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I'm only doing this because there's an international banking convention in town, Little Miss I've-Been-Twelve-For-A-Pretty-Long-Time.
One of the squickiest things to come out of horror movies is the descending age bracket for The Undead. It used to be only adults could be/were made into undead, and while children were presumably killed off screen during the Zombie Apocalypse, they weren't turned into the living dead. Well, now it seems these infants have found immortality of a decidedly unwholesome sort.
Whether it's zombie babies, vampire children, or the unsettling ghost child, audiences will feel revulsion on several levels. Let's count!
On the one hand, these are children, the idea that an undead horror (especially a thinking one) would not just kill but transform an innocent into another one of itself is so wrong it's hard to quantify. That a child would stay on in this world as a ghost is no less cruel, since it implies the child is somehow being held against their will or has become a creature out for revenge. On the other, the body is still that of a child, and most people will instinctively try to help mistakenly thinking it's Not A Zombie. Third, even if the child still has their own mind and morality (slim chance, but present) you've now essentially got a bloodthirsty immortal Pinocchio. And last but not least, when one is attacking you you have to work past all of the above and a natural instinct not to harm the former child. This can be made much easier if the little monster isn't just creepy, but deformed and scary.
Lastly, if the form of undead is sentient, this may result in significant angst on the part of the child who Can't Grow Up or physically mature.
Let's hope no parents brought their kids to see this movie.
Related to Creepy Child, Enfant Terrible and Fetus Terrible.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- The Hellsing anime has Helena, a girl vampire with the mind of a weary, ancient woman.
- Blood Alone has Higure; vampire elder, and Misaki; a newly turned vampire. Both are friendly; but Higure reveals that ultimately all undead turn into monsters. It's just a question of how many centuries (or in some cases, years or months) it takes. Kuroe is constantly watching Misaki for signs.
- In GreatTeacherOnizuka, Fujiyoshi and Miyabi encounter one, but don't realize what it is until a few seconds later.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has Evangeline A.K. McDowell, who was turned into a first-generation vampire at the age of ten. Oddly enough - or perhaps not so oddly when considering the illusion magic she uses - no non protagonist really seems to even notice that she's a child and are simply terrified of her for more normal reasons.
- It's also worth noting that she subverts the creepiness part of this; as "undead" seems to merely mean "can't die" in regard to her; she's pretty much physically indistinguishable from a normal child. Anyone who fears her, is afraid for other reasons as mentioned above.
- When Eva is sick and tended by Negi, it's specifically noted that she is not undead. That, and her own telling of her backstory, make her vampirism seem more like a regular curse cast upon her to make her kill her family than traditional vampirism. And she's creepy because she's had a lot of practice :).
- See also the CuteGhostGirl Sayo Aisako. Then again, Sayo might not fit here, since she was around 16 when she died, provides some panty shots, and has recently possessed a doll to get a physical form and travel outside the school.
- In a chapter of High School Of The Dead, two of the protagonists are attacked by a gaggle of zombie preschoolers.
- Dance In The Vampire Bund both subverts this (Anna is weapons grade adorable
 , while her adopted sibs Jiji and Clara are only fractionally less cute) and plays it straight (Mina. Can. Be. Terrifying.).
- Hell Teacher Nube. Repeat: Teacher. Of an Extranormal Grade School of Adventure. Half the time, the Monster Of The Week will be an Undead Child. It comes with the territory.
Comic Books
- One of the 30 Days of Night graphic novels has a millenial vampire baby that has never aged. It's hungry.
- In The Walking Dead, The Governor has a zombie "daughter"; later on, he removes all her teeth so he can make out with her.
- In one story from a comic collection of zombie stories This Troper read, zombiism is The Virus, but, unusually, many (but not all) people recover from the initial infection. This leads to many people quarantining off their loved ones in the hopes that they will recover. In one household, this is seen happening through the eyes of a boy perhaps 4 years old, who sees his mother barricading his father in the basement and then crying by the door. Naturally, readers assume that the father is infected, until the boy finds a way into the basement. The story closes with the boy thinking "I can smell daddy. Daddy smells... daddy smells... delicious" and then leaping to attack his father, showing the boy's rotting face for the first time.
- The eponymous Lenore of Roman Dirge's comic is an undead child played for laughs.
- One issue also included a one page comic about a little zombie girl, parodying Lenore.
- The Season of Mists arc of The Sandman featured the dead returning to what remained of their bodies. All the dead, apparently, including small animals and children.
- Casper the Friendly Ghost.
- Leigh Gallagher really wanted to draw child zombies in Defoe, so Pat Mills worked them in.
Film
Literature
- Half the plot of Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer was based off of this... Or So I Heard
- Interview With The Vampire has Claudia.
- Pet Semetary by Stephen King. And Salems Lot as well—-two of them. Later on, in "One For the Road..."
- Pride And Prejudice And Zombies has a zombie infant. Elizabeth, despite being usually Bad Ass, can't bring herself to kill it.
- The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, also has a zombie infant, which has apparently been laying in it's cradle for years after the house was abandoned, restlessly kicking the footboard. The heroine chucks it off a balcony.
Live Action TV
- Being Human has a vampire child, made when Mitchell offers his mother, out of guilt from not being able to save him, the chance to bring him back as a vampire. The episode ends with the kid innocently telling his mom "I'm hungry."
- The Anointed One from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The drawbacks of a child form are made clear when an adult vampire who isn't intimidated just picks him up and carries him over to the sunlight.
- In the Angel episode "Lullaby" (season 3, episode 9) there's a flashback to Holtz finding his slaughtered family. His little daughter Sarah has already risen as a vampire. Holtz sings to her until daybreak, then drags her struggling to the door and pushes her out into the sunlight.
- "Are you my mummy?"
- Supernatural has had a ghost child or two.
- In Forever Knight, the vampire La Croix's sire was his own preteen daughter.
- In the Highlander TV series there was an immortal child. While immortals aren't undead, the Cant Grow Up factor and the creepiness of a child not acting like one and killing other immortals was similar.
Oral Tradition
- This is a lot Older Than They Think. Philippine legends speak of the Tiyanak, a monster made from the spirit of an unborn child. It takes the appearance of an infant to draw in unwary travellers then reverts to its true form to kill its kind-hearted victim. This makes the trope Older Than Print, if not older.
- There are actually a few of these in real world mythology. This troper recalls reading of one spirit from... pretty sure it was Inuit mythology. The precise name escapes this troper, but this troper belives it was called the Angyak; it was the vengeful ghost of a child that had been left to die of exposure after having been named, which gave it a soul, and so returned to its family to seek vengeance. It nursed from its mother at night to build up strength (possibly sucking the life out of her; am not sure), then used that strength to try and murder the members of its family who actually abandoned it in the wilderness. It would only depart after killing all of its family, or if a shaman banished it.
- And in Swedish oral tradition, if a mother killed her infant, the ghost would remain around the place where she had disposed of the body. For some reason it is normally depicted as a three-year-old, rather than as a newborn (when it doesn't appear as a bucket or box, supposedly what it was buried in). Sometimes it is said to demand vengeance on its mothers, sometimes it wants the body to be put to rest in a proper churchyard, and sometimes it just... hangs aroung and scares people.
- It appears in American folklore too. There's an Appalachian story about a ghost in the woods that looks like a small child and asks you to carry it on your back to safety. But as you carry it, it'll start getting heavier and heavier with each step. And if you look back over your shoulder to see what's going on... well, apparently nobody's lived to say what exactly they saw.
- Not sure if this counts, but there's a Japanese Yokai that takes the form of an abandoned baby crying on the roadside. If some poor fool actually picks it up, it suddenly grows huge, crushing them to death under its bulk.
- The Toyol of Malaysian folklore is a foetus that died after being born or was stillborn. It can be summoned by those who want to use the toyol for Evulz, but must be fed with blood by its summoner, or the toyol will turn nasty and kill its summoner.
- In the Carpathians, a stillborn child couldn't be buried in hallowed ground (as unbaptised), and (particularly if it had been born under a caul, or had teeth) was believed in danger into turning into a vampire spirit.
Tabletop RPG
- One slightly positive example is a Dn D 3.5 supplement on undead with a half-ghoul template, where the mother, a ghoul, gives birth to a half-ghoul child that can grow up. Usually the child has to be rescued by normal humans to survive long though.
- Dungeons And Dragons also has the Atropal, a very powerful, very dangerous abomination that is basically a stillborn godling. They are just as nasty as they sound.
- The Libris Mortis supplement has the slaymate, the animated remains of a child who died of neglect or betrayal by a caretaker. It amplified necromantic magic in its vicinity, and the book said they are prized as pets of sorts for necromancers, who sometimes carry them on their backs papoose-style. Add in a creepy picture of an undead and slightly decomposed 7-ish year old girl with a ragged doll, and you have a winner. The book also has the atropal scion, essentially a remnant of a destroyed atropal.
- 4.0 and its Open Grave supplement gives us both child skeletons and the corrupted spawn, a child brought back by resurrection magic Gone Horribly Wrong. The latter is essentially an extended reference to Pet Semetary.
- Half-Ghul? And the mother is the ghul? How does the father - wait, i don't want to know.
- Woman was pregnant before she was turned?
- Ghoul-ism is transmitted by The Virus in D&D 3.5, after all.
- In a Mystara scenario the P Cs run into a bunch of non-standard zombies created by the magical equivalent of radiation. They are senient and not neccessarily hostile. One of them was created from the body of a young boy and is a possible ally. Somewhat tragical, in that he thinks he can "grow up" like a living person if he just gets away from the zombie lair and into the normal world.
- Wraith The Oblivion features the Striplings, a caste of Spectre. In the game, Spectres are ghosts who either lost themselves over time to Oblivion, or met such a violent end that they just wanted it all to go away. The Striplings are Spectres of children who died when they were younger than ten. Even the other Spectres are freaked out by them.
- There's a good reason one ruler of Oblivion set a law in place that any child wraiths would be made into soulsteel. Fate Worse Than Death? Maybe. But at least that keeps them from being Striplings.
- There's a bit of fiction in one of the Vampire The Requiem sourcebooks about a local hotshot who runs a betting event known only as "B vs. D." What does it stand for? "[Embraced] Baby versus Dog"; as the baby is practically brand new and barely fed, that means the Beast is in the driver's seat.
- The original Vampire The Masquerade has a flaw called "Child", which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. In addition to physical penalties due to size, they suffer from social penalties and the aforementioned Cant Grow Up. It's said that child vampires tend not to survive long.
- Children of Illian in Mutant Chronicles. Pint-sized zombies who beat their victims to death with rattles. High Octane Nightmare Fuel indeed.
Video Games
- There are some very small zombies in Eternal Darkness. Optimistically, pygmies, but more realistically...
- The Jojo's Bizarre Adventure video game has a level where Jotaro fights a horde of zombies, and some of them are babies.
- This is based off a chapter from the manga, where Enya Geil's Stand, Justice, turned an entire town into zombies. Including the kids.
- There's also the especially disturbing example in Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006: baby zombies bursting from the bellies of the pregnant zombie mothers.
- Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within has Stephanie, who chases you around for much of the first part of the game. To a lesser extent, her sister Ashley, who's still-living arm can be found on the dining room table and the rest of her body scattered across the house, and their brother Michael, who also stalks you in a suit of armor.
- There's also May from Clock Tower 3, the 12 year-old pianist who was murdered by the first Subordinate you meet in the game, Sledgehammer; you have to beat him in order for her to be laid to rest. Then there's the ghosts of children killed by Scissorman in Clock Tower (2) that sing Little John from the Big Castle.
- If memory of the Lets Play serves, the first Silent Hill game had ghost demon children things wandering around the school.
- The first game does have them. They are ghostly silhouette babies that walk around crying. For added creepy, they won't attack you and if you touch them they let out a cry then disappear.
- We've yet to see any human(oid) children, but World Of Warcraft now has baby zombie dragons. You can even keep one as a pet if you bought the Collector's Edition.
- There is an NPC in the plaguelands who serves as the center of a series of quests, and is the ghost of a little girl. If she doesn't break your heart then you sir have none.
- "I never feel warm anymore."
- Said little girl's quest line actually inspired a quite rocking song about how a Warrior was haunted by the memory of seeing the ghost, and went on a quest to give her the means to rest peacefully.
- Quest For Glory IV has Tanya, a little vampire girl who, while not evil, is pretty darn creepy Nightmare Fuel. One of the main quests involves turning her back into a human and reuniting her with her parents.
- Embodiment of Scarlet Devil has the Scarlet sisters, who have been about ten-year old children since the 16th Century.
- The Infernas from The Suffering. Particularly when they drop their disguises and transform into charred, giggling corpses.
- How can we not mention the ghost children from Prey?
- Edwina in the single-player mode of Timesplitters: Future Perfect. In multiplayer, she's a very much alive possessed girl... but has an Undead Child version in Deadwina.
- Luigis Mansion gives us violent infant ghost Chaunsey, spectral twins Henry and Orville, and the creepy, eternally sleeping little girl Sue Pea.
- There are a number of zombie children throughout the Shadow Hearts series. Thankfully, the specifics are only All There In The Manual.
- Baldurs Gate 2 has a ghost halfling child in the graveyard who just wants his teddy bear and then he can be at rest. Probably a reference to The Twilight Zone.
- Siren: Blood Curse has a Nightmare Fuel Unleaded scene where a Shibito child pounds on the windows of a church, begging her still-human mommy and daddy to let her in.
- Left 4 Dead has this for the Witch, though she appears to be a teen/pre teen.
- Dead Space has the commonly-encountered Lurker. A low-power enemy that attacks using three tentacles that either spit out some sort of acid projectile or start stabbing into you. The clincher? They're actually the corpses of infants reanimated and mutated into Necromorphs. Appropriate, seeing as how you first see them when they kill a surviving researcher by impaling his hand to a glass window with projectiles, then blowing his head off.
- Also, the room in which this all happens is full of vats with babies floating inside. Makes you wonder what the hell that place is for...
- It's a body-parts farm. A mining ship that big is bound to have a number of industrial accidents.
- Actually, "No Known Survivors" shows that bodyparts for transplants can be grown individually (the first "story" is set inside a barricaded lab used specifically for that purpose- well, that and grafting the new bones and flesh on). More likely, given how expensive simply running the ship must be, it's a way to avoid having to give maternity leave while still allowing a mix-gendered crew to freely interact and socialize. Women who get pregnant have the embryo removed and placed in an artificial womb (the fluid-filled chambers), allowing it to grow without risk and mommy to keep working.
- Preview materials for Dead Space 2 indicate that one of the new Necromorph types in that game is an infected child.
- Warcraft III has a segment in the human campaign where the player saves a child called Timmy. A few levels later, a ghoul named Timmy is encountered.
- World of Warcraft has a number of ghostly children and Stratholme has a minor ghoul boss called Timmy. While it is mainly a Continuity Nod and the ghoul looks like any other ghoul, observant players remembering the above example may realise they just killed a child-ghoul.
- In a similar vein, at the beginning of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance the child protagonist and two newfound friends (future antagonists) get into a snowball fight with three bullies. Said bullies aim every snowball at the nerdiest kid, and eventually he starts bleeding due to one ball that has a rock in it. After that nerd gets his hand on a Tome Of Eldritch Lore and remakes the world according to his own desires, the first-available mission to contain zombies gives them the same names as the bullies. (When they reappear in a later mission, their monster type is given as "Lost Soul.")
- Jade Empire has ghost children in the old Tien's Landing, several of whom are part of sidequests.
- Wild Flower marginally qualifies, since she also died in the flooding of Tien's Landing. She's alive, though, because Chai Ka revived her to serve as his anchor in the physical world.
- It's heavily implied that she's not actually alive. Just, not quite dead.
- Used in an unusual fashion in the fan remake of Kings Quest 2: Possum is turned into a vampire together with her dying grandmother by Caldaur. While the grandmother rejuvenates into a hot vampire lady, Possum physically ages into a young woman, though still with the mind of a little girl.
- The Never-Children, a rare case of Nightmare Fuel in text adventure game The Reliques Of Tolti Aph. While it is never said outright, their name hints that they might be the ghosts of dead fetuses.
- The Fatal Frame series has quite a number of young female ghosts. This troper finds the most terrifying to be the Shrine Maidens in the third installment, who have the nasty habit of disappearing for a brief time, before reappearing below the camera's normal field of vision and attempting to drive stakes into the main character's feet.
Western Animation
- Parodied in an episode of South Park where Butters' parents act as if he were a zombie (he's still alive and perfectly fine, but they chain him in the basement anyway), and have to find a way to sate his need to "feed".
- Straighter example in the episode "Pink eye", where Kenny turns into a zombie and then infects a large number of residents including children.
- Technically speaking, Casper The Friendly Ghost. However, he's friendly and not really creepy, so he's almost an aversion.
- Likewise, the title character of Tutenstein, who's basically a more jerkass-y version of Casper.
Web Comics
- There is a little undead girl shown prominently in Richard's "Little village up the coast" in Looking For Group. She pulls a soldier's heart out of his chest and shows it to him before we even know she is undead and on one of the pages, she and another undead child are shown kicking a dead soldier's head around like a ball.
Music
- In The Hazards of Love, by The Decemberists, "The Rake's Song" details how a man murders his children after his wife dies...then "The Hazards of Love 3" tells how their ghosts come back to exact their revenge while he's kidnapping another woman.
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