Silver bullets are for werewolves, not vampires! Anne Rice confirms
This final note today, a correction of sorts. Friday we were talking about how silver bullets can kill vampires. One of you tweeted us to say we got it wrong — it’s silver bullets for werewolves, not vampires.
@marketplaceapm @kairyssdal Silver bullets are for werewolves, not vampires! Holy crap, PLEASE run a correction on Monday. That’d be amazing
— Jonathan McNicol (@mcnicolpants) June 8, 2012
So we called somebody who knows way more about these kinds of things than we do, author Anne Rice:
Anne Rice: We’ll he’s absolutely right. Traditionally a silver bullet is supposed to kill a werewolf. Vampires are not particularly affected by silver bullets. Traditionally what kills vampires is a wooden steak through the heart. Now that doesn’t affect my vampires, but that’s what kills the run-of-the-mill, all-world vampires.
That’s Anne Rice on vampires (and world suffering). She’s into werewolves now, too. Her new book is called “The Wolf Gift.” Here’s her advice on getting rid of those.
Rice: A silver bullet right through the heart usually kills a werewolf… I think with all supernatural creatures, if you can decapitate them you can pretty much do away with them.
And while we had Rice on the phone, we asked her this: What is it in the real world that scares you today?
Rice: What scares me today? I think we read on the news of all kinds of scary things. One of the reasons we love horror fiction so much is we can get away from what’s really scary: poverty, starvation, genocide, war, nuclear annihilation.
We live in a world where we’re confronted with the suffering of people all over the planet every day who aren’t as blessed as we are, who aren’t as fortunate as we are, and they’re in situations where they’re facing terrorism and genocidal armies and governments that don’t care how many people they kill to enforce a dictatorship. That’s what’s really scary.
I think we love to go to graphic novels and TV and watch a wonderful fantasy like “True Blood” on HBO because we get away from all that, and we can experience a little fear and pity and catharsis and get over it. It’s comforting.
We’ll, there’s no silver bullet for that. Click play above to hear the complete phone interview.
CORRECTION: The text transcript of this story has been corrected.
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