# Zombie Me



## greypilgrim (Oct 2, 2004)

Not for the weak of heart:

























Definition:


A zombie is a dead person that is brought back to life through a curse (voodoo, necromancy) or a mutation and has recovered some vital functions like movement. 

They are near-mindless, possessing little reasoning power, though many can perform "remembered behaviors" from their mortal existence.

Zombies are omnipresent in the folklore of Haïti, where they are created by voodoo, an african type of black witchcraft. More recently, zombies films have exposed new theories according to which man-made virus or genetical experiments are held responsible for the creation of zombies. Such films put a strong emphasis on flesh and blood : rotting bodies and their attendant maggots, as well as the still-warm gore resulting from savage, often cannibalistic attacks upon the living.


Haitian Penal Code:

Article 249. It shall also be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made against any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the person had been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.

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Voodoo Zombie:

The methods of creating and controlling zombies vary among bokors. Some bokors use blood and hair from their victims in conjunction with voodoo dolls to zombify their victims. Others methods of zombification involve a specially prepared concoction of mystical herbs, in addition to human and animal parts (sometimes called “coup padre”). 

Ingestion, injection, or even a blow dart may be used to administer the potion variety. When these substances come into contact with the victim's skin, bloodstream or mucous membranes, the victim is rendered immobile within minutes, succumbing to a comatose-like state resembling death. The victim retains full awareness as he is taken to the hospital, then perhaps to the morgue and finally buried in a grave. 

The bokor then performs an ancient voodoo rite; taking possession of the victim's soul, and replacing it with the loa that he or she controls. The victim's "trapped" soul is usually placed within a small clay jar or some other unremarkable container. The container is wrapped in a fragment of the victim's clothing, a piece of jewelry, or some other personal possession owned by the victim in life, and then hidden in a place of secrecy known only to the bokor.

The bokor raises the victim after a day or two and administers a hallucinogenic concoction, called the "zombi's cucumber," that revives the victim. Once the zombi has been revived, it has no power of speech, its past human personality is entirely absent, and the memory is gone. Zombis are thus easy to control and are used by bokors as slaves for farm labor and construction work. One case in 1918 involved a voodoo priest named Ti Joseph who ran a gang of laborers for the American Sugar Corporation, took the money they received and fed the workers only unsalted porridge. Indeed, giving a zombi salt is supposed to restore its personality, and send it back to its grave and out of the bokor's influence.

There are a significant number of researchers who believe zombification to be an actual practice, achieved not through magic and ritual, but rather through certain powerful drugs. These drugs make a person seem dead through extensive intoxication and slowing of the bodily functions. When they are revived, they are so brain-damaged that they cannot remember who they were or who their family was. Thus, they can be controlled by the bokor. There are numerous hypothesis about the composition of the drug: it may contains the poison of the fou-fou, or porcupine fish, or pufferfish that causes severe neurological damage and near-death state. The active ingredient that causes this "death-in-life" affect is known as tetrodotoxin, although little is known about this drug. Other substances from various toxic animals and plants, including the gland secretions of the bouga toad, millipedes and tarantulas, the skins of poisonous tree frogs, seeds and leaves from poisonous plants are also mentionned. However, pharmacologists have tested samples of the alleged powder on several occasions and found little or no poison in them.


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## greypilgrim (Oct 2, 2004)

Zombie powers:

~Zombies never sleep, and they are incapable of fatigue. 
~Zombies are impervious to pain and require no air to breathe. 
~They are thus immune to drugs, poisons, gases, extremes of temperature and pressure, high voltage electricity, suffocation, and drowning. 
~While not invulnerable to physical injury, zombies can suffer great damage to their bodies (including dismemberment) without being adversely affected. Dismembering the legs will render the zombie immobile, but the creature will still continue to subsist. ~Likewise, decapitation will incapacitate the body, but the head will still "live". 
~Zombies don’t possess any superhuman strength, nor do they have a night vision, a characteristic usually common to undead monsters. 


Walking dead:
“walk or die” has been replaced by “die and walk”. The most terrific aspect of the zombie is that it first appears as the casual shape of a typical civilian which mind has been sucked out and left empty. Zombies are terrific because instead of delicately sucking your blood as the vampire, they come in disguise and brutally tear you into pieces. The deactivation of a zombie's nervous system, caused by the curse or chemical and genetic alterations, has often been used to explain their very low mobility and rate of metabolism. The chemicals in the human hypothalamus acts as a stimulant for their metabolism, prolonging their not-quite-dead condition. 





Craving for human flesh:
Zombies created by voodoo tend to be harmless, and are often used as slaves by the witch doctors that have created them. In spite of its rather feeble intelligence, the hollywood zombie is a both intellectually and physically driven only by his all-consuming hunger for fresh human flesh. Why the dead are so hungry for living flesh is still unclear?. As a slightly potty researcher illustrates in Day of the Dead, the dead do not need to eat, they reach for live flesh even when they have no mouth or gullet, even when their stomachs have been removed. The impulse is part of their very fibre, a spiritual craving. They are dead, and death wants to consume life. It is an image of insatiable nihilism that is hard to resist. In Romero’s trilogy and sequels, the world has discovered that these zombies are particulary fond of human brains, requiring the chemicals in the hypothalamus for maintaining their existence. 

Some cases of vampiric zombies have also been recorded.

Zombies are also known to locate easily their preys across walls and distance. Do they smell living flesh like our Ogre of the fairy folklore ?


Contamination:
Another deadly aspect of the zombie is their ability to rapidly spread their undead scourge, increasing their numbers to vast measures. The bite of a zombie will cause its victim to quickly grow sick and die (usually within 3 days), only to rise again as a zombie. There is no known cure for this virus. Excision and cauterization of the "bite-infected" area (e.g. - removing a hand or arm, etc.) has proven to be completely ineffective in halting a victim's metamorphosis into the Living Dead. The fact that the majority of the zombie movies arrived during the 80s during the height of the AIDS epidemic is difficult to overlook. 




Weaknesses
The zombie's strength level is at normal human-levels, but they are considerably slower that average humans, possessing poor agility and coordination. Most zombies have difficulty with simple mechanical objects and obstacles such as doorknobs, latches, stairs, and fences. When confronted individually, zombies appear rather weak, but the creature's true threat is revealed when they are encountered in huge numbers. These relentless legions of tireless, flesh-eating machines will assault you on every side and corner until you fall and there comes the lunch 

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How to destroy zombies: 


Hollywood Zombie:
Zombies are highly susceptible to fire, burning these creatures is the most effective way of destroying them. Extreme amounts of electrical current will burn a zombie's flesh, thus consuming it in flames. Zombies can also be dispatched by causing extreme trauma to their brain. This can be accomplished by driving a bullet, a drill, a long knife, a hammer, or some other blunt object into the creature's skull.

If the traditional zombie was easily destroyed by exploding the head but stronger chemical formula makes them more difficult to obliterate. In Braindead, Peter Jackson pushes the concept to its extreme limit. All the bits of flesh remain alive: the top half of a head which has been sliced off by a spade spends the rest of the movie getting kicked around the polished and increasingly bloody floor, blinking wistfully at the goings-on; one character's torso is eaten away, but the rest of the body, connected to the head by its spinal column, still waddles around the room; another zombie, cut in half, spills its guts onto the floor, and those guts then proceed to take on a homicidal life of their own. 


Voodoo Zombie:
The proper incantation and treatment of a the zombie artefacts such as the voodoo doll can harm the zombie and even destroy it. He can also be put to final rest through the appropriate voodoo ceremony, which forces the loa from its body. When a zombie tastes either salt or meat, he recovers his past personality and becomes aware of his state, immediately returning to the grave.


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## greypilgrim (Oct 2, 2004)

Death:
Death is the underlying basic theme of every zombie film and reflects the attitude and beliefs of society towards mortality. There is little explanation of what happening after death and the livings, though liberated from the stigma of religion, are still haunted by this existential issue, either feeling that they are responsible for the dead or waiting for the last call. Halperin's voodoo zombies, Romero's living dead, Jackson's blood-splattered travesties, all show us the downside of immortality. 

The first vision of death is physical.Therefore, to confront a zombie is to be reminded of our own mortality. We, as humans, go to great lengths to obscure the remains of our dead, especially our loved ones. It is no mistake that we bury our corpses "six feet under" so as to eradicate the ugliness of decomposition. Being that our mortality is also something that we try put on a symbolical if not religious ritual with tidy rituals and outright denial, zombies serve as a painfully striking reminder that we will all eventually return to the same stinking earthly essence from which we are born.

The movie Pet Cemetary clearly articulates an aspect of death that is important in all zombie films, the role of acceptance. Perhaps it is when death is not accepted (either through grief or the desire for vengeance) that the dead are most likely to walk again or, taken metaphorically, the events of the past will sour life in the present.

The zombie is the embodiment of the insatiable tyranny of mortality, its rotting face and shuffling implacability represents a potent symbol for the horror death. Its unspeakable appetite warns us of the fragility of life when faced by the reality of death, and its violence is the revenge of a past which demands guilt and fear of us because we live on in a world it has been denied.




Decay:
Another element often found in zombie films is the freakiness of familiarity the victims seem to have with the creatures attacking them.. When the main character is attacked by a zombie who was originally a friend or a loved one and want to turn it into his next meal, there are no limits to sheer horror. 

No matter how well you used to know a person, as soon as he or she dies and comes back to life, all bonds are broken and you are now no more to him than the next meal. Brother devouring sister or daughter devouring mother and father are commonplace in the modern zombie films. 

The unity of the family is then broken by the zombie plague Night of the Living Dead also succeeded in shattering taboos of family and personal relations that had, until that time, been left untouched by American culture. Upon transformation into zombies, the characters in the film lost all moral responsibility, allowing them to indulge in such monstrous activity as incest, cannibalism and paricide.

In the late 1960s, America was brutally confronted to the horror of the Vietnam War. With the brutal onslaught of gruesome imagery generated by the media buzz surrounding the war, America no longer needed "monsters" to scare them. The horror generated by mankind was scary enough. Night of the Living Dead capitalized on this by resorting to the same nihilistic attitude toward death and destruction that was generated by the war. The zombies appear as the archetypal monster of the modern times, combining various elements from the other myths : they devour like werewolves and infect by biting like vampires. But their power is limited, they are slow and weak and possess no supernatural abilities. Their only strength is their number. The second difference with the previous monster archetype is that this monster is “empty”, he acts much as the Golem, a death puppet. His absence of motives echoes the absurdity of the Vietman war, and the deep scars it left to America





Exploitation:
Control and related themes of power and exploitation are basic to the voodoo zombie films. "They work faithfully and are not worried about long hours," says zombie master Legendre of his creatures in White Zombie, in justification of the capitalist organisation represent by the metropolis-like machinery of the mill.

Zombies of the Haitian Voodoo variety represent a loss of cognition/consciousness and also a loss of free will. What is it except these things, after all, that separates us from animals. By "controlling" another person and eliminating that persons ability to make choices, let alone engage in conscious thought, the "controller" has reduced that person to the level of an animal and has robbed him of his humanity. A distinct parallel might be drawn here between occidental cultures that have promoted the use of slavery and zombie films. To fear zombification, then, is to fear exploitation.





The Apocalypse: 
Night of the Living Dead and its counterparts also illustrate the fear of widespread apocalyptic destruction. It is not a coincidence that these movies appeared mostly at the height of the Cold War paranoia. Much like the atomic bomb, zombies are unleashed in a chain reaction, each devoured corpse arising and looking for more human flesh to consume. 
Like any Apocalypse, mankind is striken because of its decadence. In Romero's zombie trilogy, the flesh-eating dead threaten a society already lost, whether the source of that loss be violence, hate, bureaucracy or stupidity. The media, the military, science, philosophy are all helpless to provide an answer. The violence and spiritual void of human society feeds upon itself and the result is an apocalypse of the dead. Zombies also represent widespread annihalation in the form of plague-like sickness. The implications here are basically the same as they are with nuclear apocalypse, but on a more personal and intimate level. As the zombie count increases exponentially, they cover more and more distance until they overtake massive amounts of land area. Indeed, by the end of Romero's Day of the Dead (1985), the final installment of his trilogy, only a small band of military survivors is remaining in the United States. Consequently, they choose to relocate to an uninhabited island in the tropics as the U.S. becomes a barron wasteland, populated only by the walking dead. Will the Arch of Noha bring the renewal ?

But there are no six-head dragons and the devil to defeat. Since the seventies, the 'zombie master' has disappeared and the zombies function as an independent menace without any control. The enemy is within us and us only, not some "other" or tyrannical force from beyond or outter space. This zombie apocalypse is, unlike the alien mutant movies of the previous decade, solely rooted in mankind.

Clive Barker has commented that, since organised religion is losing its ability to popularly explain the world, Romero's living dead represent the only immortality possible. They are the tyranny of flesh, immortality without a spiritual dimension. And they are implacable. In extreme cases, nothing will stop them, certainly not our usual bulwarks of law, order, love, sex and reason. Zombies, Barker reckons, are the archetypal monster for the latter part of the twentieth century.


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## greypilgrim (Oct 3, 2004)

Another type of zombie is the juju zombie:

Juju Zombie 

History/Lore: Like their counterparts (i.e. - the common zombie), the juju zombie or zuvembie is a reanimated human corpse, but they differ from the common zombie in many ways. The juju zombie is created through means of ritual Black Magic - usually evil voodoo. Juju zombies are among the lower forms of the undead, made to serve their bokor (voodoo sorcerer or evil witch doctor) in some way; providing effective slave labor, protection, or resolving vendettas. The juju zombie is the scourge of the houngan (voodoo priest or good witch doctor), who must defend their lands against the threat of those that use voodoo magic for dark purposes.

More powerful than common zombies, juju zombies function differently than their counterparts. Zombification through evil voodoo is really a form of possession. Juju zombies are animated by the loa (voodoo spirit-gods) that inhabit the juju zombie's form and controlled by the bokor who summoned them. More powerful than the common zombie, the juju zombie is slightly more intelligent as well, able to perceive and understand simple commands from their masters. Another distinction from the common zombie is that the bite of a juju zombie will not cause its victim to metamorphose into the Living Dead.

The methods of creating and controlling juju zombies vary among bokors. Some bokors use blood and hair from their victims in conjunction with voodoo dolls to create and control their zuvembies.

Others methods of zombification involve a specially prepared concoction of mystical herbs, in addition to human and animal parts. The ingredients are all ground into a fine dust or even brewed into a potion. The dust may be blown into the unaware victim's face. Ingestion, injection, or even a blow dart may be used to administer the potion variety. When these substances come into contact with the victim's skin, bloodstream or mucous membranes, the victim is rendered immobile within minutes, as they succumb to a comatose-like state resembling death. The active ingredient that causes this "death-in-life" affect is known as tetrodotoxin, although little is known about this drug. After the victim is presumed dead, they are commonly buried alive. Most victims are driven insane by this ordeal, making them even more vulnerable to the bokor's spells. 

Another form of zombification includes the invocation of the serpent-god Damballah, the most powerful of the loa. Through this obscure ritual, a dead body may be resurrected and controlled through the use of two matching amulets. A juju zombie wearing an amulet around its neck can be verbally commanded by anyone in possession of its counterpart.

There have been some rare occasions of juju zombies temporarily regaining part of their mental faculties. For reasons beyond explanation, their mortal persona is able to assume partial control over their bodily actions. This rare occurrence has only been observed when a juju zombie encounters situations that have heavy emotional connections to their mortal lives. Now matter how strong their spirit was in mortal life however, juju zombies are unable to resist the call of their masters for long.

Description: Human in appearance; varying with signs of desiccation, decay, and emaciation. They have blank, expressionless faces, with white eyes. Many are incapable of speech, but most are able to make moaning and guttural sounds. They are normally encountered wearing whatever clothing they wore in their human life, prior to reanimation. They may also be seen wearing slave rags or garments given to them by their bokor. 

Powers: As with common zombies, juju zombies are impervious to pain and require no air to breathe. Although they are not invulnerable, the lifeless, reanimated body of a juju zombie possesses a supernatural healing ability, enabling them to regenerate missing or injured tissue, and mend broken bones. Juju zombies can recover from small burns, lacerations, and gunshot wounds within a matter of hours. Juju zombies cannot regenerate missing limbs, however. Again, as with common zombies, dismembering the legs will render the juju zombie immobile, but the creature will still continue to subsist. Likewise, decapitation will incapacitate the body, but the head will still "live". 
Not truly alive, juju zombies are immune to certain other mortal vulnerabilities, including suffocation, drowning, extremes of temperature and pressure, high voltage electricity, poisonous gas, and drugs.

Juju zombies possess superhuman strength three times greater than what they possessed while alive. If a juju zombie could lift (press) 200lbs. in life, then it could conceivably lift (press) up to 600lbs. as a zuvembie. Juju zombies do not possess night vision, a characteristic usually common to most undead monsters.

Unlike their counterpart, the common zombie, juju zombies do not express any fear or hesitation in their actions - even when confronted by certain peril (e.g. - fire).

Known Weaknesses/Methods Of Destruction: Juju zombies are highly susceptible to fire. Burning zuvembies is the most effective way of destroying them. The flesh of these creatures can be burned so totally that they cannot recover. Juju zombies are vulnerable to the voodoo which gives them animation. The proper incantation and treatment of a voodoo doll can cause supernatural, debilitating pain to a zuvembie. A juju zombie can also be put to final rest through the appropriate voodoo ceremony, which forces the loa from its body.

There are certain mystical totems and fetishes that offer protection from zuvembies. These items can be worn about the neck or adorned in some other fashion. It should be noted that while these objects will offer protection against physical contact from zuvembies, these devices may not offer the same defense against their masters.


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## greypilgrim (Oct 3, 2004)

Where does the bokor put the soul of their zombie?

A Wanga

The wanga is a magical object, in this case a "wrapped" bottle with scissors and mirrors. Wrapping on the bottle enhances the sense of secrecy in this case, because whatever is contained within it cannot be seen. The secret is not the question of whether there is something inside; the secret is only that we can't see it. 

Magnets at the top of the bottle give it weight, and in this case, the weight of elemental forces. 

The scissors: 1) they cut things; they are tools and they are sharp and they can inflict pain 
2) they are anthropomorphic-they seem to have legs and arms especially when they are spread open. 

Mirrors: reflect and refract surfaces; they are circular, the geometric form used to represent the cosmos; these mirrors are tied with thread which prevents them from serving the role of reflecting the person staring at the bottle, but as reflective surfaces they signify water, and water is a sacred symbol in vodou because the spirits live in the world beneath the water, the spiritual Africa. 

The colors of this particular bottle: white, red, and black: are central symbolic colors to Kongo religions and to Haiti--they signify the Petwo gods, the hot gods, and more: white symbolizes reason and truth, health and clarity of vision; white also stands for the land of the dead; black symbolizes guilt and evil and social disorder, rebellion and the intent to kill; red: sexual desire, magical power, and compromise. On one level, the colors appear to symbolize different modes of thinking and acting; on another level, they are part of the cosmology: black, or the world of the living, and white, the world of the dead, with the red standing for the sun which orbits between black and white. The position of the scissor fits with this cosmological symbolism of the colors, since the body standing with arms spread out in Kongo symbolism signifies the soul in orbit and it also signifies the person contained within the community. (Go back to the flag for Erzilie Danto, and look at the small circles with crosses of diamonds. Imagine the circle and cross as a diagram of a person spinning in orbit, and the series of circles around the edge of the flag as various points in the person's journey around the cosmos.) 

The sorcerer who made the bottle, before giving it to the person he made it for, performed a ceremony which involved scraping some bone fragments from skulls, mixing them with alcohol and perfume and leaves, burning the mixture, singing and chanting, and pouring it into the bottle. The bottle, containing fragments of a skull, contained death or spirits, but heated up, and heat brings life to death. The bottle is a Haitian version of the Kongo nkisi, many of which also contain mirrors in their stomach, eyes in their "souls." The skulls, representing the spirits of a dead person, can also be thought of as zombi, and zombi can be thought of as vengeful sprits or protective spirits.


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## greypilgrim (Oct 4, 2004)

So, how does it feel? This is what happens when the sorcerer poisons you: 

The first symptoms occur 15 minutes to several hours postingestion of tetrodotoxin-containing food or powder. Initial symptoms include lip and tongue paresthesias, followed by facial and extremity paresthesias and numbness. Salivation, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea with abdominal pain develop early and can be severe. Motor dysfunction with weakness, hypoventilation (may be from dysfunction of central and peripheral nervous systems), and speech difficulties then develop. A rapid ascending paralysis occurs over 4-24 hours. Extremity paralysis precedes bulbar paralysis, which is followed by respiratory muscle paralysis. Deep tendon reflexes are preserved early in the course of paralysis.
Finally, cardiac dysfunction with hypotension and dysrhythmias, central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction (eg, coma), and seizures develop. Patients with severe toxicity may have deep coma, fixed nonreactive pupils, apnea, and loss of all brain stem reflexes. Typically, it is from respiratory muscle paralysis.

~Loss of sensory and motor neuron function
~Ascending paralysis with respiratory depression; vomiting is common
~Cyanosis
~Hypotension
~Cardiac rhythm disturbances


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