In the book the reason the ground was sour was because a Wendigo (a cannibalistic spirit demon trickster of northern Native American stories) soured it and has cursed the forest where the Micmac ground was. In the 1986 original movie screenplay it featured Jud explaning how the ground was soured with the Wendigo as the cause of it and that when Louis was gonna bury his boy he encounters a wendigo in the woods but too bad by the lake in the film it was replaced with Pascow trying to scare him due to budget.
http://anon.4ct.org/?http://www.deviantart.com/art/Wendigo-377347434 This is the creature i was telling you about and i think it possessed Gage, Timmy Baterman, Gus from PS 2, Rachel Church, Spot, the Bull (in the book), an old lady's bird (in the book), Zowie, that punk etc.
However the animals do come back okay yet feel dumb and uncaring yet one bull came back real mean and wanted to kill some kids. However humans come back really bad and know about secrets of other people and can come back foul mouthed and possessed.
And can the Wendigo possess multiple bodies at the same time and has used the dead bodies as puppets as it turned them into deadites? although in PS2 Little God Swamp was shown.
And originally Romero was gonna direct 89's movie and Tom Savini was suppose to do the effects even the Wendigo but too bad that never happened as Savini's effects would had been nice.
And could the Wendigo also be horny at times? i mean it did possessed Gus the sheriff (Clancy Brown's character) as it wanted to screw Drew's mom badly and wanted to screw furlough's mom.