Many of our burial traditions, like removing a body from a house feet first and bolting coffins, come from our fear of the dead deciding nap time was over.
The original confirmed writing of zombies is found in the epic of Gilgamesh "i shall awaken the dead and they shall feast upon the living, and the dead shall outnumber the living."
In Scandinavia, during the age of the viking, they would remove bodies from houses feet first and often from a temporary entrance, which they would then seal up, so should the body come back from the dead to prey on the inhabitants of the house, it can't find it's way in. the Scandinavian zombie was introduced to us in the elderscrolls series, yes those annoying draugr. The draugr from scandinavian lore was super humanly powerful, knew it was dead, ate its victims and liked it.
The Jiang Shi Comes from Chinese lore in which those who weren't buried correctly would come back to punish those responsible. They could only be stopped with a combination of prayer and force. Righteous anger zombie, AWAAAY!!!!!!
The Ghoul comes from Arabic belief that a person who lived a sinful life, usually a prostitute, would be denied eternal rest and be doomed to differ starting on this earth to basically play the part of the greek Siren, luring unwary travelers to their demise, except, in the desert.
The Revenant of England is the closest of these to modern zombies, being an undead simply preying on the living, nothing more.
Mind you, we currently have the tech to weaponize mixtures of viruses and stuff that would have effects similar to those of becoming a zombir.
Yaaaaaaayyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm never sleeping without my bowie knife again in case it falls into the wrong hands!!!!!!!!
