Tying somewhat into the last post, I have some thoughts about the supernatural.
I hate the move away from the supernatural in modern fiction, particularly movies. The first example that springs to mind is Blade (I will speak about things from the first two movies as I have not seen the third). There were some supernatural occurrences in Blade (like the scene in the blood god) but I remember the first movie sort of went out of its way to make vampires completely mundane. Vampirism originates with a virus; vampires are vulnerable to UV radiation; mirrors and crosses don't work on vampires. This is a great disservice to the Western myth of the vampire. The traditions we strongly associate with vampires are intricately related to the Christian faith of the Western world. Vampires cannot stand sunlight because the sun is a symbol of God and purity. Mirrors show no reflection because vampires have sold their souls to the devil and the mirror reflects the emptiness inside them. Crosses repel vampires because of the blessing and the power of Christ inherent in the symbol.
The point of this post, however, is to examine the opposite perspective. It is my opinion that these supernatural creatures are symbols of the perversions of Christian goods. They can be seen as Satan trying to emulate God (in a bid to show he is God's equal) or mock God (sort of a supernatural sarcasm).
The undead are mockeries of the resurrection. Whereas God has the power to bring a person back to life, like Lazarus or Jesus in the Bible (or all of us at the end of time), Satan can only animate the bodies of the dead, imparting the barest semblance of life.
Wights eat flesh and vampires drink blood, dark opposites of the Eucharist.
God has given mankind the gift of free will; Satan and his demons possess man, abrogating their free will.
In the paladin mythos, the Incarnation is mocked when demons take flesh. It is the essential point behind the entire mythos, the very reason the paladins exist.
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