Occupy_This posted...
Running water? Isnt that from the twighlight series?
No, it's from real life. Though I suppose it might have been in Twilight. I avoided that like the plague so I know nothing about their vampires other than the sparkling.
Like with most things in supernatural folklore, it had a basis in fact. Running water tends to be the healthiest to drink, so it was seen as being more pure than, say, stagnant puddles or swampy water that might make you sick if you drank it. And purity was generally seen as being somewhat holy or divine. So it was assumed that impure evil couldn't stand to cross pure running water.
Same reason why vampires can't stand silver (no, it's not werewolves - that's another thing Hollywood changed). Silver is antimicrobial. So people thought silver = purity. Therefore silver repels vampires.
Incidentally, that's also why they don't reflect in mirrors. Old school mirrors used to be made by adding a silver backing to glass, and silver was too pure to reflect the evil image of a vampire. But modern mirrors aren't made that way, so if vampires
were
real, they'd probably show up in modern mirrors just fine. Same with film - early film used silver nitrate (so vampires probably wouldn't show up in early photographs), but modern film doesn't so they'd show up fine in modern pictures.
If anything, folklore vampires would probably do fantastic in the modern world. All the water is polluted so it's probably not pure enough to repel them anymore, most people have stopped being religious so no being repelled by true faith, fresh garlic isn't in like 90% of all cooking the way it was in Eastern Europe, and most people can't afford anything silver.
...it's almost as if the modern world was entirely the work of vampires, slowly eliminating all of their weaknesses. And secretly ruling us from the shadows.