Earlier we had a post on zombies.
As you may know, zombies are part of Haitian folklore. The term became popular in the U.S. following the release of the 1932 film White Zombie–starring our old friend Bela Lugosi!
This wasn’t the first time that the idea of zombies had appeared in western thought, though. The idea of reanimated bodies coming out of their graves and stalking the living had already been thunk up in the Middle Ages, when they were called "revenants" (Latin, "the returned," more or less).
Folks back then had their own ideas about how to deal with the revenant threat, which might come in handy in case of an actual zombie uprising.
(NOTE: To the extent that there is any basis for these European legends, my guess is that they’re based on people who were buried when they weren’t actually dead yet–not an unknown occurrence in the old days–who then revived temporarily in a disoriented state, poor souls.)
