Real Life Zombie Stalked Graveyards for Nine Years
From the Daily Mail
Just a little bit creepy
“A man diagnosed with a rare zombie condition today told of his nine years of hell thinking he was the living dead.
Graham Harrison, 57, was convinced he had died despite a botched suicide attempt – and even took to hanging around in graveyards.
He believed his brain had ‘fried’ after trying to electrocute himself and must be dead, even though he was still breathing.
Doctors diagnosed Cotard’s Syndrome – otherwise known as walking corpse syndrome – one of the rarest diseases in the world, affecting just a few hundred people.
Delusional sufferers believe they are dead, or that parts of their body no longer exist, and often die from starvation because they feel they no longer have to eat.
Graham, a former water contractor from Exeter, Devon, woke up after a botched suicide attempt amazed he was able to talk – because he was convinced he had no brain.
” Cases of Cotard’s Syndrome date back to 1788 but it was formally identified by French neurologist Jules Cotard in 1880.
Among the handful of cases over the years was a 53-year-old woman in New York who in 2008 claimed that she stank like rotting fish because she was dead.
Like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, Cotard’s is another form of delusional psychosis, the only self-certifiable form of its kind.
Those with this condition often describe a loss of blood, organs and/or body parts. This distorted reality is caused by a malfunction in an area of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, which recognizes faces, and also in the amygdala, an almond-shaped set of neurons that processes your emotions.”
