Undead hordes are coming out for the Erie Playhouse's Zombie 5K

Jade Burns, 13, of the Showstoppers, gets zombie makeup from Mark Kosobucki, before rehearsing the "Thriller" dance, on Oct. 6, at the Erie Playhouse. The group is preparing for their performance at the Zombie 5K race. JACK HANRAHAN/ERIE TIMES-NEWS

view gallery

The girls looked absolutely ghastly.

Undead pageant queen Jade Burns, 13, slumped in a chair and waited for her painted-on veins to dry. Nearby, the poodle-skirted Devin Mulvihill, 14, stared lifelessly in the mirror while her rotting flesh was dabbed with fake blood.

"It's a little bit sticky. You don't really notice it," Devin said.

Jade and Devin were among a dozen zombies who shuffled, groaned and moaned their way onto the Erie Playhouse stage for a recent Youtheatre Showstoppers dress rehearsal of Michael Jackson's "Thriller," which they will perform during the Erie Playhouse's second annual Zombie 5K on Saturday.

That's right. A zombie race.

In a rising trend of apocolypse-themed races taking place across the country, participants have a choice: They can remain a human and run with three "brain" flags, or they can run as zombies who try to catch as many flags as possible.

Zombies are invited to dress and act the part, though most race rules prohibit any biting or actual feasting on brains.

"I knew they were popular on the West Coast -- it's a huge movement, it's spreading like crazy," said Angela Howell, race organizer and costume designer for the Playhouse.

"It's a theatrical race, so I know we can do it, and it's a fantastic way to get new people familiar with what the Erie Playhouse has to offer."

The Playhouse's 2012 race drew about 200 participants and raised nearly $3,000 for the longtime community theater. So far this year, the number of registered runners has risen to about 300, she said.

"Everybody was so excited at the end of the race (in 2012) and said they had so much fun," she said. "I asked the crowd 'Should we do it again?' and I got the 'Yeaaah!'

"So we're doing it again, and we'll do it again and again and again as long as people enjoy it."

Down in Meadville, though, the zombie hordes will take things a bit slower.

The Downtown Meadville Business Alliance is kicking off its first Zombie Walk on Oct. 19. The creepy, weird and fun family event was devised to collect canned food donations for local charities as well as take participants on a walking tour of the downtown business district.

"You are allowed to dress up and act goofy in the streets, and there's nowhere else you can do that," said Viki Allin, organizer for the zombie walk and co-owner of the Creative Crust Bakery.

Allin looked to Pittsburgh's Zombiefest and the Minneapolis Zombie Pub Crawl's Zombie 6.66K -- both scheduled for Saturday -- for inspiration. Those annual events attract thousands of participants while benefiting local charities and businesses.

"When you get that many people in an environment, it can't help but help businesses," Allin said. "Our goal is to bring customers downtown."

So on to the bigger question: Why are people obsessed with zombies?

"It's crazy, right?" said Matt Mogk, president of the Zombie Research Society (www.zombieresearch.org), a group of more than 250,000 zombie enthusiasts and academics worldwide. "It's the million-dollar question, and everyone has different theories."

Out of all the ghouls and nightmarish creatures our imaginations can conjure, zombies are really "the truest, more believable monster," he said. Modern zombies are born from seemingly realistic biological and scientific mishaps and don't have frightening superpowers.

They're just walking corpses with a hunger for brains -- anyone can become a convincing zombie, Mogk said.

"There's no pretension," he said. "Everybody can fit in."
