Vampires of I Am Legend (novel)
Matheson's novel calls its monsters vampires, but its plague-created undead swarming each night helped establish zombie fiction as well as modern vampire fiction. It gave the undead a medical cause, a bacterium, instead of a supernatural one. Romero said openly that Night of the Living Dead borrowed heavily from it.1
- sunlight
- garlic
- wooden stakes
- mirrors and crosses (psychological)
When did it first appear?
1954Published 7 August 1954
What the sources say
Two kinds exist: the risen dead, who have lost their reason, and the living-infected, who stay conscious1
Bullets fail because the bacteria seal wounds; a stake lets air in and the body liquefies1
The living-infected develop drugs to manage the disease and build a new society1
George Romero acknowledged borrowing heavily from it for Night of the Living Dead1
Named Vampire Novel of the Century by the Horror Writers Association in 20121
Filmed three times: 1964, 1971 and 20071
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.
Darkseekers
Plague victims of The Last Man on Earth
The Family
Herbert White (The Monkey's Paw)
Cauldron-Born
Herbert West's reanimated corpses
Zombies of The Magic Island