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. The word does appear in English before Stoker but with the more literal sense of "alive" or "not dead", for which citations can be found in the
Oxford English Dictionary. In one passage of
Dracula,
Nosferatu is given as an "Eastern European" synonym for "un-dead". 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. Reanimation or the creation of zombies through non-supernatural means has been a trope since at least the 19th century.
Frankenstein used unspecified technological means; mechanisms in more recent stories include germs (
I Am Legend), radiation (
Night of the Living Dead), and toxic gas (
The Return of the Living Dead). The undead have become popular adversaries in fantasy and horror settings, featuring prominently in many
role-playing games,
role-playing video games,
MMORPGs and
strategy games. == Literature ==