What is more popular than zombies, especially this time of the year?
The American public seems to have an insatiable appetite for the unburied matched only by a zombie’s craving for human flesh. Whether it is the staggering zombies of George Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead” or the surprisingly nimble, choreographed undead of Michael Jackson’s 1982 “Thriller” or the 2004 zom-rom-com, “Shaun of the Dead” or the hyper fast flesh eaters in Brad Pitt’s 2013 “World War Z,” the dead are alive.
Zombies are now more popular than sports. The first two Sunday episodes of the fifth season of “The Walking Dead” in October were seen by more television viewers than the NFL games on those nights.
As a historian, I confess the unburied have always attracted my morbid curiosity. Throughout United States history there have been a disturbing number of gravesites from which prominent historical figures have risen.
Much of the unburying is like that of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne of American Revolution fame, who was interred in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1796. Twelve years later his son moved the remains to the family estate for reburial in eastern Pennsylvania. What makes this relocation of his father unusual was that the entire body did not make the journey. The son’s wagon was too small to cart the coffin, so out of desperation he decided to boil the flesh off his father’s corpse and only bring back the bones.
Less grisly were the circumstances of President Zachary Taylor rising from the grave. He died suddenly in 1850, although previously he had been considered in good health. Rumors abounded that he was poisoned by fellow southerners who disliked Taylor’s opposition to the extension of slavery to the western territories. Finally, in 1991 his body was exhumed and tested for arsenic. Minute amounts of arsenic were discovered, but not in quantities that could have caused his death. He was reinterred in his Louisville mausoleum.
Claims that the outlaw Jessie James had escaped death in 1882 and actually had lived to be over 100 in a Missouri town caused James’ body to be unearthed in 1995. DNA testing was conducted on the body and compared to James’ descendants. It was the outlaw. Back in the ground his remains went.
Other “grave doubts” swirled around Lee Harvey Oswald. Author, Michael Eddowes claimed a Russian agent substituted himself for Oswald when the ex-Marine defected to the Soviet Union, and years later was the real asssassin of JFK. Eddowses convinced Oswald’s wife to have the casket opened and the body examined. The autopsy conclusively revealed Oswald was Oswald, and he was promptly reburied.
It has not just been the well intentioned mystery solvers who have brought the dead from their graves or at least tried. In 1876 a counterfeiting ring planned to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body and hold it for ransom in exchange for one of their cohort’s release from prison. The theft was bungled, but in 1901 Lincoln’s son Todd fearing other grave robbers, had his father’s coffin enclosed in a cage 10 feet deep with 4,000 pounds of cement poured over it.
While it is unclear what, if anything, should be done about the Zombie apocalypse that is upon us, perhaps America’s notable historical figures should follow the lead of past communist nations, who have embalmed Lenin, Stalin and Ho Chi Minh and put them on display for public viewing. Wax museums have their place, put Americans seem to yearn to see the unburied in a live setting.
Dr. Thomas Gaskin is a retired Everett Community College U.S. History Instructor.
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