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It’s official. The New Jersey Zombie Walk is back atop the Guinness World Records list for the “largest gathering of zombies.”

A record 9,592 zombies invaded the Asbury Park beach Saturday, reclaiming their title from the 8,027 zombies that set the record last year at Minnesota’s Zombie Pub Crawl.

The records management team for Guinness sets the guidelines for the makeup and dress required for participants, as well as the general time-keeping guidelines, according to Michael Empric [shown at right, standing at far right], an adjudicator for Guinness World Records.

To beat the record, the zombies that qualified to participate had to be gathered in the same place for five minutes, he said.

The walk drew arguably an equal amount of spectators to the boardwalk, as well as those dressed as zombies who did not participate in the world record attempt.

“It was exactly what we expected,” said Jackie Pappas [shown at right, standing at far left], executive director for the Asbury Park Chamber of  Commerce.

Pappas estimates around 20,000 to 25,000 people invaded Asbury for the annual walk.

Jason Meehan [shown at right, standing in center], the creator of the NJ walk, started it because his friends had attended a walk in Georgia and he decided he wanted to be a part of one. Meehan moved to Asbury Park in 2008, just as Madison Marquette had begun to revamp the boardwalk area, he said.

“Back then, some of the old buildings that have since been torn down made it look like the apocalypse, and they were changing all of that. Everything was getting repainted and everything was new, new stores and new energetic people, so it just felt right,” he said.

The first zombie walk started as a 500 person zombie flash mob. After that, the zombie walk took off via social media and has been growing in number every year since.

“It’s my first year and I want to come back every year until the day I die” said 9-year-old Sophia Rivera.

“I love all of the awesome costumes…and the blood,” said 9-year-old Vanessa Schaller.

Michael Howell has been attending the event since the first year, now in his sixth year, his enthusiasm for the event has remained . From 10 a.m. through the start of the walk at 5 p.m., Howell stalked up and down the boardwalk, dragging his foot behind him and grunting at people. The only time he breaks character is when he genuinely frightens someone, to make sure they are OK.

Mary Vanpraag, who drove in from Jamesburg, comes to spectate every year.

“I like to see the creativity of others, and I like Asbury Park,” she said. This was the first Vanpraag dressed in character and put makeup on, so she could be counted for the Guinness attempt, she said.

Meehan was confident that the record would be broken this year.

“It’s a good number,” he said. “We were hoping for a little more than that but it’s a lot of work, especially with a crowd this large.”

Whether Meehan will attempt to take back the record if the NJ Zombie Walk record is broken, he will leave up to the zombie participants.

“I always leave it up to the crowd,” he said. “This year I put up a post on the Facebook page and said ‘Our record was taken, do you want to attempt to get it back?’ and a lot of people said yes, so we decided to go forward with this.”

“We’ll always consider it,” said Pappas. “Asbury Park has to be first.”

To see a Facebook photo album of the 2013 New Jersey Zombie Walk, click here.

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