inhabitants owe their existance in the western public's consciousness to Haitian Vodou or Vaudou (pronounced [vodu], a religion originating from the Caribbean country of Haiti (obviously), located on the island of Hispañola, based upon a mélange of beliefs and practices of West African peoples, (mainly the Fon and Ewe), and Roman Catholicism, which came about as African were brought as slaves to Haiti in the 16th century and forced to convert to the vile religion of their owners, whilst still followed their traditional African beliefs. There is evidence of zombie creation, although it is a phenomenon confined to the more rural Haitian culture, Such things fall under the auspices of the bokor or sorcerer rather than the priest of the Loa. Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely due to the success of George A. Romero's 1968 B & W classic, Night of the Living Dead.

There are several possible etymologies of the word zombie. One possible origin is jumbie, the West Indian term for "ghost". Another is nzambi, the Bantu word meaning "spirit of a dead person." According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the etymology is from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, of Bantu origin. A zonbi is a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will. It is akin to the Kimbundu nzúmbe ghost.

Throughout the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed that the souls of the dead could return to earth and haunt the living. The belief in revenants (someone who has returned from the dead) is well documented by contemporary European writers of the time, such as William of Newburgh and Walter Map. According to the Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were, particularly in France during the Middle Ages, the revenant rises from the dead usually to avenge some crime committed against the entity, most likely a murder. The revenant usually took on the form of an emaciated corpse or skeletal human figure, and wandered around graveyards at night. The "draugr" of medieval Norse mythology were also believed to be the corpses of warriors returned from the dead to attack the living. The zombie appears in several other cultures worldwide, including China, Japan, the Pacific, India, and the Native Americans.