Vampires cannot be near any silver or they will ignite on fire. This is a commonly known weakness that everyone knows about vampires. They also cannot be seen infront of any mirror. They are invisible. This logically can be explained.
First about vampires
I am not going to start this with the classic movie line in almost every horror movie, “Forget all you know about vampire.” This is just a recap of what was always being said about vampires.
What is a vampire?
A vampire is the walking undead that lies between the world of the living and the dead cursed to drink blood for eternity. They are evil mythological creatures because they pray on humans. There are famous fictional vampires like Dracula, Camilla, historically noted scapegoats blamed for medical phenomenons like Mercy Brown from Rhode Island in the late 1800s, and real-life scary people from history that influenced the lore of the vampire like Vlad the Impaler and Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Vampires look human at first but they have sharp fangs, pale skin where veins are visible and bloodshot eyes. Some myths include bursting in flames in sunlight, they cast no shadow and silver burns them.
The lore about these unholy beasts of the night grew in popularity in the 14th century due to a misconception about death, decay and advance medical care. Most people would be buried alive due to a medical episode then hours later the groundskeeper would hear the buried victim scream. This led to bells being placed near gravestones to alert groundskeepers about their still alive state. But when a deadly disease roamed through a small town, the towns folk would dig up a corpse to inspect the body. If they misinterpreted seeing blood leak out of their mouths from the decaying process they would believe the corpse was a vampire. Diseases like tuberculosis, rabies and porphyria are linked to the lore about the vampire.
Furthermore, sensitive glittery vampires and badass daywalker vampires are not the norm.
What are mirrors?
First of all, all object you see reflect and diffuse light in all directions with light bounces off objects haphazardly with no particular direction which is how people can see you, a diffuse reflection. Diffuse reflection gives fuzzy, blurry views of some objects, for instance, an image reflecting against lake. Rays of light shoot through the glass, hits the silver and reflects back to you as an image. A reflection from a mirror is called a spectular reflection which is the opposite of a diffuse reflection. The image is fairly sharp like the object being reflected. In a mirror, the silver atom in the mirror absorbs the photon energy energizing the atoms then restablizing themselves by ridding extra energy.
Mirrors were originally made with silver. They were either polished to a shine or poured silver and other shiny metals like mercury or aluminum onto glass. A mirror is a surface that an image reflects off the surface at an angle equal to the angle at which it arrived. Light bounds off the mirror to show what is there facing the reflective object. There are three types of mirrors shapes: plane, convex, and concave. Mirrors were used for personal grooming, safety, decor, and in technology. There are three layers of a mirror: the glass to protect the silver and see the reflection, the silver, and the dark back coating to protect the silver from scratching off and reduce light from seeping through.
Natural mirrors are things like water or shiny objects. For thousands of years, people have polished metals like silver or aluminum because they are highly reflective. Early mirrors used materials like obsidian which is a volcanic black glass, bronze, tin, silver and copper. Common problems with the early mirrors would require frequent polishing because they tarnished often. Bronze mirrors had awful reflectivity and colour rendering. Stone mirrors were worse.
In the 1st century, glass was being used to make mirrors with the development of soda-lime glass and glass blowing. The earliest mirrors in use were from ancient Egypt from 3000 BCE by polishing metals like copper and bronze. The Antolians of Turkey are believed to have used polished obsidian as a mirror 5000 years before ancient Egypt in 8000 BCE. Most mirror were either decorative, personal grooming, ceremonies and rituals, and symbols of wealth during the age of antiquity.
Silver mirrors were first invented in the 16th century. The modern mirror was invented in the early 19th century by Justin von Liebig by applying a reflective silver coating behind glass then locked off with a dark opaque object. Nowadays, aluminum is used in its place.
Why would vampires be invisible in mirrors and some photography?
Due to silver being a hindrance to Dracula and other vampires, silver would cancel out his reflection. In theory, it would repel the image of the vampire. This is also my small theory why cameras that use silver halides, mirrors, silver paper material would not have Dracula show up.
Digital cameras don’t use silver for photography. Most electronic devices have different precious metals like gold, mercury, cobalt, molybdenum and lead. Silver would be in some point-and-shoot cameras but usually found in LCD displays and circuit boards but in small amounts. Sensors in digital cameras replaced film, especially silver halide in image capturing which was mostly a silver metal product.
Nonetheless, silver is still present in specialty equipment that does image capturing like commercial motion picture cameras and X-ray equipment for cost-effective matters and brilliant colour and detail resolution.
Other theories about mirrors and vampires
Liminal space theory
A liminal space is a portal to another world that either physical, mental or spiritual. Mirrors are seen in many cultures as a portal to a different world. Mirrors are often covered if a loved one recently passed to not get trapped inside a mirror. Please use mirrors to call upon spirits like Bloody Mary for spiritual contact. Also mirrors are used for scrying and rituals. Mirrors were believed to be reflections of the soul in ancient civilizations.
If mirrors were believed to be reflections of the soul and vampires don’t have a soul, what would be reflected in the mirror? Nothing.
Reference
https://silverinstitute.org/silver-in-photography/
https://www.history.com/articles/vampire-history#What-Is-a-Vampire
https://www.britannica.com/topic/vampire
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/howmirrorswork.html
https://historycooperative.org/who-invented-the-mirror/
Banner Credit:
Cropped image of Man in black and white long sleeve shirt taking selfie in front of mirror Chingiz Abdullin on Unsplash.
Under The Moonlight 
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