A zombie refers to a human being in a state between life and death, who has no will, human recognition, or all other spiritual or mental aspects that are present in a normal human being.
The word zombie is said to originate from the Haitian word zombi’ meaning spirit of the day. The theory goes that a long time ago, voodoo priests used to give people black powder which was gotten from animals and plants that had tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin that is known to cause paralysis or even worse death. The priests would then bury the subjects and later remove them from their graves while physically alive but having their minds erased thus turning them into mindless drones. This led to the origin of zombies.
The first-ever written documents about zombies dated back around 2100 BC from a poem titled “Epic of Gilgamesh” which proves that people used to believe in zombies since long ago. Various communities all over the world had their own burial rights and believed that failure to follow those rights, would cause the spirit of the dead not to move on to the next world’ and thus return back to seek retribution from the family. The Chinese referred to these hungry ghosts who came back to eat their family members for the improper burial as Jiang Shi’ which meant zombies.
Nowadays, although different communities maintain their beliefs, the majority of people do not believe in the existence of zombies. Zombies have found their way to TV shows and films since 1932. Again movies and games have recently come up about the zombies however they do not portray them as scary but rather as fun creatures to kill while gaming.