Vampires, zombies, the occult: When life is in tumult, pop-cult goes undead

Pop culture is dripping, dripping, with the occult.

The book and movie of "Twilight" have become instant megahits, HBO's "True Blood" is one of the biggest shows on premium cable, and the novels of Charlaine Harris and Stephenie Meyer are haunting the bestseller lists.

Werewolves, then zombies, then vampires take turns as movie monster of the month. Left4Dead, a zombie-hunting video game, has sold more than 2.5 million units since it appeared last fall.

The supernatural is everywhere, and a wildly popular genre has been loosed from the vault: the supernatural or paranormal romance.

Why? Troubled times seem to raise the dead.

"The genre of fantasy is the ultimate escape," says vampire-series author Richelle Mead. "Vampires play off that. I have heard people speculate that with the economic downturn ... these books ... serve a need for some larger escape."

Or as Tony Allen-Mills put it in the Sunday Times of London: "The zombie has become the mascot of the global economic recession and a world shaken by terrorism."

Some think the paranormal surge began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. Danny Boyle's zombie film "28 Days Later" appeared in 2002. "Dawn of the Dead" arose in 2004, and George Romero's epic "Land of the Dead" in 2005. "World War Z," a zombie apocalypse novel by Max Brooks, has sold more than 200,000 copies since it appeared in 2006.

Zombies have been used to question, satirize, or warn of the demise of contemporary culture. It's hard to watch Romero's classic "Night of the Living Dead" without seeing the angst of the Vietnam era. Vampire films often touch on divisive issues, such as AIDS in 1994's "Interview With the Vampire" and racism in 1995's "Vampire in Brooklyn."

Since the earliest vampire films, such as the 1922 "Nosferatu" or 1931's iconic "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi, they've been studies of those who are different, those on the outside with no way in. Vampires, says Alan Ball, producer of "True Blood," can be "a metaphor for any kind of misunderstood and feared minority that is struggling for equal rights in a society, which of course makes it very easy to use metaphors for gays and lesbians, bisexual (and) transgender people."