The ending of Loved to Death

This may sound like a stupid question, but at the end of Loved to Death, Andrew McCarthy's character let's out this series of eerily distorted screams when confronted with the ghost of Hemingway's character in the afterlife.  Does anyone know if this scene was a homage to the original Night of the Living Dead?  In that film towards the end when Helen Cooper is attacked and killed with the garden trowel, she makes the exact same screaming sound done in exact same distortion as in the episode.  I wonder if this was a coincidence or a deliberate homage to NOTLD.