Ro-langs
The ro-langs is the Tibetan walking corpse. One kind is raised deliberately by a tantric practitioner for occult ends; the other is a body hijacked by a demon and spreads its condition by touch, in stories where a whole community is infected in a night. It is stiff, mute and has to be physically broken to be stopped. The combination of contagion by contact and a mindless, lurching body makes it one of the closest folkloric matches for the modern film zombie.1
- low doorways, since it cannot stoop
- breaking the skin, drawing blood, cutting the flesh or breaking a bone, according to its type
- striking the single mole that is the only weak point of the 'mole' type
What the sources say
The name means 'risen corpse'1
It cannot speak and signals by wagging its tongue from side to side1
Tradition lists five types, named for what must be damaged to stop them: skin, blood, flesh, bone and mole1
It cannot be killed, only made to 'fall over'1
Old Tibetan houses are said to have been built with low door frames to keep it out1
Wylie noted that some 'risen' dead in the stories were probably people waking from coma1
Could you outrun it?
Speed class from how the sources describe it (shambles), not a measurement.
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.
Jiangshi
Xiangxi walking corpses
Ghoul
Pocong
Toyol
Condenado
Corpo-seco
Dearg Due