"A zombie is a reanimated human corpse. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou, which told of the people being controlled as workers by a powerful sorcerer. Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.



There are several possible etymologies of the word zombie. One possible origin is jumbie, the West Indian term for "ghost". Another is nzambi, the Kongo word meaning "spirit of a dead person." According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the etymology is from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, of Bantu origin. A zonbi is a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will. It is akin to the Kimbundu nzúmbe ghost. These words are approximately from 1871."

- Wikipedia



"I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
And will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!"

- Epic of Gilgamesh


"It was West who first noticed the falling plaster on that part of the wall where the ancient tomb masonry had been covered up. I was going to run, but he stopped me. Then I saw a small black aperture, felt a ghoulish wind of ice, and smelled the charnel bowels of a putrescent earth. There was no sound, but just then the electric lights went out and I saw outlined against some phosphorescence of the nether world a horde of silent toiling things which only insanity -- or worse -- could create. Their outlines were human, semi-human, fractionally human, and not human at all -- the horde was grotesquely heterogeneous. They were removing the stones quietly, one by one, from the centuried wall. And then, as the breach became large enough, they came out into the laboratory in single file; led by a talking thing with a beautiful head made of wax. A sort of mad-eyed monstrosity behind the leader seized on Herbert West. West did not resist or utter a sound. Then they all sprang at him and tore him to pieces before my eyes, bearing the fragments away into that subterranean vault of fabulous abominations. West’s head was carried off by the wax-headed leader, who wore a Canadian officer’s uniform. As it disappeared I saw that the blue eyes behind the spectacles were hideously blazing with their first touch of frantic, visible emotion. "

- "Herbert West: Reanimator" by H.P. Lovecraft




"The dead walk among us. Zombies, ghouls-no matter what their label-these somnambulists are the greatest threat to humanity, other than humanity itself. To call them predators and us prey would he inaccurate. They are a plague, and the human race their host. The lucky victims are devoured, their bones scraped clean, their flesh consumed. Those not so fortunate join the ranks of their attackers, transformed into putrid, carnivorous monsters. Conventional warfare is useless against these creatures, as is conventional thought. The science of ending life, developed and perfected since the beginning of our existence, cannot protect us from an enemy that has no "life" to end. Does this mean the living dead are invincible? No. Can these creatures be stopped? Yes. Ignorance is the undead's strongest ally, knowledge their deadliest enemy. That is why this book was written: to provide the knowledge necessary for survival against these subhuman beasts. Survival is the key word to remember-not victory, not conquest, just survival."

- The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks




"The Vaudoux priests gave out, that although the deity would permit the execution, he would only do it to prove to his votaries his power by raising them all again from the dead. To prevent their bodies being arried away during the night (they had been buried near the place of execution), picquets of troops were placed round the spot; but in the morning three of the graves were found empty, and the bodies of the two priests and the priestess had disappeared. Superstitious fear had probably prevented the soldiers from staying where they had been posted, and as most [206] of the troops belonged to the sect of the Vaudoux, they probably connived at, rather than prevented, the exhumation."

- The Black Republic by Sir Spenser St John (1884)









"Now he beheld a Departed One, of terrible appearance, humpbacked and fleshless, with hair erect, dirty, and with senses discomposed by hunger and thirst."

- Garuda Purana




"...the resurrection of dead game may have its inconveniences, and accordingly some hunters take steps to prevent it by hamstringing the animal so as to prevent it or its ghost from getting up and running away. This is the motive alleged for the practice by Koui hunters in Laos; they think that the spells which they utter in the chase may lose their magical virtue, and that the slaughtered animal may consequently come to life again and escape. To prevent that catastrophe they therefore hamstring the beast as soon as they have butchered it. When an Esquimau of Alaska has killed a fox, he carefully cuts the tendons of all the animal's legs in order to prevent the ghost from reanimating the body and walking about."

- The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer








"A man of the better and more well-to-do working class in Port-au-Prince fell ill. He had at intervals a high fever, which the physician who attended him could not reduce. The man had some months before joined the congregation of one of the foreign churches, and the head of this mission visited him. On the occasion of his second visit this clergyman saw the patient die, and at the invitation of the man's wife and of his physician, he helped to dress the dead man in his grave-clothes, which, after the Haytian custom, is quite a ceremony. The next day this foreigner, and at least a dozen other men, all natives and of good standing, assisted at the funeral, closed the coffin lid upon the face of their dead friend, accompanied the funeral cortege to the cemetery, and there saw the dead man buried four feet under ground.

The malady of which he died, according to the attending physician, a man of good intentions and of undoubted probity, at least, was not an unusual one, and it ran a normal course. There was, indeed, not a suggestion or even thought of foul play, until two days later, when the bereaved widow went to the cemetery only to find that the grave had been opened, and to see the empty coffin lying beside it. The stricken woman rushed to the nearest police office and there was promised a thorough investigation. In return for this promise and the apparent activity of the police in her behalf, the unfortunate woman acquiesced in the policy of secrecy and silence which they imposed upon her.



As it subsequently transpired, this was the only step which the authorities took in the matter, and it was well in accord with the invariable governmental attitude of suppression or denial in the presence of all Voodoo crimes. This, however, was to be one of the comparatively few instances which, owing to a fortunate accident, escaped the systematic stifling process. On the day after the widow's discovery the mail rider between Jacmel and the capital arrived several hours late, but with a story which could not be otherwise than accepted as a valid excuse. His was indeed an astonishing tale, and it is not remarkable that at first many were disinclined to believe it.


He reported, however, and subsequently substantiated every detail of his story as follows: On the night in question he was not pursuing his usual mail route. The waters of the Grande River were so swollen by recent rains that he had been compelled to leave the beaten trail and, in some places, to travel across country. While doing so, and while doubtless drowsy from his long night's ride and vigil, he suddenly rode into a great clearing lit up by a huge wood fire. A dozen men and women who were gathered around the fire rushed angrily at him, and the mail rider, not unnaturally concluding that he had fallen upon thieves, opened fire with his revolver. The strange woodland mob fled wildly shrieking into the darkest recesses of the wood, leaving the astonished traveller standing alone, as he thought, by the mysterious fire in the clearing.



The mail rider took a swig of rum to steady his nerves, and was about to beat a hasty retreat back to the flooded trail, which now contained for him nothing so fearful as the mysteriously populated forest, when suddenly, despite the rum, his blood ran cold. A long moan, as of some one in mortal agony, fell upon his ear. Twice, according to his own story, the mail rider fled the ghostly place, and twice something which he could not define or overcome brought him back.

At last, snatching up a burning cedar branch from the fire, he looked all about him, and the mystery of the moans at last was quickly explained. Not twenty feet from the fire and facing it, he saw a man dressed in the garments of the grave, who, though tied to a tree and gagged, was still faintly moaning and still weakly struggling to be free. The mail rider, after a moment's hesitation, getting the better of his fears, freed the poor wretch, who soon recovered his speech but not his mind. He could give no coherent account of how he had come into this strange plight, and finally the mail rider mounted him on his horse, tied him to the saddle, and led the way to the nearest military post on the road.

Here he turned the strange waif of the forest, who was still incoherent in his speech, over to the soldiers of the guard, and hurried on himself to the capital with his mail-bags. Once there, he not only reported the matter to the authorities, which might have been forgiven, but he not unnaturally talked about it to all his friends, an indiscretion which ultimately cost him his place. Port-au-Prince was wild with excitement, and the next day the unfortunate man was brought into town. Pie was lodged in jail, for want of a better place, and here he was immediately identified by his wife and by the physician who, a few days before, had pronounced him dead, and by the clergyman who had read the service over his body. The recognition was not mutual, however. The unfortunate victim of Voodoo barbarity recognised no one, and his days and nights were spent in moaning and groaning and in uttering inarticulate words which no one could understand."

- THE American Mediterranean by Stephen Bonsal (1912)





Zombie

* 1 oz light rum
* 1/2 oz creme de noyaux
* 1/2 oz triple sec
* 1 1/2 oz sour mix
* 1 1/2 oz orange juice
* 1/2 oz 151 proof rum


Directions

* Fill mixing glass with ice
* Add light rum, creme de noyaux, triple sec, sour mix and orange juice
* Strain into a collins glass filled with ice
* Top with 151 proof rum
* Garnish with a cherry

- The Bartenders Database








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