THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
Evidence of Zombiism
A few weeks ago, when the game Monster Hunter: World was released to adorn the consoles of millions of gaming fanatics across the globe (seriously, the game has sold really, really well), producers Capcom partnered with The Centre of Fortean Zoology founder Jonathan Downes, offering £50,000 to any would-be adventurer who could provide cast-iron proof of real-world monsters. The monsters on the list (and, yes, the competition is still running) include the legendary bigfoot, the wonderfully named Mongolian Death Worm and England's very own Cornish Owlman. My friendly neighbourhood horror site, Bloody Disgusting, has all the details should you want to get involved.
This begs the question - at least in my mind -, why aren't Zombies on the list? Are they not monsters? Are they not a mythical entity waiting to be proved or disproved? Why should they be treated as any less of a rarity than Bigfoot or The Flying Snake of Namibia? Well, the answer to why Zombies are not included in the more "socially-acceptable" bunch of freaks is actually painfully obvious: it is impossible to prove Zombies exist.
Finding evidence of Zombies
Say I believe Zombies exist, and I want to prove it. Firstly, and most obviously, there is photographic evidence - I go out there, I come face to face with the living dead and I snap a shot of his ugly mug. Boom! Job done. No one can argue with that, right? Well, I'm afraid to say to my naive self that, yes they can argue and they will argue, if "argue" is even the right word for dismissing something straight off the barbed-wire crowned bat and permanently labeling you as the village idiot, a moron to be talked of in whispers and laughed at for the rest of time. You see with Zombies being so prevalent in modern culture with conventions, TV programmes and movies as well as FX work becoming increasingly realistic (just look at The Walking Dead for example), any photos of "real" Zombies would be thrown-away as nothing more than pranks - the mischievous work of a group of friends out for some "street cred" or simple advertising campaigns creating the desired effect; enveloping the onlooker in a make-believe world.
Moving on you might try videos - a moving capture of true Zombie behaviour. But the same problem persists. Capture people shuffling along with a Zombie gait; easily dismissed as drunk men or actors. What about a Zombie eating someone, surely no one can turn the other cheek to that? Nope - faked or staged - they do it with staggering realism on The Walking Dead all the time. And this highlights yet another reason why no one can ever prove Zombies exist; Zombies are, or, rather were, plain, ordinary, "run-of-the-mill" humans once. Yes, they may have become monsters now through supernatural, viral, fungal or biological means but, at the end of the day, they're still just humans - any physical evidence will always point to the human they once were, not the Zombie they are now. This means casts of footprints, recovered limbs, hair, teeth, DNA collected from dislodged skin - they are all out.
Finally, there is written reports and it doesn't take a genius to work out the main problem here - Zombie fact is completely inseparable from Zombie fiction; The Zombie Survival Guide shows just how blurred the line between the two genres can become. However, consider a news report from an official, reliable source - getting someone known for cold, hard facts to report the return of the dead to life must be good enough to get people on the Zombie bandwagon. You'd think so, wouldn't you - certainly if the global news came up on TV and said the reanimated dead are walking the streets, I'd take note (and probably have a party). This day will never, ever happen. As soon as any journalist even mentions the Z word, that's it, their career is over. No serious news show would ever dare run a news story about Zombies - watchers would immediately tune out of this "made-up rubbish", switching to another station for more serious news. Ratings would crumble and, almost overnight, the news company would go bust - pleasing no one. And, as for that initial journalist, no one will ever believe anything he reports ever again, simply because he tried to warn people about the shocking reality of the living dead.
The X-Files
We live in an age of science; especially in the 21st century, humanity as the tools to answer pretty much anything in increasingly microscopic detail and we thrive on that knowledge, we need it, we must have that routine, that carefree, structured model of "if I do this, this will happen". If we did not have this regularity to our universe - even if some of it may only be perceived regularity - the world would be plunged into chaos, anarchy would reign and, at least briefly, until a new order had been established, civilization would fall apart. The idea of Zombies brakes this structured model of knowledge; they can't be explained by our current thinking (at the moment, death is final - once a human has taken "the big ride", they can't come back). In other words, Zombies are unexplained and, since we can't even - assuming Zombies are real for the moment - accept their realism at present, unexplainable.
It's a problem summed up rather well by a recent episode of The X-Files; the one where a brother and sister can kill people by playing games of hangman with the intended victim's name as the missing word. Pretty freaky so far but here's the catch - they played the game "telepathically", separated by miles of open country. How did they do it? We don't know, the show never even hints at an explanation and, initially, this annoys me - something deep within me, rooted into the very base of my brain wants an answer, wants an explanation. What could that explanation actually be though, what could the show have done to explain itself? The answer is nothing. No one could explain telepathy or why these people had it and no one else did, you just had to accept it and move on; it's weird yes but, hey, do we really need to understand it?
Are Zombies actually out there?
Okay, so this might be going a bit off topic though it is quite an interesting point that got me thinking. I've recently been reading the Zombie short-story anthology Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead and two stories have stuck in my mind like rotten Zombie teeth. The fictional works in question - Sea Oak and A Case of the Stubborns - both share a similar theme where a physically dead person simply refuses to die; they aren't evil, they don't want your brains or to devour your flesh, they just don't accept that they are dead. These reanimated dead return to their homes, their families or loved ones and behave as normal (or, as normally as possible considering that they are rotting away). My point here is made explicit in the former story; what if there are these harmless reanimated dead folk in the world right now and the majority of us living people, just don't know about it? I mean, if you had a dead person "living" in your house, no one is going to believe it - any proof you give will be dismissed as fake or a prank. Even physically showing someone the "living" dead person is not going to cut it or, going "the whole nine yards" and getting the rotting, moving corpse to appear on TV, announcing his dead state to a global audience would just be considered television trickery.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no way to prove Zombies exist - even if you see one yourself, you can never really be sure you are not just the victim of a prank or caught up in a morbid advertising campaign for an upcoming horror film. No one can tell the public that Zombies exist - they'll be laughed all the way to the grave. All anyone can do is choose to believe in Zombies. The question of how can I prove Zombies exist is redundant. The only question you need ask is; can I believe in Zombies without proof?
DESCRIPTION:
There is a competition running to find conclusive proof of real-world monsters. However, Zombies are not mentioned as possible candidates. This article explores, and attempts to explain, why the wandering ghouls we all love so much are left out.
CATEGORY:
Scientific
WRITTEN BY:
DATE UPLOADED:
24/02/2018