Young Writers Society

Okay, for instance, let's say I have a story with fey, werewolves, vampires, and all types of magic. These magic-based creatures are not hidden and thus interact with the real world. They're not a recent development, so I can't pretend that they didn't influence history in any way, shape, or form.

Would the existence of fey who granted miracles and made deals have hindered churches or strengthened them? How would have the founding fathers dealt with the existence of vampires? How do I deal with the scientific discoveries that were ignored in the face of trying to cure lycanthropy? Should I even worry about this at all and just plop my characters into a modern-day USA saying, "Everything is cool. All the historical events up to here are exactly the same, even adding creatures that might have totally changed everything."

Are there any books that I could read that deal with this? Do my questions even make sense? Thanks!

Let's go through your different questions since that's going to be the only way I can manage to do some organizing.
When you're setting things back in time, there's always a bit of wiggle room, because mid 18th century North America is not going to be looking at the supernatural the same way. It doesn't really get until the Great War and then WWII, that you have to start really worrying about how things are perceived. Even with WWII, there's a lot of desperation and the Nazis were trying out things relating to the supernatural, so mainly you just have to worry about explaining their existence in present times.

If you're more talking about all of those possible effects and how things were dealt with, let's look at the historical context, how it originally worked out and how each thing might have been minutely shifted.

Would the existence of fey who granted miracles and made deals have hindered churches or strengthened them?

What era of the church are you talking about? I'm guessing you mean like from the year 0 and saying that if such things existed in the world to provide temptations, how did any monotheistic religion survive?
I started to talk in discord about how having creatures like this, brings you into the pagan religions, because there are certain things that would need to be considered.
I'm not familiar with that particular creature but it sounds similar to some principles of different types of demons. And in those early time periods, particularly the Middle Ages when the church was blaming everything on demons, anything outside of the church is seen as evil. Every 'monster' is considered to be a demon because it has some sort of dark and corrupted soul.
Now with some of the guidelines of the time, a monster/demon, could be anything from the town drunk to a legit monster/demon.
With that in mind of how it might have affected the church, it's easiest to view them as temptations. Some people might go after them but ultimately their existence helps the church to strengthen it's power, proven that there are so many things in the dark.

How would have the founding fathers dealt with the existence of vampires?

So one of my favorite books is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire hunter, because it goes about the immersion of historical fiction with vampires very well. It deals a lot with the corruption of the government and how the vampires either were controlling senators or the senators were vampires themselves.
I would assume the Founding Fathers had a similar deal going on and there's a lot of talk about the English and vampires, because vampires are usually seen as greedy and willing to do anything for a price.
In that book, Lincoln sort of learns from other people and learns from experience, mainly he does learn from the vampire who is a vampire hunter himself. So I would expect that in any fictional universe with vampires, there are some vampires who are hunting other ones for what they're doing.
The thing is with that time period and the war going on, you can talk about how the Founding Fathers had like certain troops to take care of vampires and when everything was settled they came to some sort of agreement.
(And like that could become the base for vampire hunting or something. Just saying.)

I might have to research a bit more before talking about the lycanthropy but this is what I've got to offer for now.
I'll get you some book titles later because there's a series that's like hunters from hell, but I'd have to look those up again.

Thank you for the response! Mainly, I'm worried about a ripple effect and how all of this will end up impacting the urban fantasy that I write which is primarily set in the late 00s/early 10s.

If the existence of fey and otherworldly creatures ended up strengthening the church back in the 0s, then how does that transfer to my story in the 2000s? Am I just worrying too much about the ripple effect?

@Evander
I think you're worried too much about the ripple effect.
I also didn't explain that great. I meant to say like you can just slip the existence of these things in, because back then the church was already like "stranger danger, warning demons around every corner, come to church to avoid all those temptations." And they've basically never stopped for 2k years.

If your creatures because more public in 00s/10s, then that's when the concern comes in, how are they going to affect the church at that point?
In the modern age, they're going to cause way more trouble than they ever could before, potentially driving people away from the church. Like they're going to cause way more damage in modern times, than they might by the ripple effect, where everyone was already afraid of everything in the dark anyways. They probably cause the most harm in a society that has seen the 'light', if you'll ignore the cliches around that statement for a moment.

Question: When and where did each of these creatures show up?

Modern werewolves have only really existed for 1000 years or so. Wikipedia: "Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in witches, in the course of the Late Middle Ages [1200-1500] and the Early Modern period [1500-1850]." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf (brackets mine)

A lot of folkloric creatures and traditions -- especially Celtic, which you seem to be drawing from with fey -- we don't know the exact origin of, because Christian colonialism and whatnot kind of wiped it out. I'm sure you can find some books on the subject or online references somewhere, but while the beliefs may be very old, we don't know how old nor do we know initially what fairies were intended to be.

I would suggest you research the cultures you're looking to draw from with your creatures -- don't worry too much about the ripple effect, honestly! It's likely that tech wouldn't have slowed down or sped up incredibly much, especially if these creatures are rarer than humans. But check out what you want to use, and when modern legends of them started coming into focus.

For example, the modern vampire concept dates from the far, far years of the early 1800s. Before that, there were many different cultures with their own concepts, but they aren't all strictly alike to modern vampires -- in fact, most of them aren't like that at all.

If these mythical creatures are real, why would the myths vary from what they actually are? Maybe there's cultural variation by region or ethnic group as to these creatures? Age variation, for vampires?

Just a couple ideas.

To be honest, I hadn't really thought about when the creatures showed up. I envisioned fey as living alongside most humans for all documented history. But, uh, I definitely haven't done as much reading on the topic of vampires and werewolves, so I should probably get that done at some point.

Thank you so much for the response, Lareine! This gives me a lot to think about!