Não há cadáveres até agora. Wights nos livros são descritos como tendo carne pálida, olhos azuis pálidos, mãos negras. Eles diferem muito dos zumbis clássicos do tipo Romero. O braço decepado de um wight ou wight sem cabeça ainda representa uma ameaça. Portanto, não há outra maneira de matar a criatura, exceto o fogo.
ADWD, capulo 13, Bran. Este capítulo é uma boa fonte, tem todas as respostas para as suas perguntas.
All around him, wights were rising from beneath the snow. Two, three, four. Bran lost count. They surged up violently amidst sudden clouds of snow. Some wore black cloaks, some ragged skins, some nothing. All of them had pale flesh and black hands. Their eyes glowed like pale blue starts.
...
Bran filled a fist with snow and threw it, but the wight did bot so much as blink. A black hand fumbled at his face, another at his belly. Its fingers felt like iron. He's going to pull my guts out. But suddenly Summer was between them. Bran glimpsed skin tear like cheap cloth, heard the splintering of bone. He saw a hand and wrist rip loose, pale fingers wriggling, the sleeve faded black roughspun. Black, he thought, he's wearing black, he was one of the Watch. Summer flung the arm aside, twisted, and sank his teeth into the dead man;s neck under the chin. When the big grey wolf wrenched free, he took most of the creature's throat out in an explosion of pale rotten meat. The severed hand was still moving. Bran rolled away from it
...
"Hoooodor" came whimper, from somewhere down below. And suddenly he was not Bran, the broken boy crawling through the snow, suddenly he was Hodor halfway down the hill, with the wight raking at his eyes. Roaring, he came lurching to his feet, throwing the thing violently aside. It went to one knee, began to rise again. Bran ripped Hodor's longsword from his belt. Deep inside he could hear poor Hodor whimpering still, but outside he was seven feet of fury with old iron in his hand. He raised the sword and brought it down upon the dead man, grunting as the blade sheared through wet wool and rusted mail and rotted leather, biting deep into the bones and flesh beneath. "Hodor!" he bellowed, and slashed again. This time he took the wight's head off at the nek, and for a half moment he exulted... until a pair of dead hands came groping blindly for his throat.