that the votary's participation would somehow aid the spreading of Buddhism. They begin the conjuration.

Na-ra-da explains that the ro-langs tongue will wag out and that the votary must catch it. If he catches it on the first wag the siddhi (power) will be great. The second time they will gain middling power, the third it will be a small amount of power, and if it is not caught by the third try the ro-langs will eat them. The votary misses on the first two tries and then resorts to placing his mouth over that of the ro-langs's mouth (groooooooooosssssssss!) and catches it's tongue in his teeth.

The tongue then turns into a sword, which was Na-ra-da's main purpose for conducting the ritual, and the body of the ro-langs turns into gold. This sword was apparently very powerful because the votary was able to go to the top of Mount Sumeru and circle all of the continents in just moments after rushing into the air. He returns and gives the sword to the heretic, who then give the votary the body with a piece of advice: "You take this corpse, which has turned to gold! Cut off the flesh down to the bones! Do not spend on improper things like barley beer and prostitutes! If you use it for your own livelihood and deeds of virtue, then what is cut off in the daytime will be replenished at night and it shall last forever!"

The votary heeded his advice and this is the story of how the temple of O-tanta-pu-ri was paid for and many monks and votaries were fed and clothed for many years. The votary became known as U-dya-u-pa-si-ka.

This would be a representation of how a small evil, as long as not prescribed to, can provide a greater good. It is a common idea throughout the world and may not be a reflection of a particular society as much as a Universal Truth. Which I guess is what Buddhism tends to be about, so it is kind of a reflection of that segment of the Tibetan society. I think I just went cross-eyed thinking about that....

The other type of ro-langs is the "demonic". First, you must understand that all ro-langs are essentially reanimated by a demon. Like the Oni from Japan though, there are good Gdon, which defend Buddhism and there are Gdon that have broken their vows, as well as the Bgegs.

So an evil Gdon will enter the body of the deceased and take limited power of it. They cannot get the corpse to speak, nor can they bend over. If they place their palm on the head of someone that person will contract the ro-langs sickness. This supernatural sickness is almost always fatal and is accompanied by the symptoms of grey or greenish complexion, incoherence, and muscle spasms. There is a small chance that a lama with great skill in Gcod-pa may heal them.

The evil ro-langs will continue to spread their disease until stopped. Fortunately there are five different types, each with an obvious weakness. The name of the type of ro-langs dictates its weakness where it must be . The lpags-langs weak point is its skin, the khrag-langs its blood, the sha-langs its flesh, rus-langs its bone, and the rme-langs a mole is its point of injury required. There doesn't seem to be a need for a ritual object to inflict the required wounds but obviously the mole zombie is going to be a bit complicated to knock down since you'd have to know where the mole is located. I reference knock down because they don't consider it killing the dead, it is making them fall down (brgyal-ba).

So in all reality, it seems that these beliefs about the demonic ro-langs were a way to explain the occasional person that was mis-diagnosed as dead. Apparently people slipping into comas or lower states of metabolism was not that uncommon. Medicinal training was on the rise in this era but still in its early stages, so many things were still unexplained and required a reason.

Zombie (Modern)

So now on to the fun part, modern zombies. Zombies! I will be focusing on the popular and best known in each era. There are thousands and thousands of titles in the zombie genre, be it book or film. Our rotten little reflections have appeared in popular lore since the early eighteen-hundreds. Major scientific discoveries had people enthralled with the idea of mad scientists bringing the dead back to life and it backfiring. Though not completely a zombie, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was one of the early pieces of literature in that direction (1818). In most of these stories the zombies were not completely mindless, because we were so amazing with our new discoveries, but they were still very violent and had a lower reasoning capacity. Other themes were revenge, revenge, and wait...revenge. A lot of that derives from old stories handed down from war torn Europe.

In the early 1900's the scientific plots continued but many were about controlling women, them being in need of rescue, or some other moral lesson about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity. This was the nature of most books and movies in the early nineteen hundreds, as a result of the nation pretending to be so worried about everyone's souls in this era while simultaneously making large amounts of money with "exploitation" films. (I personally feel that no one made anyone take any of these roles, so it was kind of their own doing as well)

 Horror icon HP Lovecraft wrote in a few different directions during this time period. Some scientific, some old plot twist horror, and existential crisis as well. The unknown undead from one perspective or another was utilized for shock value by him. He apparently liked to use and twist the archetype of the zombie as his muse. "Herbert West-Reanimator" was one of his more popular zombie stories, which was purely a scientific direction with the main character reanimating a fair number of individuals throughout the story.

The rise of the horror genre in the 1950's spiked and the EC Comics company climbed in popularity. They were responsible for the incredibly popular "Tales from the Crypt" series that was later adapted to television as well as "The Vault of Horror" and "Weird Science". These comics, along with the literary title "I Am Legend" from Richard Matheson, greatly influenced the forefather of current zombie lore George Romero.

In 1968 George Romero made "Night of the Living Dead" and is considered the grand daddy of the zombie genre even though he was over a hundred years late to the game. So high technology was really taking off at this point so what do you imagine caused these zombies? You got it, technology. Radiation from a returning satellite causes changes in people making them slow, ignorant, and hungry for BRAINS!

For some years the same types of zombie movies as pre-Romero ran the scene. Sorry, sex sells, always has, always will. In the eighties came the infectious zombies. Sam Raimi made "Evil Dead" with both infectious and satanic zombies, then came Creepshow with revenge zombies. Here during an era with a lot of fear surrounding HIV as well as  a resurgence in militant/coercive Christianity both of these zombie twists make sense.

Coming into the nineteen-nineties we have the wide variety of zombie genres all over the board, kind of like the nineties itself with world awareness becoming a larger thing. Who'd have thunk.

In the early two-thousands though we have the rise of the bio-tech zombies from the "28 Days Later" and the "Resident Evil" franchise. "28 Days" showed zombies in a new light, Faster and stronger just like we viewed ourselves. The scary things had to be amped up in order to keep up with our growing egos. Some say that they are not really zombies because they don't die first, but that can really be debated since you can die in a split second and I don't recall it being spelled out whether a momentary death occurs or not. It's just splitting hairs at that point, in my opinion since they hold the same purpose and usage within the lore, just a different transmission.

"Resident Evil" was actually pretty spot on for the era. This series touches on a few different social occurrences during this time. Women were taking on more hero roles as true feminism (not femi-nazis) was beginning to take hold. Bio-tech companies were terrifying the hell out of people with cloning, disease tampering, and pharmaceutical overloads were everywhere. Trust in the corporations that were supposed to be helping us were becoming untrustworthy. The Umbrella Corporation fit that role perfectly, since they pretty much did all of the above. A much more diverse casting was also done without compromising the story and feeling preachy or pandering, unlike now. This series greatly reflected the times in ways that many have never even realized.

"Dawn of the Dead" was brought back in a reimagining by Zach Snyder as well and this amped up Romero's zombies to ten. They were not only fast and strong as in "28" but they were getting smarter too. This one pretty much intentionally tried to hit nerves with the zombie baby scene, and it succeeded. This just kind of represents the excess of the time, everything had to be more.

We also start to see a more comedic take on zombie films with the release of "Shaun of the Dead". A learning to live/laugh/love in the face of death and a look at how the oblivious can somehow still survive seems to be the theme here. Coming out of Britain, a region that has had far more than its' share of violence and death. Be it of their own creation or inflicted upon them; they have had their share. It was a fun little movie of irony. "You've got red on you."

It's pretty easy to say, in my opinion, that the early two-thousands were the heyday of zombie films. The creativity and the pushing of the envelope was at the forefront. This of course could not happen without the predecessors within the genre. All of these different movies led up to the television blockbuster (not the rental chain) hit "The Walking Dead"  in the two-thousand and tens.

"The Walking Dead" series can quite easily be looked at as one of the most successful ever. I personally find it a bit repetitive, but a couple of seasons were pretty good (Hail season 6 Negan!). They did, however, touch on a lot of aspects in the lore that had never been explored before. This makes sense as the information age blossomed into the monstrosity that it is today. The longer story lines allowed for more detail into how and why the zombies existed. Varieties of zombies and zombie-like beings were explored to the fullest, sometimes too much in my opinion. The idea of zombies starving was also shown. So much data on zombie lore could be attained by watching this series.

Rhyme and reason had much more to do with the stories and human behavior became a focus. This ties to the increasing focus on mental health in that era as well. The ways in which people viewed, reacted to, or used power was heavily inspected. The different small societies that rose from the fractured larger one showed many points of view. Some were very bestial, some tribal, some urban, rural, militant, and on and on.  All of these things go back to human behavior, interaction, and state of mind. This reflects how our society had started saying things aloud that were taboo for the whole of it's lifetime.

Another successful series during that era is "Game of Thrones". For the most part this series was purely about entertainment and tapping into timeless themes. The zombies, ice zombies, blue zombies, white walkers, whatever, can easily represent the risk involved in playing with nature. Modifying beings or nature to solve one problem and the solution becoming a far larger problem. This reflects the issues that we have had from our growing pains from the use of pesticides, GMOs, renewable power sources, etc. The solution to this problem in this series is to intelligently use nature to fix the problem, by driving dragon glass (obsidian) into the enemy. This could be pointing at more natural answers to our issues are more than likely out there.

Now, in the two-thousand and twenties zombies are still reflecting our society. "The Walking Dead" has now splintered into multiple shows, reflecting the divisions that are occurring due to over-sensitivity coupled with the opposing blind ignorance of many on all sides. Greed and the "me" factor, along with an inability to look at things from another perspective have become prevalent.

In another interesting take on the zombie anthology of time is "The Last of Us". In a time period where self sufficiency and herbal medicine is on the rebound these zombies show up being converted by what...........yes mushrooms, mwahahaha. Cordyceps  are a common food supplement ingested by herbalists, just not the same strain as the one that causes the mindless urges of ants. This, however, is never specified in the series because who cares about facts anymore, right? Another unfortunate reflection of the current information age where stories hit the stands before the facts are checked. Headlines are taken as facts without the stories even being read. Implementation of the greater good versus personal wants is once again a theme where personal wants trump the greater good. This is a continuation of the two-thousand tens sentiments and likely into the future.

In Closing

So there are obviously tons of references that I didn't touch on here, I primarily stuck to the most popular sources of their time period. Quite often old plots were/are revisited with a new paint job throughout all eras so they were kind of redundant to rehash. Comedic views are also laced through the zombie lore landscape. There are so many different twists on themes, methodology, and purpose that it would take years to finish this. I will revisit this on occasion to update and add to it.

If trends stay the same we should be completely safe from zombies in the two-thousand and thirties. They will be 3d printing their artificial brain product from the safety of their hover lounges while they read self help e-books about dealing with their anxiety over their ancestors eating humans in the past while being careful not to culturally appropriate the living. :)

Thank You For Your Time! and I hope that you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed researching it.

Later Days,

Ray

No AI was used in the writing of this article. But JSTOR, Project Gutenberg, and a few other random sources were.