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“I do a lot of thinking about monsters.” — Dr. Christopher Moreman

Dr. Christopher Moreman sees dead people.

And for reasons that include a lifelong love of horror flicks, he wants you to see them, too.

Chair of Cal State East Bay’s Philosophy & Religious Studies Department, Moreman studies horror films the way some scholars pore over medieval manuscripts or political speeches.

Moreman grew up in the suburban West Island of Montreal, where nothing in his life would have foretold a deep love of the macabre. Yet, after watching the campy horror classic, The Stuff, he became an instant fan of fright films, cultivating a deep fascination for monsters and zombies.

“I have been interested in ghost stories for as long as I can remember,” said Moreman, “And was always fascinated by the questions that were raised by the best episodes of the Twilight Zone growing up.”

Drawn to Roman and Greek mythologies, he received his degree in Classical Studies at Concordia University, then moved to England to earn a master's in the Study of Mysticism and Mystical Experience and then a PhD at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

But monsters and zombies continued to consume his mind, so to speak. “I still do a lot of thinking about monsters,” he admits. “I received some academic advice early on in my schooling that suggested I should follow my interests rather than trying to fit myself into a particular career mold, and so I've just tried to continue exploring what I love.”

That exploring eventually inspired Religion, Monsters and Horror — an upper-division course that blends mysticism, myth, and the macabre. Now in its eleventh year, it fills up fast, with students drawn to the subject for reasons ranging from sheer curiosity to the hope that they’ll never see zombies the same way again.

“You can learn a lot about a society from its monsters,” Moreman says. “They’re reflections of the fears we’ve agreed to have.”

The Shapeshifters of Fear

 A split-screen image of the Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz (1939) vs. Elphaba from Wicked (2024).

The Latin root of monster, monēre, means “to warn.” Ancient cultures imagined monsters as divine wake-up calls — supernatural penalties for straying from the path.

“Monsters reflect not just what scares us, but what we believe is normal,” Moreman explains. And what’s “normal” changes.

Witches, for centuries, were shorthand for dangerous, unruly women. Today, they’re as likely to be heroes. Consider Wicked, where the emerald-skinned outcast turns out to be kinder and braver than the so-called “good” characters.

Zombies have shifted even more dramatically. In Haitian folklore, they were symbols of oppression — dead African slaves forced to labor in the fields by sorcerers, their afterlife of peace denied. When zombies staggered into American cinema, US filmmakers bled them of their tragic meaning for profitable horror spectacle. By the time Night of the Living Dead hit theaters in 1968, they were characterized as rotting predators, stripped of individuality, but

hellbent on converting the living, including once-loved family members, into mindless monsters just like them. As cultural zeitgist, it’s no coincidence that the film, targeting teen viewers at drive-ins, was released during a period when America's youth were in full revolt against US institutions and the values they represented.

“The modern zombie is mortality on legs,” Moreman says. “But more importantly, in a lot of zombie stories, the hero recognizes the zombie. They might wonder, ‘Is that zombie still my brother or is it not?’”

Not surprisingly, Moreman is a recognized expert on zombies with a on the subject that’s reached audiences worldwide.

When Monsters Switch Sides

Cast from Freaks (1932).

In 1932, the film Freaks cast real circus performers with physical deformities — and then made them the heroes. The so-called “normal” characters turned out to be cruel, greedy, and murderous. “Audiences were like, ‘Wait! I could be the bad guy?’” Moreman says. The movie was banned in the UK for decades.

That reversal is the moment horror becomes dangerous. Not because of gore or jump scares, but because it shifts the target. Suddenly, the monster isn’t “out there.” It might be you.

Today’s Shifting Shadows

Zombie man with face trauma.

We’ve always created monsters in stories to warn us, to keep us in line. But in real life, they can be manufactured, too: whispered rumors of immigrants eating pets, headlines about shadowy gangs. The stories take root not because they’re true, but because they fit the fears that we’ve been taught to nurture rather than ignore.

And so, yesterday’s monster becomes today’s uneasy ally. The bully, the predatory abuser, the authoritarian strongman — figures once cast as the enemy — are suddenly recast as someone to praise, to imitate, to unquestionably support.

It’s a dark reminder that the line between “monster” and “friend” is never fixed — it shifts with the stories we choose to believe, at times sourced from those who have the power and the mic to propagate those stories.

The Lesson

“What does your monster say about you?”

For Moreman, the point of the class isn’t to make students experts in monster trivia. It’s to sharpen their ability to spot the narratives that tell them who to fear — and to question them.

“I hope my students think about the nature of the self in relation to others,” he says, “and recognize the kinds of potential biases that might come out of just accepting the normative structure as a default.”

Because the thrill of horror is the rush of surviving the story. But the lesson of horror is what happens when you realize you were looking in the wrong direction — that while you were watching the darkened hallway, the danger was standing right beside you.

In the end, monsters aren’t simply born from shadows. We make them — and we make them in our own image. Which means the question isn’t just “What do our monsters say about society?”

It’s “What does your monster say about you?”