Jan 24 2007
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UFO Zombies
Zombie films: I love ‘em. Can’t get enough of ‘em. As my wife, Dana, will confirm, there’s few things I like more than sitting down with the lights off at midnight, and watching the legions of the dead attacking the living in the ruins of some dark, post-apocalyptic city. I cheer out loud when the heroes get bitten and they, too, begin to mutate into flesh-eating killing machines. I clap my hands when someone spectacularly shoots a zombie’s head clean off its shoulders (You know that’s the only way to stop a zombie, right? Nothing else works.). And then, when it’s all over, and death and disaster reign supreme, I’ll stick another DVD on and start the nightmarish process all over again.
Whether it’s old-time classics like the superb Carnival of Souls, Hammer Films’ excellent Plague of the Zombies, Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, or the new breed - such as the spectacular remake of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and the blackly-comic Shaun of the Dead - in the Redfern household the dead well and truly rule. Okay, I admit that the vision of a black-garbed, shaven-headed ufologist with a midnight zombie obsession might instill odd imagery in some; but, hey, that’s me: can’t change; won’t change.
But, at this point, you may be saying: “Why on earth is Redfern waffling on about zombies? Has he forgotten that UFOMystic is actually supposed to be about UFOs?” No, I haven’t. And as for why I’m going on about zombies, well, here’s why: I’m not the only one in ufology with a zombie obsession. But whereas my obsession is related to the film world and entertainment (I don’t actually believe that the dead will really one day rise up and attack the living - well, most of the time I don’t…), for others the obsession is far more troubling.
For a project that I am working on and that will finally be revealed later this year, I have spent a good many months digging into the claims of a group of so-called “alien abductees” whose stories differ in some ways to the standard abduction scenario.
As many students of the UFO puzzle will know, images of the apocalypse, of a destroyed world, of civilization in ruins, and of a decimated planet are often instilled in the minds of abductees by their dwarfish, black-eyed captors. Many see this as a less-than-subtle warning that our cosmic pals want us to change our warlike ways.
But there is a new trend afoot in the world of the abductee. It is one that still focuses upon a UFO-related post-apocalyptic nightmare, but with one glorious new addition: zombies. Yes, they may be coming to get you, after all. Yes, you! Now, I’m not talking about Romero-style zombies rising up from the grave (if only that could be true, though); but something far more disturbing. Each and every one of the relevant abductees I have spoken with has suffered from disturbing dreams over the course of the last two-to-three years. Broadly speaking, those dreams focus upon a malevolent alien race (alien in the literal sense; but not extraterrestrial) coming to the Earth to claim it as its own.
But there’s a slight problem: a pesky infestation known as the Human Race. So, the aliens unleash their weapon: not a tired old Independence Day-style attack of a type that only Hollywood could come up with, but something far more subtle. Namely, a virus of strange proportions that is spread by bites and that is designed to create homicidal rage in us, to the point where we all turn on each other (yes, zombie fans, I know that such a virus was also the subject of 28 Days Later). The purpose: To ensure that eventually we all become crazed cannibals, after which the virus mutates into a personal doomsday device that kills each and every infected person. The result: no more people and a planet that the aliens can claim as their own without having to resort to destroying half of it just to get rid of us.
Okay, it’s a great scenario. But, it is one that I am finding is on the increase within abduction circles. Yes, the image of the apocalypse is one that has long been a staple of ufology - just look at the contactee history and how countless characters within that field were warned by their “alien” friends that the end was nigh.
Now, skeptics and debunkers will say that the rising image of the zombie within alien abduction account is merely a reflection of a fear that we really are becoming a form of zombie: one obsessed by TV, food, and not much else. Those same skeptics and debunkers might also say that the introduction of a “virus angle” to the abduction controversy is borne out of a very real fear (conscious and unconscious) of a post-911 bio-attack by terrrorists. And those skeptics and debunkers may be right.
But, this situation is increasing. Are we seeing a new trend in abductions that is directly borne out of fears relating to the way in which our world is changing? Or, are the abductees seeing a glimpse of a dark, strange future that awaits us all? Most might say the former. Some will say the latter. I say: wait and see. Part of me secretly and weirdly hopes it really might be the latter.
But there’s something else: a number of high-profile UFO researchers have been experiencing such zombie-driven apocalyptic dreams, too. Some of them read this blog. Maybe they will comment; it’s not my place to speak for them.
If this is merely a psychological trend borne out of a concern of bio-attacks and a changing humanity, then it will be fascinating to see how it develops in the years ahead. Maybe we will see a radically changed alien abduction scenario as time progresses. But just in case the unthinkable happens, and the rise of the zombie becomes a reality, remember: always go for the head. Nothing else works.
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January 24th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Nick, have you read “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead”
by Max Brooks? Great stuff, and I think there is a movie in the works…
Marie
January 24th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Marie
I have indeed read it. There isn’t much on zombies that passes me by. Like the zombies themselves, I devour it all…
LOL
January 24th, 2007 at 9:35 am
“But, this situation is increasing. Are we seeing a new trend in abductions that is directly borne out of fears relating to the way in which our world is changing?”
i think that’s exactly what it is.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Ecks:
Yep, could well be.
January 24th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Well you are absolutely right about the ‘zombie’ aspect. However, I have no idea about the whole alien-rabies thing.
The ‘zombie’ effect described and feared by abductees is the loss of personal consciousness, or individuality that occurs prior to an abduction.
Abductees describe being advised that in the future, this temporary zombie-ness will become permenant. The good news is that the majority of humans will be destroyed prior to this.
(If you haven’t figured it out yet, ‘The Borg’ of Star Trek fame is far more closer to the truth than people can even imagine.)
January 24th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
You can’t beat the brain-eating zombie attack on Springfield, where the zombies ignore Homer after checking his skull. “Brains!!”
;)
Kind regards,
Greg
January 25th, 2007 at 7:20 am
You should watch a Troma films cheapie some guys made down the road from me called “Wiseguys Versus Zombies”. It’d be just your cup of tea.
January 25th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Bill:
I’ll definitely have to see that.
Greg:
How could I have forgotten Homer?
January 25th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Nick, three things:
First - and this is probably something you’ve already full well noticed yourself - I’ve been struck for quite a well now by the increase in cannablism related stories throughout the world: recently I read of one in some UK papers in which a prisoner supposedly unknown for violence of this type, suddenly turned on a fellow inmate and proceeded to suerhumanly crack open his rib cage (like Homer Simpson cracking open his beloved lobster Pinchy’s carapace) to get at and eat out the other guy’s lungs; and of course there’s that relatively recent notorious and indigestible German one where the victim voluntarily turned up to be filmed watching his penis being fried before trying some for himself and then allowing himself to be slaughtered and eaten; and to give another relatively recent British one that particularly sticks in my craw is that one where the woman walked in on her blood-drenched voodoo-crazed neightbour dismembering and consuming a mutual friend, but escaped the same fate by pretending not to notice and claiming she’d be straight back after she’d dealt with something she’d just remembered she still had to do.
Second - and this is why I’m interested in such real life examples - cannibalism is highly significant to a variety of mythologies: in Hinduism, for instance, one of the signs the present Kali Yuga Age is coming to its most critical stage is when cannibalism ceases to be present in its MOSTLY symbolic form - in the way you outlined above - and starts becoming more and more common and widespread in its literal form. And in, say, Ancient Egyptian mythology, not to mention all the South American mythologies, it’s the onset and prevalence of commonplace cannibalism that signals to the gods the need to send in such redeemer figures as Asar (Osiris), Quetzalcoatl, Kuckulcan, etc.; so, in that sense, cannibalism isn’t new to the end of the world, (or as I prefer to see it, beginning of the new world) scenario at all.
Third, I’m surprised in you’re light hearted and frivolous interest in zombies, instead of taking after your celebrated grandad - to whom you bear a startling family resemblance - whose story is recounted so notably in the German silent movie of his story, Nosferatu.
January 25th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Alan
Yeah I do kind of look like “Nossie” (as I like to call him), don’t I? I think they should give me royalties every time Nosferatu is broadcast.
January 25th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Wow! I coulda guessed yer a zombie fan Nick but … I would’ve flunked on the UFO angle. I’ve not yet heard any such abductee tales of this sort. But you’ve got my attention.
Question: have you found that abduction reports are down post-911? That was the assertion a few years ago among experiencers and researchers alike on UFO Updates.
I too am a HUGE zombie movie fan.
Have you read the reports over the years of Russian / Soviet scientists ressurrecting canines that had been killed and then flahs frozen? Supposedly there is video of this floating around out there.
Boffins create zombie dogs by Nick Buchan of NEWS.com.au / June 27, 2005
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-13762,00.html
This and other issues have made me begin to wonder about the probability that some military lab somewhere has created a biological / chemical warfare agent that can either ressurrect the dead and/or cause folks to become like zombies as in 28 DAYS LATER. What better way to convince Christians that it’s the End Times than to use such a weapon a bring about The Apocalypse?
Also, years ago, a friend of mine ecountered a homeless person on a bus who claimed to have escaped from being a drug-induced slave laborer in a Florida drug farm. Shortly thereafter I read of cases where drug-lords were using illegal immigrants in just such an operation. I wonder if blow-fish toxin that supposedly creates Voudoun zombies could do that?
SMiles
January 25th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
To Alanborky:
“Pinchy! (dipping lobster meat into butter and cramming into mouth while sobbing) He would have wanted it this way…”
To All:
Fave moment in ‘zombie flick’, A Romero flick, can’t remember the name, where an undead pulls a woman by the hair so that a splinter of wood is slowly forced into her eye. Both gruesome and awesome!
January 25th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
If I were an evil alien wannabe overlord, I wouldn’t bother to fiddle around with something that would make people be zombie cannibals who would then destroy each other. I’d just go straight to exterminating the earthlings in the most tidy and efficient way possible, so that the streets weren’t slippery with rotting offal.
But I guess if they had common sense just like we do, we couldn’t call them alien, could we?
January 26th, 2007 at 5:32 am
SMiles:
Very interesting story re the dogs. I’ll have to follow up on that.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Boyinthemachine:
That was Zombie Flesh Eaters.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Carol
Good point.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Wow, I’ve never heard about aliens turning humans into zombies. I guess it’s an idea, but it just sounds like too much work. Why can’t they just blow us up? I see that would leave the planet in ruin, but it sounds a lot easier than creating some illness and waiting for everyone to kill each other. But, if something like that ever does happen, I’ll be the first to hide in a mall
January 26th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Nick and Boyinthemachine:
Yeah, that’s a great movie - called simply ZOMBIE in the USA.
However, it is NOT a Romero flick. It’s a Lucio Fulci film:
http://movies.infinitecoolness.com/20/zombie05.jpg
My Mom and step-Dad are huge zombie movie fans. They think real zombies are going to be created by a combination of too much cell-phone induced brain damage and food additives.
SMiles
January 26th, 2007 at 9:10 am
SMiles - haha, your mom and step-dad could be right. Have you seen the looks on the faces of some of those people driving down the road with their cell-phone rammed against their ear?
That blank, vacant stare which they have, caused by listening on the phone instead of concentrating on where they are driving is the veritable hallmark of the zombie!
January 26th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Annie
Yeah, if there is ever a zombie attack, the mall is the only place to go. But what would be worse: being eaten alive by a zombie or hiding out in a mall for the rest of your life listening to elevator music? The latter would be a real nightmare.
:)
January 27th, 2007 at 11:54 am
As a student of folklore, and one who is fascinated by “layering” in folk contexts, I am continually intrigued by this ongoing totally recasting of what a zombie actually is.
Old movies like “White Zombie” with Bela Lugosi, or “I Walked With A Zombie” show a zombie as what a zombie is supposed to be: a “dead” person brought back to “life” and automaton existence through the drugs or the magicks of Bokors and used as beasts of burden…slave workers to the bokors…or as guardians…and leading a shuffling, shambling life of drudgery and servitude.
There is nothing in the zombie traditions of the Caribbean about cannibalism. The zombies got feed gruel…with no salt…and that was it.
The cannibalism “facet” that pervades every perception of “zombification” today has its roots solely in Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (and all its sequels, re-makes, and
rip-off successors). These flicks are fun as Hell and a kick to watch, but they really have nothing to do with “real” zombies.
January 28th, 2007 at 8:31 am
To Bill Hancock:
‘Real’ Zombies, as you put it, do indeed have a connection to the dead, for a small number of supposed victims in Haiti are considered dead, buried, and then ‘resurrected’ by the power of the Bokor into a life of slavery. I wrote ‘a small number’, since the most popular form of zombification in Haiti involves merely the stealing/entrapment of a person’s soul, which is usually kept in a bottle. A victim of such ’soul-theft’, will gradually loose their physical senses, especially taste and touch. Simply joys such as eating and various human physical contact, including sex, lose any appeal toward this form of zombie. Confounding this curse is the fact that the victims still remember how a food should taste and how good sex should feel, which I might add would serve to only worsen any developing depression. Eventually the deceased will become completely numb, both physically and mentally, and eventually waste away and actually die. Luckily for the victim, most Bokor’s can be bribed into breaking the bottle containing the soul of the victim, and thus welcoming the cursed one back to the realm of the ‘living.’
Technically, the name for the walking dead is, ‘revenant‘ (revived one) This is the term that describes the zombies of Hollywood fame.
Why does society use the term ‘zombie’ instead of ‘revenant?’ -I don’t know. Why does society call a boy witch a ‘warlock?’ It’s probably due to the fact that certain words have an implied ‘coolness.’
To All:
This is the form of ‘Zombie’ that I personally fear:
PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIES
(Theoretical Humans Possessing No Form Of Consciousness, Yet Behaving As If They Do, And Being Completely Indistinguishable From ‘Normal’ People)
(This link is a piece on philosophical zombies made to look as if it was referring to the zombies of Romero fame, love it!)
I did a blog last year about how it is conceivable that the state of being ‘non-conscious’, as in a Philosophical Zombie, could technically be transmittable if it is indeed caused by a virus or what-not. Say a Philosophical Zombie bit you on the arm. In a few days or so you begin to experience the worst headache of your life, as well as the perception of yourself ’shrinking.’ The next thing your know your body is not obeying your commands and you are powerless to stop it. The good thing is that your emotional and psychological pain caused by this experience will soon end, as your very ‘you-ness’ will soon be extinguished. The remaining imposter looks and behaves just like you did so no one will ever know that any change had taken place. Scary. (Also scary to think of it’s implication with regard to Alien Abduction, where people claimed they watched helplessly as they ‘co-operated’ with the aliens.)
January 28th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Bill/Boy:
That’s very true: the classic zombie of today’s horror film world is a relatively new addition to zombie lore and indeed doesn’t go back further than the 60s. The zombies in the 1960s Hammer Films production Plague of the Zombies are somewhat lethal but they fit the image too of shuffling slave workers rather than rampaging killing machines as per Romero.
It’s interesting that most people’s perceptions of the zombie are that of the Romero/flesh-eating monster scenario. When the truth is actually in some ways creepier.
January 28th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
While this concept of the “philosophical zombie” is intriguing…and frightening…it remains essentially a hypothetical construct…a “what if?” kind of situation.
From historical reports the zombies of William Seabrook, Zora Neale Thurston, and Alfred Metreaux seem to be closest to what the folklore of Haiti has always described . Seabrook , in fact, wrote in “The Magic Island” (the basis for “White Zombie” with Lugosi) that he suspeacted a drug cocktail was behind true zombification..as might be the case with the famous Clairvius Narcisse…and this was indeed what biologist Wade Davis put forward years later (tetrodotoxin and datura) in his research findings (and factoring brain damage from oxygen deprivation between burial and “resurrection” in many cases).
The cornerstone of the folklore, however, is the dullard, somnambulant, spooky/creepy “best of burden” drone worker who might be a threat to someone if ordered by a bokor to take a sugar cane machete to them, but that’s about it.
To the Haitian, the horror of the zombie was the threat of being made into one. Nothing more. Being “eaten” by them was/is a non-thought.
What we have now, though, in a large part of the west, is a complete overhaul of zombie-lore, where the shambling field worker has become
fictively merged with the traditional ghoul and has a liberal touch of Alfred Packer and Sawney Beane thrown into the mix. And you stop the average person on the street nowadays…anyone from nine on up…and ask them to tell you what a zombie is…and I’ll guarantee you a sold 95% of them (or more) will spiel you out the George Romero media-driven cannibal version and will disbelieve you if you try to correct their error.
Yep…a folkloric transmutation in full progress.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:51 am
To Bill:
Unfortunately ALL zombies are mere
‘theoretical’ beings. I’m assuming that you are not familiar with the criticism levelled against Wade Davis, not to mention Zora Neale Hurston?
Wade Davis obtained multiple samples of the supposed ‘zombie-drug’, yet rejected each and every one after analysis proved there to be no neurological toxin present. He then shopped around for a Bokor and specificaly stated he wanted a concoction containing such toxins. Voila! -a Bokor emerged who was more than happy to supply him with such, and take his money.
With regards to Zora Neale Hurston, and I must tred likely here because many an academic is in flat out denial, there is considerable evidence that most of her work is either plaigerized or flat out made-up, especialy her work on folklore -Mules and Men, Tell my Horse, etc. Harry Middleton Hyatt recorded several interviews with rootworkers in the south who were quite hostile towards Hurston, claiming she flat out lied about interviewing them or otherwise misrepresented herself. In Mules and Men, much of the ‘Hoodoo’ folklore comes word for word from a book entitled, “Black & White Magic of Marie Laveau” by .Bivens, which offhand I believe was first published some 5-10 years prior to Mules and Men.
The moral to the story is this; Tales of Zombies as resurected slaves are merely the Hatian form of ‘Boogeyman.’ Such tales told to frighten people into conforming to the norms of society. There has not been one documented case of a true ‘zombie’ as claimed by Wade Davis and the like, though many a person has claimed to be a victim of just such.
The true form of ‘zombification’ actually performed/practiced in Haiti involves the theft of the soul, as I described above. This is done as a form of punishment/retribution for any number of wrongdoings. The individual who has their soul stolen is, in fact, refered to as a walking corpse. They are dead to society, ostrocized, which is often a fate far more worse than death itself.
January 29th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
All true and taken as such. Your scholarship on this material is excellent. I do indeed know that a lot of questioning has gone on about Davis’s compounds, and that there has been questioning, as well, of some of Hurston’s acounts, but all I have really been addressing here is a conformation to the general folklore…what it basically is (in general, rather than specific) terms…and what it is not: i.e. cannibalistic. As you say, the capturing of the soul in a bottle is the alledged methodology…whereas what I said, more generally, was that thae great fear of zombies in Haiti was not in being eaten by one, but being turned into one. We’re getting at the same thing, just coming at it from different directions.
Both of us realize, though, that what WE think of as a zombie is, increasingly (due to movies, video games, etc.) NOT what the public at large is coming to perceive as a zombie.
As for the root doctor material, I may come to pick your brain later as a source for info to be used in a screenplay on “the walking dead” set in the SC Lowcountry.
G’day and hats off to the esteemed Harry Middleton Hyatt!
January 31st, 2007 at 6:02 pm
To Bill:
Yes, We are indeed in agreement that the zombies of folklore did not consume human flesh.
I’m also glad to learn that we share many interests. Further correspondance is welcomed.