3 Undead Monsters More Deserving of Cultural Ubiquity than Zombies and Vampires

The Walking Dead - AMC, via A Geek Saga; Twilight - Summit Entertainment, via twilightsaga.wikia 

Modern pop culture is obsessed with the undead.  People on the bus are reading books about zombies and vampires.  Cinemas are playing movies about zombies and vampires.  The video game market is flooded with... um... zombies and vampires.  You can see where this is going.  Looking at our pop-culture, you'd think that there were only two types of undead monsters: the shambling, mindless, brain-eating kind and the immortal, blood-sucking, inexplicably effeminate kind.

Don't get me wrong; zombies and vampires can be very cool if used correctly and in moderation.  But what we have in our culture right now is an oversaturation.  Zombies and vampires are getting played out, and I'm pretty tired of them.  This jumbled graph - which I painstakingly assembled with my own two hands, Wikipedia, and Microsoft Excel - shows that, while vampires and zombies still remain popular, they might be on the decline.  I think that the general public may be slowly growing tired of these undead as well.

I tried counting up all the vampire books, too, but soon realized that it would be an impossible task.
Damn Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer.  

So what undead horrors are worthy of stepping into the cultural spotlight and filling the gaps left by vamps and zombs?  I've got a few ideas:

Keeping the Mystery in the Monster Manual

Well, I made it through finals and I got my BA in history, and tomorrow I leave on a whirlwind trip through Iceland, Scotland, and Italy, so now is as good of a time as any to squeeze in a blog update.

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One of the first things I noticed about Dungeons & Dragons, while I was browsing through the books at my buddy Marc’s house way back in jr. high, was the vast array of crazy monsters.  I recognized some of them from Baldur’s Gate and some of them from mythology, but most of them I was honestly baffled by.  Beholders? Locathah? Those cheesy ice-skating dragons from Monster Manual IV? As I became more acquainted with the game, I quickly grew more appreciative of (some) of these monsters because of their history, their abilities, or the niche they fill in the game world. 

But familiarity can sap some of the mystery and marvel from the monsters themselves.  This is a problem many GMs face, even if they don't realize it.  For the most part, experienced players and GMs alike are pretty familiar with the contents of the monster manual.  Even players who are usually quite good at separating player knowledge from character knowledge can fall into the trap of recognizing a monster their characters have never encountered and immediately shifting tactics to account for what they know of the beast from the Monster Manual.