Zombie Genre — Investigation

Scope: Pre-20th century literary roots, author framing (fiction vs. fact), Stoker-like documentary presentation. Cross-ref: Bram Stoker investigation | Lovecraft index

1. Pre-20th Century Links to Zombie Literature

Ancient and Medieval

Source	Period	Zombie-Like Element
Ishtar’s Descent into the Netherworld (Akkadian/Sumerian)	~2nd millennium BCE	“I will bring up the dead to eat the living. And the dead will outnumber the living.” — Threat by Ishtar to gatekeeper; earliest clear link between dead + flesh-eating + overwhelming numbers.
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic, compiled over centuries)	Pre-modern	Ghouls (ghūl) — flesh-eating demons; haunt graves and deserts; shape-shift to deceive. Corpse-eating association strengthened in Galland’s 18th-c. French translation.
William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum	12th c.	Revenants — animated corpses returning from graves; detailed accounts; “frequent examples… suffice as warning to posterity.” Major source for medieval undead.
Nordic sagas	Medieval	Aptrgangr, haugbui, draugr — corpse-like beings; grave-dwelling; hostile to living.
Augustin Calmet, Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans	1746/1751	Scholarly treatise on vampires and revenants; Hungarian/Moravian/Silesian reports; defined vampires as dead who return to drink blood. PG: The Phantom World (abridged tr.).

19th Century

Source	Year	Zombie-Like Element
Robert Southey, History of Brazil	1819	First recorded English use of “zombi” — in account of slave uprising; Southey glossed as “devil.” Coleridge annotated: “a devil” (daemon).
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein	1818	Scientific reanimation — galvanism; corpse animated by experiment; creature neither fully alive nor dead. Direct precursor to lab-zombie (Lovecraft, Romero-style viral).
Wade Davis (1985) cites Haitian oral tradition	—	Haitian zombi = enslaved corpse controlled by bokor; predates Seabrook but documented later.

Etymology

Zombi/zombie — West African: Kongo nzambi (god), zumbi (fetish); Kimbundu nzambi (deity). Entered popular English via W.B. Seabrook, The Magic Island (1929).

2. Indications Authors Gave That Their Zombie Works Were Fiction

Explicit or Clear Fiction Signals

Work	Author	Signal
Herbert West—Reanimator	H.P. Lovecraft	Pulp serial in Home Brew; genre horror; no documentary claim. Lovecraft called it “hackwork” in letters.
Night of the Living Dead	George A. Romero	Theatrical horror film; no found-footage or “this really happened” framing.
Dawn of the Dead, etc.	Romero	Satire, genre conventions; clearly fictional.
Zone One	Colson Whitehead	Literary fiction; standard novel packaging; no documentary framing.
White Zombie (1932)	Victor Halperin	Horror film; drawn from Seabrook’s nonfiction + Webb’s play; marketed as fiction.
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)	Val Lewton	Film; Jane Eyre + Haiti; fictional.
World War Z	Max Brooks	Standard legal disclaimer: “Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” Oral-history format is literary device; Brooks discusses it in interviews as fiction.

Ambiguous or Parodic Framing

Work	Author	Framing
The Zombie Survival Guide	Max Brooks	Presented as serious survival manual; “never breaks character.” Agent called it “parody, tongue in cheek”; Brooks said “self-help” not humor. Blurs line deliberately.
“A Brief Treatise on the Treatment of Zombie Bites”	Richard Weems	Preface as fake USDUC document; documentary authority for fiction.

Nonfiction (Not Fiction Framed as Fact)

Work	Author	Framing
The Magic Island	W.B. Seabrook	Nonfiction travelogue/ethnography. Marketed and sold as nonfiction; Baker & Taylor “best-selling non-fiction.” Seabrook claimed firsthand experience. Credibility questioned by some reviewers.
The Serpent and the Rainbow	Wade Davis	Nonfiction ethnography. Harvard ethnobotanist; tetrodotoxin hypothesis; case of Clairvius Narcisse. Scientific controversy over claims.

3. Authors Who Presented Zombie Fiction as Fact (Stoker-Like)

Definition: Prose fiction that the author deliberately framed as documentary, found documents, or factual record—without explicit “this is a novel” disclaimer.

Identified Cases

Work	Author	Documentary Framing	Stoker-Like?
World War Z	Max Brooks	Oral history format; UN Postwar Commission; “conducted interviews”; mimics Studs Terkel.	Partial — Has legal disclaimer; interviews and promotional material treat it as fiction. Format mimics documentary, but no preface claiming “simple fact.”
The Zombie Survival Guide	Max Brooks	Survival manual as if real; historical “outbreaks” from 60,000 BCE; never breaks character.	Partial — Satirical/parodic; readers generally understand it’s a joke. No Stoker-style “these papers are real” preface.
“A Brief Treatise…”	Richard Weems	Fake USDUC document.	Yes — Fiction presented as official document.

No Stoker Analogue Found in Major Zombie Canon

Among major zombie works (Seabrook, Lovecraft, Romero, Brooks, Davis, Whitehead, film adaptations), none use a Stoker-style preface that explicitly asserts the narrative is “simple fact” and “exactly contemporary” record.

Seabrook and Davis wrote nonfiction—they claimed their accounts were true, but did not write novels and then pretend they were true.
Brooks uses documentary form (oral history, survival manual) but includes disclaimers and discusses the works as fiction.
Romero, Lovecraft, Whitehead—standard fiction packaging.

Conclusion: The zombie genre has no prominent prose work that matches Stoker’s Dracula: a novel with a preface that explicitly presents the story as documentary fact. The closest is Brooks’s documentary-style framing, but he does not claim “this really happened.”

4. Summary Table: Fiction vs. Fact Framing

Work	Genre	Presented As
Dracula	Fiction	Fact (preface: “simple fact,” “exactly contemporary”)
The Magic Island	Nonfiction	Fact (ethnographic travelogue)
The Serpent and the Rainbow	Nonfiction	Fact (scientific ethnography)
Herbert West—Reanimator	Fiction	Fiction (pulp)
White Zombie (film)	Fiction	Fiction (horror)
Night of the Living Dead	Fiction	Fiction (horror)
The Zombie Survival Guide	Fiction	Parody (blurred)
World War Z	Fiction	Documentary-style + disclaimer
Zone One	Fiction	Fiction (literary novel)

Outstanding Questions

Exhaustive search of pulp/paperback zombie novels (1950s–80s) for documentary prefaces.
Haitian zombie texts pre-Seabrook (Creole, French) — any presented as fact?

Checked: Richard Matheson I Am Legend (1954) — standard genre novel; no documentary preface. Influenced Romero.

Cross-References

Fiction presented as fact — Consolidated catalog of authors who presented fiction as fact
Bram Stoker investigation
Lovecraft index
Fiction encoding index

Keywords: #Zombie #Genre