I hope that this article finds you all well and ready for the holiday season. I want to venture a little away from my traditional article this time and I hope that all who reads this will understand that some of the information is fictional. Bearing that in mind, I hope that you enjoy Silent Night of the Dead.

Around the 21^st or 22^nd of December is the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and it is called the Winter Solstice. The longest night follows the day that has the smallest amount of sunlight so it stays darker longer. Many ancient cultures and religions celebrate this time in recognition of the rebirth of their deity or the Sun. I have often thought that this night would have more paranormal activity than Halloween night because for the simple fact that there is more night.

In the study of the paranormal you find that most things that are paranormal reside in the darkness. Many think that this a big holiday for Vampires - that they may even have a party. They may not even have to feed on the living this night as their urge or hunger is not there for one night. They can eat regular food and drink regular liquids with no side effects. Most of them have some type of food with garlic and use real silverware. They can even go to church and they can see their reflection in a mirror because it is like they are not a Vampire for just one night. However, this can cause them problems also because they do not have any of their supernatural powers. Therefore, if they run into someone who knows what they are, they will be as vulnerable as a regular human to injury and death. If a Vampire dies on this night, because it is one of the undead, it will change into something else that is undead … a Zombie!

From an old Vampire hunters journal I found a story that I would like to share with you. There was a small town in Mississippi that was a host to one of these Vampire parties on the Winter Solstice sometime in the 1950s. They rented out a ballroom in a hotel and had a local restaurant to cater the food for the party. The party started two hours after sunset and was going well, or so it was said by one of the locals who worked for the restaurant. The same person said that most of the people at the party seemed like they were from another country because of the way they talked and that there were several people there that were not “white.” This comment is what caused a problem with several locals who were racist, because in the 1950's in the small town Meridian, Mississippi this type of situation was “unheard of.”  Only whites stayed at this hotel and the only people at a party that were not white were the people who work the party. According to the journal, in the early evening, two of the locals tried to crash the party and had an altercation with several of the Vampires. Sometime after the people working the party left (because they were just hired for the meal), the locals returned with more of their friends. According to the journal three of the Vampires were killed by the locals and the rest were run out of town. This was a big mistake by the locals because the Vampires would have taken care of their dead. The locals wanting to hide the bodies buried them not far from town in an old building’s basement. Just like when they first changed into vampires it took a day for them to change into zombies. The journal did not know who the zombies’ first victim was but within three days there were 15 dead and another 20 or so that were sick. So there was a fully fledged zombie outbreak by Christmas eve - the history books do not tell that the National guard was called out to quarantine the town. There is no record of anything that happened there except in the journal, which told that they had to go house to house with flamethrowers burning the zombies, the dead and all that were infected. The journal said that more than half the population of the town was gone by the end of the outbreak.

This was one of the stories that appeared in the Vampire hunters’ journal relating how a vampire could turn into a zombie. It also relayed how to make a zombie that you could control. It told how a Hougan (a Voodoo Priest) used some zombified vampire’s blood, herbs and the Hougan's own blood to make a potion that he would use to make a Zombie. He would pick his victim and tell them that he was going to curse them and for three days he would somehow get the victim to consume small amounts of his potion. The victim would become sick with a fever and hallucinations that would end in their death. The victim would be buried and after three nights the Hougan would dig up their new zombie servant. It seems that the Hougan’s blood and the herbs would allow them to have control over the zombie, but not for more than a week or two. If the Hougan became unaware that he was losing control over his zombie he would become the zombie’s victim. However, as long as he had control over the zombie he would use it to kill his enemies, without feeding on them. This was how he would know if he was losing control over his zombie. Also that he needed to dig up the victim he had killed to destroy the corpse before it turned into a zombie. The Hougan would want to keep control, only ordering his servant zombie to kill people, so that he would appear to have absolute control over the dead. All the stories in the journal had a common thread in how to deal with a zombie and how they are made.

The journal relayed some of the strangest ways to put zombies to rest that I have ever read starting with the French and the guillotine. According to the journal, it was invented to behead a zombie placing its head in a basket so it would be easily disposed. The guillotine became an instrument of execution after a time because the French believed that evil people would become  zombies if they were not killed by beheading. There were also hanging cages that they would put the zombie in and let the birds feed on them. It seems that birds and most animals are immune to being affected by the zombies so animals were used to help dispose of the zombies. They would put the zombies in a pit letting the rats feed on them. Some believe that this was what caused the plague so burning bodies was started. Zombies had always feared fire so it was used to round them up and destroy them. The flamethrower was originally invented to destroy zombies it was only used in war later on when the special zombie disposal units were sent into the regular war. It was said that every country had their own zombie disposal units that were used any time there was an outbreak. Many of the men that were in these special units became independent contractors and even Vampire hunters. The journal that I read was from a man that was in one of these units and became a Vampire hunter when he retired.

In his journal he said that the many fires that claimed a large number of lives were actually zombie disposal units doing their job. Our history could be written differently if we knew how many zombie outbreaks have actually happened. The journal said that he had not heard of a large outbreak in years, but there have been small ones that were taken care of quickly. He also talked of how some countries have tried to use zombies or their blood as a biological weapon. There were labs that studied zombies and tried to discover how to make use of the ability to reanimate the dead. The scientists have made the process quicker so that it did not take but an hour or two for a victim to change into a zombie. Luckily no one has used any zombie biological weapons but it has not kept the accidental infections from happing.

The bio zombies are not like regular zombies; you have to destroy all of them not just the head. You can chop off a hand or any part of its body and it stays animated until it is burned or destroyed by acid. In addition, the bio zombies did not decompose as fast as a regular zombie, he said that they actually were faster and stronger than a regular zombie. The scientists never found any use for their research except for the bio zombies they never found anything beneficial to man. The journal’s last entry was about the folly of man trying to control something that should be destroyed.

If you go look for old journals you may find one like I have and if you read it the way you view the world may change.  Like this article many journals have been written with many creative liberties which could cloud the facts. So if you find yourself at a vampire winter solstice party make sure that none of the vampires die unless you are ready to take their head sometime before Christmas!