George A. Romero invented zombies, right? Wrong! The idea is in fact age old, with roots stretching back into distant history. Most people know that the Voodoo tradition of Haiti includes a prominent place for zombies, raised from the dead by black magic, but fewer realise that medieval England also had it’s very own version of the walking dead. Known as the Revenants, these monstrosities were said to have caused panic throughout the towns and villages of 12th Century England. In several instances the fear was so intense that the commotion attracted the attention of church authorities, thus preserving the details of the case for future generations to rediscover.

William of Newburgh is the most famous contemporary source on the subject of revenants. Newburgh, a 12th Century scholar, theologian and historian, wrote about the peril of living with the undead and documented several zombie cases that occurred during his lifetime in his Historia rerum Anglicarum (or History of English Affairs). The most famous account was a story from York, involving a man of ill-repute, who had fallen to his death whilst spying on his unfaithful wife. Newburgh recounts that shortly after this man had been laid to rest in a local churchyard, his hideous corpse was seen wandering through the area at nighttime. The zombie’s appearances became more and more frequent and eventually a number of people were killed during terrifying encounters. The nightmare only ceased when a group of young local men tracked the monster down and destroyed its body with axes and fire.

In a different report, Newburgh retells the story of a recently widowed woman who awoke one night to find her husband standing, decaying and rotten, next to her bed. According to the good Canon William, the cold grave had left this zombie particularly amorous and craving the warm embrace of his wife. Unfortunately, like Frankenstein’s monster, the rancid reanimated corpse no longer comprehended the fragility of living human flesh and proceeded nearly to crush the poor woman to death. The harrowing experience repeated three times, before the frisky zombie decided to turn his attention to other local women, moving from house to house under the shadow of night.

At the same time that William of Newburgh was reporting terrifying revenant experiences in and around Yorkshire, Walter Map was recording similiar occurrences in the South of England. Map, who is thought to have come from Hereford, is known to history because of his major work, De Nugis Curialium (or the Trifles of Courtiers). In this, Map recounts tales from across Medieval Europe. Of particular interest to us is his description of a revenant encounter in his home city. He writes that a man of wicked spirit rose from the dead in zombie form and terrified his former friends and neighbours for a number of weeks until the Bishop of Hereford order the monster’s head to be cut from its body.

William of Newburgh and Walter Map are definitely the most prominent of the 12th Century annalists who documented revenant experiences in England and Wales, but they are not alone. There are a number of other examples of scholars from the eleven hundreds writing about the scourge of the undead. For whatever reason, the problem appears to have been quite widespread during this era. Could it be that 12th Century England and Wales genuinely experienced a zombie outbreak, just like the ones George A. Romero iconised in acetate centuries later? It is certainly interesting that so many medieval zombie reports occur in the same few decades, but this may well be just another example of “paranormal fashion”, just as Romero’s masterpieces spawned a multitude of copycat works. Sometimes a paranormal idea or concept is “in fashion” and when this happens the number of reports rise rapidly.