Why Romero Called Them Ghouls
In Night of the Living Dead, the dead return to attack the living, but the film does not name them “zombies.” George Romero’s original script calls them “ghouls,” a familiar word for corpse-eating monsters. It describes what the creatures do without giving them a detailed origin or a formal supernatural category.
That choice suited the film’s spare approach. The story offers no settled explanation for the dead rising, and its characters spend more time trying to survive than working out what to call their attackers. A label could organize the threat for the audience, but the film leaves that job largely to viewers.
How “Zombie” Took Over
“Zombie” was already part of horror culture, and audiences and media used the word for Romero’s shuffling corpses. Repetition made it the convenient name for the creatures—and, eventually, for the kind of monster the film helped make famous.
The change matters because “zombie” now feels like the obvious term, even though it is not the word Romero’s script chose. The film’s monsters became influential enough that popular usage supplied them with a lasting category of their own.
