Greek Zombies

The other day, I took some Easter lilies up to Mount Olivet to place on the graves of my grandparents and aunts. As I bent down to place the flowers near the stone, I made a startling discovery: behind my papou's grave was a strange stick-like object protruding from the dirt. I reached over and broke a bit off, examined it and thought it looked a lot like a bone. But maybe it was just a dead plant. So I reached down and gave the thing a tug at the very root.

Holy heebie jeebies, Batman! It was a some sort of partially cooked bird carcass stuffed into a plastic sack! And it was a big bird at that. I had busted off a piece of what had been a wing bone.

Like the dashing hero in every adventure, I took decisive action: fleeing to the sexton's office checking over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure no zombies were after my brains! The big burly cemetery workers could remove it more aptly than I, I reasoned.

Nearby the buried bird were a couple of upside-down jars and some other items. The grounds crew could get rid of those for me too.

A few days later, the boys and I stopped back to make sure that the chicken-ala-graveyard had been removed. To my great relief, the workers had indeed pulled it out and filled the hole with dirt. But those creepy jars were still there. So, using a pointy rock, I started excavating.

Here's what I dug up:

Now I admit, the Nescafe bottle cracked me up: Nescafe is what you order in Greece if you want watery "American" coffee!

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the two rock-like objects were. Actually, they weren't rocks at all, but composite board. And both had been painted, the larger one with pins sticking out of it.

I dragged everything home, donned some plastic gloves, and opened the two bottles up. At first, I thought the Nescafe might have been filled with skinny fingers.

But it ends up they were chilies floating in what looked like fermenting Nescafe. And I know where those chilies came from: the label on the smaller bottle read Chinese Red Peppers.

And what of that pepper bottle? Well, it still had the original liquid (so I'm glad I used gloves) but also contained what appeared to be photo paper - any images long since dissolved.

I don't know if someone was practicing an alternative religion like Santa Ria but if they were trying to create an army of the living dead they're going to have a couple of pissed off old Greek zombies on their hands!