Legend of the Walking Dead

Book excerpt: Legend of the Walking Dead: Igbo Mythologies is a journey into the mysteries of life and death of the Igbos of Nigeria. The book draws readers into the Igbo people’s ancient and traditional beliefs about life and death. There is a very thin line dividing the land of the living and the land of the dead, so thin that spirits from both lands coexist. Sometimes, during the story, it is difficult to differentiate between the living and the dead. Both have bodies; the living existing in their bodies, while the dead exist in (are using) borrowed bodies. Fifteen-year-old Osondu has disappeared. His mother goes searching for her son and faces the same fate. She too goes missing. The gods are ever present, in control, and minister to both the living and the dead. This is because the gods minister to the spirits, not the bodies that harbor them. To the gods, the spirits of both the living and the dead are ever alive. The world of the traditional Igbo society is a world in which the dead visit and interact easily with the living. It is also a world in which most of the time the living are at the mercy of the gods.