Читать книгу The Zombie Book - Nick Redfern - Страница 27

Deep in the heart of North Wales is a stretch of mountains collectively called the Berwyns. They are huge, daunting, and picturesque. And they are saturated with tales of paranormal phenomena.

T. Gwynn Jones was an investigative author who penned a classic book on the legends and mythology of Wales. It was titled Welsh Folklore and Welsh Folk-custom, and suggested the name “Berwyns” was derived from two words: “bre,” which is an old Welsh term for “hill,” and “Gwynn,” a word that paid homage to a legendary member of Welsh royalty, Gwun ap Nudd. Notably, the mighty king oversaw humans who were not normal, but nothing less than a race of magical and diminutive fairy folk. Known as the Tylwyth teg, they lived in the heart of a supernatural realm known as Annwn. It was a place where time was non-existent and the fairies stayed forever youthful. As bright and positive as all of that sounds, however, there is a distinctly dark side to the Berwyn Mountains: they are said to be the home of an infernal pack of what can most accurately be termed zombie hounds.

Before the word of the Christian God reached the United Kingdom, it was told in hushed tones on the Berwyns that Odin, the legendary overlord of the ancient and mighty Norse gods, travelled the night skies of the old Welsh mountains with nothing less than a pack of supernatural and deadly hounds at his side. Considered as either dogs of the undead kind or deceased people returned in animalistic form, they were driven by one thing and one thing only: to be seen. Anyone unfortunate enough to lock eyes with the deadly dogs would be whisked away by the terrifying pack and torn apart and eagerly devoured by their savage jaws—in a fashion not unlike the zombie dogs of I Am Legend and the Resident Evil movies. Thus was born the Wild Hunt in which monsters hunted man, purely out of a need to feed.

The Berwyn Mountains in Wales are known as a magical place where fairy folk dwell … and also zombies.