Square of the Living Dead

Some of you might have been traipsing about yesterday with baskets of cute little eggs hanging from your arms, enjoying the day that Jesus Christ rose from the dead after three days in that stone tomb. Or, some of you may have been sorta dead, bloody, and rancid.

A party of zombies convened at Davis Square around noon today before making its way down to Harvard Square. After being publicized on the Internet on portals like Craigslist and Facebook, the event—spontaneously planned by 18-year-old Boston resident James Bennett—successfully amassed about 250 participants.

The zombies, with blood splattered all over their ragged clothing and faces painted pasty white, lurched forward with their arms outstretched, while zombie hunters who survived the zombie apocalypse gripped toy guns to ward off potential threats to their grasps on life. One female zombie gnawed at a bloody heart. One protester held a sign that read "Easter is for candy, not for zombies"—but the individual was inevitably drawn into the masses, soon staggering forward as yet another soulless human shell.

More undeadness after the jump...

But the zombies didn't seem to be all that insensate to the whims of human emotion and the joys offered by heartfelt art. At the end of their march, the zombies began to dance to the flute-tooting of some musicians in the Square—"in a kinda zombie-esque way," as Bennett described it. Around 1:30, the zombies began to disperse, leaving behind streaks of blood on road signs and the glass panes of a bus stop.

For all the morbid connotations of half-dead creatures, bloody foam around the mouth, and putrid flesh, it's no coincidence that the zombie walk happened on the most happy day of the year for Christians:

"It does kinda connect rather well with the whole Jesus' rebirth thing, resurrection-whatever," Bennett said of the event's timing with Easter. "It wasn't mean to offend anyone, but...Jesus is kinda like a zombie."

"Zombies are people, too," Bennett philosophized. "They mindlessly go forward with their lives without thinking."

Never thought about it that way, to be honest.

Photo Credit Melody Y. Hu/The Crimson.