Vampires, also known as Nosferatu and Children of the Night, live in our nightmares and in the dark of the night. They sneak into our homes while we sleep and drink our blood. Vampires have been portrayed as both evil and romantic in movies. Some vampires scare us and make us afraid to go to bed at night, while some have us wishing they’d sneak into our rooms while we rest. It is, however, a general notion that you just can’t trust a vampire. Look at Sookie Stackhouse in ‘True Blood’! She had a great life, free of injury, until she hooked up with Bill Compton, vampire. Now she’s been clawed by a Maenad in season 2, almost murdered by the shifter Debbie Pelt (a couple times), and almost drained dry by the love of her life, Bill Compton, when Debbie shut her in the trunk with him in season 3. Turn your back on a vampire and you just might find some fangs puncturing your neck.
Some vampires are friendly, until they smell blood of course, and some are just want kill you. If you happen to find yourself face to face with a hungry vampire and your only choice is to kill or be killed then you are going to want to read on. There are ways to kill vampires and there are ways to just slow them down. Maybe you thought this vampire was your friend, but you cut your finger, like Bella Swan in ‘Twilight’ series when she cuts her finger opening a present and Jasper pounces, and now you look like dinner. In this case you might not want to go for the kill, just help them snap out of that blood trance they are in.
Slowing Them Down
There are some important tools you can use to slow down vampires. Those tools include garlic, Holy water and crosses/crucifixes. Movies like ‘Fright Night’ and ‘The Lost Boys’ have taught us that garlic can be used to keep vampires away. In both of these movies garlic was used as a way to ward off the undead, although Paul (one of the teenage vampires in ‘The Lost Boys’) tells Edgar Frog that garlic actually doesn’t work. In ‘Blade’ we learned that garlic mixed with silver nitrate in bullets can be used to kill vampires, not just slow them down. If I were worried about vampires I would definitely keep some of those babies in my arsenal!
Another way to chase off vampires is with a crucifix or a cross. In ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’ even broken pieces of wood are turned into crosses. They also use Holy water in this same movie to fight off the vampires. Luckily they have a former reverend with them who blesses some water that they put inside water guns. Since vampires are an abomination to God they are believed to be afraid of these things. In fact, Holy water usually burns or melts their skin, as seen in ‘The Lost Boys’ when Edgar Frog attacks one of the undead with it. ‘Dracula 2000′ found a great way to explain the vampires hatred/fear of religious items, telling the tale that Dracula was in fact Judas, whom turned his back on Jesus.
Killing Them
Generally, one of the most popular ways to kill a vampire is with a stake in the heart. Buffy did it often, and so do most other vampire killers (slayers). Although, in some vampire fiction it is believed that a stake to the heart only incapacitates the vampire, not actually killing them, like in the former television series ‘Kindred: The Embraced’. You have to get pretty close to a vampire and have some strength in order to get a stake all the way into their heart, so unless you are akin to Buffy I suggest you find another method.
Chopping the vampire’s head off always seems to kill them. It worked on Lucy Westenra in ‘Dracula’. Again though, you’ll need to get kind of close to the vampire in order to perform a decapitation.
It is believed that most vampires will die in the sunlight, but not all of them. Lucien’s love, Sonja, in ‘Underworld’ was given death by sunlight for disobeying her father. So if you could manage to trap the vamp in the sun you’d have a hands-off way of killing them. Just hope they don’t have some means of surviving in the daylight. In the ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ television series there was a ring, the Gem of Amarra, that rendered the vampire invulnerable and allowed them to walk in the light. Spike attempted to use this ring to kill Buffy in episode 3 of season 4, “The Harsh Light of Day.” And in episode 11 of season 3 of ‘True Blood’ Eric drinks Sookie’s blood (as she is part fairy) which allows him temporary safety in the sun, but definitely only temporary.
Seems to me that your best bet is to keep a nice sharp sword around in which to decapitate any vampires that mean you harm, then there is no doubt that they’ll die, again. You’ll still have to get kind of close to them, but what choice to do you have?