Werewolves and Zombies

According to European folklore, a werewolf is a person who has the ability to change, either at will or involuntarily, into a wolf. Once transformed the person has an insatiable urge to eat live human or animal flesh and howl at the moon. There are stories of werewolves, dating back to prehistory, from ancient cultures all over the world. 'Lycanthropy', the mental disorder where sufferers believe themselves to be a wolf, comes from the Greek 'lykos', meaning wolf and 'anthropos', meaning man.

In Pagan society, the wolf was revered for its cunning and hunting skills. Pagan warriors worshipped wolf gods and wore wolf skins and teeth in the belief that they would acquire the animal’s characteristics. In the Middle Ages, the wolf became a symbol of evil. Hysteria about werewolves broke out all over Europe. Thousands of people were accused of being werewolves and many were tortured and executed.

You could be singled out as a werewolf if you had hairy hands or feet, bushy eyebrows that met in the middle, or prominent teeth. If you were born under a new moon or bitten by a wolf, you were thought to be doomed. Anyone who wanted to become a werewolf could make a pact with the devil or rub a magic salve on their bodies. It is now thought that some of the herbs and plants used in salves and potions had LSD like effects and so caused any would-be werewolves to hallucinate and really believe they had been transformed. According to folklore, werewolves could be warded off using the plant wolfsbane and killed by shooting with blessed silver bullets.

A zombie is a person who has been brought back to life through some sort of curse, or been reanimated by other means, giving the body the ability to move. The typical image of a zombie is a slow moving corpse, in varying stages of decomposition, with little reasoning power and a hunger for live human flesh. Not something you’d like to meet down a dark ally!

Zombies are often associated with the West African religion, 'voodoo', which was brought to Haiti by slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries. Voodooists believe that a zombie is a corpse that has been raised from the dead but the living may also be put into a zombie-like state by the use of poison and ritual. Legend has it that landowners raised zombies from the dead to work for free on their plantations. 

Hollywood has embraced the zombie as a popular horror genre. In early classics like George A. Romero’s, 'Dawn of the Dead' (1979), zombies are shuffling, blank faced corpses, intent on devouring human flesh. More recently, films like '28 Days Later' and 'Resident Evil', both released in 2002, feature zombies created by man-made viruses that have escaped from labs. The zombies in these films don’t shuffle after their victims, they sprint! And 'Shaun of the Dead' (2004) even introduced a dose of humour to the zombie movie genre.