Under the guise of many names, zombies continue to pervade popular culture and influence societies through articles, movies, merchandise, and even survivalist guides to the apocalypse. The concept itself stems from much further back temporally than the films would have you believe, and from much further afield geographically.

The zombie ‘myth’ first originated in Haiti in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the country was known as Saint-Domingue and ruled by France. The French brought in enslaved Africans to work on sugar plantations, and treated them cruelly and brutally. Most died within a few years of arrival which lead to more people being captured and imported as ‘goods’. Haitian slaves believed that when they died they would be released back to “lan guinée”, literally Guinea or Africa more generally, an afterlife where they could be free. However, it was also believed that those who took their own lives would not be allowed back to this afterlife, and would instead be condemned to spend eternity wandering the Hispaniola plantations as undead slaves. Suicide, tragically, was still common amongst slaves. The zombie archetype was a projection of the misery and torment suffered by enslaved people from approximately 1625 to 1800 but has since become widely appropriated by American pop culture in a way that white washes its origins and turns the eternal suffering of slaves into a platform for escapist fantasy.

• The term “zombie” itself is believed to have originated from the West African word “nzambi,” which means “god” or “spirit of a dead person.” It was brought to the Americas through the slave trade and eventually became associated with the reanimated dead.
• In Haitian Vodou, "zombi" refers to a corpse brought back to a state of animation, often through magical or ritualistic means. This process, known as zombification, is believed to be performed by bokors, who can control the reanimated corpse.
• In Haitian folklore, "jumbees" are spirits or ghosts, sometimes associated with the dead. They can be malevolent or mischievous, and their association with death and the supernatural sometimes links them to the concept of zombies.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/how-america-erased-the-tragic-history-of-the-zombie/412264/

https://galaxypress.com/zombies-the-history-and-literature-of-reanimated-corpses/

https://u.osu.edu/abel118eng4563/the-history-of-the-zombie-in-popular-culture/

https://www.culturematters.org.uk/zombies-and-capitalism-george-a-romero-s-anti-capitalist-critique-and-his-democratic-collaborative-film-making/#:~:text=TF%3A 'Night …' was,is crucial to the film.