BBC Radio Shetland

The Walking Dead

Factual: History

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29/10/2014

BBC Radio Scotland - The Walking Dead

Novelist AL Kennedy investigates revenants, Scotland's medieval equivalent of the zombie.

AL Kennedy investigates revenants, Scotland's medieval equivalent of the zombie, which 17th-century witch-hunters and ministers believed to be corpses animated by the Devil.

Zombies, vampires and Frankenstein monsters have ancestors too and novelist A L Kennedy sets out to explore a horrific branch of their Scottish family tree - the revenant: the original walking evil undead thing, lumbering from its grave. Like the zombie, it's a malevolent rotting undead corpse. Like the vampire, it lives on in the grave, rising to terrify the living, so that monks and priests must rally to destroy its blood-filled corpse. It'll tear you limb from limb, if you don't hit it with an axe. In 17th century Scotland, a country gripped by witch-hunts, it took on a terrifying twist. Ministers and witch-hunters refused to believe the evil dead themselves came back - they decided it must be the Devil, raiding the graveyards and stealing bodies to inhabit as meat puppets, so he could consort with the witches. Helped by historians Christian Livermore, Martha McGill, Ted Cowan, Louise Yeoman, and Darren Oldridge, A L Kennedy sets out to track the Scottish revenants to their lair.

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