I liked the Dresden Files approach to this, it is having faith in something that repels vampires, not the things people have faith in. So the main character repels vampires with a pentagram necklace and his faith in magic.
Blindsight/Echopraxia by Peter Watts had a good “science” based version. Vampires are an obligate carnivore/cannibal hominid that went extinct (after giving humans their “uncanny valley” fear btw as a survival trait to detect them) and had a heriditary fear of right angles due to a quirk in their visual cortex.
The idea being “right angles don’t occur in nature” and such. The problem with that idea is that they do, but still a decent series with some interesting ideas.
Hold on, Blindsight has a sequel? This could be fun…
Seconded. I read those on a recommendation, not usually my genre. I enjoyed them more than I thought I would, aside from the trope of humans “creating” something dangerous that they thought they could control and of course failing.
Same thing in Vampire The Masquerade, True Faith is just total and absolutely certain belief in something.
In one lorebook, a vampire was reportedly sent running when a panicked businessman brandishing his credit card, believing utterly that the power of money would protect him. He was right.
total and absolute belief in something
My Syndicate agent with an Adam Smith book and a wad lf cash THE POWER OF CAPITALISM COMPELLS YOU!
So, in theory, could an incredibly narcissistic person be immune to vampires because of their faith in themselves? Maybe an extreme charlatan type character? As long as they too believed in themselves.
Jesus had faith in himself, and he was immune to vampires. And the religion he taught was all about having faith in yourself too. He told his apostles that their own faith could move mountains just like his.
20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
22 “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. 23 “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Christians don’t need a cross in order to repel vampires. That’s just a crutch. A placebo. Anyone who has faith in themself as Jesus taught can do it.
You could argue their faith needs a focus object as many magic rituals require
Faith doesn’t need focus objects any more than Thor needs a hammer.
Not required to work but easier for the average person to manifest, maybe?
…thus, often in videos or games priests simply pray to repel evil. They brandish their faith, not “lower case t”'s
Thats so cheesy that I both do and do not want a full story about a victorian style vampire hunter capitalist moneybags who takes it into his own hands when authorities refuse to protect his daughter from an evil count and his legion of bloodthirsty beggars.
Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. Your hero, a holy order knight, is turned even though he brandishes the holy cross. Vampire only comments “You have no faith”.
I Am Legend had the reverse, where it was entirely psychological on the vampire’s part. Neville tests crosses and crucifixes on some vamps and discovers they don’t repel his Jewish neighbor, but a Star of David does.
That makes sense to me, if you’re aiming for a “secular” explanation of vampirism. The true faith explanation still requires some source of supernatural power to affect the vampire from outside, while an amped-up placebo effect is sufficient to explain Matheson’s vamps. I always loved I am Legend for taking the idea so seriously!
does faith in science count? faith that distant stars exist? faith that the set of whole numbers is infinite? faith that the sun will rise tomorrow? faith that my wife loves me?
My favorite explanation: “it confuses the shit out of their brains”
- Play Faith by Limp Bizkit.
- Vampire’s run screaming.
Isn’t it the same in Hellboy?
I don’t think the movie addresses it and I’ve not read any of the comics, but I should.
I think it’s in the Blood and Iron movie where a priest has lost his faith and is killed by vampires.
That just brought back a memory of some comedy film where a character is confronted by a vampire and whips out his necklace, the vampire cringes in fear but then sees it’s a Star of David. I want to say a Mel Brooks movie.
This is what I came to post if you didn’t.
I fucking love this.
I liked the castlevania one about how it’s just a shape that confuses their vision for some reason.
Which was a crazy lore addition considering hell and Satan are totally real in that world.
Can handwave it away by saying that Christians chose the cross because it hurt supernatural things.
cough Doctor Who. Curse of Fenric. Loosely ‘it creates a psychic barrier they can’t penetrate’ that actively causes pain.
naw, satan keeps em updated
Vampire zero day exploits. Patch em or lose em
Don’t they mean upper case t’s?
uppercase (T) doesn’t have a part above the junction, unlike the lowercase (t), and as we all know, crosses have a little curvy bit below the ground.
Oh, I didn’t know that, actually! Makes sense. You smort
Gotta have a solid foundation, y’know?
Shit, I need to get a refund for my Saint Anthony’s cross.
I enjoyed this idea more than one might expect.
There’s no SCP for this?
What is this talking about
The part of vampire mythology where crosses hurt them
My favourite line from True Blood: I am actually older than Jesus. I wish I could have known him but I missed him.
“across from where ?”
Said vampire would also have been afraid of fishes at first because those were the predominant symbol of Christians until the cross became more popular at some point in the 2nd century AD.
Would be even more confusing
“Why did I get a severe fish allergy out of nowhere? Strange…”
Not a problem for the John Carpenter 🧛♂️ series, since those all… wait this might be a
spoiler
Don’t exist.
But anyway the lore iirc is that they all descended from Judas Iscariot who betrayed Christ ✝️.
That was from Dracula 2000 iirc. explains his hatred of all things christian and aversion to silver.
Oh I did mix up the details thank you. John Carpenter’s vampires were from a 14th century priest who was burned at the stake and then became a vampire, compared to the Judas story pushing that origin another 14 centuries back.
There is such a richness of lore describing various origins of vampires. Like in Blade (I haven’t watched the more recent ones) and Underworld and Midnight Mass it seemed to have an entirely physical/biological/genetic origin, while the likes of John Carpenter’s and Dracula 2000 etc. sounded at least superficially to me to be more purely a spiritual one (it being a "curse“), and then there’s so very many that cross both of those lines.
Like the Netflix (& previously Syfy, and before that Zenescope Entertainment’s graphic novel series) Van Helsing series where it starts off as the former but begins to cross into the realm of the latter, or Buddy the Vampire where the body component is physical (if not quite purely genetic) but the soul is an entity from another realm, thus leading to e.g. Angel (and later Spike) who could have human souls inhabiting a vampiric body.
Perhaps my favorite though is the Netflix Castlevania series, not only bc it’s a fucking work of art, but it’s a fascinating concept of basically science looked down upon by cretins - e.g. as irl Dr. Fauci received death threats after efforts expended towards saving the planet. And then that one later dipped into the spiritual as well, with Dracula sent to hell and they had to open a portal to try to get him back:-).
I have to stop myself from going on an on about that, bc I do find it so fascinating, e.g. the Castlevania series mixing in elements and thereby help explaining what I feel might even be the true origin story of vampires in general (or at least the, or perhaps “a” main thrust), where they basically are landlords who live many “lifetimes” (worth of years) in comfort and luxury, off the backs of the poors who live short(er) lives without medicine or the direct knowledge that vampires recall from having lived through or learned from books or magic. And every once in a while instead of eating them a rich can convert a poor to become like them, to live a supremely long life, though like their sires at the cost of the blood (work) of the poors, and with the most knowledge and magic only belonging to the oldest of the landowners. It is fascinating to me how all the origin stories begin to converge when looked at from that POV.:-)
