7 Terrifying Monsters That Are (Sort Of) Definitely Real
4. Zombies
The modern zombie is a lot more versatile than the image first popularised in 20th century film and literature. Nowadays a zombie might be the victim of an infection, chemical weapon or a mad scientists brain surgery but the shambling corpses of old school horror movies tended to be at the mercy of black magic. Eerily, however, the existence of mindless, moaning walkers may not be as fictitious as you would expect.
The concept of zombiism stems from Haitian and African culture where there have been claims of real life zombies for decades. Perhaps the most famous is a case featured on VICE documentary Investigating The Haitian Zombie. The story begins with the discovery of a woman wandering barefoot round a Haitian village in 1937 dressed only in rags and looking dazed. Locals identified her as Felicia Felix-Mentor, a local woman who had reportedly died 20 years previously aged 29.
She was taken to the hospital where the doctor claimed that she seemed uninterested in what was going on around her, referred to herself in third person and could not keep track of the passage of time. She was reportedly averse to direct sunlight and, on the rare occasions that she spoke, her voice was flat and emotionless.
There was some doubt as to whether this woman truly was Felicia Felix-Mentor but a theory proposed in the 1980s by American botanist Wade Davis offered a frightening suggestion of how a person could indeed seemingly die and come back to life. Discreet and well-measured poisoning via tetrodotoxin (pufferfish venom) and datura flowers (or angels trumpets) can induce a temporary deathlike state and cause permanent damage brain function resulting in delirium and suggestibility. You can read more about it in this article.
And that, children, is why you should never take sweets from strangers. Unless its Halloween and you're all wrapped up in loo roll. In that instance its totally fine.