Zombies, vampires... What exactly are people afraid of when they say "fear of ghosts"?
I experienced a haunted house with my colleagues the other day, and I was so scared that I had nightmares that night. It's just that the zombies in the haunted house and the chainsaw horror are more frightening than terrifying. In addition to screaming, I always felt unfulfilled, and it also aroused my curiosity about all kinds of ghosts.
To experience real fear, you still have to choose familiar ghosts, such as zombies and vampires.
In order to prepare for our next haunted house adventure, I decided to study the past and present lives of these two ghosts first. After research, it was found that the reason why ghosts exist is that living people are "at work".
Chinese zombies - disturbed dead, stumbled feet
Let's start with zombies.
TV children born around 1990 must have vivid memories of Hong Kong zombie movies, zombie blue-faced fangs wearing Qing Dynasty official uniforms, jumping up and down when walking, with a hint of funny and clumsy in the weirdness.
In the 1985 movie "Mr. Zombie", the zombie wearing a Qing Dynasty official uniform with a yellow charm on his head | Douban
The most important source of inspiration for the zombie image jumping away is Xiangxi's "corpse chasing", but there are not many written records of this image by the people:
"I saw people jumping in the woods, with their hair on their feet and their faces like walls of powder."
- "Zi Bu Yu", vol. 8, "Criticizing Zombie Cheeks", page 182
This is one of the few jumping zombies mentioned in the literature, from "Zi Bu Yu" created by Qing Dynasty novelist Yuan Zhen.
"Zi Bu Yu" can be described as a zombie encyclopedia, and Yuan Zhang, who likes to travel, includes a total of 34 zombie stories in more than a dozen provinces and cities across the country, which shows that similar legends are very common and are not limited to Xiangxi.
In addition, there are also some records about zombies in "Liaozhai Zhizhi" and "Notes on Reading Micro Caotang". Qing dynasty writers were keen to depict zombies, which was rare before the Tang and Song dynasties.
Zombie records in "Son Silent" | Douban
Contrary to the Qing Dynasty official uniform in the movie, almost all of the zombies in the written records were ordinary people, mostly men, and had no specific identity. And the zombies in the novel are powerful, not only can run and jump, but some "senior" zombies can also fly.
And the explanation of "jumping zombies" is not only Xiangxi corpse chasing, there is also a saying called "stumbling block".
This is a funeral custom in some parts of the northern part of the continent - when a person has just died, in order to prevent the corpse from changing, two feet are tied with a rope, and if they stumble, they cannot stand and walk. When you go to the funeral, untie the rope, if you don't untie it, you won't be able to walk in the next life.
According to this statement, the zombies in the movie are afraid that they will cheat the corpse before they enter the mortuary, and their feet are still tied and there is no way to jump and walk.
Similarly, there are "rice buckets" in some areas of Zhejiang. Those who believe in this technique believe that putting a rice bucket on the deceased will prevent the corpse from being fraudulent, making it impossible for the corpse to stand.
A more common funeral custom is to prohibit animals such as dogs and cats from moving around the carcass. Otherwise, the animal will disturb the deceased and make them stand upright and become zombies.
Both Ji Xiaolan and Yuan Zhen mentioned in the book that the formation of zombies is related to the fact that the corpses have not entered the earth.
For Chinese who attach importance to "entering the soil for safety", it is necessary to have a heart of awe for the remains of the deceased when the bones are not cold, and fulfill the responsibility of protecting and caring for them. This reverence translates into a kind of folk belief that if the deceased is disturbed during the mortuary and does not rest in peace, there is a fear of necrophilia, which is a punishment for the living who do not respect the dead. In order to avoid unknown disasters, the people have derived the customs and taboos of stumbling wires and forbidden cats and dogs.
Do vampires really exist? Or is there another identity
The fear of coming back from the dead is also common in other cultures, such as the vampire we are all too familiar with.
When most people think of vampires, they think of handsome, personable medieval aristocratic gentlemen. All thanks to nineteenth-century vampire literature such as the famous novel Dracula, which promotes the fascinating and dangerous image of vampires.
The vampire Dracula in the movie "400 Years of Horror" | imbd.com
But the medieval legendary vampire was a completely different creature – ragged, smelly, ferocious like a beast, attacking humans or livestock at night. These monsters are dealt with with garlic exorcism, dismembering them so that they are decapitated, or piercing their chests with stakes and nailing them into coffins.
Vampire legends have not only inspired much literature, but also attracted archaeologists to explore them. However, the "vampires" found by archaeologists are far from the popular Draculas.
Some unusual bones have been unearthed in a cemetery in Lugano, Italy, in which a ten-year-old child was deliberately put into a stone in his mouth, and the hands and feet of a three-year-old female skeleton were pressed by the stone - does it sound similar to "stumbling wire"?
A 10-year-old "little vampire" found in Lugano, Italy, with a stone stuffed in his mouth David Pickel，Stanford University
Common witchcraft items such as crow paws, toad bones, ash-filled bronze crucibles, and puppy bones were also found in the tomb.
Archaeologists speculate that the young dead may have been buried with some ritual, with stones in their mouths and bodies to prevent the dead from coming out of the tomb and threatening the living.
Similar tombs have been found in other parts of Europe:
In 2009, the skeleton of a woman with a brick stuffed in her mouth was unearthed in Venice;
In 2012, archaeologists found two skeletons in Bulgaria with iron rods pierced in their chests;
Around 2013, decapitated bodies were found in Poland, with skulls placed between legs, and others with stones in their mouths and sickles around their necks (if the corpse climbs up, they will be beheaded by scythes);
In 2017, 137 burned and broken human bones were found in Yorkshire, England.
Beheaded "vampires" found in Poland Andrzej Grygiel
A "vampire" with a scythe under the head found in Poland Foundation for Polish History and Culture
These unusual tombs are collectively known as "Vampire burials", but this "vampire" is in double quotes - are people really afraid of blood-sucking monsters? In the eyes of archaeologists, these "vampires" all died and may have been criminals, death row prisoners, and more likely victims of the plague.
Ancient Europe was repeatedly hit by large plagues. A ten-year-old "little vampire" in Lugano, Italy, was found to have a missing tooth — one of the evidence of malaria — and he was buried around the middle of the 5th century, during the history of malaria ravaging Italy.
Other "vampire tombs" are mostly medieval tombs, and the great plagues of the Middle Ages, such as the Black Death, claimed the lives of 25 million Europeans, accounting for 1/3 of the total population of Europe at that time.
Before the invention of modern medicine, people attributed deadly diseases and unnatural deaths to some supernatural "evil force." Beheading and dividing corpses, holding hands and feet with stones, and stuffing bricks in our mouths may not seem normal to us, but for people at the time, they were most likely a routine countermeasure to prevent the resurrection of the dead and threaten the living.
The concept of "blood sucking" may also come from people's ignorance of death and decay at the time, for example, the breakdown of the intestine after death will cause the human body to swell, forcing blood into the mouth, making it look like a corpse that has recently sucked blood.
The existence of ghosts is all "at work" by living people
Whether there are jumping zombies or wandering vampires, no one can tell.
But folktales and archaeological finds provide a window into the minds of the ancients through the way people treated the dead, their beliefs, and thus their beliefs.
Zombie stories, vampire legends, are all emotional projections of living people.
"The dead do not bury themselves" - the living have mixed feelings for the dead, on the one hand, they do not want to believe that death is the real end, on the other hand, they fear the disaster that those who come back from the dead will bring to them. It is human nature to love life and fear death. Whether it is "stumbling wire" or stuffing stones in the mouth, it is a way for people to cope when they feel that their lives are threatened, and it is a folk belief that is gradually formed through the accumulation of experience.
Written by Edan
Editors: Xuezhu, Li Xiaokui
bibliography
[1] Feng Yichao. (2007). "The Child Doesn't Talk" Zheng, a preliminary study of the zombie story in the second book of the sequel. Donghua Sinology, (6), 189-222.
[2] Barrowclough, D., 2014. Time to Slay Vampire Burials? The Archaeological and Historical Evidence for Vampires in Europe.
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/03/medieval-villagers-mutilated-the-dead-to-stop-them-rising-study-finds
[4] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-10-year-old-received-vampire-burial-prevent-return-dead-180970550/
[5] https://theconversation.com/older-than-dracula-in-search-of-the-english-vampire-105238
An AI
After researching, the next time I go to a haunted house, I should still be afraid.