Perhaps the most popular horror movie monster of modern times, the typical zombie most people tend to think of today is the shambolic flesh-eater so often seen on our screens. There is another much older type of zombie however with its roots in voodoo that many people may not tend to know as much about.

The lesser known voodoo zombie, unlike its undead on-screen counterpart is actually a living being, created by a shaman or witch doctor. This process involves the victim being fed a mixture of toxins causing coma-like symptoms and possible brain damage leading to suggestibility. They are then buried and later exhumed by the shaman, whereupon they are told that they are now a zombie and must obey their creator.

Due partly to the fact that victims tend to already believe in the concept of voodoo and zombie creation of this kind, and the effects of the toxins they have ingested, they tend to simply do as the witch doctor tells them. They are not inherently used for the purpose of attacking others however, and more often are simply slaves that the creator may use for any number of tasks.

How much of this really happened is debatable given that there is very little scientific evidence of how this procedure is done and that much of it is likely lost to history. There are still thousands of people in the Caribbean, parts of Africa and even the United States however who still practice voodoo, although seemingly the zombie phenomena has largely died out.

In the past at least these kinds of zombies were seemingly created from time to time, although it remains unclear whether this was a permanent process or could have been reversed with medical treatment. It is also likely that the shaman would have to feed the zombie regular doses of some kind of concoction to keep them in an altered state of mind and keep them docile.

Modern zombies as most people tend to think of them are undead beings, usually characterized as having been created by a virus of some kind, which in most media tends to have rather vague origins. It is sometimes intimated however to have been the result of some kind of military experiment gone wrong, although other movies tend to simply depict already dead bodies rising from the ground with seemingly no outside cause.

Viral causes tend to mean that the vast majority of any given population is infected initially, presumably through airborne transmission. As well as this, bites or scratches can also spread the infection, and uninfected people killed will tend to rise again even without any obvious means of transference.

Unlike voodoo zombies they are also undead, and tend to have only the most basic of motor functions. They also feel no pain and can usually only be killed by either severing the spinal column or destroying the brain, although decapitated zombies are often shown as still being alive, or at least still being capable of biting even if the body seemingly ceases to function.

Traditional zombies, being living beings, are scared or fire, can move quickly and retain at least a modicum of reasoning power beyond modern zombies. Perhaps most importantly they also don’t eat human flesh, although can be commanded by their creator to do so.

Clearly, the modern idea of zombies have to some extent been inspired by voodoo zombies, although perhaps not entirely. The earliest films featuring undead zombies tend to have a creator that they are compelled to do the bidding of, similarly to voodoo zombies. To an extent Golems, originally from Jewish mythology, are also thought to have had an influence on modern zombies, in that they blindly follow a given task and often have no reasoning power, the same as modern zombies.

In summary, voodoo zombies, which have at least some basis in fact, were created and controlled singly and by human creators, and while in an altered state of mind, were still people. Modern day zombies are inhuman, undead monsters obeying only the instinct to feed, and are usually created by either a virus or genetic experiment of some kind.

Hypothetically should you find yourself under attack from either kind of zombie, one on one, they should be fairly easy to handle unless you are taken by surprise. Modern zombies for instance are usually incapable of operating door handles or climbing ladders, and have a lot of trouble with stairs, making giving them the slip fairly easy. Voodoo zombies while more intelligent are still fairly easy to outwit, and of course are a lot easier to dispatch or at least render unconscious.