Monstrous Origins
October 30, 2024 | Ian Everett
Happy Halloween! Everyone’s favorite time of year! Creepy crawlies and ghastly ghoulies abound! Today we thought it’d be fun to explore the origins and various legends surrounding some of our favorite classic monsters.
Zombies
The classic zombie! Commonly depicted as a reanimated corpse with no will of its own (either guided by hunger or some other dark purpose), zombies find their modern origin in Haitian folklore. The term is derived from the word Nzambi meaning “spirit of a dead person”. These traditional zombies were created by a voodoo sorcerer called a bokor. This process turned them into a sort of mindless automaton, a body without a soul or mind, which invoked images and fears around the chattel slavery of the colonial New World.
“The earliest references to zombies in the United States were closely associated with slavery and connected the word to African traditions. The word zombi—which for years was spelled without the ‘e’ at the end—first appeared in print in an American newspaper in a reprinted short story called ‘The Unknown Painter’ in 1838.” – NPR
George Romero can be credited for the modern “horde of zombies” concept. Until Night of the Living Dead, zombie stories mostly focused on the voodoo/folklore origins of zombies and involved plots based around those aspects.
After Night of the Living Dead—which never refers to the dead as “zombies”—mainstream horror ran with this new concept of a horde of undead creatures.
“The Caribbean cultural context, the connections to a particular African diasporic experience, and the notion of zombies as slaves in the thrall of a sorcery-performing master—all of that was swept away by Night of the Living Dead. The zombie is now a safely universal experience devoid of cultural specificity. Everyone dies so anyone can join the army of the undead.” – Jeff Hinkelman, CMU
Lately, zombies seem to be more of a metaphor for plagues and infections rather than slavery. Media like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, and 28 Days Later focus on societal apocalypse in the wake of a fast-spreading disease that wipes out nearly all human life.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is among the organizations that have sought to capitalize on the American appetite for all things zombie. In 2012, the CDC raised some eyebrows when it unveiled a page on its website devoted to ‘zombie preparedness’.” – NPR
Werewolves
Werewolves, another staple Halloween critter! Werewolves are defined as shapechangers (mostly involuntarily under the light of a full moon) who can transform from human to wolf.
Shape changing and turning into wolves as a storytelling tradition goes back to ancient history! The Epic of Gilgamesh is believed by some to have the first mention of the werewolf in history. Herodotus, the Greek historian and philosopher, asserted that the ancient Slavic/Baltic Neuri people were magicians who could turn themselves into wolves. Ancient Greece has werewolves and wolven men integrated into its mythology and local religions: a popular myth of King Lycaon has it that Zeus turned him into a wolf after he tried to serve the god human meat. The term lycanthrope comes from ancient Greek—lykánthrōpos or “wolf-human”.
Werewolves took off in medieval European mythology, deriving their modern name from Old English (werwulf meaning “man-wolf”). There’s evidence of widespread belief in werewolves at the time, even being mentioned in medieval law codes, such as King Cnut, whose Ecclesiastical Ordinances inform us that the codes aim to ensure that "...the madly audacious werewolf do not too widely devastate, nor bite too many of the spiritual flock.“ - Otten, Charlotte F. (1986). The Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2384-7.
Rumors of Norse Viking warriors also mention wolf-coated men called Úlfhednar. Scandinavian traditions may also have led to the Slavic werewolf tales. The 11th century Belarusian Prince was considered to have been a werewolf. Werewolves seem to split between western and eastern European folklore: on the eastern side the werewolf is more like a vampire, while in the western folklore they are associated with the witchcraft panic. Being a werewolf was a common accusation in medieval witch trials.
Numerous reports of werewolf attacks in France, and belief in lycanthropy as an affliction spread across much of French-speaking Europe through the 1600s. Until the 20th century, wolf attacks on humans were common enough in Europe that it’s no wonder they were mapped onto some kind of evil folklore. One idea scholars have theorized is that werewolf myth may have been a way of explaining serial killers!
Modern werewolves feature men cursed under the light of a full moon, with a vulnerability to silver weaponry. The latter comes from German and English folklore that silver could deal with shapeshifters, the former from 20th century media. Werewolf of London was the first feature-length film about werewolves.
Modern depictions move away from the werewolf as a cannibal or witch. However, the idea that lycanthropy is an affliction or punishment has remained a prominent theme of the werewolf in most of its history.
Vampires
Our favorite bloodsucking creatures for the terminally horny! One of the easiest Halloween costumes there is, just slap on some pointy teeth and blood and you’re golden. Maybe even apply some sparkles if you’re into a… different… variety.
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Vampires seem to have maintained their media popularity these last couple of decades, and it’s easy to see why. Tales of bloodsucking creatures have existed in nearly every culture for centuries, however, the term vampire didn’t exist in ancient times. Demons and spirits were often associated with blood drinking, instead. The Persians were one of the first civilizations with such a lore, with pottery shards depicting creatures attempting to drink men’s blood. Lilith of ancient Hebrew demonology was a primordial she-demon and Adam’s first wife. The story drew on and was synonymous with Assyrian and Babylonian folklore of the Lilitu, a feminine demon who was associated with drinking the blood of babies. Greco-Roman myth had multiple creatures that were described as feasting on blood, including Lamia, the Mormo, the Strix, and Empusae, the daughter of Hecate.
Many cultures across the world feature vampiric, blood-feasting creatures. Africa has many such legends, like the West African asanbosam and adze, the Eastern Cape region’s impundulu, and the Madagascar tale of ramanga, an outlaw or living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the nail clippings of nobles. China has the jiangshi, which are hopping undead creatures that absorb the life force of their victims and are said to be the result of a spirit not leaving a dead body. They have greenish-white furry skin, which may be derived from fungus or mold growing on a corpse. Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore feature a creature called the Kuntilanak/Pontianak/Yakshi, an undead creature born from a woman who died in childbirth. In Malaysia, the lore depicts these creatures as blood-suckers.
There are some theories that the development of the vampire was caused by not understanding the decomposition of corpses (vampire hunters might mistake swelling and other signs of decomposition as evidence of vampirism), as well as mysterious wasting diseases that we didn’t understand at the time. In the 18th and 19th centuries, New England experienced a vampire panic associated with a rise of tuberculosis. Families pulled loved ones out of the grave and removed their hearts to prevent them from coming and infecting other family members. Mercy Brown, of Rhode Island, is a very famous example of this kind of hysteria. Her father dug her up, cut out her heart, and burned it to ashes, in 1892.
Modern vampires also feature very heavy political imagery, depicting them as wealthy nobles in castles, and the idea of a blood-sucking creature and a parasitic wealthy class is easy to connect. Vampires in modern fiction can trace most of their origins back to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as it remains the most influential piece of vampire fiction in the modern era. Dracula introduced many undertones of sex, blood, and death that remain fixtures of vampires to this day. Media from the 20th century that was inspired by Dracula is responsible for establishing our modern features of vampires, like their fangs and sensitivity to daylight.
Dracula remains an incredibly influential character, existing in our popular canon on a level similar to Sherlock Holmes. He’s been adapted into dozens of different stories and has inspired countless vampires.
Ghosts
The great ghost! The disembodied spirit of a deceased person. The history of the ghost goes hand in hand with our history of belief in the afterlife and the soul.
Many cultures have ancient tales of ghosts. Mesopotamia believed ghosts were created at the person’s death—carrying their memories and personality—and traveled to the Underworld. Ancient Egypt also believed in a disembodied soul, and Hebrew mythology featured this as well. Ancient and Classical Greece featured ghosts that could work for good or evil purposes. (The 5th century play Oresteia features the first ghost in a work of fiction, the ghost of Clytemnestra). Romans believed you could summon a ghost to exact revenge on an enemy. The Bible even mentions that the Disciples thought of Jesus as a ghost upon his resurrection!
Ghosts in the Middle Ages were typically either the souls of the dead or demons. Most were ascribed as souls assigned to Purgatory, cursed to atone for their sins in life. Necromancy arose in Renaissance and Romantic works as a dark art associated with communicating with the dead. Many tales from this time feature ghosts returning due to regrets, grief, vengeance—some negative emotion left unresolved in life. Some also featured them as kindly messengers or guides, often with some business left behind in life as well.
Most modern ghost stories revolve around one of these two themes: horror and romance. Modern romantic ghost tales include things like Field of Dreams or Ghost, while modern horror ghost tales include things like The Sixth Sense, The Ring, and The Haunting of Hill House.
The fear of ghosts could be derived from psychological phenomena like sleep paralysis, hallucinations, and the human mind against itself.
"...I am perfectly aware that the fear of ghosts is contrary to science, reason and religion. If I were sentenced to spend a night alone in a graveyard, [...] I should already know that twigs would snap and the wind moan and that there would be half-seen movements in the darkness. And yet, after I had been frog-marched into the graveyard, I should feel a thrill of fear every time one of these things happened...“ - Philosopher Peter van Inwagen ("God and the Philosophers", edited by Thomas V. Morris (1996) ISBN 0-19-510119-7 p. 39)
Spooky Conclusions
Many of our Halloween monsters that we enjoy seem to come from a place of anxiety and fear about moral and taboo topics:
Zombies from slavery
Werewolves from cannibalism and murder
Vampires from death, decomposition, and wasting illnesses
Ghosts from unexplained phenomena and the human mind playing tricks on itself
So what kind of monsters could you imagine coming from our more modern fears and anxieties? Creatures born from the idea of not having as much privacy in a digital age, or misinformation? Imagine a being that sits in the corner of your office, always watching with a lidless eye, always studying you, always learning about you, and when you are thoroughly mapped out, it will begin dancing for you so compellingly that you can’t look away, not until you die. Who knows, maybe you could name that creature the All Gore Rhythm.
Happy Halloween everybody!
