Night of the living undead

Kirkwood Avenue and Walnut Street are hubs of nightlife entertainment for college students, but this Thursday the streets entertained a different crowd: the undead.

About 100 people dressed up as zombies took over the streets for about an hour, walking straight-legged and blank-eyed, bringing traffic to a halt, jumping on cars that honked at them and slapping up against windows of businesses.

The eighth annual zombie parade began at 10 p.m. at the Sample Gates and ended about an hour later on Walnut Street outside Jake’s Nightclub. The “zombies” were mostly students, but a few children and adults were also participating.

Freshman Brandon Anderson – who dressed up for the parade as “Zombie Juno” in an orange-and-grey-striped hooded shirt with a round ball under it in addition to his red, white and black zombie make-up – said he came out because he wanted to be a part of an outrageous event.

“I just thought it’d be so cool to be standing on Kirkwood, outside Cafe Pizzeria, seeing about 200 zombies go by,” he said.

“And even cooler would be being one of those zombies,” added Kaisha Cyliax, also a freshman and zombie.

As Anderson imagined, spectators were, in fact, fascinated by the spectacle.

People poured out of local businesses to watch the sight. Although some motorists who were stopped by the crowd honked impatiently, others embraced the event by rolling down their windows and blaring “Thriller” or by crawling out their car sunroofs to holler at the zombies.

“Something this unusual doesn’t normally happen,” said Catherine Gibbs, an IU senior who had never seen the annual zombie parade before. “This is absolutely hilarious.”

The parade came to a somewhat abrupt end, though, as police cars pulled up behind the crowd with their lights flashing.

Although at first this did not deter the crowd and many zombies surrounded the police car, yelling, the party dissipated as even more squad cars arrived and one man was handcuffed and put inside one of the cars.

Parade participants were divided about the arrest.

Senior Luke Bapple, who believed the arrest happened because the arrestee had touched one of the police cars, said the arrested “zombie” should have known better.

“I mean, I’ll jump on a civilian car,” he said. “We’re dead, not stupid.”

 But senior Samantha Miller applauded the arrestee.

“He was a martyr zombie,” she said.