Mummy. Mummies of humans and other animals have been found on every continent,[1] both as a result of natural preservation through unusual conditions, and as cultural artifacts. Over one million animal mummies have been found in Egypt, many of which are cats.[2] (See: Animal mummy) In addition to the well-known mummies of Ancient Egypt, deliberate mummification was a feature of several ancient cultures in areas of South America and Asia which have very dry climates. The oldest known deliberate mummy is a child, one of the Chinchorro mummies found in the Camarones Valley, Chile, which dates around 5050 BCE.[3] The oldest known naturally mummified human corpse is a severed head dated as 6,000 years old, found in 1936 CE at the site named Inca Cueva No. 4 in South America.[4] Etymology and meaning[edit] History of mummy studies[edit] Howard Carter opens the innermost shrine of King Tutankhamen's tomb near Luxor, Egypt.
Types of mummies[edit] The Egyptian mummies[edit] Mummy in the British Museum. Skeleton (undead) A CG art skeleton, as commonly found in modern fantasy-theme games Figurines and images of skeletons doing routine things are common in Mexico's Day of the Dead celebration, where skulls symbolize life and their familiar circumstances invite levity. "The Boy Who Wanted the Willies" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale in which a boy named Hans joins a circle of dancing skeletons.
Mekurabe are rolling skulls with eyeballs who menace Taira no Kiyomori in Japanese folklore. The animated skeleton features in some Gothic fiction. One example is in the short story "Thurnley Abbey" (1908) by Perceval Landon, originally published in his collection Raw Edges. It is reprinted in many modern anthologies, such as The 2nd Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and The Penguin Book of Horror Stories.
They have also been used and portrayed in fantasy role-playing games or adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Minecraft. Revenant. A revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living.[1] The word "revenant" is derived from the Latin word, reveniens, "returning" (see also the related French verb "revenir", meaning "to come back"). Vivid stories of revenants arose in Western Europe (especially Great Britain, and were later carried by Anglo-Norman invaders to Ireland) during the High Middle Ages.
Though later legend and folklore depicts revenants as returning for a specific purpose (e.g., revenge against the deceased's killer), in most Medieval accounts they return to harass their surviving families and neighbours. Revenants share a number of characteristics with folkloric vampires. Many stories were documented by English historians in the Middle Ages. Analysis[edit] Medieval stories of revenants have common features. Comparison to other folkloristic and mythological undead[edit] Selected stories[edit] William of Newburgh[edit] William of Newburgh (1136? Zombie. Zombies have a complex literary heritage, with antecedents ranging from Richard Matheson and H. P. Lovecraft to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein drawing on European folklore of the undead.
George A. Romero's reinvention of the monster for his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead led to several zombie films in the 1980s and a resurgence of popularity in the 2000s. The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, became a staple of modern popular art. The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi".[3] The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as West African, and compares it to the Kongo words nzambi (god) and zumbi (fetish).
Folk beliefs[edit] Haitian tradition[edit] It has been suggested that the two types of zombie reflect soul dualism, a belief of Haitian Vodou. African and related legends[edit] Evolution of the zombie archetype[edit] Rusalka. In Slavic mythology, a rusalka (plural: rusalki or rusalky) is a female ghost, water nymph, succubus, or mermaid-like demon that dwelt in a waterway. Other terms for these spirits include vila (plural: vily), wiła, willy (plural: willies), samovila, samodiva, rusavka, and mavka. According to most traditions, the rusalki were fish-women, who lived at the bottom of rivers. In the middle of the night, they would walk out to the bank and dance in meadows. If they saw handsome men, they would fascinate them with songs and dancing, mesmerize them, then lead them away to the river floor to their death. Origin[edit] In most versions, the rusalka is an unquiet dead being, associated with the "unclean force".
The ghostly version is the soul of a young woman who had died in or near a river or a lake and came back to haunt that waterway. Rusalki can also come from unbaptized children, often those who were born out of wedlock and drowned by their mothers for that reason. Description[edit] Vampire. Vampires are mythical beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures In folkloric tales, undead vampires often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive.
They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 1800s. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularised until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe,[1] although local variants were also known by different names, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania.
Etymology Folk beliefs Description and common attributes Creating vampires The causes of vampiric generation were many and varied in original folklore. Ghoul. A ghoul is a folkloric monster or spirit associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh, often classified as undead. The oldest surviving literature that mention ghouls is likely One Thousand and One Nights.[1] The term was first used in English literature in 1786, in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek,[2] which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore. By extension, the word ghoul is also used in a derogatory sense to refer to a person who delights in the macabre, or whose profession is linked directly to death, such as a gravedigger ("graverobber"). Early etymology[edit] Ghoul is from the Arabic الغول ghul, from ghala "to seize".[3] The term is etymologically related to Gallu, a Mesopotamian demon.[4][5] In Arabian folklore[edit] In ancient Arabian folklore, the ghūl (Arabic: literally demon)[6] dwells in burial grounds and other uninhabited places.
A ghul is also a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting, evil demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. Draugr. "Sea-troll" of modern Scandinavian folklore as depicted by the Norwegian painter Theodor Kittelsen The draugr or draug (Old Norse: draugr, plural draugar; modern Icelandic: draugur, Faroese: dreygur and Norwegian, Swedish and Danish draugen), also called aptrganga, literally "again-walker" (Icelandic: afturganga) is an undead creature from Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology. The Old Norse meaning of the word is a revenant. "The will appears to be strong, strong enough to draw the hugr [animate will] back to one's body. These reanimated individuals were known as draugar. However, though the dead might live again, they could also die again.
Draugar die a "second death" as Chester Gould calls it, when their bodies decay, are burned, dismembered or otherwise destroyed.[1] Draugar live in their graves, often guarding treasure buried with them in their burial mound. Traits[edit] The draugr's victims were not limited to trespassers in its howe. My howe shall stand beside the firth.