Blindsight/Echopraxia by Peter Watts had a good "science" based version. Vampires are an obligate carnivore/cannibal hominid that went extinct (after giving humans their "uncanny valley" fear btw as a survival trait to detect them) and had a heriditary fear of right angles due to a quirk in their visual cortex.

The idea being "right angles don't occur in nature" and such. The problem with that idea is that they do, but still a decent series with some interesting ideas.