Zombie Claus went well… Sure, there were probably things that we could have done better, but, all in all, I’d say it was extremely successful. First off, and most importantly from a personal perspective, I wasn’t the only zombie involved. I don’t have an exact count, but it seemed like we had about 15 people actively participating, which, considering the fact that there was no parking within a mile of our designated meeting place, and that it was well below 20-degrees outside, isn’t all that bad. (In addition to the people dressed as zombies, we probably also had about 8 people tagging along, taking photos, offering moral support, screaming for pedestrians to run for their lives and, as it turns out, reporting for the local newspaper.) In planning this thing, I was almost certain that I’d be doing it alone. I was prepared to do it by myself too, but it sure was nice to see that there were already eager zombies waiting at the bar when I got there. (Speaking of the bar, we all owe a big “thank you” to the staff of Bab’s Underground Lounge for giving us a place to setup camp. Like rotting corpses, they were great hosts.) Second, I’d say it was successful because no one got either 1) punched by an angry pedestrian, 2) hit by a car, or 3) detained by the police. Sure, there were probably things that could have been done better (like having more “victims” waiting to be attacked along our route, and the incorporation of a few choreographed dance numbers), but we nailed the stuff that really mattered — good zombies, good fun, no real blood.

OK, because I don’t have a lot of time right now, I’m just going to share a few bullets. (If there are aspects that you’d like to know more about, just leave a comment.)

– We started out on a positive note with eminent local historian Brett Schutzman giving us pointers on how to be good zombies. (Brett grew up in the shadow of the mall where “Dawn of the Dead” was shot, so he was clearly the most qualified.) My favorite piece of advice he offered was, “If someone talks to you, don’t make eye contact. Just look at their ear, groan and move on.” (Brett, by they way, has his photos and thoughts up at the Maproom Systems site.) He was going to do a section on Zombie sexual harassment in the workplace, but chose to keep hammering the key points of “Move slow” and “Don’t use words” instead.

– I had a beer with Brett and his wife after the event (back in the safety of Ypsilanti) and he mentioned that he would have stressed empathy more if he had it to do again… He wanted to impress upon us that these weren’t monsters that we were portraying, but things to be pitied… He also alerted me to the fact that there was a “serial face-stabber” on the loose in Ypsilanti.

– Occasionally you could see in a passerby’s eyes that he or she wanted to be attacked. I avoided even those individuals (afraid that I might cause them to slip on the ice, hit their heads, and die), but a few of my fellow zombies went with it and lunged at a few people, even making contact on rare occasion. No one gave into this temptation more than Pigtail Zombie, who really enjoyed making the experience as real as possible for those individuals in our path. For the most part, people were happy to play the role of victim, but there was one tough guy who wasn’t having any of it. I heard him yelling at Pigtail Zombie behind me, “If you fucking touch me, I’ll knock you out,” or something like that. (Pigtail Zombie told me later that she touched him right after he said that.)

– So far I’ve only seen one blog entry by someone on the street that night that wasn’t with our group. You can find it here… He says we were realistic, but not that scary.

– Someone on State Street came out of an ice cream shop and yelled, “I’m not scared of you,” in a confrontational tone that kind of surprised me, like he really thought that we were trying to terrify people, and that he was being brave in standing up to us.

– A few of the non-Zombies traveling along with us reported snippets of conversations that they’d overheard during our march. One reported on a conversation between an older husband and wife. The wife asked her husband, “Why are they doing this?” The husband responded, “It’s how they’ve chosen to express themselves, Dear.” The second report was of another couple. In that one, the man said to the woman he was with, “Don’t be scared, they’re just from Ypsi.”

– If we do this again some day, I’d want to send someone into the crowds around us with a directional mic to pick up the conversations taking place. (Can someone please make a note of that?)

– Andy Claydon, who made his Santa outfit out of a giant Christmas stocking, had a brilliant idea. If we do it again, he wants to have one of the zombies blasting poorly done covers of classic Christmas songs. (He’s played some grade school recordings for me that are absolutely brilliant.)

– On the subject of “next time,” it was pretty much the feeling of everyone involved that we should have more volunteer victims spread along the route. The one real victim we had (Windbreaker Zombie) was incredible… He was so good, in fact, that we ate him twice… We needed more though.

– Windbreaker Zombie said that next time we did this he wanted to play the role of a loud, obnoxious guy who comes out of a store to yell at us, only to be surrounded, pulled to the ground, killed and turned into a zombie himself. I thought the idea was incredible.

– Lots of people honked their horns in support. I remember someone yelling out a car window that they wanted to have our “zombie babies.”

– After the formal march ended, a woman introduced herself to me. She was a reporter with the Ann Arbor News and she’d apparently been with us from the beginning (I guess waiting to see if we did anything newsworthy, like knock people over). I was encouraged by the fact that the News has someone assigned to the “zombie beat.”

– The WCBN guy that had interviewed me the day before dropped by the bar to say hello and wish us luck before we set out. I thought that was pretty cool.

– This is kind of unrelated, but are there any young women in the audience who would be interested in filming a “Zombies Gone Wild” video? I’m convinced that I could make millions.

– The images in this post were collected from multiple sites. Among them were the Flickr pages of Paanta, Sam Abuelsamid and John Baird, all of whom did incredible work. (Sam Abuelsamid has also posted some rough video footage of the event on-line… It takes a really long time to load, but hopefully we can get an edited version up on MM.com shortly.)

– A few blogging zombies have already posted their thoughts. So far, I’ve found mentions at Suds and Soliloquies and Sam’s Thoughts. (If any other zombies have posted, let me know.)

– In conclusion, I’d just like to thank everyone who participated, either locally or from far away. This was a great little project and it proved to me, once again, that there really isn’t a limit to what can be accomplished with the tools we have at our disposal… Just to remind everyone, this all started a few weeks ago when the idea occurred to me and I posted a short blurb here. A reader in Hawaii then read the idea and liked it enough to buy the ZombieClaus url and launch a site. Several other readers then helped tweak the idea until it made sense. A half dozen other people in the audience then contributed artwork promoting the event. And, as all of this was happening, everyone began putting out the word. Within a few days, it was listed at MetaFilter, and on the Laughing Squid site in San Francisco. A bar owner offered space. Several people got on-board to document the event. Local radio ran a half-hour segment on it. And, perhaps most importantly, over a dozen people gave up a night of their lives to get made-up, and walk a few miles in the freezing cold while being stared at. I’m not suggesting that it was the most noble or meaningful of endeavors, but it does demonstrate, rather remarkably, I think, that a community like the one we have here can actually execute on projects when they want to. I think that’s pretty encouraging.

Thanks to a very cool reader in New York, you can hear my Zombie Claus interview here.

update: Yes, it’s me being interviewed. I know I used a different name in the interview, and I know that I said that I needed a warm place to sleep, but it was me. Sorry if you found it somehow dishonest, but I find it to be in the true spirit of the Zombie Claus holiday. (I’ve been getting lots of notes, even from people that have known me for decades, asking who it was doing the interview, which is really strange given the fact that I didn’t disguise my voice one bit.)

update: Brett’s got up a nice post in honor of Zombie Claus over at his Maproom Systems site. (Brett, I should add, will there with us tonight, assisting with the makeup and documentation.)