h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are so many variations in horror mytholgy these days(most notably with vampyre n 'shifter' lore though there are other examples)that i thought it might be interesting to discuss ..and maybe come up with with a more standard one for ourselves.
For instance, traditionally vampires cant walk in sunlight..
in some stories they can move around during the day..and even go out if protected with strong sunscreen..in otthers (ok one other i know of) they actually 'die'(the animating force leaves them) at dawn! in some you can kill them with a bullet.. as long as its a big enough impact to destroy the heart..in others it has to be a stake..
ill leave you all to carry on..

anyone?

there is one that is old but I thought it most unlikely. That they can be killed by running water.

As to lore I heve problems with a stake through the heart because lore also says that blood does not pump through their veins and their heart is still.

not all the time! some vampires have a heartbeat and circulation
after feeding..

Ok the scoop on Nosferatu(incidentily the word is German meaning Walking Plague).
1) Sunlight: Ok the notion vampires are harmed by sunlight is holywood hype. They generally are nocturnal but are completely capable of moving during the day. The modern misconception is probably due to the movie Nosferatu and has been done wrong in almost every vampire movie since(if you read the novel Dracula he can act in daylight)
2) Staking: Yes staking a vampire can paralyze it. Whether or not the heart beats is unimportant to staking though. Traditionaly to stake a vampire you must not only impale the heart but pin the creature to the earth. This serves a magical purpose of binding to the earth until the stake is removed. As such stakings were usually imediately followed by burning the corpse
3) The Nature of the Vampire: Modern occultists have suggested(and several myths support this) that the vampire is in fact a type of spirit. Basicly where ghosts are spirits trapped between life and death by accident, vampires do so deliberately draining life energy out of people to maintain there state.

Wee were talking about the vast diferences in horror movies and novels

For instance Lk Hamiltons vampires die at dawn till the next sunset and can be killed with a bullet large enough to destroy the heart, but Anne Rices are different, etc

Um some of the comments at least seem to address mythological vampires. In terms of fictional to me Stoker's Dracula still stands as the best(the whiny, wishy washy critters of Rice are lousy excuses for vampires). Stoker followed the legends better then most. C. J. Henderson also deals with vampires in a very different and intruiging sense("Some Things Never Die and Some Things Come Back). He presents them as people who kill others to take there life energy. They can then use that energy for magic and other rituals and even be brought back to life if enough people are killed over there corpse. They're also nasty, brutal creatures that rend there enemies apart bare handed.