Walk like a ….ZOMBIE?

My husband and I recently participated in a zombie walk. We are not the type of people who normally like to dabble with the dark side but I was really curious to check out what this experience was all about. I honestly had never even heard of a “zombie walk” until I saw promotions about one that was going on downtown. Our kids were spending the night with their cousins so we had to make the most of a kid free night. You can’t waste free childcare when you get the opportunity!

We drove downtown to check out our first zombie walk.

They were supposed to meet at a plaza and then parade all over downtown. We got there a few minutes late but some bystanders told us which direction they were headed. We had to speed walk to catch up but found the group. There were all varieties; friends, families, musicians, all decked out as different types of zombies. We observed them from a rooftop parking garage and then decided to go in for a closer view.

We followed behind them for a while walking behind the tuba zombie.

We walked several more blocks behind them so that we could get a get look at all of the costumes.

So as we were on our way back to the car, we got inspired by the simplistic costume a dad and his two boys had. Basically a white t -shirt cut up over their clothes. I knew of another zombie walk going on at a college campus at 10:30 that night. That gave us enough time to create an outfit and get there. My husband agreed to participate and the price of free was perfect. We couldn’t waste a kid-free night just sitting at home watching tv and we didn’t have the budget to go out to eat or do something else. So why not be undercover parents, who’ve been married 13 years with two kids, pose as zombie college students.

We were starting to get into the idea of crashing a college zombie walk.  We began looking for old clothes to shred up. My husband found an old t shirt with a pre existing hole. I was struggling to find something. I generally like my clothes so it was really hard to find something to dice up. After about 10 minutes of searching I remembered my mother in law had a bag of clothes in the car that she was giving to goodwill.  I figured they were fair game. After dicing up our clothes to zombie level, it was hair and make up time. This is were my husband put me to shame. He came out of the bathroom with a better make up job than me.

I teased my hair to get the full effect and we were ready to go.

We had to laugh at the idea of our kids finding out what their parents were doing while they were gone. We got to the campus a little early and parked at the nearby campus housing. We just kind of hung out in the parking lot waiting for everyone to get to the meeting location. There were busses that were also shuttling people over from another part of campus. I would say we were the only people there who didn’t at least no someone else.

We found some stranger to take our picture and then observed the other zombies around us.

There was a Snow White, an Osama BinLaden, meat processors, nurses and  regular college student zombies to give a lot of variety.

We waited for a while for the other buses to get there and then started our walk. Lots of the zombies were totally getting into character and even running up to people on their doorsteps. Some even went into a few apartments if the door was open from them observing the crowd.

A car load of students was leaving the area and they were immediately swarmed by zombies. No doubt it would have felt very creepy and claustrophobic, seeing hundreds of people surround your car. They were instructed to move away from the vehicle after it started to get out of hand.

We walked around for about 20 minutes. It was SO COLD! We were ready to go when it was over. Overall we were glad we got out of our comfort zone and did something we would have never imagined doing. It was fun to dress up, step into character and pose like college students.

Ever wanted to try a zombie walk?

Check out this site for an upcoming event near you.

Many zombie walks across the nation are used as fundraisers to help local food pantries and check out  worldzombieday so you can be on your best zombie etiquette.