The black history of zombies

Zombies, we have all heard about the living dead or the walking dead that roam the streets and feast on the flesh of human beings.

My first encounter with zombies was when I watched

Watching Michael Jackson turn into a werewolf in front of Ola Ray was scary enough. By the time the zombie crawled out from their graves and crypts I had lost my mind. To make matters worse, Michael Jackson turned into a zombie. I really didn't know what they were but I knew they were scary.

My next encounter with the zombie phenomenon was sometime in 1993 when TV ads for the early Nollywood horror flick ''. I never watched the movie because the advert was scary enough.

By the time Sony had revolutionized the gaming industry with Play Station, zombies had become a mainstay. , the popular game would later be recreated into several movies. The franchise has been so successful that the last instalment '' will be released January 2016, in Japan.

Today, the average Nigerian kid has consumed so much of zombie media from movies such as '', '', the sequel '', and the hit TV series 'undefined'.

As Nigerians begin to celebrate Halloween, it is fitting to say that zombies have a black origin, Haitian to be specific.

Nzambi is the Haitian word for zombie and it is the Kongo word for 'soul'. The dark art of reanimating dead corpses started in Haiti when African slaves who still maintained their traditional practices used voodoo to bring back the dead.

The Haitian zombie is not as sensational as the ones we see on TV. They are docile and weak but they do not have a hunger for human flesh.

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It was believed that the notorious Haiti dictator used zombies as members of his feared Tontons Macoutes to clamp down on those who opposed him.

Scientists have travelled to Haiti to try to understand the components of the zombie powder but none of them has been successful so far.

Another point where black culture intersects the zombie myth is the movie ''. The seminal flick released in 1968 featured a black actor Duane Jones as the leading actor. This was unusual at the time. Many black actors weren't given leading roles.

'Night of the Living Dead' would go on to be a success. With a meagre budget of $114, 000 the film would go on to rake $18m internationally.

In Nigeria, we have our own fair share of myths such as bush babies and Madam Koi Koi, but the zombie myth is one of those universal myths that haunt us like vampires and werewolves.

Happy Halloween.