Daniel Farson

Although popularized in countless Hollywood horror films like Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later, actual accounts of real—life zombies are rare and treated with skepticism. Despite this, credible accounts of human beings evincing zombie—like behavior in Haiti have been given by respected American writers as early as the 1930s. In this excerpt from his book Vampires, Zombies, and Monster Men, author Daniel Farson finds that although many of these sightings relied heavily on verbal testimony and incomplete evidence, their consistency and the degree of dread with which most Haitians regard the possibility of becoming zombies suggest at least a kernel of truth behind such a bizarre, persistent myth. Nevertheless, Farson states that most zombies may simply be people who are mentally ill or under the influence of powerful drugs. Daniel Farson is also...