and Dr. Rush later destroyed all his own records and correspondence relating their experiments. We are thus left to piece things together through conjecture.
We know that their first human trial was in March 1810, and that their first test subject was a Greek immigrant and sailor named Nikolas Stukas. We know there were many other human test subjects after Stukas, but where and how Jefferson and Rush acquired them, what precisely was done to them, and what finally became of them, we do not know. What we do know is that they never discovered a cure for zombism. Tragically to the contrary, they ended up releasing the zombie-human hybridization contagion into the world.
Lewis never bit anyone who lived. Had this happened he would have discovered himself with another zombie-human hybrid. If Rush ever determined how exactly his concoction and the Mandan root caused the zombie virus to mutate, that knowledge was destroyed along with the ingredients to Rush’s Miracle. But mutate the virus did. As a zombie bite yields another zombie, the bite of a zombie-human hybrid yields another hybrid. This surely became clear to Rush and Jefferson when their first test subject, the Greek sailor Stukas, fled Monticello and went on a feeding spree, infecting numerous others before his eventual capture and execution.
This did not stop Rush and Jefferson from continuing with their experiments, though it would seem they now kept their test subjects under closer observation. There wasn’t another accident until January 1811, when an unnamed female African slave attacked and fed upon three unfortunate souls in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia, before eventually being caught. The slave told her apprehenders that Thomas Jefferson had done this too her, which fortunately for Jefferson, sounded too preposterous to believe. A similar incident happened again in June of that year, when eight people were found devoured over the course of two weeks, the culprit never apprehended. How many zombie-human hybrids Jefferson and Rush accidentally (or purposely, we do not really know) loosed into the world is uncertain.
On August 15, 1813, Dr. Benjamin Rush sealed and sent the letter to Jefferson from which the quote at the top of this section was taken. Then he proceeded to burn all his journals and letters in which he made any mention of the zombie-human hybrids. Four days later he was found dead at the age of sixty-seven. What exactly he died from was not determined at the time. He was old for the period, but given the grim nature of his goodbye letter to Jefferson and his skill with chemicals, it is also quite likely that he committed suicide by a poison of his design.
People had once thought that witches could make a man a zombie while he still lived. Now it had become somewhat of a reality, and people were beginning to take notice. In 1816, Timothy Treddstone, a Virginia wood-worker, turned himself in to the chaplain of his church, believing himself possessed after attacking and eating a neighbor. Treddstone’s story became a media sensation when the church vowed to cure him of his demon. This inspired several other zombie-human hybrids to come forward in the hopes that they too might receive holy healing. Eventually, the hybrids were all put to the flames when it became clear they could not be rid of their hungers.
Once becoming hybridized many hybrids committed suicide, either of their own accord or under influence of their church officials, who assured them it was their only hope of regaining entrance into heaven. Many others fled to the western frontier to become a problem for the Indians. Some simply found ways to conceal their secret. Most were caught and destroyed. Regardless, the hybrid strain was here, and it was here to stay.
Zombies in Chains
The moving dead are our Nation’s mightiest resource and still unrealized in full.
—Robert La Jogne, South Carolina senator, 1808
From the moment Europeans first encountered zombies, they had
We know that their first human trial was in March 1810, and that their first test subject was a Greek immigrant and sailor named Nikolas Stukas. We know there were many other human test subjects after Stukas, but where and how Jefferson and Rush acquired them, what precisely was done to them, and what finally became of them, we do not know. What we do know is that they never discovered a cure for zombism. Tragically to the contrary, they ended up releasing the zombie-human hybridization contagion into the world.
Lewis never bit anyone who lived. Had this happened he would have discovered himself with another zombie-human hybrid. If Rush ever determined how exactly his concoction and the Mandan root caused the zombie virus to mutate, that knowledge was destroyed along with the ingredients to Rush’s Miracle. But mutate the virus did. As a zombie bite yields another zombie, the bite of a zombie-human hybrid yields another hybrid. This surely became clear to Rush and Jefferson when their first test subject, the Greek sailor Stukas, fled Monticello and went on a feeding spree, infecting numerous others before his eventual capture and execution.
This did not stop Rush and Jefferson from continuing with their experiments, though it would seem they now kept their test subjects under closer observation. There wasn’t another accident until January 1811, when an unnamed female African slave attacked and fed upon three unfortunate souls in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia, before eventually being caught. The slave told her apprehenders that Thomas Jefferson had done this too her, which fortunately for Jefferson, sounded too preposterous to believe. A similar incident happened again in June of that year, when eight people were found devoured over the course of two weeks, the culprit never apprehended. How many zombie-human hybrids Jefferson and Rush accidentally (or purposely, we do not really know) loosed into the world is uncertain.
On August 15, 1813, Dr. Benjamin Rush sealed and sent the letter to Jefferson from which the quote at the top of this section was taken. Then he proceeded to burn all his journals and letters in which he made any mention of the zombie-human hybrids. Four days later he was found dead at the age of sixty-seven. What exactly he died from was not determined at the time. He was old for the period, but given the grim nature of his goodbye letter to Jefferson and his skill with chemicals, it is also quite likely that he committed suicide by a poison of his design.
People had once thought that witches could make a man a zombie while he still lived. Now it had become somewhat of a reality, and people were beginning to take notice. In 1816, Timothy Treddstone, a Virginia wood-worker, turned himself in to the chaplain of his church, believing himself possessed after attacking and eating a neighbor. Treddstone’s story became a media sensation when the church vowed to cure him of his demon. This inspired several other zombie-human hybrids to come forward in the hopes that they too might receive holy healing. Eventually, the hybrids were all put to the flames when it became clear they could not be rid of their hungers.
Once becoming hybridized many hybrids committed suicide, either of their own accord or under influence of their church officials, who assured them it was their only hope of regaining entrance into heaven. Many others fled to the western frontier to become a problem for the Indians. Some simply found ways to conceal their secret. Most were caught and destroyed. Regardless, the hybrid strain was here, and it was here to stay.
Zombies in Chains
The moving dead are our Nation’s mightiest resource and still unrealized in full.
—Robert La Jogne, South Carolina senator, 1808
From the moment Europeans first encountered zombies, they had
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