Groups of locals dressed as zombies walk past the Tennessee Aquarium in downtown Chattanooga during the 2011 Zombie Walk.

You’re walking down Market Street at 3:30 in the afternoon on a Saturday.  You’ve taken in the aquarium, visited the Creative Discovery Museum, and have done a little shopping on the side.  You start back towards your car when  you start to hear the rough shuffling of dragging feet behind you.  You turn, but see nothing, so you continue about your business.  The shuffling gets louder.  The clap-step of dragging limbs is right behind you, and you can hear in the distance a low, guttural moan that says, simply: “Braaaaaains…”  You turn, and are faced with a terrible zombie horde!  The decaying creatures rush you and you are overtaken in seconds, bitten and infected with their terrible disease, only to return as one of them!  Ok, not really, because those zombies behind you are only locals who have taken up a Halloween tradition that in recent years has swept the nation:  Zombie Walks.

Whether the walks are for “zombie rights” or for some good old Halloween fun, locals take it upon themselves to dress in tattered clothing, pallid makeup, and bloody wounds to parade around cities on zombie walks.  While their appearances may unnerve some, the zombies say that they go out of their way not to approach or frighten anyone who doesn’t want to be scared, especially small children.  The reactions they get are many, from sheer horror to genuine amusement and participation.  For this zombie walk, the zombies began at the Walnut Street bridge and made their way to Broad Street, stopped at the Aquarium, and then continued across the Market Streeet Bridge to return to their starting point on the Walnut Street Bridge.

The 2011 River Rocks Chattanooga festival ended its week-long run with a sculpture burn by local artist and carpenter Andrew Nigh in Coolidge Park.