George A. Romero’s 1968 film ‘Night of the Living Dead’ featured an invasion of ghouls – mindless cannibals, thriving off the flesh and brains of humans. While not called zombies in the movie, for many people it was their first introduction to these kinds of paranormal beings.

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The term “zombie” is said to come from Haiti, and Haitians used it to describe an enslaved person being controlled by the will of another. And that story tracks, especially knowing Haiti’s history involved with the enslavement of Africans and Natives on the island of Hispaniola. 

To talk about how the term “zombie” transformed from its original meaning to its current one, we were joined by Chera Kee, a Wayne State University assistant professor teaching film and media topics with a focus on the horror genre. Kee is also the author of “Not Your Average Zombie: Re-Humanizing the Zombie from Voodoo to Zombie Walks” and “Corpse Crusaders: The Zombie in American Comics”

Kee says zombies really took off in 1929 when author William Seabrook wrote “The Magic Island” about his travels in Haiti. 

“He had a whole chapter on zombies and he was thoroughly impressed, because he’d never heard of anything like this,” Kee said. “It was completely unique to his experience. And people were like, ‘We can take you to see real zombies,’ and that really blew his mind.”

A quarter century of screams in Pontiac 

While Erebus Haunted House does not have a history as long as zombies, co-owner Edward Terebus and his brother Jim have been in the haunted house business for almost 45 years. They’re celebrating 25 years of making people scream at Erebus Haunted Attraction in Pontiac. 

Edward Terebus spoke to WDET assistant producer Dorothy Jones about the haunted house’s history. In 1981, the Terebus brothers set up their first haunted house in the K-Mart parking lot at 12 Mile Road and Van Dyke. It grew over the years until they founded a permanent haunted home in Pontiac.

At Erebus Haunted Attraction, there’s no age limit, Terebus says. If your kid can’t watch horror movies, the haunted house probably is not for them.

“I’ve seen five year olds make it through the haunted house. I’ve seen 25 year olds pee themselves and faint. So it really depends on the person and the people coming through,” Terebus says. 

Use the media player above to hear the full conversations with Terebus and Kee.

More headlines from The Metro on Halloween 2024: 

• To win the race for president, the Harris campaign needs to win over moderate and swing voters, which likely includes people who often vote republican. That’s why it was significant when Fred Upton endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris last week. Upton served 36 years in the House of Representatives and is the most prominent Republican in Michigan to publicly back the Democratic presidential nominee. Upton joined the show to discuss his decision to support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump and why he thinks other Republicans should also do so.
• It was November 2020 and President Biden had taken the lead in the election. Meanwhile, poll workers in Detroit were sifting through piles of absentee ballots. Dozens of protesters, some of them armed, showed up and claimed there had been election fraud. They were echoing Trump’s false claims and pushing for a recount. WDET senior news editor Quinn Klinefelter spoke with Detroit election officials and poll workers to discover how things have changed ahead of this year’s presidential election.