Why invite vampires in

These invitation barriers are extremely strong, as they are among the few known ways to keep vampires at bay, if killing the owner is not an option. The barrier only holds for as long as the vampire remains uninvited, the owner s remain alive, and the dwelling remains standing. If the vampire is invited in, the barrier magically disappears, and if the owner dies or is killed, the house will no longer have an invitation barrier so long as the house's ownership doesn't revert to another person, such as if it's left to a family member in a will.

If a homeowner dies and is then resurrected, the magical invitation barrier is "deactivated" despite the owner returning to life, and it is unknown if the ownership can be refreshed in the case that this should happen. Vampires who are unable to convince a human to invite them into their home have often been known to resort to other methods to enter the house, such as setting the house on fire to either destroy the home or to drive the humans inside out of the house and the protection it provides.

Other methods of destruction will often yield the same effect, such as when Klaus started throwing fence pikes through the Gilbert House when he wasn't immediately extended an invitation. Vampires have been known to use this weakness to their advantage by establishing a home with a human owner so as to keep other unfriendly vampires from gaining access to their homes without invitation.

Some vampires even go so far as to compel their human title-holders not to give a specific vampire entry, such as when Frederick compelled Miss Gibbons not to allow Damon to enter her home, where Stefan was being held captive and tortured. Ownership can apparently be tampered with, as the magical protection is based on signed legal documents.

This was seen when the Salvatores opted to bestow ownership the Salvatore Boarding House to Elena so she could use it as a safe house after Klaus came to Mystic Falls. Elijah was able to bypass the protection of the Guerrera Mansion in a similar manner by having a city official to invoke eminent domain upon the home, giving it heritage status and therefore making the home open to the public without invitation.

If the ownership of a home changes while a vampire is still inside, there can be very violent side effects. For example, in The Dinner Party , Elijah was daggered and brought into the Salvatore Boarding House while the house was still in the name of the deceased Zach Salvatore and could be entered by any vampire without invitation. However, while Elijah was kept daggered and unconscious in the basement cellar of the house, the Salvatore brothers had a lawyer transfer ownership to Elena in order to use it as a " safe house " from any vampires who try to hurt or abduct her for Klaus.

Inviting the vampire in causes you to lose any power over him and grants the vampire an advantage crosses, garlic, etc.

Similar, though, and congruent with what I wrote above. Some vampire works use the idea that there are different lines of vampires who have different powers and vulnerabilities.

One well-known example is the Masquerade role-playing system. So the idea was that most ideas from vampire folklore were sometimes true but often false - a YVMV system. Enter freely and of your own will! In doing so he created many of the traits of the vampire we take as a matter of course — the not being seen in a mirror, the avoidance of garlic, the sensitivity to a crucifix, the ability to change into a bat.

And, interestingly, Stoker was codifying traditional elements and making up new ones precisely to have his characters going beyond these. Dracula, says the Stoker-created myth, must return to their native earth every night. Vampires are torpid in sunlight. Strahd Von Zarovich technically owns any home in his domain, meaning that he can come and go as he pleases. Also, they make the somewhat logical restriction that a vampire cannot enter another person's tomb - this being one's final "home", and them not being able to grant an invite.

Provided the inhabitant was formally "given" the grave via burial rites - unhallowed mass graves and suchlike aren't prohibited. However, just like with a home and charm, this doesn't prevent a vampire from making the "inhabitants" come out by animating the inferred remnants or sending someone else to fetch them.

Wu Jen and in 3. Vampire: The Requiem : The Zelani, a Daeva bloodline , have the weakness of being unable to enter a dwelling uninvited. If they try to, they take aggravated damage equivalent to plunging your hand into fire or being exposed to sunlight.

This isn't so much based on ancient tradition, as the fact that the bloodline's founder was horribly brutalized and tormented by a vampiric home invader. In Vampire: The Masquerade older members of Clan Tzimisce, who all suffer from extreme territoriality, believe in Sacred Hospitality and obey this trope as a matter of tradition. But a tradition is all it is, so don't press your luck. It's also a possible Flaw a player can choose for his character to have. Video Games A Vampyre Story : Mona discovers this restriction applies when she tries to enter the house of a man who mistreats his wife.

How does she get in? By tricking the wife into inviting her. Mona gets it double-hard; the home in question doubles as a shop for the seamstress wife, which should theoretically at least give Mona a little leeway for example, with the sign saying, "We're open, please come in!

One Sim in My Sims , while he may or may not be a vampire, certainly makes reference to vampire tropes, including this one. Web Comics Came up in Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name ; Conrad smacked into the air when he tried to enter Ples's house with the rest of the crew, since technically all of them were trespassing. Sam in Sluggy Freelance has this restriction, but not every vampire in the Sluggyverse does.

On one occasion, Sam tracks down Dr. Schlock, who is decked out with every anti-vampire trick possible. He then points out Sam can't even enter his motel room without an invitation. In a rare moment of intelligence, Sam pulls out a gun, shoots Dr. Schlock in the leg, and asks, "Can I come in? Cynthia and Nicole argue about whether or not a vampire could get into their car without being invited.

Later, we see a vampire trapped outside of Nicole's house by some sort of forcefield while another is able to enter freely because Nicole invited him in. In Deep Fried , a kid who's afraid of clowns tries to pull this on Beepo. Beepo's response? Alluded to in Darken. In Thistil Mistil Kistil , Loki's valley is supposed to work like this.

The Kingfisher features vampires that require invitation. There are degrees of invitation and other complications, most of which isn't explained in the comic unless it becomes an issue. Vampire Cheerleaders had Heather unable to enter her own home after "conversion". Her mom screaming at her pulls her hand, which only makes her suffer Hartley's lack attention to her daughter applies both to this and to the particulars of the resistance, so she of course orders Heather to enter After which senior Hartleys puzzle their acquaintances for quite a while by suddenly becoming a very hospitable couple.

Western Animation Jackie Chan Adventures : One of the demons released into the mortal world loses his tail. Jackie Chan and company manages to catch the tail, and takes it back to Uncle's shop. It is obvious that a sufficiently powerful creature can break through a sufficiently weak threshold. In the vampirian tradition, it is only the first invitation that matters. If you invite a vampire to enter your house only once, he can come back at any time to come and kill his prey, as did Dracula with Lucy, the friend of the co-star.

The writer conceived a frightening and somewhat realistic figure, illustrating to readers the image of Count Dracula, a speculator with supernatural powers and.

He comes back to life every night. A man comes out of his grave and attacks people whose blood runs through their veins, alive. Dracula sucks blood thanks to his sharp and pointed canines, killing them and turning them into vampires themselves.

He is immune to the night, allergic to the day, to the light of God, to the sun. The only repellent to drive it away is garlic and the only way to kill it is by using ash wood.

Vampires in the past were individuals with porphyria, a disease that caused problems for their skin following exposure to the sun. So they came out at sunset like owls, crickets, and bats. Furthermore, the repellence to garlic was due to the fact that it is a spice that eliminates toxins and eliminates parasites, a category in which vampires also fell.

Moreover, he cannot be invited since he is the embodiment of evil and would only bring pain and fear. Even if Dracula was not invited, the idea that he could lure her to the window to feed his instincts is already set-up. Indeed, even if Van Helsing tries to defend her with garlic and other things, nothing works.