You wanted it, here it is!

First ever zombie self makeup

Hello faithful undead friends!  It seems that you are dying for a zomblog, so here it is!  I thought I'd start with the history of why Gresham will suddenly be overrun by flesh eating upright corpses.

I have always loved zombie movies.  The process of using latex and toilet paper to turn someone into something that terrifies people's worst nightmares has always been fascinating.  I learned how to do zombie makeup from the instructor that ran the makeup department of a local haunt that I used to do makeup for.  That was the start of it all.  My name is Sunshine.

Julie and I doing our first ever
Portland Zombie Walk

Enter my friend Julie.  Our love for horror only brought us closer together.  She loved looking at the photos of my zombie makeup moments, and I kept wishing for a zombie friend who would attend the Portland Zombie Walk with me, so  one year I zombified her and drug her to it.  The experience sparked something in us.  There was something so gratifying about freaking people out.  We faithfully became part of the volunteer team that puts on the Portland Zombie Walk every year and have happily drowned in latex and home made fake blood ever since.

Zombie Max, makeup
I'm still pretty proud of

The next year, we got some more friends to go, and also some of our kids went with us.  There was something special about being part of the zom-team. Even though the weather was dreadfully drizzly, it didn't stop us from going all out with our zombie selves.  We started getting so good at our makeup that people started asking us to do it for them.  We did, gratefully, and started really honing in on our skills of doom and gloom.  Costumes got more elaborate and creative, and every year we put more thought into what we would be.  Even news stations made it a point to chat with us about our costume selections.
We mostly just hissed at them, but they ate it up!

Zombie Color Runner

One thing seemed to sort of nip at our heels every year as we worked to grow the Portland zombie hoard.  Our zombie gang all live in Gresham.  So many people would have joined us for a day of shambling moans if it wasn't so far away.  Then we had a thought?  Wouldn't it be great to create a sister city zombie walk?  We tossed the idea around with a couple of our friends, mostly as a joke.  It seemed to stick to the wall like a perfectly cooked noodle and the conversation kept coming up.

We scheduled a brainstorm meeting just to talk about the what-iffs, and before we knew it, we had a team.  Not like a maybe, like an actual full on team of people who wanted to make this thing a reality!

From right to left, Sunshine, Julie, Daphne.

Daphne, who always loved hearing about our zombilicious shenanigans started walking with us at the Portland Zombie Walk in 2014.  She was so excited about being a decaying body that she got all deadded up and hit the zombie scene with us.  Is it possible to say that horror makeup is addicting?  Oh, I think so.  She didn't waste a minute learning all about how to sink in your eyes, apply fake blood, and make yourself look simply gore-gious.  When the Gresham Zombie Walk started to take shape, she made sure to hit the social media scene and start dragging everyone to our facebook page.  I know that any time we need to get the word out about something, she's on it.

Amber the fundraising guru

Amber, another zombie fanatic, was ready to rock the Gresham zombie scene, and immediately went to town getting sponsors and pulling the frayed corners of this whole zombies in Gresham idea together.  Might I add that she is one of the zombies who couldn't make it to the Portland walk and dreamed of a closer option.

It didn't take her any time to start finding sponsors and raising money so that we could start building a dent in our startup costs.  Trust me, there's no love for zombies on Gofundme, so we were totally on our own to pound the pavement and get this thing going.  Amber did it with ease and excitement, and I'm so glad she's part of the team.

I also immediately brought on Curtis, who is a zombie encyclopedia and has some amazing connections and great passion for the dead and decaying.  As a matter of fact, in our entire friendship, I believe that at least 87% of all our conversations either had to do with zombies, or somehow found their way into zombie territory.  It only made sense to grab him to help make this thing a success, and he's working hard to make sure that our merch is to die for!

How do we define success at the Gresham Zombie Walk?

Well, we were just 5 zombies with an idea and no way to really make it a reality.  Now, we have several sponsors, tee shirts being made, rubber bracelets we will be selling, and everything ironed out with the city.  We're also successfully raising money so that we can apply to be a non-profit and use our zombawesome skills to spread awareness and help other causes such as domestic violence shelters, human trafficking organizations, fighting child abuse, and feeding hungry Greshamites.


Are you getting the idea?  We don't just want to be a wham-bam-thank-you-mam flash in the pan event.  Not only do we want to have our Halloween season walk and fund raiser, but we want to do a quarterly event as well.

What can we say Gresham, we're here, we're dead, get ready for us.

Are you ready for the date?

Don't forget to like our Facebook Page to keep up on all of the current zombie-tabulous fun!


XOXO from Zombieland, and you'll hear from us again soon.  OH, just another note, this blog is severely under construction, so keep coming back to check out the changes and give us your honest coolness scale rating!  We'll ZEE you ZOON!

Sunshine O'Connor
Gresham Zombie Walk Co-Founder