Florida City Baffled by Who Sent Zombie Alert Message During Power Outage

Earlier this week Lake Worth, Florida residents received a fake "zombie alert" during a power outage. Now, several days later, officials are still baffled by who sent it.

On Sunday, some 7,880 Lake Worth residents were experiencing a brief power outage when a message warned them of an impending zombie invasion.

"Power outage and zombie alert for residents of Lake Worth and Terminus," the alert read. "There are now far less than seven thousand three hundred and eighty customers involved due to extreme zombie activity. Restoration time uncertain."

The alert went out around 1:45am. The "Terminus" in the message is a reference to the popular zombie television series, The Walking Dead. Now, days later, it's unknown who sent the message. Lake Worth spokesman Ben Kerr told Palm Beach Post that an independent investigation is underway, but that the city's own investigation concluded that no current or former employees had a hand in the invasion warning, which was edited from the pre-prepared standard outage notice. He also indicated that "no one was fired" for the message.

"Those messages are pre-prepared," Kerr said. "There's literally thousands of them. At some point, some edits were made and that's what you saw. Someone edited it with a zombie invasion going on. No one was fired for it."

The fake zombie emergency message isn't the first time that concerns about hacking of the system that sends the messages has come up. Last September during Hurricane Irma, concerns arose but according to Kerr were dealt with quickly.

Since the Florida zombie activity wasn't real, for now zombie fans will have to tune into AMC's Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead shows if they want their zombie fix. There's also a Living Dead Weekend event coming up in Pennsylvania for those wanting something a little more, the event bringing out some of the biggest names in the horror genre's history of film and television.

The Walking Dead will return for its ninth season in the fall. Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET on AMC. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.