Has anyone noticed a consistent symbolic logic across different European cultures? I’m particularly interested in whether the fear of bats was mostly practical—because they’re nocturnal and hard to see—or if it was tied to older ideas about thresholds, the unseen, or the boundary between life and death.

Also, do you think Christian interpretations later reshaped the older folk meanings, or did they coexist? Any examples from specific regions would help me avoid overgeneralizing.