How to Raise the Dead

Satisfaction comes with a job well-done, and nothing satisfies so much as bringing someone back from death. While horror movies and best-sellers make it look easy, raising the dead is a difficult skill that can go horribly wrong, so be careful. Read on to learn more.

Difficulty:

Challenging

Instructions

1. Ensure that the person is really dead. The normal procedure is to check their pulse and see if they are breathing by putting your face near their face to feel for air flow while looking at their chest to see if it is moving. Poking them with a sharp stick is a good bet, as well.

2. Follow the old voodoo practice of pretending to raise the dead. Buy some puffer fish, grind it into a powder and feed it to a victim. Chances are about 50-50 that they will only go into a catatonic state instead of die. You can later raise them from the dead with other drugs. Be aware that the resurrected person may be brain damaged and technically considered the undead. You need lots of practice to get a drug cocktail recipe that works consistently.

3. Pull a Frankenstein by using electricity to raise a dead person. Place a defibrillator on the corpse's chest and continue to shock the heart to keep it pumping. You also need some type of apparatus that forces air into the lungs. While technically alive now, the patient will not be able to leave your makeshift battery. By rigging up a portable shock unit, you could make the creature capable of limited movement, perhaps crawling.

4. Follow the example of Anita Blake, vampire hunter. She uses her psychic ability to pull them from their graves, but you could just dig them up with a shovel. To reanimate the corpse, Anita douses the dead person with animal blood, within the safety of a magical circle that the corpse can't cross. It the person has been dead a long time it may be necessary to use human blood.

5. Practice your necromancy skills, the art of death magick. Go to the grave of the deceased between midnight and 1 a.m. to recite your incantation. Be extremely careful because evil spirits have been known to enter the corpse instead of the rightful soul.

6. Play loud, obnoxious music as an alternative to more messy dead-raising methods. Mama always said your music was loud enough "to raise the dead"; so crank it up and see if it works.

Tips & Warnings

• Raising the dead may get you into legal trouble, so have a lawyer standing by.