Undead

Bram Stoker considered using the title, The Undead, for his novel Dracula (1897), and use of the term in the novel is mostly responsible for the modern sense of the word.

[1] Stoker's use of the term "undead" refers only to vampires; the extension to other types of supernatural being arose later.

Most commonly, it is now taken to refer to supernatural beings which had at one point been alive and continue to display some aspects of life after death, but the usage is highly variable.

Frankenstein (1818) used unspecified technological means, the influential I Am Legend (1954) blamed a germ, Night of the Living Dead (1968) proposed radiation from a downed space probe, The Return of the Living Dead (1985) depicted a toxic gas, and Resident Evil (1996) featured a bioweapon.

So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free.Other notable 19th-century stories about the avenging undead included Ambrose Bierce's The Death of Halpin Frayser,[3] and various Gothic Romanticism tales by Edgar Allan Poe.