Mummies, Zombies & the Wicked Stepmother — Who Owns the Afterlife?
PODCASTER CAPITAL · SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
HISTORY • CULTURE • MYSTERY • THE SUPERNATURAL
Who owns the afterlife? From an ancient Egyptian papyrus in Zagreb to Haitian folklore and the darkest corners of fairy tales.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT MUMMIES, AND WHAT IS A ZOMBIE?
Three mysterious figures. Three different stories. One enduring human fascination with death.
01 — THE DEAD HAVE A STORY TO TELL
A mummy is more than a frightening figure wrapped in linen. It is a preserved human or animal body, sometimes naturally preserved and sometimes deliberately treated to prevent decomposition.
Ancient Egyptians developed elaborate mummification practices because preserving the body was an important part of their beliefs about existence after death. The body was not simply something to discard. It had a role in the journey into the next world.
The process could involve removing internal organs, drying the body with natron, applying oils and resins, and wrapping the remains in linen. In some periods, the complete process took approximately seventy days.
Amulets, prayers and funerary texts were also important. The dead needed protection, provisions and guidance for the journey beyond the world of the living.
THE BIG PICTURE
The mummy was not intended to be a zombie. It was a preserved body, prepared for a religious understanding of continued existence after death.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead was not one single, standardized book. It was a collection of funerary compositions intended to help the deceased navigate the afterlife.
02 — THE ZAGREB MUMMY AND THE MYSTERIOUS PAPYRUS
Now we move from ancient Egypt to Zagreb, Croatia. And this is where the story becomes particularly interesting.
The Archaeological Museum in Zagreb has a remarkable Egyptian collection, including the famous Zagreb Mummy, known here as Ružica, and an extraordinary collection of funerary objects.
The mummy was purchased in Egypt in 1848 by Mihael Barić, a Croatian collector. It arrived in Zagreb in 1862, together with linen wrappings and other archaeological material.
One of the most intriguing objects associated with this history is a funerary papyrus in the Zagreb collection. It contains religious illustrations and texts connected with the ancient Egyptian understanding of the afterlife.
And this brings us to one of the most memorable descriptions in the recent report.
„S druge strane vrata je zmija koja riga vatru, i ako si pogriješio lozinku — nagrabusio si.”Porin Šćukanec Rezniček, curator of the Egyptian collection,
quoted by Bojana Mrvoš, 24sata, 30 October 2026
Read the original report
A fire-breathing serpent, a mysterious door and a password that must be correct. It sounds like a scene from a fantasy film, but it belongs to a much older tradition of imagining the dangers and obstacles encountered beyond death.
The Egyptian underworld was not simply a place where everyone automatically arrived. It was a landscape filled with divine beings, guardians, gates, tests and powerful religious knowledge.
03 — SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS A ZOMBIE?
A zombie is not an Egyptian mummy. The two figures come from different cultural and historical traditions.
The word zombie is associated with Haitian Vodou traditions and has a complicated history with roots in African beliefs and the experience of slavery in colonial Saint-Domingue.
In Haitian traditions, the concept of the zonbi can involve the loss or control of a person's soul, agency or body.
This is an important distinction. The zombie is not simply a monster that happens to be dead. It can represent something much more disturbing: a person deprived of their own will and made subject to another's control.
And then Hollywood arrived...
Cinema transformed the zombie into an international horror icon. The familiar image is a reanimated corpse, wandering without consciousness, driven by an appetite for human flesh.
Movies, television and popular culture have developed many different versions: slow-moving zombies, fast-moving infected creatures, apocalyptic hordes and even comic interpretations.
But the original cultural background deserves more than a Hollywood stereotype.
THE DIFFERENCE IN ONE SENTENCE
A mummy is a preserved body associated with burial and the afterlife; a zombie is a figure associated with the loss of agency and the control of a body or spirit, later transformed by popular horror.
04 — THE WICKED STEPMOTHER: A FAIRY-TALE ARCHETYPE
And now, just when we thought we had enough monsters, we must introduce another character.
Not a mummy. Not a zombie. Not even a ghost.
The Queen, the Mirror and the Poisoned Apple
Think of Snow White and the Evil Queen. A magic mirror, an obsession with beauty, jealousy, deception and a poisoned apple.
The wicked stepmother is one of the most recognizable villains in European fairy-tale tradition. But her role in this story is more interesting than it initially appears.
She does not need to resurrect the dead. She wants to create death.
In the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, the Queen makes several attempts to kill her stepdaughter. The poisoned apple finally leaves Snow White apparently dead.
The seven dwarfs place her in a transparent glass coffin because her body still looks as though she is sleeping.
And there she remains, suspended between life and death, until the poisoned piece of apple is dislodged and she awakens.
THE FAIRY-TALE CONNECTION
Snow White is not a mummy and not a zombie. Her preserved appearance and glass coffin create a powerful image of suspended life. The wicked Queen is the living agent behind that deathlike state.
Why the Wicked Stepmother Belongs in This Story
Because the story is not exclusively about dead bodies. It is also about the living, their fears, their ambitions and their desire to control what happens to others.
The Egyptian funerary tradition asks how a person can continue beyond death. Haitian zombie traditions raise questions about freedom and the loss of personal agency. Snow White asks what happens when jealousy and cruelty turn someone into the instrument of death.
And suddenly, the wicked stepmother becomes more than a fairy-tale villain. She represents the terrifying power of the living over the vulnerable.
05 — THREE STORIES, ONE HUMAN OBSESSION
Let's put our three mysterious figures side by side.
| FIGURE | CENTRAL IDEA |
|---|---|
| Mummy | Preservation, memory and the afterlife. |
| Zombie | Loss of agency, control and the living dead. |
| Wicked Stepmother | Jealousy, manipulation and the threat of death. |
Different cultures and storytelling traditions approach death in different ways. Yet they repeatedly return to similar questions:
These are not merely questions for horror films. They are questions about religion, mythology, history, psychology and human imagination.
THE FINAL WORD · WHY IT MATTERS
Death Is Not the End of the Story
The Egyptians prepared their dead for eternity. Haitian folklore gave the world a figure whose freedom could be taken away. Fairy tales gave us wicked queens who feared losing their power.
And in Zagreb, an ancient papyrus reminds us that the past is still capable of surprising the present.
Perhaps the greatest mystery isn't whether the dead can return.
Perhaps it is why the living have never stopped imagining that they might.
READ THE SOURCES — EXPLORE FURTHER
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24sata — Bojana Mrvoš (30 October 2026)
The newly revealed mystery of the Zagreb mummy papyrus -
Archaeological Museum in Zagreb
The Zagreb Mummy and the Zagreb Linen Book -
Archaeological Museum — Object Catalogue
The Zagreb Mummy -
Smithsonian Institution
Egyptian Mummies — Preservation and the Afterlife -
University of Arizona — Haitian Origins
The historical and cultural origins of the zombie -
Brothers Grimm — Snow White
The original fairy-tale narrative
PODCASTER CAPITAL · ESSAYS · IDEAS · AUDIO
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