At Monster Bash 2007, I met and spoke briefly with a friendly guy known as "I. Zombi", one Hayden Milligan. He was the horror host of a public access show called THE WITCHING HOUR, which aired in the very conservative area of Lexington, KY.
If you met him, you'd never forget him.
As a child, his life was dramatically and terribly altered when was burned very badly on his face and hands. They were severely damaged, and the end result was that Hayden wound up looking like some scarred vengeance-seeking character seen in HOUSE OF WAX or other horror movie.
Except Hayden, known as "I. Zombi", was no villain. He was a married man with a friendly, enthusiastic disposition, who played guitar and had many friends. He easily won friends with his amazing determination and his enthusiasm.
Sadly, illness took his life last Monday. A documentary on his life, "I. Zombi" (directed by Jeremy Newman) was making the rounds of the festival circuit at the time of his passing. A preview of it can be seen here. A relaxed, apparently domestic picture of Hayden Milligan can be seen at this web page for the John Hopkins Film Fest in Baltimore.
The DSH urges you to explore his website:
I.ZOMBI
I did not know him well at all, and in exploring his website, find we would have disagreed on some things. (I found his views on some subjects fairly credulous.) But he met adversity and pain with grace and imagination, and his too-short life is a life to be respected and admired.
May he be somewhere serene and doing what he loves best.
Update 07/23/08: Since Milligan's death, his website has become unavailable (viewers are immediately redirected to the domain host) . HERE is a link to a Wayback Machine archive of I. Zombi webpages, although many of those are also unavailable.
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