In honor of the spookiest of seasons, let us talk about one of the most horrific folkloric creatures of all: the walking dead.

Now, while a lot of different cultures have their own folklore surrounding living corpses, we’re going to focus more on the one that’s had the most impact on zombies in popular culture, Haiti. Originally, though, the word in question was zombi rather than zombie, and appears to have been derived from one of two Kongo words: nzambi, meaning “god,” or zumbi, meaning “fetish.” Since the bulk of Haiti’s population at the time were African slaves, the West African origins of the word make sense.

So does how these original zombies operated. In Haitian folklore, zombies were created by a bokor, that being a malevolent sorcerer. The bokor would use their magic to bind the deceased to them, who would then proceed to do their bidding with no will of their own. Typically, if a zombie is given salt, the spell is broken and they return to their grave.

Yeah, I can see how the idea of being forced to continue their servitude even in death would be pretty horrifying to enslaved people.

As for how it ended up in our current pop culture landscape is a little more ambiguous. The word “zombie” appeared in the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 1819, but one of the earliest works of fiction in English was in 1838. This story, called “The Unknown Painter,” follows the titular painter’s slave trying to warn him that a zombie’s been coming in at night to finish his apprentice’s paintings. Sort of like that story about the cobbler, except with the undead instead of elves.

In terms of film, one of the earliest is 1932’s White Zombie. This one is about a guy who tries to take a girl from her fiance by turning her into a zombie. And these are all white people, by the way, hence the name. Fun fact: Rob Zombie took the name of this film for his band back in the day.

A somewhat more racially sensitive zombie movie came out in 1969, that being George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which follows a group of people holed up in a house during the zombie apocalypse. I have seen this movie and it actually holds up really well. You can actually watch it for free on YouTube, since it’s public domain, which I recommend if you haven’t seen it yet.

The zombie craze kind of died down in cinema for a while after that, but was alive and well in video game format, where they often appeared as antagonists. The ur example of this, of course, is the 1996 PS1 classic Resident Evil (known in some territories as Biohazard). This game puts players in the shoes of a group of police officers trapped in a zombie-infested mansion, and kick-started one of Capcom’s most recognizable franchises.

Zombies made a comeback to movie theaters in the early 2000s, with films like 28 Days Later and the horror comedy Shaun of the Dead. We also have Robert Kirkman’s comic The Walking Dead, which was adapted to a very popular TV series by AMC starting in 2010.

I find it interesting to note that, around the time Resident Evil came out, the origins of zombies started to become less magical and more scientific. In a lot of more modern zombie media, the monsters tend to come about because of something like radiation, or, more commonly, a virus. In some stories, like the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead, their origins are entirely unexplained.

There are a lot of other zombie stories I could get into, but for brevity’s sake I’ll stop here. Hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you next time!