I had neighbours like this.

It seems fair that if I'm off on a tangent about zombie movies its best that I do some research into why they make such good ideas for movies. Haiti seems to be the spot that moderm zombie lore sprouts. As in my last post, America was in close contact with Haitian culture for over 15 years so it's no surprise that zombies became something at least warranting some passing discussion. In fact the zombie of popular culture is pretty much the Haitian article.

Practitioners of voodoo, bokors, could make a mortal a zombie. By annointing them with a special potion they would go away to die and then be summoned by the bokor who would promptly take their soul, (what else?) and then release them to do their bidding.

Zombies go way back before the 1930's version came to town. The middle ages abounded with stories of the living dead. Called "revenants" they were described as the "dead rising from graves to haunt the living." Yum. Which pretty much sums a good zombie flick.

But I went looking for what it was really like and a chap I came across from the 12th century was one Walter Map. He was a writer of note and, common for the time (before newspapers and phones) a chronicler. He is credited with being among the first to write about English vampires, another word for revenant used at the time. He writes of one such zombie rising from the dead and running about the villages scaring the shit out of the locals till the local Bishop, Gilbert Foliot, takes care of business. It involves cutting off the head with a shovel, among other treatments.