And a vampire bites you, does it hurt? The vampire, I mean, I’m pretty confident it would hurt you.
I have the feeling holy water is less holy once it’s been in your colon.
This reminds me of a favorite line from a Buffy fanfic:
“Christ!” Spike yelled.
“Doesn’t it burn your mouth when you say that?” Anya asked.
I’m thinking you’d have to drink a massive quantity of it for it to reach any kind of dense level in your body. Better to just keep a Super Soaker filled with it within reach at all times. Maybe a few water balloons, just for good measure.
Israelis drink Holy Water almost exclusively*.
Haven’t seen many vampires around these parts, lately.
Coincidence? You be the judge! 
- This is true – the Sea of Galilee is essentially the country’s fresh water reservoir.
Hurt? Nah. It’s kinda like adding a little Tabasco sauce to the meal.
Are there many vamipires in Italy? Folks there eat a lot of garlic, I hear. Same dealie-o right?
Don’t forget what happened to that mosquito.
I was watching one of those shows where they go around and swab everyday places you touch, like stair railings, and door handles on subways, etc. etc. When they got all the results back the worst place for contamination was the holy water font on the local Catholic Church. The investigators were impressed with the diversity of the contamination as well as the quantity!
So I’m going with yeah, it would hurt the vampire!
I doubt it would have any effect on vampires, as far as those things go you’d expect the transubstantiated blood of Christ to be pretty potent and from what I can tell they don’t seem to mind if the victim’s been to mass.
In the brilliant but out-of-print DRACULA sequel/prequel by Jeffrey Sackett BLOOD OF THE IMPALER, it does affect one vampire (Lucy Westenra). Her victim had just gotten drunk off a flask of consecrated wine. As the blood goes into her system, she gets warmer & warmer… and explodes.
Wouldn’t that be kidneys or bladder, actually?
I doubt much water (holy or normal) makes it as far as the colon.
Water makes it EVERYWHERE in the body. 
In terms of the digestive tract, I believe water that you drink is primarily absorbed in the small intestine, but some gets into the bloodstream via the stomach lining and some is absorbed in the large intestine, aka the colon. In fact, there’s still a small proportion of water left in the feces, which affects its consistency.
Once the bladder is dealing with water, of course, it’s soon to leave the human body, which I don’t think is what Small Hen was referring to - though aiming a stream of ‘holy urine’ at a vampire is a funny image too. And lots of water passes through the kidneys, mostly in the form of bloodstream plasma.
Okay, that’s probably as much as I should contribute to the discussion for now
Yeah, I was thinking mostly about the water that ends up in your blood. I mean, if I were to go for, say, a week, drinking nothing but holy water, then would my blood become holy by absorption? Or would the biological processes at work break down the holiness? How great of a concentration is needed to harm a vampire? (For some odd reason I don’t think my catholic cousin is going to seriously follow through and ask her priest.)
This question was inspired by re-watching an old episode of Buffy in which a vampire is trying to dig for something in dirt which had holy water poured on it some time ago; it still causes him pain.
Holy water in itself isn’t terribly mystical, it’s really just tap water that’s been blessed, so it would probably be a lot easier to skip the holy fast and ask the priest to say a blessing on you instead. Then again, I just had an awesome idea for bottled water: “Aquasancta, for all your demon-fighting needs”. There’s got to be a market for that somewhere…
How about instead of drinking it, you get an IV?
New Orleans.
How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it?
Yes, I saw Telperian’s post a few back.
If that’s the episode I think it is, then there was no real connection with holy water - the vampire was trying to dig in ‘consecrated ground’ with his bare hands. Apparently the effect is the same.
Which brings up the question of if burying a dead person in consecrated ground will prevent them from rising as a vampire, or just really piss the vampire off.
I attended a Catholic school through fifth grade. The purpose of the holy water fonts (located just inside each entrance to the church, in our case) was explained to us in the second grade. One of my classmates tasted the water when the teacher wasn’t looking; he said it tasted soapy.
Holy water that’s been blessed in the Easter service gets Holy Oil dumped into it and the Paschal Candle dunked into it. That can’t do much for the flavor.
Not all holy water comes from that ceremony, IIRC, but they don’t have an incentive to make it taste good or keep it excessively clean – you’re not supposed to drink it, after all. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it tastes bad.
On the other hand, holy water droplets must inevitably circulate in the air over the fonts – what concentration is needed to cause a vampire harm? Is holy water still holy if it’s in evaporated form? What concentration i the blood/lymph/sweat is needed to affect a vampire?
I think you’d do better if you did like the folks in From Dusk to Dawn and filled some super-soakers with it, rather than relying on passive protection.