Zombies - Sarah - Fifth Hour

A trash can rumbles as you hear a screeching moan coming from the back alley. In Haiti puffer fish poison is administered to a much hated rival. In a lab a doctor tweaks a specimen’s genes, in effect keeping cells from aging, causing them to remain living but lose all conscious thought and knowledge. These are all known traits of a zombie though each is different and does not correlate to one another. Both creditable information and non creditable information are given on these creatures of horror films and voodoo that I believe to be real.

On the creditable side of things you have a religious practice, voodoo. In Haiti voodoo practitioners will find able living persons and poison them with puffer fish poison. The poison, also known as ‘zombie powder’, is enough to slow the heart and brain to a crawl. Causing the person to “slowly die” starting with symptoms of lethargy and the heart finally seems to stop and the pulse can no longer be found. They are, in most cases, rushed to the hospital then found to be dead, taken to a morgue and then buried. The Voodoo practitioner will later come and unbury them and make them their slaves. This was the origin of zombies. It was said that at one time most workers in sugar cane mills were zombies, and now the practice of creating zombies is illegal. In truth there are many legally defined zombies walking among us today.

On the non-creditable side we have fictitious flesh eaters, B horror movie creatures and scientifically altered dead cells. This is the more common image of zombies today. Most when asked what a zombie is, would say things like “something that dies and comes back craving the flesh and brains of there human counterparts” others perhaps would add the belief or disbelief that animals can also become zombies. These things are up to personal preference making it in and of it self non-creditable. It’s either all or none; you can’t have the proverbial cake and eat it too. There are many different takes on zombies of the sort as well. Some believe that they are genetically altered and a bite can transmit that genetic mutation. A virus that spreads from person to person is also a common theory. In the thirties films zombies followed much of the Haitian voodoo practice in a way. There was a master zombie and the rest would follow its orders, the twist was that they would crave the flesh of the living and with time zombies became damned souls and then as we neared the technological era became the result of human engineering. All of which have three things in common: They crave flesh of the living, had to die at one point in time or another, have no moral basis for judgment.

Nightmarish characters and slaves of the religiously inclined make up the different types of creepy capers we call zombies. Roaring moans make up our sci-fi fantasies and quench our lust for the abnormality of social norms and hidden messages. Where as poison and grave robbery make up the definition used by the people of Haiti for years. Creditable against Non-creditable, I believe they’re real.

Reference List

Not a zombie, yet retrieved April 6, 2009 http://www.sciencepunk.com/2006/11/soviet-scientists-make-zombie-dogs/
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/z/zombies.html
Non-creditable information April 6, 2009
http://zombies.monstrous.com/
Non-creditable information April 7, 2009
http://facweb.bcc.ctc.edu/wpayne/zombies.htm