all the women who gained Dr. John’s special attention, his favorite may have been a very young Voodoo Queen of great beauty. He called her Little Sister Sally just because he liked that name, and the way it rolled off his tongue. Sally, whose real name was Alice Slowe Jefferson, was the youngest Voodoo Queen ordained, and she was personally taught by Dr. John, who also zombified her alive.
Though he was advanced in age and she was a mere girl of twelve when he took her into his fold, some believe that it was Little Sister Sally who took possession of Dr. John’s dark book of all the hundred-plus spells on how to zombify someone. Even today, members of the Secret Society of Dr. John believe that Sister Sally is the only complete Zombie Queen who ever existed. Through some dark, mysterious spell that Dr. John perfected in St. Louis Cemetery Number One, the exotic Creole beauty, the daughter of a rich plantation owner, remains alone as the world’s most perfect youthful living Zombie Queen. Zombified on her seventeenth birthday, Little Sister Sally has never had to fear the passage of time.
Bullets
It was a very odd story that got the zombie faithful in states of foaming at the mouth excitement when it first appeared. In 2012, and to the amazement and puzzlement of many, it was revealed that none other than the United States’ Social Security Administration (SSA) had secretly, and then recently, purchased almost a quarter of a million rounds of ammunition. Was the SSA fearful of being overwhelmed by hordes of angry grannies, all demanding increases to their benefit payments? No, it was possibly much worse than such a scenario could ever be.
When the story broke, the SSA was quick to play the whole thing down as a matter of little consequence at all. Some conspiracy-minded figures suggested the agency was perhaps just a bit too quick to lay matters to rest. It may come as a surprise to the majority of people to learn that the SSA actually has its very own, independent police force. So the SSA assured everyone that the bullets were simply bought for target-practice, as a means to train its personnel on all the latest tactics and trends in the world of law enforcement. Uh-huh. Of course, what else? Well, maybe, quite a lot else.
Not everyone, unsurprisingly, was buying into the SSA’s version of events. In fact, it’s correct to say that hardly anyone bought into it. Certainly, the news provoked understandable suggestions that the SSA—possibly alongside many other agencies of the U.S. government—was preparing for a near-future period of nationwide civil uprising, possibly from the effects of a collapse of the entire U.S. economy, or maybe, as a result of an outbreak of a nationwide zombie infestation.
In those online domains where the conspiratorial and the paranoid like to hang out, even bleaker rumors were quickly taking shape. One of the most controversial theories presented suggested that, to avoid complete economic collapse, plans were afoot to secretly, and drastically, lower the population level of the United States. This, we were told, would be achieved by switching on a dormant virus that was deliberately been inserted into the flu vaccine.
All of those tens of millions of people who regularly get flu jabs would suddenly mutate into murderous maniacs. In the days after the outbreak, the government would then step in and wipe out the infected—using not just the regular police and the military, but also agencies such as the SSA, that in 2012, as we have seen, very conveniently decided to arm itself to the absolute teeth. With millions upon millions dead and the population significantly reduced in number, the economic strain would be gone, or at the very least, be significantly lifted.
Of course, it’s all paranoid nonsense and couldn’t really happen. Could it? Maybe we won’t know the answer to that question until it’s way too late to do anything about it—aside from not getting a flu-shot, perhaps.
Burial Traditions
See also: Cemeteries and Tombs, Cremation, Funerals, Mummies, Mummification
The coffin has taken many shapes and forms in its evolution as a final resting place for the deceased. Many authorities attribute the presence of trees in the churchyard or cemetery to ancient notions concerning a hollowed out tree as a dwelling place for the spirits of the dead. In Babylonia, great boxes of clay were baked to form a kind of coffin in which the dead were buried.
The first actual coffins, as we know them today, probably originated in ancient Egypt where the people believed that the body of the deceased must be kept safe until a future time of resurrection. The Egyptian word for coffin is from Kas, which means to bury. Another form of the word became Kast, indicating the receptacle into which the body is placed, the coffin.
A Hindu ceremony is seen here in Kathmandu, Nepal, at the Pashupatinath Temple. The departed one’s body is cremated and the remains sent on their way down the holy Bagmati River.
In the Hindu faith, the deceased are given a ceremonial washing, then the body is wrapped in a burial cloth and placed on an open casket. If at all possible, within one day of death, the body is to be carried to a place of cremation by six male relatives. The body is placed on a stack of wood and covered with flowers. Melted butter is poured over the body to help it to burn, and the eldest son or nearest male relative of the deceased lights the funeral pyre.
Traditionally, the cremation takes place outdoors and the ashes are collected and scattered in the waters of a holy river, such as the Ganges. In other countries, Hindu dead are taken to a crematorium. Followers of the Hindu religion believe that the soul, the Atman of each individual, is reborn many times in a cycle of spiritual evolution before it can become one with God.
Those who follow the path of Judaism bury their dead in a plain coffin after the body has been washed and dressed. If possible, the funeral takes place on the day after the death has occurred. The coffin containing the deceased is taken first to the synagogue and then to the place of burial.
At the gravesite, the rabbi says a few words of remembrance about the deceased, and the coffin is placed in the grave. The closest male relative of the deceased says a prayer called the Kaddish to help the soul travel to the Olam Haba, the world to come, and the family of the dead person fills in the grave with earth.
Muslims prefer not to use coffins for their dead unless they are residing in a country that requires such containment for the deceased. If it is possible to do so, the dead are buried on the day following their death. The deceased is washed, perfumed, and wrapped in three cotton burial cloths.
Those who follow the religion of Islam believe that the soul of the deceased is guarded by the angel of death in a place called Barzakh until the Day of Judgment. If at all possible, friends and relatives gather around a dying person and read verses from the Quran. With his or her last breath, the dying person always tries to say the Shahadah: There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.
Large graves and headstones are not permitted to mark a Muslim burial site, but the grave itself is to be raised above ground level. As the body is being taken to the burial ground, the Salatul Janazah, a prayer for the deceased is read. The body is buried facing Mecca, the sacred city toward which all Muslims turn when they pray.
