The Father of all Pop Culture Zombies

This travel writer introduced the undead to America. He also ATE HUMAN FLESH.

In my other newsletter Pop Cultural Precursors, I wrote about the twisted life and legacy of William Seabrook. He’s the travel writer who first introduced zombies to Western pop culture. He was also a bohemian, an occultist, a sadomasochist, and a self-confessed cannibal who wrote about the smell, taste, and texture of human flesh with the relish of a restaurant critic.

.Read the full story here. Here’s an excerpt:
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In his travelogue The Magic Island, Seabrook explains what the actual dietary needs of the original zombies were reputed to be. He shares the story of a Haitian couple, Joseph and Croyance, who command a group of field workers that are “not living men and women but unhappy zombies who [they] had dragged from their peaceful graves to slave in the sun.” Croyance must prepare tasteless meals for them because zombies immediately die if they taste salt or meat. One day she takes pity on the “poor dead creatures who should be at rest,” and decides that it might cheer them to see the crowds and processions in the city during a religious festival.

In town, Croyance slipped up and mistakenly fed salted pistachios to the zombies. The seasoned food broke the spell that had suspended them in an unnatural state between life and death; they all cried out, and then they each began to trudge towards the graveyards in their home villages. “No one dared stop them, for they were corpses walking in the sunlight, and they themselves and all the people know that they were corpses.”

When they reached their destinations, each of the zombies fell to the ground and immediately transformed into a pile of rotted flesh.