The rapper eventually arrived, three hours late. “He was wearing one shoe, and he fell out of an SUV as it careened up the outfield of Midway Stadium,” Terhark said. “Then he got on stage, and he was great.”
The Zombie Pub Crawl set a world record for largest gathering of people dressed as zombies in 2014. (Bre McGee/For the Minnesota Star Tribune)
In 2014, interest swelled in the event. It set a Guinness world record for the largest gathering of zombies, numbered at 15,458 participants. (This was a vast undercount but satisfied Guinness’ persnickety requirements for measuring mass participation records, Terhark said. Police at the time estimated the crowd was closer to 35,000, which matched ticket sales.) Nonetheless, the record still holds today.
The event’s success ushered in more logistical headaches for the planners, who agonized over conditions beyond their control. Terhark remembers scouring the weather forecasts for weeks leading up to the event. The elements determined whether the organizers made a profit or went broke, he said. He’s proud that despite its ups and downs, festival organizers never lost money.
“We landed the plane without ruining anybody,” he said. “But it was a bit of a cluster for many years.”
It seems every hipster in the Twin Cities who came of age in the mid-2000s to 2010s can recount an insane story from the annual party. Terhark remembers a zombie being impaled in the leg while trying to scale the wrought iron fence at the Nomad World Pub.
Another person dressed up as a zombie Santa was so inebriated in 2014 that he wandered into a St. Paul home, frightening two children who lived there.