The habits of "Folk vampires" The aforementioned "Folkloristic vampires" are a group of psychologically instable persons who develop both the need to act like vampires (in the way they believe vampires act) and certain habits that often lead them directly to jail or security lock up in mandatories. Those persons have gathered their amount of habits from sources of "information" they tend to consume, among those fictional literature and films of a great amount. So come most of them react to garlic, holy symbols and sun in a very specific way. Some of them even claim to be able to fly. They often stick to dress codes including black suits and capes and sleep in coffins. How mythology added those characteristics is sometimes doubtable, but can be guessed when regarding the whole context. Vampires are mythologically regarded as companions of the devil. Therefore it would be logical in relation to the Christian concept that anything holy has to be avoided. General belief mentions holy water, crosses and blessed rosaries as unbeatable weapons when hunting those "foul creatures". Ouch! I should take off my necklace... Garlic is mentioned in context to eastern European belief. Exhumed corpses were often declared vampires. They were defeated by being staked to the ground of their graves and houses were protected from them with garlic girlands. This is due to the concept that everything has to be defeated with something equal. Corpses smell, garlic as well. Therefore it was regarded protective. The tradition of using stakes was founded much earlier. Several cultures tried to prevent the dead rising from their graves in order to hunt the living by fixing them to their graves by wodden stakes or iron poles. This tradition transformed to exhuming suspected vampires, staking and decaptivating, often also burning them in order to kill them again. Sunlight might weaken a real vampire, but noone who can claim to be able to gather his senses would believe to burn to ashes. This aspect of mythology can be related to the significance of darkness. Vampires are dwelling in the darkness, the "Day"-time of all that is evil. When the sun rises, all evil fades with the darkness, due to common belief, originated in the fear of darkness and everything unseen. But why should a vampire be able to fly? Easy to answer. Bats are related to vampires. Actually, in south America, there are even two kinds of vampire bats existing. Bats are also creatures of darkness and also related to the devil. (Slowly the circle closes, doesn«t it?) Vampires are said to be able to assume bat shape and bats can fly. Any questions?! As a conclusive statement let me say that all those mythological explanations are only suggestive. But one could at least always say that those observations make it even more funny to watch those people who want to be oh so big bad vampires only work hand in hand with superstition, Christian belief and the result of dramaturgic experments.