Herbert West's reanimated corpses
A six-part serial in which a medical researcher keeps injecting corpses with a reagent that brings them back violent and degraded. It is regarded as one of the earliest depictions of zombies as scientifically reanimated bodies rather than products of sorcery. Critics rate it among Lovecraft's weakest work, but its film adaptation gave it a long afterlife.1
When did it first appear?
1922Serialised in Home Brew, February to July 1922
What the sources say
Most of the revived are animalistic and impossible to control; one becomes an inarticulate cannibal1
A revived boxer is put down with revolver fire1
Lovecraft wrote it for five dollars an instalment and disliked it; the page reports it began as a parody of Frankenstein1
It is the first story to mention Miskatonic University1
It was the basis of the 1985 film Re-Animator and its sequels1
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.
Herbert White (The Monkey's Paw)
Vampires of I Am Legend (novel)
Cauldron-Born
Zombies of The Magic Island