I've noticed recently that for "deadly creatures of the night", vampires have a ludicrous amount of weaknesses, many of which are rather mundane. In recent years, many of their weaknesses have been stripped away, leaving vampires pretty bland and one dimensional. These modern vampires are better suited to romance then horror, and part of that is the loss of there weakness, so I've put together a short guide to vampire weaknesses, not only including what there weaknesses are but why. Ill start with the most well known and work my way down, so let's fly right into it.
- Garlic
- Garlic is one of the most famous weaknesses of vampires. It seems silly that vampires are weak to a vegetable, and that's because it is. However, if you look into the history behind it in begins to make a lot more sense. Now I've found two possible origins of the weakness.
- Back during medieval times, garlic was frequently use to drive away bloodsucking insects, including fleas mosquitoes and possibly vampires.
- Garlic was also believed to to be a natural purifying agent that drove evil from the body. Because of this it repelled vampires, because vampires were seen as pure evil. Villagers would hang garlic over their door ways to repel vampires as well as witches.
- Sunlight
- Another famous weakness of vampires is sunlight. This one is especially interesting because classic European vampires were not burn by sunlight like they are in Pop culture, but instead it simply robbed them of their powers (except at midday for some reason). The origin of this weakness is pretty simple, during medieval times, people believe that sunlight equalled God, and because vampires were unholy, they died in the presence of God.
- Wooden Stakes
- Wooden stakes are the most interesting to me. For years I wondered, why do they have to be wooden? But after learning the origin of it, I realize why their referred to as wooden. There a disease that used to be fairly common called consumption wear your body would wither away until you died, and the villeins believed that people who died of the disease would come back to life at night and infect other people. To avoid this, they buried victims face down with a long wooden stake driven through them into the ground, holding them there. Eventually this idea moved to vampires too.
- Holy Symbols
- This one is probably the most obvious, and doesn't require much explanation. Vampire were considered unholy, therefore holy symbols were their foil, as unholy creatures could not survive in there presence.
- Fire
- Vampires are weak to fire for the same reason that werewolves and witches are, fire was believe to be a powerful purifier, and like garlic, drove evil from the body. Because vampires were considered to be soulless being of pure evil, without that evil they were just corpses.
- Running Water
- Many old folk stories about vampires had them unable to cross bodies of flowing water, especially rivers. This is because Jesus and his disciples were baptized in rivers, and therefore rivers were holy, and vampires cant handle holiness.
- Arithmomania
- Arithmomania is the compulsive need to count things. I actually could not find the origin of this, though it's interesting to note that the devil is also said to have this trait. It's the inspiration for the Count from Sesame Street.
- Silver
- During this time period, silver was considered a very pure metal, and almost as valuable as gold. Since it was pure it was attributed to killing unholy creatures, famously werewolves and vampire.
So you may have noticed by now that one thing that connects most of these weaknesses together is holiness and purity. Vampire's were rising into infamy around the time of the rise of the Church of England, so the church spun the creature into being satanic in nature, so it made sense for them to be weak to things like this.
Many of these weaknesses were used in the two most influential vampire stories of all time, Nosferatu and and Bram Stoker's Dracula. These have affect all vampire stories since, in someway or another, but recently, writers have started to misrepresent vampires. From films like Hotel Transylvania to novels like Twilight, vampires just aren't what they used to be. They've become brooding romantics instead of savage killers. They've become less interesting, and I implore that next time any of you are writing vampire fiction, please help return them to their proper notoriety.
That's all I have today, please consider the above information next time you encounter vampires (real or fictional) and until then have a very fine day.
If you enjoyed this content, make sure to go check out my buddy Arthur's blog Bart is not the Villain, and my other blog Completing Catalyst. Ciao.
