# Build a working vampire
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [November 3, 2012, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733 "2012-11-03T03:44:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/1 "2012-11-03T03:44:18Z")
We pulled _Shadow Of The Vampire_ off the ol’ shelf and watched it last week. There’s the scene where they’re filming Count Orloff in the bedroom, and Mina notices that ‘Max Schreck’ is not reflected in the mirror.
The lack-of-reflection thing never made sense to me. We see the photons bouncing off of the things we’re looking at. A mirror bounces photons. If we can see a vampire, there’s no logical reason why we couldn’t see a reflection of one.
‘Logical’, you say? Yeah, I get that the stories are all about magic and myths. I haven’t seen any of the ‘sparkling vampire’ shows. Maybe they’ve addressed this already. But if you were going to build a vampire myth, how would they work?
**Reflections:** I’ve got nothin’.
\*\*Sunlight:\*\*Certain wavelengths of light (and other radiation) are deadly to various organisms. I could accept that sunlight would kill a vampire. Reduce it to dust? Not so much. Unless their physiology is such that application of these certain wavelengths causes rapid oxidation and/or combustion.
Was it _Lost Boys_ where the vampires could be out at dawn if they wore sunscreen and dark shades? I don’t see any reason a vampire couldn’t endure some sunlight if he was properly protected against the deadly wavelengths.
\*\*Making vampires:\*\*Vampires are created by people being bitten by a vampire. Sounds like a simple infection to me.
\*\*Weapons against vampires:\*\*Garlic wards them off. OK, the strong smell of garlic may make it difficult for a vampire to approach, accepting that they have hypersensitive senses. Steak through the heart. That would stop just about anybody. Crosses and holy water? Um… I’m not seeing how they’d work against a ‘physical’ vampire (as opposed to a supernatural one).
And so on.
So here’s the question: How out you ‘design’ a vampire, such that it possesses as many of the traditional folkloric attributes, but possesses them in a more-or-less ‘plausible’ manner? That is, describe the vampire as a new species and leave the supernatural (God and Satan, for example) out of it.
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/2 "2012-11-03T04:15:23Z")
I always understood that vampires don’t have reflections because they don’t have souls. Didn’t Dracula sell his to the Devil in exchange for his skills in black magic?
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/3 "2012-11-03T04:18:36Z")
A steak through the heart would kill anyone, if they develop coronary disease. But in some mythologies, like Vampire: the Masquerade and derivatives, stakes paralyze the vampire, but only if it gets them in the heart. Doesn’t kill. In that game, all vampires give reflections, except for one clan who is attuned to darkness. IIRC they showed up on CCTV, but their features were garbled. As far as sunlight goes, the mythology goes all over the place, from almost instant death, to smoking following by burning, to sparkling.
_I Am Legend_ (the book) describes some vampires who are warded off by crosses and some that aren’t. All from recollection: the narrator believes that the vampires, who have varying degrees of cognitive abilities, are scared of crosses because they expect to be. I believe some even try to fly, to little success. Same might be for not crossing running water, and even counting things (ONE! Ah! Ah! Ah!..) Vampirism is like OCD to the max in many myths.
And of course, a mention of [porphyria](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1321/did-vampires-suffer-from-the-disease-porphyria-or-not) is necessary.
And then there’s the myths from the original _Dracula_ which don’t make the cut these days. Sleeping with your native soil only shows up rarely (V:TM for one other clan). And their affinity with wolves has changed to a rivalry. And finally, uhh, hairy palms.
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### Author:  [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/4 "2012-11-03T04:39:44Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> The lack-of-reflection thing never made sense to me. We see the photons bouncing off of the things we’re looking at. A mirror bounces photons. If we can see a vampire, there’s no logical reason why we couldn’t see a reflection of one.
Old-timey mirrors contained silver, so it was thought that as a pure metal it would abhor the image of the vampire. I wouldn’t exactly call it rational, but that is how the myth arose.
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### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/5 "2012-11-03T04:42:12Z")
> [@Smapti](#):
>
> I always understood that vampires don’t have reflections because they don’t have souls. Didn’t Dracula sell his to the Devil in exchange for his skills in black magic?
Dracula went to the Scholomance near Hermanstadt in Transylvania where the Devil is supposed to take as his due the soul from every tenth student. Dracula just got unlucky.
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### Author:  [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/6 "2012-11-03T05:04:32Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> \*\*Sunlight:\*\*Certain wavelengths of light (and other radiation) are deadly to various organisms. I could accept that sunlight would kill a vampire. Reduce it to dust? Not so much. Unless their physiology is such that application of these certain wavelengths causes rapid oxidation and/or combustion.
>
> Was it _Lost Boys_ where the vampires could be out at dawn if they wore sunscreen and dark shades? I don’t see any reason a vampire couldn’t endure some sunlight if he was properly protected against the deadly wavelengths.
Although it’s become a standard part of the modern conception of the vampire, the idea that vampires can be killed by sunlight was invented for the movies. There’s no mention of it in the novel _Dracula_ or any pre-20th century literature or folklore that I’m familiar with, so I wouldn’t feel obligated to include it. Literary and folklore vampires were often described as coming out at night and sleeping during the day, so they could simply be nocturnal, like plenty of real animals, or suffer from severe UV sensitivity like people with the genetic disorder [xeroderma pigmentosum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeroderma_pigmentosa).
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Making vampires:\*\*Vampires are created by people being bitten by a vampire. Sounds like a simple infection to me.
In Whitley Streiber’s not-that-good vampire novels, it takes a blood transfusion to turn a human into a vampire, or rather a sort of human/vampire hybrid. FWIW Streiber did try to do what you’re asking for in this thread, and described vampires as a very strong and long-lived but non-supernatural humanoid species. They feed only on human blood, and in pre-historic times basically kept humans as cattle. They became more discreet once humans developed weapons that could kill them. Streiber’s vampires have some external physical differences from humans, but use wigs, glasses/contacts, and dental appliances to disguise themselves. (The hybrids remain human in appearance and are not as long lived as true vampires.) In _The Hunger_ they’re an Earth species that is only very distantly related to humans, but in the sequel _The Last Vampire_ he retconned that to have them be an alien species that came to Earth thousands of years ago.
Streiber also touches on some of the practical difficulties of being a vampire, like how to dispose of all those bodies and how hard it is to keep up with rapidly changing fashions. There’s a brief comedic scene in _The Last Vampire_ where the millennia-old vampire protagonist is embarrassed to realize that her “elegant” outfit is about 50 years out of date and that she looks like a college student wearing something she found at a thrift store.
ETA: It occurs to me that the whole can’t-enter-unless-invited thing, as well as sensitivity to religious icons, might be explained by vampires just being really polite. Maybe they feel guilty about the whole blood drinking thing and try to be as inoffensive as possible. Might even explain the garlic thing – they’re worried about having bad breath.
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### Author:  [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/7 "2012-11-03T05:22:56Z")
I could possibly help you out here. I consider myself an armchair expert. And I would LOVE to discuss this at length.
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> The lack-of-reflection thing never made sense to me. We see the photons bouncing off of the things we’re looking at. A mirror bounces photons. If we can see a vampire, there’s no logical reason why we couldn’t see a reflection of one.
No, it doesn’t make sense. It’s a medieval superstition that only souls reflect in the mirror. If that were true, one need only read _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. His misdeeds show up in his portrait, but not his face. But he’s no vampire. And no, the sparkling vampire movies didn’t address this. However, Yarbro’s vampires do, and she has stated she just picked the “mythical” parts she liked and used them. So her St. Germain can’t reflect. He uses a wax figure for his passport and driving photos.
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Sunlight:\*\*Certain wavelengths of light (and other radiation) are deadly to various organisms. I could accept that sunlight would kill a vampire. Reduce it to dust? Not so much. Unless their physiology is such that application of these certain wavelengths causes rapid oxidation and/or combustion.
This one can be accepted; there are people with extreme photosensitivity. They won’t get toasty in minutes but they will suffer extreme sunburn.
> [@](#):
>
> Was it _Lost Boys_ where the vampires could be out at dawn if they wore sunscreen and dark shades? I don’t see any reason a vampire couldn’t endure some sunlight if he was properly protected against the deadly wavelengths.
That was Blade.
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Making vampires:\*\*Vampires are created by people being bitten by a vampire. Sounds like a simple infection to me.
No, that’s how zombies are created. Vampires must give some blood to the victim. Either enough to be a renfield (which I totally think is stupid) or enough to vamp them.
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Weapons against vampires:\*\*Garlic wards them off. OK, the strong smell of garlic may make it difficult for a vampire to approach, accepting that they have hypersensitive senses. Steak through the heart. That would stop just about anybody. Crosses and holy water? Um… I’m not seeing how they’d work against a ‘physical’ vampire (as opposed to a supernatural one).
>
> And so on.
Garlic, nah, it’s a blood thinner, someone back then made a connection. Which is good because garlic doesn’t work. Holy water? What is that to a vampire who was created before Christ?
> [@](#):
>
> So here’s the question: How out you ‘design’ a vampire, such that it possesses as many of the traditional folkloric attributes, but possesses them in a more-or-less ‘plausible’ manner? That is, describe the vampire as a new species and leave the supernatural (God and Satan, for example) out of it.
I could possibly help you out here. I consider myself an armchair expert. And I plan to write a book so I can’t give what I’ve already given.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/8 "2012-11-03T05:29:58Z")
In _Blindsight_, crosses work on vampires (which are a hominid predator, nothing supernatural) because they have a quirk in the wiring of their visual cortex that sends them into an epileptic fit when they see lines intersecting at right angles. Not something seen in nature, but once humans starting building things…
Saberhagen’s _Dracula Tapes_ and sequels explained garlic as being effective because of their enhanced sense of smell. Amusingly, it explained Dracula’s reaction to holy objects as him being offended at the vampire hunters treating them disrespectfully like that. It explains vampire’s vulnerability to a stake in the heart as part of a general vulnerability to organic objects; metal doesn’t bother them, but wood or horn or bone hurts them.
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### Author:  [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/9 "2012-11-03T08:17:24Z")
The blood-exchange needed to create a vampire is only a recent invention, tho extrapolated from Dracula-Mina’s blood exchange. Still, the book claims vampire bites unto the death are sufficient. We never see Lucy drink from Dracula & Renfield is in his thrall even when he’s in transit on The Demeter. It came to be that someone realized if bites were sufficient, there would be TONS of vampires.
In the novel DRACULA, he could go out in sunlight but limited in power. But that could be because he was a master vampire centuries old who got his powers from Satan. Could newborn Lucy survive sunlight? Would Lucy if she survived a few decades to a century?
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/10 "2012-11-03T09:20:53Z")
_Der Trihs_ reminds me I got to read _Blindsight_. Plus it makes me think they will be at home in Lovecraft-land, where everything is non-Euclidian.
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/11 "2012-11-03T10:29:45Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> **Reflections:** I’ve got nothin’.
True Blood addressed this, early on, in a conversation between Bill and Sookie. Can’t remember Bill’s exact words, but it basically boiled down to ‘We made that up, to give you a false sense of security.’
> [@FriarTed](#):
>
> In the novel DRACULA, he could go out in sunlight but limited in power. But that could be because he was a master vampire centuries old who got his powers from Satan.
No, it’s because Nosferatu hadn’t come out yet, and nobody\* had thought of the idea that sunlight was fatal to vampires, and wouldn’t for about 30 years (when Murnau came up with it as a way to end his flick).
Dracula, Carmilla, Ruthven, and Varney (the vampires in the four primary influences of Vampire fiction - Dracula, Carmilla, The Vampyre, and Varney the Vampire) were all able to go about during the day - though Carmilla slept late, Dracula lost most of his powers, and Varney and Ruthven were healed by moonlight. (Well, I haven’t read Varney (intimidated by the length) or The Vampyre (the introduction was so badly written I couldn’t bring myself to subject myself to it), so I can’t say for sure the ‘healed by moonlight’ thing actually applies to both.) European folkloric vampires are nocturnal, but again, not killed by sunlight, and need to be actively killed (by staking, beheading, burning, etc) once they’ve been unearthed during the day.
- Apparently some vampiric beings in North American folklore have issues with the sun, but I can find no details. It’s not a trait of European folkloric vampires, nor of the vampires of the literature inspired by them, in any case. Nor for any Asian ‘vampire’ that I’m familiar with.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/12 "2012-11-03T12:04:57Z")
Another interesting idea for the nature of vampires is seen in Barbara Hambly’s vampire series. They are apparently created by infection with some kind of crystalline/viral organism that “kills” the victim (in the sense of conventional human life processes), preserves & animates the body as its vehicle, and as the decades and centuries goes by slowly replaces the original human tissue with its own substance in a process likened to fossilization. Which explains why the vampires get stronger and tougher with age, as well as sometimes changing in appearance such as bleaching to snow-white. It also explains why they are stronger and tougher than humans, while reacting to sunlight and silver (sunlight ignites them, silver poisons them) in ways humans don’t; they aren’t made of the same substances humans are anymore.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/13 "2012-11-03T12:38:02Z")
> [@Smapti](#):
>
> I always understood that vampires don’t have reflections because they don’t have souls. Didn’t Dracula sell his to the Devil in exchange for his skills in black magic?
> [@Telperion](#):
>
> Old-timey mirrors contained silver, so it was thought that as a pure metal it would abhor the image of the vampire. I wouldn’t exactly call it rational, but that is how the myth arose.
I’m pretty sure my underwear doesn’t have a soul, but it reflects in the mirror. That’s what I was getting at, rejecting the supernatural in ‘designing’ a vampire. I know the supernatural explanation. But if you allow God and Satan and all that, then you could build your vampire any way you wanted. Like, ‘God deemed that The United States is exceptional, so American vampires don’t reflect, have all of the abilities of the Marvel and DC superheroes, and can only be killed by unobtainium delivered into the right ventricle.’
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#):
>
> True Blood addressed this, early on, in a conversation between Bill and Sookie. Can’t remember Bill’s exact words, but it basically boiled down to ‘We made that up, to give you a false sense of security.’
That makes more sense. But it would be nice to have a literarily-plausible reason why they wouldn’t reflect.
> [@thelurkinghorror](#):
>
> A steak through the heart would kill anyone, if they develop coronary disease.
:smack: I can’t believe I did that!
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> Another interesting idea for the nature of vampires is seen in Barbara Hambly’s vampire series. They are apparently created by infection with some kind of crystalline/viral organism that “kills” the victim (in the sense of conventional human life processes), preserves & animates the body as its vehicle, and as the decades and centuries goes by slowly replaces the original human tissue with its own substance in a process likened to fossilization. Which explains why the vampires get stronger and tougher with age, as well as sometimes changing in appearance such as bleaching to snow-white. It also explains why they are stronger and tougher than humans, while reacting to sunlight and silver (sunlight ignites them, silver poisons them) in ways humans don’t; they aren’t made of the same substances humans are anymore.
I like that. Bradbury used it in a short story whose title I can’t recall. (A little boy feels as if his body is being taken over, and doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him. Then one day he wakes up and is perfectly fine and healthy – only he’s no longer the boy, but a ‘fossil’ facsimile that can kill with a touch.) It’s also how it worked in _The Thing_, and similar to _Invasion Of The Body Snatchers_.
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/14 "2012-11-03T12:43:51Z")
As an odd aside, I find it fascinating that pretty much every culture has its own form of vampire type human predator.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/15 "2012-11-03T13:03:18Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> Bradbury used it in a short story whose title I can’t recall.
It was [_Fever Dream_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever_Dream_(short_story)).
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/16 "2012-11-03T13:06:25Z")
Yeah, the reflection thing always bugs the hell out of me, too. Especially when you start really nitpicking it. (“Wait, even if I can’t see the vampire in the mirror, why can’t I see his clothes? Are his _clothes_ undead, too? If I toss Dracula a sweater, does it’s reflection vanish if he catches it, or just when he puts it on?”)
Anyway…in a play on the whole thing, one strain of vampire in the novel I’m writing can _only_ be seen in mirrors, a la Medusa\*. It’s an autonomic telepathic effect, used to aid in hunting. The distortion/image reversal of a reflection is enough to circumvent the neurological effect.
Being a brain-based phenomenon, these vampires would show up just fine on cameras, or through long distance optics, though they’re extinct by the time the former come around.
So, yeah—with the psychic angle, it’s slightly too “out there” to count as _realistic_, but it’s a slightly _less_ horrible corruption of physics than “no reflections.” 😉
\*Well…as in you’d have to use something reflective to indirectly see them at all, not that you’d turn to stone by looking at them. You know what I mean.
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/17 "2012-11-03T13:29:53Z")
Oh! That reminds me of how the ‘no reflection’ thing was explained in the Doctor Who episode The Vampires of Venice. (Where the ‘vampires’ technically weren’t.)
The ‘vampires’ don’t look human at all, but use a telepathic device to appear that way. Looking at them in a mirror confuses your brain between what you see in the mirror, and what the device wants you to see, so your brain just edits the reflection out to ‘correct’ the error.
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### Author:  [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/18 "2012-11-03T17:14:46Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> I’m pretty sure my underwear doesn’t have a soul, but it reflects in the mirror. That’s what I was getting at, rejecting the supernatural in ‘designing’ a vampire. I know the supernatural explanation.
This is outside my area, but I don’t think there’s any plausible non-supernatural explanation for why an object that is visible to the naked eye would not be visible in a mirror. There are supernatural but non-religious explanations, like the telepathic device mentioned by **Kamino Neko** or maybe vampires visiting their victims in spirit form only and thus being visible only to the mind and not the eye or mirrors (basically the opposite of the traditional explanation), but AFAIK anything visible to the eye would have a reflection in a mirror.
If you don’t like the “we made it up to give you a false sense of security explanation”, I can think of non-supernatural reasons why vampires might _avoid_ mirrors. Maybe they suffer from a phobia or superstition about mirrors or seeing their own reflections. Maybe becoming a vampire alters an individual’s appearance enough that it’s deeply upsetting for vampires to see their own reflections (or be photographed, for that matter). Or maybe vampires aren’t that bright and don’t understand how mirrors work, which means they tend to ignore them unless they notice there’s “another vampire” looking at them, in which case they freak out and smash the mirror.
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### Author:  [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/19 "2012-11-03T18:12:26Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Anyway…in a play on the whole thing, one strain of vampire in the novel I’m writing can _only_ be seen in mirrors, a la Medusa\*. It’s an autonomic telepathic effect, used to aid in hunting. The distortion/image reversal of a reflection is enough to circumvent the neurological effect.
Huh. That’s an interesting twist on it. Please tell me that your vampires aren’t greatly concerned about dominance games. Man, I’m SO tired of reading about vampires and werewolves that are obsessed with who is alpha and who isn’t.
And, since Barbara Hambly’s vampires have been mentioned, I just wanted to note that she’s got a third vampire novel out, _Blood Maidens_.
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### Author:  [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/build-a-working-vampire/639733/20 "2012-11-03T18:15:13Z")
Hmmmm, looks like Hambly’s got yet another vampire novel out, _The Magistrates of Hell._ Time to fire up the nook and download, I guess.
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