In this writer’s estimation the second half of Season 4 of The Walking Dead television series has been rather slow. This is, of course, deliberate as the destruction of the prison and the fragmentation of the group allows for the development of back stories and an exploration of how the characters respond to their new situations. Last Sunday’s episode, “The Grove,” continued in this vein, but it included a darkness and emotional punch not seen since the mid-season finale with the death of Hershel.

Apart from the murder of Mika by her sister Lizzie, and the resulting death of Lizzie by Carol’s hand that served as the main elements of shock and tragedy for this episode, for me a line by Tyreese was especially significant. In a moving scene involving Tyreese and Carol, Tyreese shares how his murdered girlfriend Karen still appears in his thoughts, dreams, and nightmares. He realizes that everyone struggles with such memories, and then extends this to all of the dead in general, both those that live in the memories of the living, as well as the walkers in the woods. Tyreese describes this situation with sobering words:

“But that’s the deal, right? The people living are haunted by the dead? We are who we are. And we do what we do ’cause they are still here. The whole world is haunted now and there’s no getting out of that until we’re dead.”

I found that phrase, “the whole world is haunted now,” very interesting in light of the apocalyptic world that The Walking Dead has created, particularly considering its seeming nihilism and the related struggles of the characters to maintain hope. In my view Tyreese’s phrase could also be applied to horror in general in connection with our present zeitgeist. In the past various monsters and other horrors were limited to particular places, whether a haunted house or a European castle. As we developed our haunts changed with us. They moved from the external monster limited to specific spaces to the monster within us as Psycho hit American cinema. Then as the unrest of the counterculture surfaced in the late 1960s, George Romero unleashed the flesh eating ghoul. This would become known as the zombie, and a feature of Haitian folklore was changed forever. So was our understanding of the family and other institutions we had previously valued and trusted. Everything was now suspect. Horror with hope, where good always destroyed evil resulting in a happy ending, was now gone, and a nihilistic foundation of horror set forth in the past has continued into the present. It is perhaps best exemplified (and literally embodied) by our current fascination with the zombie in many levels of popular culture.

Tyreese is right. The whole world is haunted now. And its not be limited to horror entertainment.