and also because I have a fear of crossing thresholds uninvited, which I have to do almost any time I want to leave the house.
Today I’m thinking of vampires. A vampire may not enter your home without permission, but can it stand on your outdoor property? Vampire media would suggest so, but we all know how lax the standards are for vampire representation these days. So, this requires some discussion, to me.
Some depictions require that a vampire need permission from the host, who may or may not be the owner of the property. Other depictions allow the invitation to be given by any non-vampire within the home, be it host or fellow guest. From this we must assume that in this case, the vampire’s limitation is not express ownership of the property they intend to enter, but invitation into some level of humanity which can only be granted by other humans.
It follows that in most imaginings, a vampire’s limitation is in relation to not only the threshold of a property, but also the threshold of exterior to interior. A vampire may not cross into your foyer without express invitation (from whomever) — however, it can appear to request such permission on your lawn, or your porch, or elsewhere outside the building, even if you own the property outside of your house just as equally as you own the building that qualifies as your home. It is not a matter of whether the vampire may intrude on your property, rather, it is a matter of whether the vampire may intrude on your humanity. Humans do not live outdoors, and as such, vampires may trespass as they please as long as they are outside. But a house is a human construction, a way for some small anchored space of the outside world to be trusted and safe; a home is an extension of one’s self, a checkpoint in the unsafety of everything outside of one’s body. You may sleep there — become vulnerable — peacefully. And as the material world is transformed by one’s humanity, and extends a person thus, so increases the difficulty for a vampire to tread there.
I wonder if this is the common understanding due to simple practicality in storywriting. All land, these days, is owned, whether by individuals or corporations or departments of the state. If a vampire were limited by whether a piece of land were owned, it would have trouble navigating pretty much anywhere. I suppose it would be frozen in place; it would have to act to leave the space it stood on, but movement in any direction would be an intrusion — except, perhaps, in international waters, and in some countries where air rights do not extend a coelo usque ad centrum.
Perhaps there’s a clean compromise: vampires could be restricted by private or individual ownership, but remain unhindered on land owned by the state, or even a sufficiently large group of people. A vampire could pass anywhere considered “in public,” even if that land were technically “owned” by some party, such as most parks, malls, and shared neighborhood walking areas. In this case, a vampire would be prevented from crossing onto your lawn (without permission), but could reasonably stand on the sidewalk nearby. However, I’m sure there would be a loophole with the laws surrounding “public ownership” that would allow the vampire to tread in some unexpected places, like certain government buildings or abandoned properties.
I suppose, as well, there used to be more royalty in the world. In such cases one could declare themself owner of whole countries of land, or even the whole world, by arguing divine right and/or superior genetics, or whatever else monarchs see sufficient to justify themselves with. In the case of conflicting documentation, it’s as of yet unclear what boundaries a vampire would be beholden to. But there is at least one thing I can say in favor of the “vampires cannot, without permission, tread on any owned property” argument: we don’t see a lot of vampires these days, do we?
Today’s wisdom:
Look forward to chance encounters and unexpected guests.