The Whisperers
TRAVIS LANGLEY
“People wearing dead people’s faces!”
—Morgan Jones1
“It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.”
—actor Errol Flynn2
A survivor named Marco, while hunkering down to hide, hears words whispered among passing walkers. He panics and abandons an injured friend. “There were whispers and I was afraid,” he says, lying terrified in the infirmary after another man, Dante, finds him. Rick says, “The guy has clearly lost his mind.”3 Dante soon encounters these talking walkers himself. Talkers kill his companions. Dante kills talkers and then stands in shock: “They were talking.” But once he spies a seam on the back of one body’s head, he discovers that these were living humans wearing costumes made from corpse skins. Another corpse-costumed survivor arrives to point a shotgun and say, “Don’t move.”4
These are the Whisperers. Similarly to the way Rick, Glenn, and others have moved safely among walkers by wearing zombie gore,5 the Whisperers wear human skin—possibly from walkers, possibly from people skinned alive or those who died without turning. The dead accept them. The living fear them. Dante’s captor warns, “You came into our land. Killed our kind. Now we explore your land, learn about your people. You will see many of us. You will know us. You will fear us.”6
A mask has might. When donning these disguises to affect others both dead and alive, the Whisperers may not have anticipated how it would affect themselves. A disguise can be liberating. Face paint or a feathered mask at Mardi Gras can help unleash hedonistic partying. Behind an avatar, the online anonymity can let one user share feelings too intimate to disclose in person or turn someone else into a troublemaking troll.7 Anonymity in any form can lower inhibitions (disinhibition) by insulating a person against consequences or reducing consciousness of oneself as an individual (deindividuation8). Many situations deindividuate people—among them, getting lost in a crowd. Whisperers start out wearing corpse skins in order to get lost in walker crowds.
A costume, a uniform, or any other outfit affects the way people act, think, and feel. For example, sports players wearing black uniforms get more penalties for aggressiveness compared with the players on other teams and even compared with themselves when they don’t wear black.9 The Whisperers don’t just disguise themselves as walkers. They play the part. They are role-playing: adopting and acting out roles that can have personalities, motives, and actions different from their own. Continuously playing a role can be a tricky thing. Police officers who go deep undercover for long periods may have trouble defining themselves after a while.10
The Whisperers come to identify with walkers. They walk among the walkers for safety. Then, in time, they walk with the walkers for company. “The skin makes the dead leave us alone,” a Whisperer named Lydia explains. “We travel with them. They protect us, and we protect them.”11
Festinger, L., Pepitone, A., & Newcomb, T. (1952). Some consequences of deindividuation in a group. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 382–389.
Frank, M. G. (1988). The dark side of self- and social perception: Black uniforms and aggression in professional sports. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 74–85.
Girodo, M., & Deck, T. (2002). Dissociative-type identity disturbances in undercover agents: Socio-cognitive factors behind false-identity appearances and reenactments. Social Behavior and Personality, 30(7), 631–644.
Hollenbaugh, E. E., & Everett, M. K. (2013). The effects of anonymity on self-disclosure in blogs: An application of the online disinhibition effect. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(3), 283–302.
Love, K. G., Vinson, J., Tolsma, J., & Kaufmann, G. (2008). Symptoms of undercover police officers: A comparison of officers currently, formerly, and without undercover experience. International Journal of Stress Management, 15(2), 136–152.
Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(3), 321–326.
Notes
1. Episode 3–12, “Clear” (March 3, 2013).
2. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/errolflynn125391.html.
3. Issue 130 (2014).
4. Issue 132 (2014).
5. Issue 4 (2004); Episode 1–2, “Guts” (November 7, 2010).
6. Issue 133 (2014).
7. Hollenbaugh & Everett (2013); Suler (2004).
8. Festinger et al. (1952).
9. Frank (1988).
10. Girodo & Deck (2002); Love et al. (2008).
11. Issue 135 (2014).