Zombie Outbreak* of 1922
*also referred to as the Zombie Uprising
Where was the Zombie Outbreak of 1922?
The first documented signs of the outbreak were concentrated in Carlingford. At the heart of the initial event was the town’s mental hospital—sometimes referred to as the Carlingford Asylum. It was here that reports of strange behavior, unresponsive patients, and unnatural physical resilience began to surface. These accounts—initially diagnosed as a combination of popular medical ailments—would, in hindsight, mark the beginning of what would become one of the region’s most disturbing events.
There is some archival evidence suggesting that a secondary cluster of similar cases occurred simultaneously in a nearby residential quarter. However, this satellite event appears to have been smaller in scale and was not met with the same urgency or public alarm. The residential area was simply noted in town records as “experiencing unrest,” which reportedly subsided—though no further documentation remains.
How long did the outbreak occur?
It appears the outbreak lasted approximately four to seven days, with the highest concentration of affected individuals appearing during the first and second days. Reports from that initial period describe rapid-onset symptoms, erratic behavior, and, in some cases, violent resistance to restraint. Many residents—either by instinct or instruction—chose to remain indoors, boarding windows, bolting doors, and refusing to answer knocks, even from those they knew.
Other accounts suggest that some townspeople took more direct action—isolating the afflicted, setting traps, and, in at least one instance, ambushing a group near the chapel on the edge of town. These efforts, both passive and active, created a fractured but effective response. No centralized defense ever emerged, and no leadership is credited in surviving sources, yet by the end of the week, the outbreak had burned itself out.
The final days are poorly documented and largely reconstructed from secondhand testimony. Some accounts describe an unnatural stillness settling over the area, broken only by distant sounds—unexplained and often deliberately left undescribed. By the end of the seventh day, the situation was considered “resolved,” though no official report was ever filed, and no burial records have been located. Survivors from the region rarely spoke of what occurred, and those who did offered only fragmented, often contradictory recollections.
What happened during the Zombie Outbreak?
In early May of 1922, between 150 and 200 patients at Carlingford Memorial Hospital were reportedly stricken with what was initially described as a wasting disease. Many of the patients—several of whom had previously been in good physical health—began losing weight at alarming rates. This rapid weight loss was accompanied by escalating bouts of seizure-like symptoms that left individuals incoherent, unresponsive, or catatonic for extended periods.
While the first cases were isolated to a handful of patients, the illness spread rapidly over the following days. It moved unpredictably between wards and floors, seemingly without regard for proximity or contact. No consistent vector could be identified, and the staff quickly grew overwhelmed. By mid-May, it became apparent that some patients were not recovering from their seizure states. Death, once thought to be avoidable, became inevitable—and increasingly disturbing in its presentation.
Aware of the hospital’s limited resources and its isolated location, Dr. Bradford Leland, the managing director and chief surgeon, reached out to two larger and better-equipped hospitals within a day’s travel. Reinforcements were dispatched immediately.
Carlingford Memorial had originally been established as a modest regional hospital, suited for the small, static population of the area. However, the post–World War I boom in the timber industry brought an influx of temporary workers—many of them returning soldiers—which led to a brief expansion of medical facilities in the region. By 1922, Carlingford Memorial was in the process of being scaled down, with plans to transition into a smaller, research-focused institution.
The arrival of what became known locally as “the Medical Brigade” marked a turning point. On May 17, doctors and nurses from the nearby hospitals arrived alongside a handful of regional newspaper reporters, all expecting a routine story of frontier medicine facing an unknown illness. Some believed the response effort might even bring new prestige to Carlingford, framing it as the unlikely birthplace of a medical breakthrough.
Instead, just after midday, the hospital’s front doors opened—and the first of what would become an endless stream of emaciated, sickly patients began to emerge. Shuffling, wide-eyed, unresponsive. This would be remembered as the first wave of the Carlingford outbreak. The presence of the press that day ensured that photographs, interviews, and raw eyewitness accounts would survive, offering some of the only firsthand documentation of what would later be called the zombie outbreak.
The Bigger World of the Outbreak
While the outbreak in Carlingford remains poorly documented, a small collection of internal reports, letters, and medical notes has been preserved and stored in the Mendtide Main Research Library. These few remaining documents suggest that, even at the time, there were attempts to understand the disease’s causes—and why it appeared to be localized entirely within Carlingford Memorial Hospital, affecting only a segment of its population without ever becoming fully epidemic.
One internal report, unsigned but attributed by handwriting to a senior medical reviewer, lays out a peculiar detail: while Dr. Bradford Ashmont Leland was officially the hospital’s chief of surgery and managing physician, he had inherited his position with an unusual caveat. A more senior figure remained on staff—Dr. Adrian Penrose, a research surgeon who, despite being younger than Dr. Leland, held supervisory authority in matters of research and experimental medicine.
From the available notes, Dr. Penrose had arrived at Carlingford three years before the outbreak. Though there are no surviving records of Penrose ever exercising authority over Dr. Leland in administrative matters, he maintained his own private study area within the hospital. While far smaller than a full wing, this space included a fully functioning surgical suite, a handful of patient rooms, and even a medical theater used for observation and demonstration. No staff records exist to indicate who attended these sessions.
Penrose’s surviving medical journals—several of which are part of the Mendtide archive—reveal a troubled, ambitious man obsessed with the temporal lobes of the brain, and the connection between memory, behavior, and what he referred to cryptically as “spiritual mechanics.” He repeatedly notes failures, complications, and “unintended outcomes” in his attempts to isolate behavioral disorders. It is heavily implied, though not stated outright, that Penrose conducted direct experimentation on patients under his care.
Following the outbreak, none of Dr. Penrose’s patients reappear in Carlingford’s records, nor are they accounted for in regional hospital transfers. Their ultimate fates remain unknown.
Dr. Penrose himself perished during the outbreak. At the request of Dr. Leland, and allegedly in the hope of preserving research opportunities, Penrose’s head was removed and kept for later study. The preserved head was transferred with the rest of Carlingford Memorial’s research materials to the Mendtide Research Library.
It has been missing since 2017.
