When do you accept that there are vampires around you, that you're back in time, or..

Cafe Society
1

… whatever?

By this I mean… in the many stories that thrust normal people into extraordinary situations, a common element is the time it takes for the normal person to understand and accept what’s going on.

Three people found dead and drained of blood, but, “Vampires? That’s crazy talk!”

You’re walking down the street and all you see are 1950’s-era cars, fashions, and newspaper dates, but “Is this a joke? Why doesn’t my cell phone work?”

Kolchak, the night stalker, suffered this a lot in his career as a mid-1970s TV series newspaper reporter who constantly ran into the supernatural. I can understand his editors being skeptical at first… but as the series continued, I couldn’t help but imagine the conversations he’d have:

KOLCHAK: The city is being stalked by zombies!
EDITOR: Zombies? That’s ridiculous! OK, I admit you were right about the vampire, the werewolf, the ghost, and the mummy, but zombies are just a legend!

So - what’s realistic for characters to see or hear before they accept that the bizarre is real, at least as a working hypothesis?

And… is that different from you might react yourself if placed next to the bizarre?

  • Rick
2

One of the things I like about the USA network series The Dead Zone is that the people around the precognitive Johnny Smith do believe him, because he has been right so many times. This includes the local sheriff who takes official actions based only on Johnny’s predictions.

One thing I’ve learned: if aliens land a saucer in your back yard, by the time you can get anyone else to look, it will be gone.

3

I always wondered that about Scully on “X-Files”, too.

Having seen so many movies, I think I would recognize the signs of supernatural events pretty easily. Having recognized the situation, I would strive to deal with events as they occurred, and worry about explanations later.

I mean, if a bunch of people have turned up drained of blood, and for some reason I’m going INTO the situation instead of OUT of it… it’s not going to do any harm to have some garlic and wooden stakes with me, right?

As for what’s realistic… I think the movies are probably pretty accurate on that. Most people are very slow to change their preconceptions, and if you ask them to accept what they’ve already decided is bunk, they’re going to resist.

4

It’s been my experience that people believe what they need to believe.

In some cases, they believe this so intensely that we lock them up for their own safety.

In the Jeff Rice novel, “The Kolchak Tapes,” that the old “Night Stalker” TV series was based on, Rice addressed this issue very nicely, thank you.

NOBODY believed it. Not even Kolchak. Eventually, the cops and Kolchak develop the idea that the murders are the work of a loony who THINKS he’s a vampire.

Kolchak’s investigations lead him to the information that the killer is likely one Janos Skorzeny, an Eastern European with an odd and checkered record that, if believed, would make him something like a hundred years old. Even THAT isn’t enough to convince Kolchak, much less the cops.

Kolchak does begin to develop doubts, though, after a serious scuffle between Skorzeny and several police officers… in which the medium-sized Skorzeny grabs an officer twice his size, and pitches the cop over a fence like a sack of laundry.

Even then Kolchak does not voice his suspicions. At least, not loudly. He’s afraid of being labeled a kook. He does, however, convince the cops that carrying crosses and holy water are a good idea… because we have established as FACT that Skorzeny is insanely dangerous, even barehanded… and if Skorzeny thinks he’s a vampire, perhaps the crosses will do some good. The cops grumble, but even they see the logic in it.

The book – unlike the TV movie – does not end with Kolchak wandering into the vampire’s lair, alone, at night. Kolchak tracks Skorzeny to a rented house, and Kolchak accompanies a substantial force of police officers to the place, where it turns out that crosses and holy water are very much effective (there’s a hilarious scene involving Skorzeny and his coffin, which Kolchak has found earlier, and poured about a pint of holy water into. When Skorzeny tries to hide in the thing, he winds up erupting out of the coffin, screaming and hissing and “acting like he’d been shot in the can with buckshot,” as Kolchak puts it.

Only when Skorzeny has been run to ground do we discover that the chief of police is also convinced. He pressures Kolchak into driving a stake through Skorzeny’s heart… then arranges for Skorzeny to be cremated… and offers Kolchak a choice: keep your mouth shut, and preferably leave town… or face charges of murder.

I wish the book was still in print. It wasn’t what I’d call a great novel, but it dealt with the issue of “belief in the supernatural in today’s world” better than any other book I’ve ever read.

5

When do you accept that there are vampires around you, that you’re back in time, or…

Every morning when I get up.

6

This thread reminded me of the stupidest line in Star Trek history. In the episode “Remember Me”, Beverly Crusher says “Well, if there’s nothing wrong with me, there must be something wrong with the Universe!”

7

It would take some serious evidence to make me believe in any of that stuff. Ockham’s razor hasn’t lost any of its edge over the past seven centuries.

Of course, in tv shows like “Kolchak” or “The X-Files”, you can hardly turn around without running into convincing evidence.

In L. Sprague de Camp’s classic time-travel novel Lest Darkness Fall, the protagonist is cast back to fifth-century Rome, and only reluctantly accepts the fact, on the basis of overwhelming evidence. Then, being a de Camp protagonist, he gets right down to business.

8

The best anyone can do is to reason and act on the evidence of their senses. If presented with evidence consistent with time-travel, vampirism, or any other such phenomenon, I would include it as a working theory (along with more likely theories, such as elaborate hoaxes or delusional killers). Thus, presented with a body drained entirely of blood with only two small wounds on the neck, I would make a point of acquiring certain traditional anti-vampire items–they could be useful against either a real vampire or a killer with vampiric delusions. I would not, however, go around indiscriminately pegging hapless goths to the ground without further evidence. Likewise, with a time-travel scenario, I would begin looking for the mechanism behind the phenomenon, while also looking for evidence of a hoax. More simply put, I would not be convinced until I had irrefutable evidence, but I would operate on the assumption that matters could be as they appeared from the beginning. There is little to be gained in a crisis by assuming that your senses are deceiving you.

As for fictional characters–it will vary with the character. A normally superstitious character might believe immediately, if the situation fits his superstitions, while a hard-headed businesswoman (for example) might resist the idea of anything so far removed from her practical, orderly world past the point of reason. An intelligent, competent biologist might fall between the two, analyzing the new evidence and discarding hypotheses until only the extraordinary answer remains. Proper characterization can either be done beforehand to explain the character’s response to the situation, or developed by using the character’s reactions to the extraordinary to establish his patterns of thought.

9

"When do’?

How about When did?

10

Hey, epistemological skeptics are presented with overwhelming evidence that things exists every friggin’ moment of their lives, and they still have doubts.

Peace.

I zee nuthingk, I know nuthingk.

11

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Vlad Dracul *
**I always wondered that about Scully on “X-Files”, too.

Having seen so many movies, I think I would recognize the signs of supernatural events pretty easily. **

[QUOTE]

:smiley:
“I saw the movie and I read the book…
when it finally happened to me I sure was glad I had what it took”
Neil Young
just giving you a hard time there…:smiley:

12

“Let’s split up.”

Uh oh.

13

I asked a similar question like this a while back…what would happen if a small army of skeleton warriors started killing people in your town, how long would it take officials to believe it?

Again, it all came down to proof, and even then, it’s not something that many people will believe right off the bat. Supernatural stuff just doesn’t mesh with our brains, and we’ll try any kind of “logic” to help show us that “It’s just some guy(s) in a good costume”. Basically, until you’re cornered by the thing, you won’t believe it’s real.

As for time travel, I have a feeling that’s a lot different. If suddenly, I ended up in 11th Century England, I don’t think it’d take that long for me to realize I was out of place. I’m sorry, I just don’t know that many people who could set up a hoax like that. So, after initial shock set in, I don’t think it would take too long to accept that fact and start trying to understand “How’d I get here and how can I get back?” There’s just way too much substancial evidence to help show you’re in a different time, whereas with zombies, vampires, and most other supernatural stuff, good makeup, costumes, and a loose grip on reality are all very easy to come by, thus making spooks a bit harder to believe.

14

“Supernatural stuff just doesn’t mesh with our brains,…”

Then how do you explain the number of churches in every town in the U.S.?

15

Well, normally I would agree, but for you, Vlad… it might do you harm. :wink:

16

It would depend on the set-up. If, for instance, I were conducting some sort of elaborate fundamental-physics experiment, or even a time-travel experiment, I would be a lot more open to to the possibility that I had time-jumped than if I just walked around the horses and suddenly the world was different. It would also depend on the sort of evidence I was confronted with: Some stuff simply cannot be hoaxed. If the Moon was waxing gibbous last night when I went to bed, and it’s crescent now, then something weird sure as heck happened. Likewise, if the modern city I’m in suddenly turns into an old-growth forest (with the same geography and topography, and no light pollution on the horizon), well, that wasn’t the work of a few hoaxers.

But to echo a few other folks, you don’t need to know exactly what the situation is to be able to act intelligently. If I’m being attacked by… something…, and I’ve got a gun, I’m going to try to shoot it. If that doesn’t work, then I might try clubbing it with a crowbar. And if the crowbar works but the gun doesn’t, I’m not going to care much that it worked because wrought iron is anathema to fey, I’m just going to make sure to use the crowbar first against the next one of those things I meet.

Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that if “supernatural” things exist, they’re under no obligation to follow the “rules” set out for them in fiction. Trying to classify the beasties as “vampires” or “werewolves” or whatnot might actually be a disadvantage, rather than just classifying them as “thing that survived a lead bullet but not a silver one, last time I fought one”.

17

Or, of course, “thing that survived one bullet but not two”. Few things as irritating as people in monster movies failing to repeat a tactic that either only just failed, or slowed the bad thing down \ hurt it noticably. Anyway, also see Cecil’s guidelines on vampire killing, there are dozens, and almost all are quite different from today’s pop-culture ones (sunlight insta-killing them wasn’t even in Stoker, let alone earlier stuff).

I was thinking about this the other day, after reading the thread about how you’d react if you received a Hogwarts letter, and I’d go for a few casual violations of the laws of physics, which is pretty standard (reversal of entropy, violaion of C of E, etc). Even if there’s nothing that couldn’t possibly be faked today then I could still be convinced, unless there’s a really good reason for anyone to bother messing with my head.

18

[Venkman]“Good idea–we can cause more damage that way.”[/Venkman]

19

My 2¢

  1. If I saw a Tyrannosaurus walking down the street, I would call 911 and report an intruder trying to break into my house. That would be a lot more likely to get a patrol car to respond than trying to convince the dispatcher that a dinosaur was outside. Although I could say “either there’s a tyrannosaurus outside, or else I’m hallucinating like a s.o.b. Either way I think you should send someone.”

  2. Has anyone ever pulled a Scare Tactics type hoax where an elaborate effort was made to convince someone that something paranormal had happened? Maybe as a psychology experiment?

20

Hmmm…maybe the best thing to do would be to say “There’s two guys with rifles firing at people in the street.” That would bring lots of cops, heavily armed, as opposed to the perhaps two patrol cars that would respond to an intruder.