These Real-Life Zombie Stories Should Prepare You For The New Season Of ‘The Walking Dead’
Things are getting weird out there, you guys. This Ebola virus is all anyone can talk about and if I’m to believe the reliable mainstream news media, it’s only a matter of time before ISIS infects us all and America becomes Zombieland. I’m just not sure I’m cut out to roam the countryside in a Hummer, bashing zombies upside the noggin with a golf club at my leisure.
There’s of course the slight possibility that I’m overreacting, but with an Ebola victim returning to life in his body bag and The Walking Dead returning on Sunday, the undead are ripe for ANOTHER comeback. Oh yeah, zombies are back — again. While we can cancel out the possibility of an actual zombie apocalypse going down (we can cancel it out, right?) there have been examples of zombie-like behavior popping up all over the place for years. Some of them involve people returning to life who were thought to be already dead, and others, well, they unfortunately draw upon the more gory of zombie traits.
People are waking up at their own funerals
This past June a 3-year-old girl woke up from the dead at her own funeral in the Philippines. (Awkwaaaard.) The child had been suffering from a fever and was taken to a hospital on Friday where a doctor declared her without a pulse and dead on Saturday morning. A neighbor who was attending the funeral lifted the coffin lid and saw the girl move her head, that’s when she sprung to life an devoured the entire church. Only kidding. The young girl was removed from the coffin and given some water before being taken to the hospital for examining — and so the parents could chew out the quack who almost had them bury their daughter alive.
Waking up in the middle of your own funeral is strange enough, but Brazil isn’t about to be out-zombied by the Philippines. In 2012, a 2-year-old boy who was thought to have been dead, woke up, asked for a glass of water, and died again. As in the case of the girl in the Philippines, Kelvin Santos had been sick and after he was declared dead by a doctor his family didn’t wait more than a few hours before having a wake. Just an hour before the funeral service was about to get underway, Kelvin sat up and said, “Daddy, can I have some water?” Naturally, people started losing their minds and screaming about the miracle they had just witnessed, only to have Kelvin lay back down and die all over again. Kelvin’s family soon followed up with a lawsuit against the hospital for medical malpractice.
China was a hotbed of zombie activity in 2012
China is not a country you want to be in should their be a zombie outbreak, not only because of its densely populated cities, but because they’ve already recorded a few real-life zombie occurrences. In 2012, a rather unsightly incident went down with a drunken Chinese bus driver who was angry about another motorist blocking his path. Rather than patiently wait for the other driver to move, the man began jumping on top of the woman’s hood. When she exited her car things got particularly nasty and the drunken man leaped upon her and began to chow down on her face. The woman survived, but did require plastic surgery to repair her wounds. Some believed that the bus driver was possessed by Jiang Shi, a hopping zombie creature of legend, believed to kill and absorb the qi of the living.
Psychos going full zombie on innocent folks in China isn’t a singular incident either. In the same year as the bus driving zombie attack from above, a retired teacher attacked a younger subway rider after a squabble over a seat. The younger man had apparently shoved the 67 year old out of the way when the older man began to attack, eventually biting repeatedly at the other man’s face. Other passengers reportedly tried to break up the fight at first, but when they saw the man go full-flesh-eater they decided it was more than they were willing to deal with during rush hour and backed away in terror. What’s even more perplexing is that no charges or arrests were made, when police arrived both men reportedly apologized for their actions and the attack was swept under the rug. If somebody tries to eat my face I’m not gonna let it slide with simply a “Whoops, my bad, bro” but that’s just me.
Not all of China’s zombie occurrences are vicious bloody attacks, though, sometimes they involve sweet old ladies who just want to cook you a homemade meal. Li Xiufeng was 95 when she fell and suffered a head injury that left her laying in bed. The elderly woman was found by a neighbor who couldn’t wake her up and apparently thought “I’m not a doctor, but this lady’s obviously dead.” The neighbor had the woman’s body placed in a coffin where she was to remain for several days before burial in order to abide by local Chinese customs. Thankfully, the woman came to just one day before her funeral and climbed out of her casket when nobody was around. The woman was later found cooking because she was feeling hungry — as being dead for several days will do to a person. “After waking up, I felt so hungry, and wanted to cook something to eat,” said Xiufeng. If being declared dead and shoved into a coffin wasn’t bad enough, the poor lady woke up to find that her neighbor had destroyed or given away all of her stuff because that’s what the tradition called for. Worst. Neighbor. Ever.
Drugs are bad and may turn you into a cannibal
PCP is some bad stuff that you don’t wanna mess with. Stripping naked and howling at the sky is good not-so-clean fun, but eating your friends is plain old rude. Take rapper Big Lurch who was sentenced to life in prison after smoking PCP and then attacking his then-roommate Tynisha Ysais, eating her face and lungs. When the police finally arrested Big Lurch he was naked and covered in blood, yelling at the sky in the middle of the street. Not cool, Lurch. Not cool at all.
Then there was the infamous Miami cannibal zombie attack of 2012. You remember that don’t you? It was suspected that Rudy Eugene had spent the day enjoying bath salts in the Florida sun when he stripped naked (as they always do) and attacked Ronald Poppo, a homeless man in broad daylight on the MacArthur Causeway. Police had to shoot the man several times before he finally stopped eating Poppo’s face and died of his gunshot wounds. Ronald Poppo survived the attack, but was sadly left horribly disfigured by his zombie attacker. As for Rudy Eugene’s motives for the attack toxicology reports only found a trace of marijuana in his system and leaving the primary reason he went berzerk largely inconclusive.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to building up my zombie doomsday stockpile of ammo and machetes.