Name: Zombies Age: Earliest mentions date to 2016. Appearance: Sudden, extremely belated. Is this about being stalked by the undead? In a manner of speaking, yes. When they rise half-decomposed from their graves to stagger through the dawn streets and smash in the windows of your house? It’s more likely they would send you a text. Oh. Or they might pop up and like something you posted on Instagram. Am I still supposed to shoot them in the head? Because that’s starting to seem a little disproportionate. You’re probably better off ignoring them. This isn’t like any of the movies I’ve seen on this subject. That’s because this is real life: part of the perilous world of modern dating. So zombie is a dating term? Exactly, it’s a corollary to ghosting. Ghosting? Surely you’re familiar with ghosting – when someone you’re seeing romantically suddenly vanishes, in person and online, without explanation? Yes, intimately. I just didn’t know it had a name. Zombieing is when someone who ghosted you suddenly reappears weeks, months or even years later, also without explanation. How would that even work? Imagine someone you were involved with cut off all contact one day, never responding to your texts and disappeared from social media. I don’t have to imagine it. What would you say if that same person sent you a text four months later, asking if you were free to meet up? “Sure, is 7.30 too early?” Wrong – you mustn’t condone such behaviour. Should I not just be glad they are alive, and out from under whatever heavy object they were obviously trapped beneath? Zombieing can be more callously incidental – perhaps someone you were dating vanishes off the face of the Earth, and then two years later tries to connect on LinkedIn. You mean they want career advice? The point is, they don’t even have the courtesy to stay ghosted. What turns people into zombies? It’s probably the virtual nature of online contact – even after behaving badly, getting back in touch is low risk and low consequence. I thought you had to get bitten by another zombie. That too. What should I do if an old flame who ghosted me suddenly zombies me? The most important thing is to trust your instinct. My instinct is to drive over and stand underneath their window all night. In that case, the important thing is to ignore your instinct. Do say: “Get lost.” Don’t say: “Hi, just texting to see if you were maybe trying to zombie me and lost my number.”