Walk Of The Undead

It’s no secret that zombies scared the crap out of me when I was little girl.

So I guess it would be smacking your fear in the face therapy that I went down to Zombiewalk 2009 on Saturday. Zombies big and small made their way to Vancouver Art Gallery to start the annual walk. And as the brain-eating force arrived, I made sure to get all up in their flesh decayed faces to snap their photos.

All of them came in make up, some with peeling flesh, most bloodied and gored. There were even Asian zombies, which in my opinion, would be how I would choose to dress up as if I was one of the undead.

There were theme zombies: Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy and scarecrow from Wizard of Oz and yup, Michael Jackson. I couldn’t decide whether or not it was amusing or morbid, this little homage. I chose amusing as the Thrill the World Dance was happening at Zombiewalk too.

Kimli and her friends were out in full force promoting Thrill the World, an October 25 event where world-wide zombies will participate in dancing the Michael Jackson dance and raise money for various charities. If Kimli had her way, I’d be doing the zombie shuffle this fall.

When you encounter zombies that are downright nice, friendly and cute, you say to yourself, “Gosh, what was I afraid of all those years?” Then you let out a sigh of relief that as a logical thinking adult, you can let go of the last remnants of any irrational childhood fear. It’s silly to feel so scared when you see zombies re-applying fake blood on themselves and on each other, or having a smoke and talking on their cell phones, or having a hamburger and coke for lunch.

I had a great time and some good laughs being down at the Zombiewalk.

But then as I was going to bed, all I could see where scores of zombie faces (in all their b/w grotesquery a la George Romero) coming at me when I closed my eyes. Drat curses.

View more photos of Zombiewalk 2009 on my Flickr album.