Questions tagged [apotropaism]

I've been watching a lot of Supernatural, and I've been wondering. What is it with salt? They keep bringing up that one needs to salt and burn the bones. Also, salt is used to repel ghosts. This isn't the first time I've heard mentionings about salt…

For instance, according to the supernatural wiki, silver is a metal with strong supernatural properties. But historically, why is specifically silver considered harmful to vampires? Is there a reason why it could not be gold or bronze?

I typically hear of the silver bullet being the gold standard (so to speak) weapon for killing a werewolf and rarely hear of other weapons successfully doing the job. Even Wikipedia's article on silver bullets states: (it) is often the only weapon…