Asbury Park loses New Jersey Zombie Walk

The New Jersey Zombie Walk is no more.

The annual gathering, which drew tens of thousands to Asbury Park Boardwalk each October, has reached its demise, event founder and co-director Jason Meehan tells the Asbury Park Press.

After launching in 2008 as a small group of friends who gathered at Asbury Park's VFW Hall to invade the city's downtown area, the free event became a globally recognized entity. The nearly 10,000 zombies in attendance in 2013 earned Guinness Book of World Records certification as the largest gathering of the undead on the planet.

Last year's event was part of a "Grey Matters" campaign to benefit the Monmouth County-based Camp Jinka. Offered by the David S. Zocchi Brain Tumor Center at the Leon Hess Cancer Center of the Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, Camp Jinka is a summer camp for kids and teenagers whose lives have been affected by brain cancer. The motivation the 2014 event, Meehan said, was rooted in personal loss: the event's volunteer coordinator and co-director Mariel Alguacil lost her mother in January 2014 following a two-year battle with brain cancer.

Meehan provided a statement explaining the end of the New Jersey Zombie Walk (presented here in full), including an Oct. 3 send-off for the event:

My Dear Zombies,

I am aghast as I sit here, trying to find the most gentle way to write these words to you ... but there is no way to make this painless. Sometimes it's just better to rip the bandage off the wound...

The New Jersey Zombie Walk has died. Its death was not sudden, and every attempt was made to revive the deceased. Untreated issues and complications both existing and previously unforeseen put the event in critical condition early this year. Several unsuccessful treatments led to a terminal diagnosis and this subsequent passing. In other words, it's a long story:

As the Zombie Walk had grown exponentially over its last few years, so did everything that comes along with planning it, principally the amount of money it cost to be able and to be allowed to host the event. Also, as our event developed, so did our host city. Asbury Park has come quite a long way in the seven years since our first shamble down Cookman Avenue. The decayed ruins of buildings that once highlighted our footpath have since been demolished to make way for new condos and restaurants, and every parking space along the street we shuffled down has been metered. For years it has made us proud; surely our event that brings so many people to see Asbury is at least in its own way part of what has sparked all this wonderful growth. I believe this to be undoubtable, and that the loss of our dearly departed will be felt by all.

As you know, the Zombie Walk has always been a free event, something I’ve always been very adamant about despite mounting costs. As the Walk became larger, so did the list of requirements placed before us by the city of Asbury Park. Each year our budget has seen unavoidable increases, making it increasingly difficult to raise the funds required to produce the Walk without turning it into something more akin to a ticketed convention or festival.

I have been fortunate to at times work with a few organizations and people who wanted to see our event continue. They tried hard to help us find ways to secure sponsorships, but never enough to completely cover the mounting costs. I will also eternally be grateful to the Asbury Park Boardwalk for hosting our horde and doing everything possible time and again to minimize what expenses they could. Above all, the Zombie Walk could never have happened without the help of the countless volunteers, family and friends who collectively have put in tens of thousands of hours of work year after year to make the event happen, never demanding anything more than the good time that they had being a part of the Zombie Walk team. I wish we could have paid you for it all, because it never would have happened without your help.

With enough hard work, we always seemed to find a way to pay for the Zombie Walk, which is the other reason we’ve been facing the unimaginably hard decision of pulling the plug on it. Making the Zombie Walk is a lot of work. In truth, there have been times where it has been an unpaid full-time job; and others where it has jeopardized my real career, health and relationships, both personal and professional. No one is going to be more upset that the Zombie Walk has died than I am, but for personal reasons is has to. For years now, I have watched loved ones deal with medical issues, and felt wracked with guilt when I was too busy working on the Zombie Walk to be by their side. Finally, there is some relief in their struggles, and I want to be there to share joy in their good health. My best friend and co-director Mariel is also healing, and looks forward to finding a new career and new direction to take her life in now that her family’s fight with brain cancer has come to an end. We are different people, and in different places than we were when the Zombie Walk began. All this has made me very aware of one simple human truth: Nothing lasts forever.

As these words are typed, I am days away from welcoming my first child into this world. Life is about to start, and that is paramount to everything. My family has to be the undisputed focus of my life, because I don’t want to miss a moment of what’s to come. I choose to be alive instead of dead.

I made this decision early this year, and spent much of my free time up to this point searching for a way to keep the Zombie Walk alive without me. I have been completely unsuccessful in finding a company to manage the event moving forward. A few allies in Asbury Park have extended support, but no one wants to take the helm. It’s not an easy job, I don’t blame them. So for all of the reasons above, it is time to send the Walk over to the other side.

Funeral services are tentatively being planned for Saturday, Oct. 3. The Asbury Park Boardwalk and I are hoping to put together something truly special and I pray that we can make it happen. I will post the information as soon as I have more details. Zombies have a rich Voodoo origin, and in that religion death is celebrated like life. It would be wonderful to see all of your bloody faces one more time to give the Zombie Walk a proper send-off into the afterlife. You have forever changed Asbury Park and New Jersey. Thank you for making my event the stuff of legends. It will live on forever as a strange and beautiful piece of local history.

Thank you.

RIP

Jason