Why are vampires traditionally repelled by the Holy Cross?

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I cannot say that there have never been, in the history of the world, mortal men and women who acted as predators and drank the blood of other people for occult purposes, but vampires are a fantasy, just a literary device. There is no such thing. Ditto for zombies. (Ghosts may be angels, demons, or souls in purgatory — we just don’t know.)

I love everybody on here, but these are minutes of our lives that we’re never going to get back, people. For me anyway, it’s an utter waste of time. For those who enjoy this kind of thing, happy reading and enjoy your books (or movies, as the case may be).
 
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I certainly agree that most horror novels are complete crap, no need to waste one’s time with them. But there are exceptions. Frankenstein is quite well written and IMO quite appropriate in this modern age of cloning and other run away science. Others, such as Dracula, do not have such a worthwhile purpose, but is well written literature. I think my recommendation above us also worth one’s time, and it does present the issue if our struggle against evil quite well, along with a good conversion story to boot.
Now, I have a good friend who will not read any fiction, she will only spend time with spiritual or theological reading. No argument there, it’s her choice. But if one is open to good novels, there is no reason to say that all of any given genre is bad.

BTW, the novel World War Z is a very interesting zombie book, and well written. The movie is completely different.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I love everybody on here, but these are minutes of our lives that we’re never going to get back, people. For me anyway, it’s an utter waste of time. For those who enjoy this kind of thing, happy reading and enjoy your books (or movies, as the case may be).
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Do you not watch or read anything fictional?
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I love everybody on here, but these are minutes of our lives that we’re never going to get back, people.
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Wow. Uh…okay. Thanks for sharing that with us. (Bearing in mind you’ve basically wasted minutes of your life by telling us we’re wasting minutes of our lives.)
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I love everybody on here, but these are minutes of our lives that we’re never going to get back, people. For me anyway, it’s an utter waste of time. For those who enjoy this kind of thing, happy reading and enjoy your books (or movies, as the case may be).
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You know, not all that much. That’s just me. I will watch a movie now and then, but it has to be a plot and storyline that deeply engages me, or else I just lose interest. I did go to see Joker when it came out, and it completely blew me out of the water! It was that good. I also liked Pulp Fiction (but you have to watch it two or three times before it makes sense).

As far as reading, I read mostly factual material. I’m just not a novel person. If I am going to read a novel, I like it to be simple and short, like To Kill A Mockingbird or possibly 1984 — the kind of novels they taught in high school and college composition or literature classes. I tried to read Atlas Shrugged, got about 1/3 of the way through, and just closed it in despair — “all this detail, all this overwritten, dense narrative, I can’t take this anymore!”. I truly suspect that Ayn Rand was somewhere on the autism spectrum.
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HomeschoolDad said:
I love everybody on here, but these are minutes of our lives that we’re never going to get back, people.
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Assuming you are actually a priest, and not just using that screen name for dramatic effect or some such (as if I wished to be really snarky and take the screen name “PopePiusXIII” even though I am neither a pope nor a priest), I shall say this as respectfully as I know how:

My comment was about 75% tongue-in-cheek and 25% serious. Besides, I did not say anyone was “wasting” anything. If anyone wants to spend time thinking about vampires or zombies, I am fine with that. I choose not to. I may (and probably do) spend my time occasionally on things that someone else would consider a waste. So be it. My son is always telling me about the coming zombie apocalypse. I remind him, Son, there is no such thing as zombies, if you want to read something really edgy and scary, come along with me and let’s study the Book of Revelation. Anything to get him wanting to read the Bible!
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HomeschoolDad said:
I love everybody on here, but these are minutes of our lives that we’re never going to get back, people. For me anyway, it’s an utter waste of time. For those who enjoy this kind of thing, happy reading and enjoy your books (or movies, as the case may be).
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I totally enjoy reading horror btw. The best horror books do have some philosophy behind them. One of these days I’ve got to start a thread on the best horror books out there. When I was coming back to Christianity and Catholicism one of the things that started to initially bring me back is some of of the good and classic horror books out there. I could at least see that certain paths were completely dark. Some of the classic horror books help me see this.

William Blatty’s exorcist is is very good. Bran Stoker’s Dracula is good and entertaining. I found the Great God Pan by Arther Machen to be terrifying. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Stevenson was boring at first but then both deeply philosophically and terrifying. It was a forerunner of Blatty’s Exorcist. Many of the ideas in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are further developed and built upon in the exorcist.

Just sayin…don’t knock a good horror book!..
 
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I read The Exorcist when I was young, thought I was invinsible back them. It scared the heck out if me.

Speaking of horror novels, I have never been a big fan of Stephen King, but The Stand is a really good book.
 
I too read mostly non fiction. So I don’t begrudge your reading habits. But you might not want to tell us what sort of books we are wasting time reading if you don’t have much experience in the matter.
 
tafan2 said:
I too read mostly non fiction. So I don’t begrudge your reading habits. But you might not want to tell us what sort of books we are wasting time reading if you don’t have much experience in the matter.
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I am not going to go to the hill of the cross arguing whether fiction is a worthwhile pursuit or not. A person could spend their entire life immersed in fictional tales and be the best, holiest, most honorable and decent person who ever lived. I have read enough of it, to know that when you read fiction, you are immersing yourself in the mind of someone who is making up a tale about something that never existed. You are trading your consciousness for theirs. I prefer to read stories and narratives about things that actually happened. I read for information and to learn about the world, its history, its politics, its people, its wars and conflicts, the great ideas, and so on. The world is a complicated place, and this helps it to be less complicated for me. Add to that, that college for me was this massive, and I do mean massive, list of reading assignments. I had a lot of reading — of all kinds — rammed down my throat, and now that I don’t have to read books comprising hundreds of pages every week, I don’t do it. I read slowly and soak in material by osmosis. I speak slowly. I absorb material and knowledge slowly and deliberately, and don’t just simply memorize it. That is just how I process information. And by the way, not to brag, just to dispel the notion I might be mentally slow or disabled, I am a member of Mensa and my IQ is somewhere around 134 to 137.

So in a nutshell, if someone else wants to fill their mind with tales of things that never happened, that is their choice, but I choose not to, and I have shared my reasons, reasons that make perfect sense to me. Everyone is different.
 
I seem to be the opposite. When I read fiction I’m taken to places I’ll never see in real life, situations I may or may not ever find myself in and views of life I may never have considered before. My mind is expanded and often shown the beauty of lives and locations I couldn’t dream of. To each their own. I’ve never considered even a badly written book to have been a waste of my time.
 
I can think of three reasons I read fiction, occasionally a book will fill all three. 1) entertainment, I love a good story and sometines that’s what I am in the mood for 2) sometimes a novel will teach us a lot. I think I learned more about different paths to conversion by reading Brideshead Revisited than by any other means. 3) sometimes I really enjoy authors who can work majic with the English language (Patrick O’Brien comes to mind)
 
I agree with all three! I just really enjoy fiction and I read a lot of non fiction as well. I like to alternate them but it isn’t a hard and fast rule. I also rotate a bit between a real book, a kindle and an audiobook. Some work better in one format than another but I’ll take them any way I can get them!
 
FatherMerrin said:
The premise of the Holy Cross acting as a ward against vampires is a common trope
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Anything evil cannot stand the presence of Jesus. That’s the basic idea. Vampires are generally presented as personifications of evil and so they are repelled by the presence of that which is holy.
 
I did read them but, nope…way too teenagey girly fantasy for me. Same with the movies…I watched them, then forgot about them.

I prefer serious fantasy! 🥴🤔😂
 
Talking about fantasy, has anyone seen The Witcher on Netflix?

I enjoyed it.
 
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