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National Geographic

How vampires became allergic to the sun

In the 1922 film, Nosferatu, the main character gets struck by sunlight and bursts into flames a few seconds later. This moment caused a key shift in vampire folklore, creating the concept that vampires are night creatures who are unable to exist in the sunlight. Photograph Courtesy of Allstar Picture Library Ltd, Alamy Stock Photo The trope of vampires burning in the sun is a 20th century invention—but daywalkers are making a comeback. Thanks to centuries of folklore, novels, movies, and TV shows, the tropes of vampires are carved deep into the popular imagination: The creatures drink blood, sleep in coffins, recoil from garlic and crucifixes, and are susceptible to a wooden stake through the heart. Perhaps most of all, they're creatures of the night who can't handle daylight. But that's not always the case. Some vampire stories even imagine the mirror opposite, a parallel creature who can exist in the sun: a daywalker. The daywalker is both a new idea in vampire lore and an old one—a testament to the endless flexibility of these creatures as a narrative device. (Tracing the blood-curdling origins of vampires, zombies, and werewolves.) With the release of Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires, available now on Disney Channel and Disney+, we took a look at how the vampire trope has evolved. The origins of nightwalkers Vampire lore is rich, diverse, and very old, with deep roots in folklore, and the creatures have a long association with darkness and nighttime. Humans have even used this to their advantage: 'Specifically in China, there was this idea that if you put out a bag of rice in front of your home and the vampire of Chinese mythology comes across a bag of rice, they will obsessively count every grain, and then they won't realize that the sun is coming up,' says Laura Westengard, professor of gothic literature at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. In Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula, although weaker during the daytime, Dracula was still able to live in sunlight without burning. Illustration Courtesy of the British Library archive, Bridgeman Images But many of the vampires of the 19th century's great wave of Western European vampire literature were in fact capable of moving around in the sunlight. The creatures of John Polidori's 1819 The Vampyre, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 Carmilla, and even Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula were weaker in the daytime, but they didn't catch like a pile of tinder. 'They prefer to be sleeping, but they are not going to burn up and die,' says Westengard. ('Faerie smut' is having a moment — just like it did in 1500.) That narrative development owes much to F.W. Murnau's silent 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu, which drew heavily on Stoker's Dracula but added a major twist: At the end, the malignant Count Orlok is caught out by the rising sun and vanishes in a puff of fire. 'That's where it starts, that one particular moment, that little change that he makes, which is only about three seconds of the movie,' says Stanley Stepanic, assistant professor at the University of Virginia. It's not entirely clear why Murnau did it, but the addition has proven tenacious. 'That shift in folklore occurs right there, and afterwards we see it becoming a big theme.' How daywalkers became more prominent By the late 1990s, vampire vulnerability to sunlight was so deeply ingrained in popular culture that Ray Ban made it the punchline in a cheeky late '90s ad campaign, featuring stylish vamps protected by the brand's offerings. It's one of the tropes that writers using vampire lore are obliged to tackle, weaving their interpretation of the rule into their worldbuilding. Twilight author Stephanie Meyer famously chalked her vampires' preference for darkness and rainy gloom up to the necessity of concealing their sparkly skin. But a huge part of the perennial power in vampire lore lies in the possibilities for reinvention, so some stories choose to play with the power of a vampire-like creature that can also survive in the day. One of the best examples: the landmark 1998 superhero movie, Blade. Originally created as a Marvel superhero in the 1970s, Blade straddles the line between vampire and human. In both the comics and movie adaptation, his pregnant mother was bitten by a vampire, rendering him immune to a vampire's bite and especially gifted as a vampire hunter. But the movie ramped up both his abilities, Stepanic explains, giving Blade an ominous name—the Daywalker—and a heightened mystique among his enemies. The story pits Blade against a vampire society split between two rival factions: 'pureblood' vampires, born to vampire parents, and 'made' vampire, who were born human and later turned. The film climaxes with a vampire coup attempt that requires harvesting Blade's blood for an arcane ritual to summon an ancient god. It's Blade's existence caught between two worlds that makes him such an enigmatic and compelling character. Blade shows how centuries of vampire stories have spawned the creation of ever-more elaborate backstories and new plot twists that keep the mythology fresh and engaging to audiences. Reimagining the daywalker trope Another project that centers on the daywalker idea is Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires. The film is the latest installment in a Disney Channel original franchise that's fundamentally about conflict resolution and working through differences. Its first few iterations saw zombies versus cheerleaders, then integrated werewolves and aliens, and is now adding vampires to the mix—but with a twist. 'The story is about opposites, right? It's about opposites learning about each other,' says director Paul Hoen. Hence: nightwalkers versus daywalkers. From that basic idea, the team built out two parallel communities. The daywalkers live in and revere the sun, hence a town of glass, pools, and light, Hoen explains. They have the power to create a ball of energy they can use to do things like light fires and create fireworks. The vampires, meanwhile, have the power to control the wind. Since the franchise is aimed at kids, there's no immortality or blood drinking; instead, the two groups subsist off the same 'blood fruit.' Here, instead of using the daywalker trope to portray a blood-soaked world riven by insurmountable conflict, the Zombies 4 team turns it into a different theme. 'It's very much truthful to the Zombies franchise,' says Hoen. 'It's always been about tearing down walls. This is still a theme like that—we need to understand each other.' How the vampire archetype continues to evolve But the traditional nighttime-only vampire still holds tremendous sway in popular culture. Take Ryan Coogler's smash hit Sinners, which takes place over 24 hours as a pair of twin brothers launch a juke joint and then face a vampire named Remmick, who emerges out of the pitch-black Mississippi Delta night to besiege their establishment. The protagonists just have to make it through the night—if they can. Ultimately, Westengard explains, 'there's no one true version of a vampire.' But that's a huge part of what gives the vampire such power, and why these undead creatures reappear again and again in pop culture. 'We're able to project our anxieties and desires upon these figures and at any moment, what that looks like changes.' Vampires have emerged as charismatic, powerful, and elastic symbols that can serve an astonishing array of narrative needs: 'Over time, the vampire has transformed in media so much that it has become a general symbol of basically anything in human existence,' says Stepanic. Storytellers can use vampires any way they want, in any medium they want. 'It's become basically a mirror of the human race.'