Ask almost anyone to tell you something about vampires, and odds are they’ll say the undead can only hunt at night—and that any who linger past dawn are instantly incinerated by the sun’s first rays.

It’s easy to see why. These days, the burning bloodsucker trope is a staple in nearly every vampire film, TV show, and book. But remarkably, the idea that daylight kills fanged fiends isn’t part of traditional folklore at all.

In fact, many cultures believed vampires could operate perfectly fine in sunlight:

• Eastern European Folklore: In Polish legend, vampires were said to rise at noon and remain active until midnight.
• 19th-Century Gothic Fiction: Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) was a late riser, but routinely strolled through sunny courtyards.
• Stoker’s Dracula: Even Bram Stoker’s famous Count could move around during the day—he was simply stripped of his supernatural shapeshifting powers while the sun was up.

So where did our sun-dodging monsters actually come from?

We have a pioneering German filmmaker to thank. In the iconic 1922 silent film Nosferatu —an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula — director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau needed a dramatic, unambiguous way to destroy his vampire villain, Count Orlok.

Leaning into the classic religious symbolism of light conquering darkness, Murnau decided that pure sunlight would annihilate the beast. Actor Max Schreck dissolved into a (decidedly low-tech) puff of smoke, Hollywood instantly adopted the plot device, and a brand-new piece of vampire canon was born overnight.