# Zombie Vampire



## Nesacat (Oct 26, 2006)

I've been thinking about this one ever since I read Dustinzgirl's post in her Halloween thread about her daughter wanting to dress up as an evil bride zombie princess vampire.

Can a being be both a zombie & a vampire and has anyone read of any such creature or seen one in a movie?


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## HoopyFrood (Oct 26, 2006)

It would be a kind of...really dead creature that bites your neck but does a very messy job of it!
Kind of reminds me of the weird hybrid things from Blade 2...but they were definitely vampires...just messy ones!


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## Memnoch (Oct 26, 2006)

Erm. . . . I have always question the zombies thirst for flesh as it is!! Do they become undead dead if they don't eat flesh!!

I believe a Zombie Vampire would be applicable to my above comment do they need the blood if zombified? Or blood and flesh??? Woul they lose there preternatural powers i.e. speed, mist abilities, a Vamp cum Zombie!!!

Hoops my opinion of Luke Goss' (one third of the original boy band bros) bretheren in Blade 2 is the mated offspring of a Vamp n Predator!! Love the 1st two Blade movies.

Listen to us attempting to find logic and rules to something, in a forum dedicated to the championing of quite the opposite . . . oooooohhh the irony


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## HoopyFrood (Oct 26, 2006)

Yeah, the first one will always be the best...although I love Ryan Renolds in the third one.
And another thought...to kill them would you have to stick a stake into their brains?


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## Nesacat (Oct 26, 2006)

Vampires can regenerate though so does that mean the zombie's body would become 'whole' again? Also vampires need fresh blood and they tend not to eat.


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## HoopyFrood (Oct 26, 2006)

Would they be called Vambies? Or maybe Zompires? Hehe, I like this thread!


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## Memnoch (Oct 26, 2006)

Or Lawyers??? . . .


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## Memnoch (Oct 26, 2006)

OH HOOPY NOOOOO . . . The 3rd Blade was awful although Reynolds was the highlight, Snipes teeth didn't fit and as such he couldn't talk through them and he doesn't need all that help he's Blade he rocks alone . . . well cept for Whistler!! . . . I think the most genius bit of casting in any Comic to Film franchise Stephen Dorff as Bad Guy in The 1st Blade!! Closely followed by my all time fave actor Christian Bale as Batman!!

So *Ness* would this lawyer/vampombie require both Blood and Flesh do you think to sate there undead requirements!!


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## HoopyFrood (Oct 26, 2006)

Hey, I didn't say I liked the third one! Just Ryan! The first one will always be the best...same with the Matrix.

Would they only be able to come out at night? Could they only shuffle along, but turn into strange bats? So many questions!

Although of course in the new version of Dawn of the Dead, they can run...which is evil!


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## j d worthington (Oct 26, 2006)

Hmmm. To take it into the realm of actual speculation.... Okay: Yes, vampires regenerate in the stories in most cultures. And, if you go back to sources before Stoker's canonization of the theme, they tended (at least in Eastern European sources) to sleep in coffins filled with the fresh blood of their victims, and their flesh was incorruptible. (In fact, that's part of where the idea came from; according to the Russian and Greek Orthodox belief, it isn't the flesh of saints, but of the particularly damned that does not return to God's earth. When bodies were found upon being dug up to look as fresh as the day they were buried, they were believed to have a pact with the devil, and that they walked and fed on the blood of the living... especially when there were cases of actual pernicious anemia -- not at all uncommon with the poor diet in such districts at times -- or various other "blood diseases" afoot.)

As for zombies: In some of the literature on the subject, zombies don't eat at all. In others, generally the more authoritative, they tend to eat, but are often fed a porride (very much like gruel), as they have no sense of taste. Also, in real cases of so-called zombification, their flesh does not rot until they meet a second and final death. There have been cases of "zombies" which were used as slave-labor for literally decades (see, e.g., Seabrook's "Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields"); and one particularly famous case, Narcisse, was known in his native village for 20-30 years, recognized by his family, and friends, and his death was documented by the local hospital, as was his interment. There is some dispute as to whether this was actually the same man, or a man who had a striking resemblance, but it's never truly been settled. Was he actually dead, or had he been the victim of a "sorcerous" plot, using the tetrodotoxin that has sometimes been claimed to be linked to cases of zombification (again, this is in dispute, but it's damned difficult to get the facts about such obscure parts of pharmaceutical anthropology).

Now... if a zombie can eat, and a vampire regenerates, then the digestive system must be working at least at a sluggish level in both, and new cells must be generated. So I'd think that a zombie-vampire, feasting on the blood of the living, would indeed continue to exist in that state almost indefinitely. The difference is that such a creature might not be subject to the "second death" that a "normal" zombie is... and yet one of the most notable things about a zombie is their poor mental capacity (as the people who have been labeled such are generally somewhat brain damaged from being buried in a comatose state, and suffering oxygen deprivation enough to impair some of the mental faculties -- for the fictional zombies, it's because they are reanimated corpses, but with some faint semblance of life, such as sluggish digestion and elimination, extremely shallow breathing, the ability to take simple commands, etc.).

I'll give it some more thought, and see if I can find more on it in my books on the subject... but I think the combination is a unique one so far; but not by any means impossible. As you managed to convince me with the sources you cited in the "Dead Werewolf Becoming a Vampire" thread back shortly after I joined on here, Nesa, it may sound like an unlikely or even impossible combination, but when one looks at the genuine (not Hollywood) sources, it's not really all that far-fetched.


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## HoopyFrood (Oct 26, 2006)

wow...here we are with our silly suggestions and J.D just puts us all to shame!


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## Ian SCD Officer (Oct 26, 2006)

Personally, I have doubts about whether vampires and zombies actually exist, unless they do exist in some freaky alternative dimension/parallel universe/ or hell itself. But I personally think it could be possible for a creature to be both a zombie and a vampire.

And I must say J.D: you are a genius. I wish I was as clever as you. I believe the cases of zombification are a myth (the closest things we have to zombies are mentally retarded, slow moving, cannibals), but vampirism exists in so far as there are people who can't eat anything except blood, or they have some blood fetish or somehow despise sunlight and have very pale skin. But apart from that, vampires/zombies are a myth in my humble opinion.

But strangely enough, I believe ghosts exist. I know I am a hypocrite, but somehow I believe in ghosts more than I believe in Vampires and zombies, the other 'undead' forms.


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## Memnoch (Oct 26, 2006)

A preacher to rival few J.D. you have almost convinced me that they exsist!!

To be fair you all speak speculativley, I, ME, ME, on the other hand was at the pub the other night and met one of these hybrid creatures of doom!!

There I stood transfixed at a fly swimming in my double vodka RedBull, as BANG, I turn to the noise a man (or so I thought) lay prostrate on the floor,
Another stood over him holding his hand to the side of his streaming bleeding half bitten off ear!!!  

The horizontal being moaned in an unearthly manner and and in jerky movements slowly regained his feet!! Unsteadily mouth dripping copious amounts of blood he staggered arms outstretched toward his victim intent on blood and brains it seemed to me (I was on my seventh Dbl Vodka Redbull) Now here a theory was disproven, with a well aimed punch to the head the Vampombie collapsed never to rise again, who says a bullet to the brain incapsitates these loathesome creatures!! (well at least it didn't rise prior to my leaving five minutes later!)

   . . . so yet again my local has proved the truth to another of the worlds mysteries!! First mutants (See X-men 3 thread for evidence) and now vampombies.  I thankyou.


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## Joel007 (Oct 26, 2006)

Zompires?
very slow moving creatures of low intelligence that crumble to dust in sunlight. I can see them living a long time.


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## Carolyn Hill (Oct 26, 2006)

But how would one come into existence?  Zombies are made by practitioners of magic, who resurrect the dead.  Vampires are made (usually) by other vampires, who bite/drain a living person--and (usually) that person has to bite/drink the vampire's blood in return and then die for a night or some specified period of time before rising as a vamp.

So, does the magical practitioner wait until the living person has been bitten and died, then resurrect that dead person (making a zombie) at the same moment that person is also rising as a vampire?


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## BookStop (Oct 26, 2006)

What happens to bodies of dead vampires? You know, when you plunge the wooden stake through their heart. Certainly they don't all explode or shrilvel into nothingness. Do their fangs disappear when they die? See, it all depends which vampire stories you follow. If a vampire can die and leave a body behind, then a necromancer could just raise them into zombietude, but I don't think they'd maintain vampirelike powers.


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## Nesacat (Oct 27, 2006)

I was wondering that too BookStop. It would then be just a zombie presumably. The tales where the stake has been removed has the being returning as a vampire and not as a zombie. And if they went all the way and severed the head and cut out the heart, a necromancer might not be able to do much with the corpose at all.

It is quite a curious conumdrum. Much more so than the idea that a dead werewolf becomes a vampire. A zombie and vampire in legend would appear to be totally different and have entirely different requirements to survive. As j.d. said zombies were often mindless slaves to other more powerful beings. Vampires however are known for their intelligence and cunning. Vampires would regenerate but a zombie does not. One needs blood to survive but the other does not. 

However, a zombie with the ability to regenerate or a vampire with no thirst for blood and the ability to walk abroad under the sun would be pretty powerful indeed.


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## j d worthington (Oct 27, 2006)

For clarification's sake: The speculation about it being possible is just that: speculation, based on folklore. As for the cases of "zombification" -- those are still very much disputed, but what evidence we have to support them indicates that following: That by use of a mixture of things, including the rather potent neurotoxin tetrodotoxin, certain targeted people (very much like mob contracts) are caused to "die", to be put into such a low metabolic state that it often passes for death. Because of the way funerals were often held in Haiti and other of the islands, the "corpse" would often be left uncovered until very shortly before actual interment, therefore the oxygen deprivation would be of short duration. Once the funeral had been held, the person responsible for administering the toxin would remove the person (who had meantime recovered consciousness, or at least a closer-to-normal metabolic rate, thus requiring more oxygen), but by that time a certain amount of damage to the higher brain functions had set in, and they were thus actually living people, but with very stunted intellect, who could obey simple commands, but seldom showed any volition of their own. That, plus the tendency toward dazed expressions, evident fear of the person responsible (who often beat them to break them in, as well as to punish them for tasks done improperly), and the shuffling, uncertain gait, coupled with the villagers' actually having witnessed a funeral, led to the belief that these people were actually walking dead, rather than unfortunate victims of a particularly nasty form of malice/vengeance.

On vampires -- the theory of porphyria that was in vogue for a while has been seriously questioned as the cause of vampirism, yet still has some adherents. The connection, however, is extremely unlikely, even given a particular type of mental disorder predisposing such a person to "bloodlust" -- so the actual facts behind the origin of a belief in vampires is still unknown, albeit some of the things noted above in religious beliefs are likely to be a part of the more recent views of vampires (the vampire itself actually dates back at least to Babylon). However, there are documented cases of vampirism, including a serious outbreak in Rhode Island in the 1890s -- something Lovecraft, with his knowledge of R.I. history, made use of in both "The Shunned House" and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. (This particular outbreak did indeed result in a corpse being exhumed and a stake driven through its heart and a beheading of the corpse. Anyone interested can look up the facts in microfilms of the newspapers of the time, or by checking out various sources on American -- or New England -- folklore traditions, such as Charles M. Skinner's *Myths and Legends of Our Own Land*, vol. 1, p. 77.) Were these supernatural beings? There's no evidence to support such, but vampiric attacks are a fact in many regions, throughout many ages, and certainly the belief in such a creature is deep-rooted and of long standing.

The problem is that, with most perceptions of these things being built around a Hollywood version, there is no consistency whatsoever -- which is fine, as far as storytelling goes; a writer should be able to mold them to his or her advantage. But when trying to answer a question like this, it's much more helpful to look at the historical cases rather than Hollywood's thin fictional version, as there is a consistency and logic to the folklore utterly lacking in the more recent views (say, post-1930).


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## j d worthington (Oct 28, 2006)

For those who might like a short history of the most famous vampire (and a little background on the history of vampire tales leading up to Stoker's novel):

LiveScience.com - In Search of the Real Dracula


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## Nesacat (Oct 30, 2006)

Spent the weekend checking with friends who read SFF and watch the movies to see if anyone had come across anything that might be said to be a zombie vampire and none of us could think of a real example in either a book or a movie. 

Has anyone here got one?


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