LOST: Kate's Black Horse

People keep talking about Smokey/MIB taking over bodies, but I've always thought of it as APPEARING like a dead person. CiB

Bingo -- Nemesis didn't take over Locke's body -- that body is lying on the beach. Ergo, Jacob prob didn't take over Sayid's body either (amend this to The Nesspi Theorem).

Maybe the body has to be ON the island in order for the MIB to assume the shape. CiB

Nope. There are many folks in this camp (body must be on the island). I think the popularity of this idea is because there is such an emphasis on the two cadavers. However, I think that the body is unnecessary -- most incontrovertible evidence for me is Kate's Black Horse. The Black Horse is usually in the list of Island Apparitions, and I don't think the horse corpse (couldn't resist) is not on the island. I've always found the Black Horse (is it a stallion?) the most interesting of the Apparitions because it stands out: not human, more poetic, etc. On the other hand, perhaps Nemesis has taken animal forms previously and we just don't know it. Vincent would be a really good one -- awesome surveillance potential (what's his name? Sirius Black?), and Vincent does seem to come and go at strange intervals, perhaps Vincent never survived the crash? There could be any number of animal interactions -- some people think that the medusa spiders were part of the monster.

You could explain it all away: The Black Horse was just a dream, Hurley's visitors were actual dead people, and so on, but I like the Black Horse for Nemesis -- goes with Man in Black don't it?

The other can of worms is: Does the impersonated personage have to be dead? If not, the writers could ret-con any scene or action they want to and just say it was Nemesis being tricksy.