CHAPTER 1
A Brief, Bloodstained History of Werewolves
The Bond Between Man and Wolf
The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.
–HENRY WARD BEECHER, PROVERBS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT
Anthropologists place humans’ first domestication of dogs at between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. DNA tests have recently established that various domestic and wild dog breeds evolved from four different species of canines, one of them being wolves, some 40,000 years ago. Yet there is evidence that human hunters traveled with wolves much further back—at least 100,000 years ago. Mans superior intelligence and opposable thumbs and wolves’ speed and super sense of smell made for an unstoppable hunting team. The dim cultural memory of that ancient bond may be why legends of wolves—the wild ones that did not accept domestication or perhaps simply didn’t like the company of men—are so deeply rooted in man’s primal subconscious, where fears arise in the dark after midnight.
Ancient man learned a lot from his association with wolves. Wolves knew how to work as a team or pack. They were cunning and deceitful, traits that work well even today in banking and health insurance companies. They were strong, an inspirational example for men in battle. They knew no fear and would fight to the death.
Our brains are still wired with a bit of our animal evolutionary past intact. Some scientists theorize it is in the hypothalamus where our primitive, animal core is housed. Others say it is the pituitary gland that contains a rare, normally dormant thyroid-stimulating hormone called lycantropin. Whatever the hormonal basis, mans cerebral cortex has evolved to be much larger than that of a normal wolf, swelling with the powers of contemplation, imagination, knowledge, analysis and memory. These traits naturally conceal the animal impulses we were born with and allow us to operate as thinking, civilized human beings instead of making moves instinctively the way our forebearers did. Thus the nightmarish tales of werewolves through the ages may reflect our fear of letting our own animal nature run amok. What man did not need was the one extra attribute that came along with being a wolf, the desire for blood—in many cases, human blood.
Werewolves of Antiquity
Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, devoted much study to separating myth from fact. Around 450 BC he reported on shamanic practices in the Neuri tribe of Scythia (part of eastern Poland today):
It seems that the Neuri are sorcerers, if one is to believe the Scythians and the Greeks established in Scythis; for each Neurian changes himself, once a year, into the form of a wolf, and he continues in that form for several days, after which he resumes his former shape.
Note that here he is speaking not of a shaman but of an entire tribe of people turning into a pack of werewolves for multiple days, once a year. This may be the earliest reference in written literature of lycanthropy.
In the eighth of his Ecologues, written about 35 BC, the famed Roman poet Virgil inscribed the following lines:
With these full oft have I seen Moeris change To a wolf’s form, and hide him in the woods …
Apparently, the character of Moeris not only could change shape at will into that of a wolf but did so quite frequently. This is probably the first literary use of shapeshifting.
Four centuries later, around AD 43, the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela substantiated Herodotus’ story: “There is a fixed time for each Neurian, at which they change, if they like, into wolves, and back again into their former condition.” His comment “if they like” shows that the Neurians were not cursed or under a spell but could change themselves, at a certain time of the year, upon a whim.
Also during the heyday of imperial Rome, the renowned poet and pornographer Ovid reported upon King Lycaon of Arcadia who, to prove his godlike universal knowledge, placed before Zeus a hash made of human flesh. Zeus was not amused and did not care for his own god status to be mocked, so he transformed Lycaon into a wolf:
In vain he attempted to speak; from that very instant
His jaws were bespluttered with foam, and only he thirsted
His vesture was changed into hair, his limbs became crooked;
A wolf, he retains yet large trace of his ancient expression,
Hoary he is as afore, his countenance rabid,
His eyes glitter savagely still, the picture of fury.
Around the 2nd century AD, Greek geographer Pausanias wrote about Olympic boxer Damarchus who changed into the shape of a wolf at the sacrifice of Lycaean Zeus in Arcadia. Nine years later he turned back into a man. Although Pausanias had a hard time mustering up belief in this particular folktale and later referred to it as inaccurate, it gave rise to a cult of worshippers that sacrificed at the same temple in the hope of becoming wolves. The legend gave birth to the term lycanthropy and also to the association of werewolves with cannibalism. Those who became wolves by sacrificing at the temple of Lycaean Zeus could only become men again by abstaining from eating human flesh for the full nine years.
Another of Rome’s greatest literary figures, Gaius Petronius, wrote in Satyricon in the late 1st century of a dinner at which guests told supernatural stories about werewolves. This literary appearance of Roman were-wolfs, like Virgil’s, seems to have been pulled from contemporary lore and life in that era and not made up independently by each author.
By the 7th century, men of learning were already trying to find reasons for the werewolf phenomenon, exploring the possibility that it might be a mental or emotional disorder. Paulua Aegineta, a celebrated surgeon of his time from the Greek island of Aegina, included “melancholic lycanthropia” in his medical encyclopedia. He described animal transformation as a malfunction of the brain, brought about by “humeral imbalances” or hallucinogenic drug use. Though far from our modern concepts of mental illness, it was a giant step beyond the mainstream explanation of his time—“The Devil made me do it.”
Around the year 1000, Wulfstan II, Bishop of London, wrote a homily called Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, or Sermon of the Wolf to the English. It became his most famous work and is still studied by Old English scholars today. In it, he referred to the Devil as a werewulf—the first recorded use of the word in English. People so strongly identified Wulfstan with it that many referred to him as Lupus (Latin for wolf). After his death, many people claimed to have experienced miracles at his gravesite, yet the church refused to consider him for sainthood.
Werewolf Trials
Most of us are familiar with witch trials throughout history as times of extreme cruelty. The church and the government fought for control of the people, and in their zealous drive to mold society into their visions, the value of human life fell by the wayside. Though less well-known, possibly because the era is seldom mentioned in world history classes, the werewolf fever and subsequent trials were driven by the same ignorance and paranoia that created the great witch hunts. In the end, the two were joined by the populations and the churches’ common denominator: the Devil. By the time the trials came to a close, countless people had been murdered, and the paranoia that swept Europe began to subside under the weight of science.
Ukranian Prince Vseslav Briacheslavich was rumored to be a werewolf. He is often depicted as a gray wolf. Legend has it that he was born magically by his mother, so he had an ulcerated hole in his head. (That must be what a magic birth does to you.) The magicians put a magic bandage around it, which he wore until the day he died. He was a successful and popular military leader, often flying from place to place as if by sorcery. He is also recorded as having taken on the form of a lynx and being a sorcerer. He died in 1101.
Welshman Giraldus Cambrensis was a historian and an archdeacon of Brecon. He traveled extensively in Wales and Ireland and was a great lover of Irish music, although he despised the Irish people in general. His writings were accused of being biased and dishonest, and ridicule was leveled against him for being addicted to the cult of the superstitious and the practice of witchcraft. Much of this criticism was not without basis, because in 1187 he wrote Of the Prodigies of Our Times, and First of a Wolf Which Conversed with a Priest. What follows is a brief translation of a few of the passages:
I now proceed to relate some wonderful occurrences which have happened within our time. About three years before the arrival of Earl John in Ireland, it chanced that a priest, who was journeying from Ulster towards Meath, was benighted in a certain wood on the borders of Meath. While, in company with only a young lad, he was watching by a fire which he had kindled under the branches of a spreading tree, lo! a wolf came up to them, and immediately addressed them to this effect: “Rest secure, and be not afraid, for there is no reason you should fear, where no fear is!” The travellers being struck with astonishment and alarm, the wolf added some orthodox words referring to God. The priest then implored him, and adjured him by Almighty God and faith in the Trinity, not to hurt them, but to inform them what creature it was that in the shape of a beast uttered human words. The wolf, after giving catholic replies to all questions, added at last, “There are two of us, a man and a woman, natives of Ossory, who, through the curse of one Natalis, saint and abbot, are compelled every seven years to put off the human form, we assume that of wolves. At the end of the seven years, if they chance to survive, two others being substituted in their places, they return to their country and their former shape. And now, she who is my partner in this visitation lies dangerously sick not inspired by divine charity, to give her the consolations of your priestly office.”
At this word the priest followed the wolf trembling, as he led the way to a tree at no great distance, in the hollow of which he beheld a she-wolf, who under that shape was pouring forth human sighs and groans. On seeing the priest, having saluted him with human courtesy, she gave thanks to God, who in this extremity had vouchsafed to visit her with such consolation. She then received from the priest all the rites of the church duly performed, as far as the last communion. This also she importunately demanded, earnestly supplicating him to complete his good offices by giving her the viaticum. The priest stoutly asserted that he was not provided with it, the he-wolf, who had withdrawn to a short distance, came back and pointed out a small missal-book, containing some consecrated wafers, which the priest carried on his journey, suspended from his neck, under his garment, after the fashion of the country. He then entreated him not to deny them the gift of God, and the aid destined for them by Divine Providence, and, to remove all doubt, using his claw for a hand, he tore off the skin of the she-wolf, from the head down to the navel, folding it back. Thus she immediately presented the form of an old woman. The priest, seeing this, and compelled by his fear more than his reason, gave the communion, the recipient having earnestly implored it, and devoutly partaking of it. Immediately afterwards, the he-wolf rolled back the skin, and fitted it to its original form.
These rites having been duly, rather than rightly, performed, the he-wolf gave them his company during the whole night at their little fire, behaving more like a man than a beast. When morning came, he led them out of the wood, and, leaving the priest to pursue his journey, pointed out to him the direct road for a long distance.
Cambrensis’s journals and histories, while bearing a small amount of ambiguous fruit for music scholars on such topics as harmony, leave much more ambiguity for those studying the lycanthrope.
Around the beginning of the 13th century, Countess Yolande (daughter of Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders) commissioned a poem which was written in the form of an episodic roman d’aventure and set in Italy. Roman d’aventures are written using the elements of magic to play a role in the story line. In this particular case, it is memorable to note that the magic elements involved a werewolf. The countess’ poem has not survived, but pieces of the single surviving manuscript of an English poem of the same name written around 1350 still exist and are held at Kings College in Cambridge.
Marie de France composed her twelve Lais (poems) in the early stages of the 13th century. “Bisclavret” is one of those poems and tells an interesting tale of infidelity and lycanthropy. When a Barons wife wants to be with the knight she loves, she decides to discover where her husband goes many nights. It turns out that he is a werewolf and must strip from his clothes, which he hides in a safe place in the woods, before he can complete his lupine transformation. She discovers the hiding place and steals his clothes, thus debilitating his return transformation into human form. For over a decade he remains in lupine form until he gets an opportunity to kill the knight and retrieve his clothes, wherein he changes back into a human. During the tussle with his wife and the knight, he tears her nose from her face. The legend recounts that she bears daughters afterward who are also missing their noses.
The earliest dates concerning the contradictory and confusing stories of the wolf-boy of Hesse, Germany, are 1304, and quite often that changes to 1344. Sometimes that date is pushed as far ahead as 1744. The tale, which was originally related by Benedictine monks, tells of three boys—two from Hesse and one from Wetterau. Purportedly the first mentioned child, a boy of about three years of age, was taken by the wolves and not recovered until he was seven or eight. The wolves had fed him with meat from the hunts and suckled him. They would surround him with their bodies to keep him warm during the winter. Most probably, he was discovered and brought before the court of Henry, prince (Landgrave) of Hesse to be poked, prodded and observed. If this part is true, it is easy to understand why he preferred the company of wolves to men. If our current tabloids had been published back then, he would have been a cover model.
After the crusades in the Holy Lands, some knightly orders returning to Europe, such as the Cathers and the Knights Templar, imported heretical beliefs that challenged the mainstream Catholic Church. The pope appointed church courts called Inquisitions to eliminate them, which the Inquisitions did quite effectively. But in France, where the Cather influence had been strongest, after the knights had all been slaughtered or forced to flee and hide, the Inquisitioners soon found other “heresies” to occupy their attention. Best known of these was witchcraft.
The written authority for witchcraft trials, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), was written in Latin by inquisitor Heinrich Kramer and first published in Germany in 1486. The treatise was the judicial casebook of European witch and sorcerer hunts.
Curiously, the Malleus Maleficarum rejected the concept of werewolves and other shapeshifters. Kramer wrote:
Here we declare the truth as to whether and how witches transform men into beasts. And it is argued that this is not possible, from the following passage of Episcopus (XXVI, 5): Whoever believes that it is possible for any creature to be changed for the better or for the worse, or to be transformed into any other shape or likeness, except by the Creator Himself, Who made all things, is without doubt an infidel, and worse than a pagan.
The book was condemned by the church because it advocated illegal procedures and beliefs in non-Christian magic, and Kramer himself was denounced by the Inquisition. By declaring Kramer wrong, was the church taking the position that werewolves did exist? Many thought so. Some 80 years later, scholar Johann Weyer wrote in De praestigus daemonum that werewolves, witches and vampires did not possess humans, but instead it was Satan who put those thoughts into people’s minds so that they believed it was so. He argued that imagination and gullibility made them susceptible to the Devil’s influence—and that certainly was a crime under the Inquisition.
No place boasts more or better-documented accounts of werewolves than France, where between 1520 and 1630, over 30,000 werewolf trials were held, almost always resulting in a guilty verdict and a sentence upon the werewolf (loup-garou in French) as horrible as the fates of his victims. In a country where the secular laws of the time made no distinction between humans and animals—though they did not apply to nobility—werewolf trials became so popular that they were held on an average of one trial and conviction per day for more than a century, overshadowing the witch problem. Here is a sampling of those cases:
Known in history for nothing except being self-confessed werewolves, Michael Verdun, Pierre Borgot and an accomplice, probably Verdun’s wife, were charged with lycanthropy in Besancon, France, in 1521. Under torture, they confessed that years earlier they had stripped naked during a Sabbat of warlocks and anointed themselves with a salve that caused their legs to become hairy and their feet to transform into those of beasts. They roamed the countryside attacking children and adults alike to kill and eat them. They were finally captured when Verdun was wounded while in wolf form after attacking a traveler. The traveler followed the trail back to Verdun’s house, where he found him being bathed and his wound cared for by his wife. Convicted, they were burned at the stake.
During his trial, Pierre claimed he had pledged his soul to three demon horsemen years earlier in exchange for helping him save the sheep he was shepherding and this transformation had been the hideous result of that bargain. A beautiful Faustian contract if ever there was one.
In 1573, the small French village of Dole was held hostage by a werewolf serial killer. He targeted only children. Although people kept their kids indoors whenever possible, within only a few months, four children—two boys and two girls—were slaughtered. Their wounds showed both claw and teeth marks. One boy had a leg completely torn from his body. What was worse, the children had been cannibalized. Flesh had been torn from their bellies and thighs and eaten. The villagers knew a werewolf was in their midst.
Bowing to public pressure, the Franche-Comte Province authorities issued an edict on December 3, 1573, that not only permitted but encouraged the citizens to hunt and kill the werewolf responsible. It wasn’t long before a reclusive hermit by the name of Gilles Garnier was arrested and brought to trial. He had been spotted by a group of workers with the body of a dead child. At first, in the waning light, he had been mistaken for a wolf, but that was dismissed as an optical illusion of the twilight. During his trial he was reported by over 50 witnesses to have appeared at various times in the form of a wolf. Why they had never come forward until the trial is still a mystery.
During the trial, in which both Gamier and his wife were accused of the killings, he confessed to being a werewolf. He said that when he married, he moved with his wife to the countryside but he could not provide food for the two of them. One night while he was hunting, a ghost appeared to him and offered him an ointment that would change him into a wolf and bring him success as a hunter. Why the unknown specter was being so benevolent was never explained. Gilles chose to stalk and murder children simply because they were the easiest prey to catch.
His first kill was a ten-year-old girl whom he ravaged in a vineyard outside of the town of Dole. He strangled her, stripped her and ate flesh from her limbs. He then removed some of the meatier flesh from her and took it home to his starving wife. Presumably she ate it. A few weeks later he attacked another little girl but fled when interrupted by passersby. The girl was rescued from his clutches but died from her wounds a short time later. Soon afterward he attacked and killed a young boy and ate meat from his belly and hips. He also removed a leg to dine on later with his wife. His last kill was that of the young boy with whom the workers caught him. He was forced to run before he had a chance to eat.
Gilles was burned alive at the stake on January 18, 1574, having been found guilty of the crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft. No mention of what happened to his wife was reported. His ashes were scattered to the winds so that no resting place would exist.
In another account of a werewolf attack, dating back to 1588, a huntsman at his master’s estate in the mountains of Auvergne, France, got in a fight with a werewolf and hacked off one of its paws. The werewolf fled, but the huntsman retrieved the severed hand, put it in a pouch and brought it back and show his master. When they opened the pouch, they found instead a female’s hand wearing a large golden ring. The master sent the huntsman away with thanks and took the pouch and hand to show his wife. He found her nursing her bandaged arm. Ordered to remove the bandage, she revealed that her hand had been cut off. Under intense pressure from her husband, she confessed to being a werewolf. She was burned alive at the stake a short time later.
The case of madman Peter Stumpp is one of the more sinister in the annals of lycanthropism. In the late 1500s this cannibal killer was found to be responsible for the deaths of goats, lambs, sheep, children, men and women, including two pregnant women and their fetuses. Fourteen children in total was the number to which the Werewolf of Bedburg confessed to killing, not including the unborn. One of the 14 was his own son, whose brains he digested with great relish.
He said he would change into a wolf with the use of a magical belt which he would fasten around himself. The belt had been given to him by the Devil. He was finally apprehended one day when, according to him, the belt accidentally came loose and fell to the ground, turning him back into his human form. He pointed to the spot on the ground where the belt had fallen, but nothing was found. Some say the Devil snatched it back to where it properly belonged. Others say that Peter was just wacky.
He was also said to have an insatiable sexual appetite and had several mistresses, including his own daughter. He even confessed to sex with a succubus sent to him by Satan. Not only was he executed for his deeds, but his two mistresses (his daughter and another woman referred to as his gossip) were executed also. The details of his death were put down in a chapbook by George Bores entitled The Damnable Life and Death of Stubbe Peeter, which was published in 1590.
After Stumpp had been imprisoned, the magistrates found out through due examination of the matter that his daughter, Beell Stumpp, and his gossip, Katherine Trompin, were both accessory to various murders committed, and were burned to ashes at the same time and day as Peter, on October 31, 1589. Stumpp’s execution was the most brutal: he had his body laid on a wheel, and with red-hot, burning pincers had the flesh pulled off from his bones in several places; after that, his arms and legs were broken with a wooden ax or hatchet; afterward his head was struck from his body, and his carcass was burned to ashes.
In 1598, a vagabond by the name of Jacques Roulet was accused of being a werewolf and murdering a young boy in the countryside of Angers, France. After “examination” he confessed to the crime and was sentenced to death for lycanthropy, murder and cannibalism by the lieutenant criminel of Angers. On appeal to the Parliament of Paris, he was instead sent to the insane asylum for two years—probably a less unpleasant fate, but not much.
In the same year, the Werewolf of Chalons, also known as the Demon Tailor, was convicted of crimes so hideous that all the records were destroyed and his real name was lost to history. The offenses included ripping out throats and carving up bodies. The police found barrels filled to the brim with bleached bones in the cellar under his tailor shop. Unrepentant and blaspheming, he was burned to death for his crimes.
Also from 1598, a banner year for werewolf sightings, comes the strange case of the Gandillon family, issued from the Jura Mountains on the French-Swiss border. An enraged mob of peasants seized and murdered a mentally challenged woman by the name of Perrenette Gandillon. She had been accused of taking on the shape of a wolf and slaying a young boy and girl. Oddly, it was noted that “… the creature had no tail and human hands in place of its front paws,” leading some to believe that she had not been a werewolf at all.
To vindicate the mob’s action, the authorities arrested her sister Antoinette, her brother Pierre and his son Georges for witchcraft, worshiping the Devil, attending sabots and being werewolves. As proof, the prosecutor presented evidence that the men, while in captivity, barked and howled like wolves. All three were burned alive at the stake. Historians have suggested that they may have been infected by rabies, causing them to act as they did.
In 1603, in rural southwestern France, a 14-year-old boy by the name of Jean Grenier claimed responsibility for the deaths of several young girls in nearby villages. Lacking other suspects, they arrested Jean, who said he had slain and eaten the females while he was in the shape of a wolf. He told the judges that he could assume this shape by applying a magical ointment, though none was ever produced. The judges found that he suffered from lycanthropy induced by demonic possession. He spent the last seven years of his life in an insane asylum, where he died at age 21.
From about this point on one might presume that actual cases of lycanthropy ceased to exist due to the advances in science and industry and the relegation of legends to the fairy-tale category, and the folklore was reduced in importance to horror movies and books. Nothing could be further from the truth, and a few cases of famous modern wolf-men will be focused upon later in this book.
* * * *
LYCANTHROPIC LITERATURE
As the 15th century drew to a close, werewolves all but vanished from Inquisition courtrooms–or perhaps they had been all but exterminated by then. They soon resurfaced in a new kind of book known as the novel, where they have been a staple of Gothic horror ever since.
Histoires et Contes du Temps Passe (1697)–The year 1692 brings on one of the first tales of lycanthropy that doesn’t involve hunting down and eating humans. A man from Livonia by the name of Theiss claimed to be from a band of werewolves who not only didn’t eat humans but couldn’t. This may have been due to the shamanic spell cast upon his band. He did say that during the three nights a month in which they were transmuted into spiritual lupine forms that they would travel to Hell, leaving their human forms behind to fight for their fertility rites. Similar versions of this tale have shown up in other were-groups in non-neighboring countries.
Famous French author Charles Perrault is remembered for this collection of fairy tales. Besides the Disney favorites Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, he explored werewolflike themes like “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” thus inspiring lycanthrophobic nightmares in a dozen generations of otherwise innocent children.
Wagner the Were-Wolf (1857)–Written by popular British author George William MacArthur Reynolds, this is said to be the first werewolf novel written in English. The book tells of a Faustian exchange of youth for werewolfism during the time of the Inquisition.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)–Robert Louis Stevenson updated traditional werewolf themes, blending them with contemporary science, in his best-selling horror novel, still in print after more than a century.
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put a logical spin on traditional elements of werewolf legends in his best-known Sherlock Holmes mystery, which has been transformed into movies no fewer than 24 times. His werewolflike “hound from hell” was based on the Irish wolfhound, bigger than a wolf and among the largest dogs ever domesticated.
“From a History of Infantile Neurosis” (1918)—Sigmund Freud chose “the Wolf Man” as a pseudonym to hide the identity of his patient, Russian aristocrat Sergei Pankejeff, in an important case study. Freud picked the name because of a dream Pankejeff had about white wolves in a walnut tree, suggesting to him that the Wolf Man’s mental problems came from seeing his parents copulating “doggy style” when he was two years old. Pankejeff remained in therapy for 60 years and wrote his own memoir, The Wolf Man.
The Werewolf of Paris (1933)—Set in the French Revolution, this novel by American author and screenwriter Guy Endore featured motifs of both Freudianism and Marxism. Although it did not inspire werewolf movies of its era such as Werewolf of London (1935) or The Wolf Man (1941), it would later be brought to the screen as Curse of the Werewolf (1962) and remade as Legend of the Werewolf (1975). Endore himself was blackballed from Hollywood as a communist.
* * * *
Becoming the Wolf
When you dance with the devil, the devil don’t change … the devil changes you.
–MAX, 8MM
The werewolf as an allegory is the tale of mans duality. It’s the story of his good side, his conscious, fighting a daily battle with the little devil on his other shoulder, the beast. In the era of litigation and not owning up to our own actions, it is much easier to use someone else or something else as an illustration to highlight what is wrong with ourselves. Monsters are perfect scapegoats for that. Nobody cares about a bad monster, and we all hope he gets his comeuppance. For example, film director George Romero uses zombies as social statements on a regular basis because nobody has an emotional tie with a stinky, rotting zombie.
None of us wants to believe that we are responsible for irresponsible behavior. That is why the most popular type of monster (usually a male) is one that is cursed or accidentally transformed. Beauty and the Beast, Phantom of the Opera and The Wolfman are all types of tales wherein a man acts without rationality and can ultimately blame an outside source for his actions. Even Dr. Jekyll can blame the beginnings of Mr. Hyde on chemistry and science.
But for Larry “The Wolfman” Talbot, science and chemistry had nothing to do with his problem. He was attacked and bitten by a werewolf (the gypsy Bela who was cursed with lycanthropy) one night in the woods. Many legends have it that if one is bitten or clawed by a werewolf and lives, then he becomes a werewolf also. So now old Larry is cursed and unable to control the primal urges that cause werewolves to hunt and kill human beings. In some lore, the transformation only occurs on the night of the full moon. In others, it happens for multiple nights every month, usually three. However long the length of time is, the fact remains that the victim suddenly becomes a savage beast who will to do anything to destroy the civilization around him. That is why he is usually pictured as a rich or cultured person prior to the attack so that the transformation from man into beast came be at its most extreme. If he is wounded or killed while in wolf form, legend states that he will be restored into his human form. He may or may not still bear the wound acquired while fighting as a werewolf.
But what other types of reasons could be the cause of this shapeshifting? One of the earliest tales is related by Pliny the Elder in his book Natural History, in which he tells of lycanthropy by lottery. Someone is chosen from the village (shout out to Shirley Jackson) and taken to an enchanted marsh or pond. There he strips, hangs his clothes on a nearby tree and swims across the pond. By the time he reaches the opposite shore, he is changed into a wolf. He lopes off to join the wolf pack. He must, for the next nine years, avoid all human contact. After nine years he swims back through the enchanted water and emerges on the original shore in the form of a man whereupon he dons his clothes and rejoins his village.
Herodotus claimed that a tribe called the Neuri were sorcerers and each of them changed into the shape of a wolf, not every month, but just once a year for the period of several days. In his book A History of Magic, Eliphas Levi speculated that lycanthropy was actually an act of astral projection by a sleeping man who dreamed of being a wolf. The wolf projection hunts for meat, and if it is wounded while flying about, the sleeping man back at base camp bears the same wound.
Darwin commented upon the idea of a fetus forming a downy lanugo of fine hairs covering its body just prior to birth. When it escapes from the womb, the fetus sheds its skin with hairs and swallows it. Once ingested, it becomes mixed with the baby’s internal fluids and becomes part of the meconium which is dropped from its body during its first bowel movement. Some superstitions believe that first layer of hairy skin or fur never leaves the body and in fact is turned inside out upon transformation, becoming the pelt of the werewolf. This would work something like a reversible jacket that covered the entire body.
During the 16th century, the belief in lycanthropy was particularly widespread in Europe. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people who were suspected of being werewolves were torn open and ripped apart in an effort to find their furry under layers. A mass hysteria ensued between about 1520 and 1630 and the Parliament of Dole in France in 1573 only fueled the flames of fear and ignorance when they ordered an all-out hunt to capture, bind and kill the werewolf or werewolves who infested the district. People used sticks, halberds, spears, arquebuses, kitchen spits, fireplace pokers or just about any instrument they could get their hands on to detain and rip apart suspected werewolves. Thousands of cases of citizens being torn apart to try and expose the wolf hair on their inside-out skins were recorded. One can only imagine how many murders were never mentioned in the official registers.
In the more learned circles of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, nobody believed in a physical transformation. Instead, they believed in a mental transformation brought about by the influence of the Devil. As in cartoons, he would sit upon the persons shoulder and whisper things into their ear until they believed they were wolves. The other path to transformation was by magic much like the sorcerers of Neuri. Olaus Magnus wrote that 15th- and 16th-century Norsemen murmured a charm over a goblet of ale and then drank it. The magic took hold and they were mentally transformed into a werewolf. Almost always involving a charm or magical incantation of some sort, the Slavic people of Western
Europe smeared a magical ointment over their bodies and then put on a wolf’s skin or pelt or even belt of wolf’s fur and magically they were transformed into werewolves. In almost all cases, a talisman was secured and a charm was chanted aloud or even sung to complete the transformation.
The mystery was in how to obtain the charm. The first people to recognize the need to grasp these qualities and gain control over them were the witch doctors or shamans on the tribes and clans. They would chant and dance and conjure up spells to pull the desired essence from the wolves and place them in the men to make them great hunters.
Sometimes they would mix up an ointment or balm of some sort that they would rub on the person desiring these traits while chanting. Sometimes, at midnight under a full moon, they would make the person submerge themselves in a wolf pool or pond said to be filled with magical waters while singing incantations to the gods asking that the strength and persona of the wolf enter the client’s body.
Interestingly enough, there may have been some fun with hallucinogens going on, and quite a few of the ointment and salve recipes still known to us today contain some mighty powerful drugs, the kind of ingredients that would make almost anybody believe that they were just about anyone or anything (shout out to Carlos Castaneda). Some of these drugs and herbs were also found in witches’ ointments used to make a person fly. There is no doubt that they did. It doesn’t mean anybody actually left the ground though. However, use too great a dosage and cardiac arrest and death would soon follow. Henbane, monkshood and belladonna are just a few of the poisonous ingredients mixed into potions that made people think they had superpowers and were wild animals.
Sometimes, as in the enchantress Circe, the wizards turned their powers onto others and not themselves. Some of these people had the bodies of wolves while having very human heads, and the werewolves of medieval Ireland were entirely in wolf form but remained very human underneath their skin. But no matter how it happens and whether it is physical or mental, there is a transformation of some sort going on. Wolves are not the only things that people transform into, as you shall see.
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WEREWOLVES OF MERRY OLDE ENGLAND
Why is it that in Great Britain there are very few stories of werewolf attacks? Truth be told, it is because the ruling class took werewolves quite seriously. They knew that there were two great threats from werewolves. First was the fear of deaths of innocent people attacked where they lived, traveled or slept. Mass hysteria could sweep through the populace and create panic. Second was the very real threat of rabies. Though the medical basis for rabies was not understood, everyone knew that people infected but not killed by rabid animal bites turned into werewolves; most people had seen it happen before.
In the 10th century, King Edgar ordered that not only the wolf population but also the werewolf population of England be destroyed. His efforts almost succeeded-but not quite. So in 1281, King Edward I again ordered all wolves eradicated, and werewolves, whether they existed or not, began to spread their campaign of fear across the island nation. A massive government hunt succeeded in exterminating wolf and werewolf alike. Stories of werewolf attacks faded from public consciousness for the next three centuries.
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Other Were-Creatures in Existence
Man needs to preserve the beasts because without them we have no humanity; without our humanity we cannot control the beast.
–D. H. ALTAIR
Much of the fact, folklore and legend of the were-creatures depend upon the geographical location from whence the reports originate. At one time it was widely believed that when a werewolf died it would become a vampire. This created not only another connection between werewolves and vampires but also formed a common belief system that takes into account all forms of shapeshifters. There was also a belief in Greece that both the werewolf and the vampire are of the undead, although the believers of this are few and far between. Vampires are the only one of the folkloric shapeshifters who are actually reanimated dead beings.
In The Natural History of the Vampire by Anthony Masters he states:
The same kind of religious and pagan hysteria surrounds the werewolf myth as surrounds the vampire myth. There is no doubt that the belief was genuine …
In many, many cases believing makes it so. Author Jon Izzard uses the term therianthrope as a term to not only describe werewolves, but all shapeshifters who transform between human and animal and back again.
In the 1800s, priests watched graves in Normandy during a werewolf scare, afraid they were going to open up and attack and ravage the countryside in packs. One of the most unusual beliefs was in New Zealand, where lizards were feared because they contained the malignant souls of those who had not received last rites.
Making the ever-popular connection with devils and sorcery, Malaysians, believed that the ghosts of evil wizards entered the bodies of tigers and became were-tigers. Ethiopians held the belief that the King of the Devils rode about on a fire-breathing wolf and was followed by his minions in the form of a pack of wolfs. This was the very thing feared by the Malaysians, and yet these countries are far apart. Did both of these places make up the same story independently or is there a truthful connection here?
There is a Japanese legend of the white werefox named Kitsune (the Japanese word for fox). Seemingly bewitched, she transforms into the shape of a beautiful woman, marries and has children. In the legend, when her husband discovers her secret, he loves her too much to do her harm and she is too beautiful to let go, so she spends her days with him and her nights as a fox.
What was going on with the ancient Egyptians? One would be hard-pressed to believe that lifetimes of toil and building went into creating the Sphinx at Giza to represent a pretend creature. But there is sits, with the body of a lion and the head of a man. Many Egyptian gods represented this duality; the jackal-headed Anubis, the falcon Horus and the crocodile Sobek. Are these pretend fairy tales for adult Egyptians, idle imagination that all of their gods seem to represent the meeting point of man and animal, or a naïve form of show-and-tell? History reveals there is much more to it than just that.
The Navajo Indians of North America had their “skinwalkers” or “tricksters” who are thought of as evil entities and in cahoots with the tribal medicine men. This is yet another example of the sorcery-shapeshifting connection. If you can think of the animal, it has probably its own transformation tales surrounding it including bats, coyotes, turkeys, donkeys, lynx, owls and panthers. There is even a name for transforming into a cow, boanthropy, or a dog, kuanthropy. One of the oddest is the were-cuy craze that roared through the small villages of the Peruvian Andes. In the end, the cuy were hunted down and the deliciousness of the common guinea pig was discovered from a diet born of fear.
Oucurro Grabling, a professor of geomasonary at the University of Credence in Iceland, is currently studying the strange phenomenon of were-statues. He believes that when giants roamed the earth (a historical truth written about not only in scientific books but religious tomes as well) the shamans would cast a spell on them which literally turned them into stone statues. The Medusa mythology is a lasting remnant of these tales. The purpose of these statues was to stand guard on the coastline and watch for approaching vessels. Professor Grabling believes the heads at Easter Island are actually several of these giants still standing guard. Although the earth has piled up over the centuries and overgrown the statues’ bodies up to their necklines, they are ever vigilant, transmitting telepathy messages back to an unknown receptor. There are those that still believe that Stonehenge is actually the leftover ruins of a (for lack of a better term) playpen for young giant children being held captive until they had grown sufficiently to allow them to be put into service.
The list of were-beings is seemingly endless, as are the reports of werewolf attacks throughout history. The background is there, but in most cases I don’t think you are going to be attacked by a werecow. However, a werewolf attack is a distinct possibility, more so for some of us than others. My job as a researcher is to provide you with enough information to withstand or elude an attack from a shapeshifter. Let us begin that journey.