by Peter Jekel
All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil. —Ovid
The Sound of Moonsong, the howl of the wolf, is a sound that few people will forget, once heard. It carries over the still night for kilometers around to surround the listener, like unseen wraiths coming in for a final entrapment from which there will be no escape. It truly is an eerie sound but it is also a very beautiful sound at the same time, perhaps reminding us of our primeval past.
Today we know not to fear but to admire the wolf as a reminder of our close link to Nature. During the Middle Ages of Europe, however, when fear and superstition were the norm, fear of God, fear of the Devil and his minions, the Demons, and most importantly, fear of the Church itself, the wolf was a seen as a creature of terror. The wolf was hidden away in the deep dark forests just beyond the small villages of the day, feeding that fear with its unnerving howl and legacy of mutilated bodies of livestock. Corpses on the all-to-frequent battlefields of Europe were also fair game for the ravenous wolf. The wolf indeed was the Devil’s work. To add to the terror, there was also a belief that it was possible for a person to be transformed into the dreaded wolf through witchcraft or the work of the Devil.
Legends of shapeshifting from human to animal form are found across all cultures. In most cases, the werebeast is a predatory creature, often the most feared by the locals. In Africa, there are stories of werehyenas, werelions and wereleopards. In the case of werelions, the ability to transform is associated with royalty; kings were said to be able to transform into lions. The lions of Tsavo that killed hundreds of workers between March and December 1898 during the building of the Kenya-Uganda Railway, were thought by many of the locals to have been kings who took on a lion shape to repel the European invaders. One novel by Jamaican writer, Marlon James, captures the essence of the werehyena, rare in modern literature, in his very graphically written Black Leopard, Red Wolf.
In South America, there are legends of werejaguars, India, weretigers, Japan and Korea, werefoxes and in Europe, werebears and of course the werewolf. In Navaho stories from southwestern United States, there are references to monsters known as Skinwalkers. Skinwalkers are demons that have the ability to transform into animals, most often coyotes.
In Europe, the tales of transforming from human to wolf form, goes back to the ancient Greeks. Lycaon was the King of Arcadia who had through his many wives, fathered fifty sons but only one daughter, Callisto. The King was instrumental in civilizing the region of Arcadia located at the centre of Greece’s Peloponnesian Peninsula. However, the sons of Lycaon were becoming lax in their tributes to the gods which angered the king of the pantheon of Greek gods, Zeus. He decided to visit the family disguised as a peasant. One of Lycaon’s sons convinced his father to serve the poor visitor human flesh, the source of which was one of his many sons, Nyktimos. The flesh was mixed with the meat of sheep and goat to create a stew for the masquerading Zeus. Zeus, aware of the trickery, turned Lycaon and all of his sons into wolves. Nyktimos, on the other hand, was restored to life in his human form.
Homer’s The Odyssey has been analyzed by neurologist Dr. A. Larner who indicates that the hero Ulysses, when confronted by the goddess of magic, Circe, is in actual fact describing a case of lycanthropy.
Other early sources of this shapeshifting ability comes to us from Ovid Roman poet (43BC- 18AD), who lived during Augustus’ reign, wrote of tales of men who lived in the woods of the Peloponnesian peninsula of Greece, taking the form of wolves. Another Roman poet, Petronius (27-66AD) who lived during Nero’s notorious reign is most famous for his satirical novel, Satyricon which contains chapters about werewolves and witches. Other Roman writers such as Virgil and Pliny the Elder also told of tales of man-wolves.
Many European fairy tales which were passed down orally for centuries before being put into writing and many describe characters that though not necessarily werewolves are shapeshifters nonetheless. Jack the Giant Killer (transformation of a character into a doe) and The Black Bull of Norroway (transformation of a character into a black bull) are both examples of such fairy tales that feature shapeshifting from Britain. Interestingly enough, there is a lesser known The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh that bears a resemblance to the more modern Snow White. In the story, a princess is transformed into a dragon by her evil stepmother; the reason for the curse was due to the fact that the princess had been compared to the stepmother for beauty. Other European countries also have their stories of shapeshifting.
Germany, for example, is the place of origin of the story of The Frog’s Bridegroom, which had been slightly altered into The Frog Prince and The Frog Princess in other retellings of the tale. The Brothers Grimm told the tale of the Foundling Bird which features multiple transformations of the two main characters of the story. A old French fairy tale resulted in today’s Beauty and the Beast, which has taken on many modern incarnations as musicals, plays and television series. In all of the cases, the transformations were a form of punishment for a transgression. Only when true love is found were the transformed animals returned to their original human form.
In other transformation fairy tales, the alteration is part of a punishment. There is the Norwegian East of the Sun and West of the Moon, in which an evil stepmother transforms a man into a bear hoping to force him to marry her daughter. In Lithuania, Egle the Queen of the Serpents, the heroine and her children are transformed into trees as a punishment for a betrayal. The Finnish story, The Merchant’s Sons, is a tale of two brothers one of whom seeks the hand of the tsar’s evil daughter. The girl is not interested and attempts to murder the young man. Instead, true justice is done as the man is able to instead, turn her into a mare that both he and his brother ride.
Nature itself has some ingenious shapeshifters. Cuttlefish and their close relatives, the octopi, are masters of blending into their background both to find prey but also evade predators. Ironically, it has been determined that cuttlefish and depending on the species of octopus are colour-blind, at least in their eyes. How do they mimic the colour of their surroundings then? Current thinking is that they are able to detect colours and textures not through their eyes, but their skin. Through specialized cells in their skin called chromatophores, which are normally associated with sight in other animals, they are not only able to change colour, but they can also morph their skin to mimic the texture of the background.
According to the mythology, how does one become a werewolf? One idea from the Swedish writer Olaus Magnus of the 16th century, suggested that one could become a werewolf by drinking a cup of special beer and repeating an incantation. Another is that one could become a werewolf by sleeping outside in the summer with a full moon shining in your face. Stripping naked and putting on a wolfskin belt, drinking water from rain collected in an animal footprint and rubbing a magic balm have all been suggested as a means of turning into a werewolf. Sorcerers and an allegiance to Satan have also been suggested as being a way of turning. Science fiction author, Brian Stableford, wrote The Werewolves of London trilogy that is set in 1872. It centres around two characters, David and Gabriel, who become unwitting hosts of powerful fallen angels who themselves are in a struggle of their own, that could decide the fate of the world.
It is not only Satan that can create a werewolf. Christian saints, demons and even angels have been reported to turn people into wolves. In fact in 1692, in Jurgensburg, Livonia (now modern Latvia and Estonia), a man named Thiess of Kaltenbrun, who was on trial for heresy, claimed that he was a werewolf, though not in league with the Hounds of Hell, but with the Hounds of God, whose mission was to go to Hell and do battle with witches and demons. Irish Saint, St. Patrick, reputedly transformed a Welsh king into a wolf. A sixth century Irish monk, Natalis, doomed a family to being wolves for seven years.
How does one recognize a werewolf? As the reported metamorphosis beings, the body becomes hairier, the eyes redden, the nose drops, the ears lengthen and the skin becomes courser. Some will claim that they can recognize a werewolf when in human form. Hairy palms, the thumbnails that are left uncut to resemble claws, tattoos resembling a crescent moon and eyebrows that are slanted and meet in the centre of the forehead. Other signs include paleness, feeble vision, an unnatural dread of water and always being thirsty. It is also stated that a full moon will bring out the werewolf. At least one author expanded on this concept of the lunar cycle and created a Hugo Award winner. Suzy McKee Charnas wrote the feminist story, Boobs, where the lunar cycle not only brings on a girl’s first menstruation but transforms her into a wolf.
There are reportedly ways to kill a werewolf. To do so, you must destroy the beast’s heart or brain. The most efficient way to kill it is with a silver bullet, possibly due to the fact that silver is alleged to have had mystical healing powers in many pagan religions.
However, a silver bullet might not always be at your disposal. Water has been recommended as a cure with holy water being all that more effective. The other cures are more drastic and would probably not just kill a werewolf but pretty well anything. One can draw a werewolf’s blood until it faints (how one gets close to a werewolf is not explained), lop off its penis, flog the werewolf, make the werewolf drink milk and whey for three days, force it to drink salt water or to blow its head off.
The werewolf of nightmares was not always a reality either. Interestingly enough, as early as 1584, Reginald Scot, an English statesman and the author of The Discoverie of Witchcraft, viewed lycanthropy (person changing into a werewolf) as not a transformation but a disease. Clinical lycanthropy was described as a type of insanity where the patient believes he or she has transformed into a wolf.
Shapeshifting into a werewolf, as well, on its own, was not always considered inherently evil as indicated in the twelfth century story of the shapeshifting Alphouns, who acts as the protector of the rightful heir to the Sicilian throne, William of Parlerene. However, with the fear instilled by the all-powerful Church in the masses with the threat of the Inquisition, the werewolf was transformed from a protector to a representation of pure evil.
Starting in 1428, Switzerland conducted a series of witch-hunts resulting in trials. For up to eight years, people were executed for suspected witchcraft and werewolfery.
From 1520 to 1630, France carried out a series of horrific werewolf trials with weak or speculative evidence, thirty thousand trials in total. The sentence of a guilty verdict was death, death by burning alive.
Not all suspected “werewolves” were innocent though. There was the case of Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun who were both executed in 1521. Their victims included a woman, a seven year old boy and a four year old girl. Each of the victims was partially eaten by the notorious pair. They achieved their ferocity by stripping naked and rubbing themselves with special ointments. Pierre Gandillon and his son, Georges, in 1584, killed and ate a young child. Like Burgot and Verdun, before them, they achieved their power by rubbing an ointment on their bodies. In 1603, there was the famous case of young fourteen year old Jean Grenier, who confessed upon capture, to being a werewolf, after having met a dark man in the depths of the woods; he had escaped to the woods to get away from the beatings that he experienced at home. The dark man taught him to make a ointment to render him all-powerful. Grenier was sentenced to die for the crime of being a werewolf, but only by virtue of a local cloister was the young man spared and sentenced to life in an abbey. He lived there for another eight years, all the while consuming offal and running around on all fours.
France was not alone in its horrific characters that were reputed to be werewolves. Perhaps the most famous werewolf story, in fact, was the story of Peter Stumpp who up until his capture on March 31,1589, terrorized the area around modern Cologne, Germany. For many mornings, people in the area would wake up only to find their loved one beside them half-eaten. At his trial, Stumpp confessed to his crimes. He had reputedly killed sixteen people in total, including two pregnant women and thirteen children. He would drink their blood and then feast on their flesh. His most fiendish murder he reserved for his own son, whose skull he cracked open and consumed the brains. His punishment was somewhat different than most werewolf executions. Rather than being burned, he was executed by the pulling off of his flesh with the assistance of a hot pincer.
In 1764 to 1767, the region of Gevaudan in the south of France was gripped by the fear of a pair of wolves who killed up to one hundred people. Huge bounties resulted in the deaths of over a thousand wolves. Even the army attempted to stem the killing of people by the wolves. It was only with the killing of the pair of murderous wolves by bounty hunters that the ravaging of the village stopped. It was widely believed at the time, that the pair of human-eating wolves were, in fact, werewolves.
More often than not, the trials resulted in the execution of innocents. One, for example, was the execution of Gilles Garnier, who in 1573, lived outside of Lyon, France, as a hermit. He was put to death for the alleged eating of the flesh of young children. With a series of unsolved child murders in the area, the authorities needed a scapegoat and what could be better than a social outcast like a hermit who was intimidated to confess.
There was also the sad case of Jean de Nynauld, who in 1615, was sentenced to die by burning for being a werewolf. The evidence against her was that she was missing a hand. Coincidentally, at the same time, a man had reportedly been attacked by a wolf, only to have escaped death by cutting off the paw of his attacker. Trial judges determined that the man had been attacked by the woman who had taken on the form of a wolf. Modern study of the trial proceedings by historians appears to point to the fact that the man had instead raped the young woman and cut off her hand. He then used the fear of the werewolf as a cover for his heinous crime.
It is the evil satanic monster that is the subject of many nineteenth century tales of the shapeshifters, especially werewolves. Scottish novelist, Leitch Ritchie, wrote, in 1831, The Man-Wolf. In 1839, The Phantom Ship by Frederick Marryat, an English naval officer and novelist, features a seductive woman who is able to transform into a wolf. The year 1847 saw the publication of English author George Reynolds’ Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, about a kindly man makes a pact with the devil to become a werewolf to acquire wealth, not unlike the “deal with the Devil” found in Christopher Marlowe’s classic sixteenth century play, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Alexandre Dumas, writer famous for his tragic tale, The Three Musketeers, also published in 1857, The Wolf Leader, a fantasy about a hunter who encounters a wolf-man on one of his travels and enters into a horrible pact with the creature. George MacDonald’s 1883, The Princess and Curdie, tells of transformation of humans into beasts, but the transformation is very slow. The heroine, Curdie, is given the power to detect the transformation before it happens. Clemence Housman, in 1896, wrote The Were-Wolf, about a female werewolf that seduces her victims only to transform into her monstrous form when the victims are at her mercy. Perhaps the most famous transformation story is the novella written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There is no werewolf or other animal in the story, but the evil comes in the form of a transformed person from his good persona into his murderous alter ego.
The twentieth century continued with evil demonic shapeshifter tales. Possibly the most prolific author of shapeshifter, in this case specifically, werewolf stories, is English author Algernon Blackwood. Most of his stories were published in the early 1900’s. American author, Guy Endore, published the quintessential werewolf novel, The Werewolf of Paris in 1933. Stephen King wrote the novella, Cycle of the Werewolf in 1985. It is set in a small town where a character changes into a werewolf once per month on the eve of a full moon. Thai composer and writer, S. P. Somtow wrote Moon Dance about a wealthy European werewolf family that emigrate to the Old West of the United States to search out new hunting grounds. Werewolves in London by M. L. Hamilton is a serial murder mystery with a clue left behind by the wily killer, the howl of a wolf.
Venturing beyond the original werewolf shapeshifter motif, Stephen King also wrote a more horrific story, It, about a shapeshifter that is able to take on many forms, often based on the main fear of the victims; most commonly it is seen as a clown.
Science fiction also saw an opportunity for tales in shapeshifting, more often than not, going beyond the standard werewolf story. Some writers see shapeshifters as another form of humans. Jack Williamson wrote the short story, Darker than You Think that sees werewolves as being a separate species. Frank Herbert’s famous Dune series, also has shapeshifters called Tleilaxu Face-Dancers, who are a type of human that can change their appearance at will. Sheri Tepper wrote the True Game series, that features shapeshifters who are a subspecies of humans. Gene Wolfe’s The Hero as Werewolf, appears to be somewhat of a variant of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, which has a distant Earth future where humans have evolved into separate species. In Wolfe’s tale, genetically fit humans have been bred to not only be healthy but more importantly, placid, whereas descendants of those abandoned by the utopian future, feed on those who are responsible for their current state of affairs. Ron Goulart wrote an entire science fiction humour series, Chameleon Corps, about shapeshifting secret agents. Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed is about two immortal Africans. One of the two is able to transform herself into any human or animal and the other character wants to take advantage of the ability to breed a group of superhumans. M. A. Foster wrote The Morphodite, which follows an assassin that is able to get away with his/her crimes by changing into the opposite sex after each kill.
Some science fiction authors have taken the distinct species of humans a step further by offering a biological explanation for the werewolf. James Blish’s There Shall be No Darkness and Randall Garrett’s The Breakfast Party, are both examples of stories that feature biological rationalizing behind the existence of the werewolf.
Whitley Streiber wrote The Wolfen, that features wolves with an almost human intelligence that exist to provide a natural control of humans as a result of humans no longer being governed by the laws of Nature. Streiber also wrote Wild Country, that follows a man who, as his life’s misfortunes accumulate, takes on the appearance of a boar-like werewolf.
Some science fiction authors have created the technological shapeshifter; that is, some form of technology is developed that allows the creation of shapeshifting beings. One early such story is Abraham Merritt’s The Metal Monster which features a shapeshifter, a robot of sorts, that is able to rearrange its body parts. Clifford Simak’s The Werewolf Principle is about a human astronaut who has been altered by genetic engineering to take on the shape and personalities of the aliens that he encounters, one of which is wolflike, hence the title. K. W. Jeter dramatized the transformation of a dog into a weredog utilizing a matter transmission technology in his novel Wolf Form.
In other science fiction, the shapeshifters are aliens. Science fiction editor extraordinaire, John W. Campbell, also was an author, albeit of far too few stories. One of his most famous is the short story, Who Goes There? about an alien lifeform that can change into the shape and retrieve the memories of any person or animal that it absorbs. It is truly a tale of paranoia at its best. In Wayne Trotman’s Veterans of the Psychic Wars, Niburians are described as an ancient race of psychic shapeshifters. They have the ability to transform into people who are both living and dead. James Blish’s A Style in Treason, has an alien shapeshifter that is known as a vombis. Robert Silverberg wrote the Lord Valentine series which has hostile alien shapeshifters known as the Metamorphs. Robert Sheckley wrote Keep Your Shape, that describes Earth’s biodiversity as being hugely tempting to alien shapeshifters. Sheckley’s bijou Aesopian fable is of shape-adapting alien invaders who are enthralled by the diversity of earth’s species. Overwhelmed by the freedom to exercise their morphological talents, the invaders become trapped by their own ideals in suitable earthly forms. Robert Stallman, wrote the Book of the Beast trilogy that follows the life of a werewolf from his adoption when he was young through when he grows up with the end goal of trying to eliminate his wolf legacy. Al Sarrantonio’s Moonbane follows a father and son pair who explore the aftermath of a meteor shower only to be attacked by a werewolf.
Philip K. Dick turned the alien shapeshifter story on its head in his Oh, To be a Blobel, in which alien blobels and humans engaged in a war that creates a great deal of confusion in its participants since both sides had been modified to shapeshift into the other.
Fantasy writers have also taken advantage of the concept of a shapeshifter. Mary Stewart wrote A Walk in the Wolf Wood. It centres around a man who lives as a wolf in the woods. Cassandra Clare wrote a trilogy known as The Infernal Devices, about a character who can literally change into any type of being, whether it be natural or supernatural or living or dead. All that she needs is to hold one of the being’s belongings. In a similar vein, Patricia Brigg’s wrote a number of werewolf fantasies in her Mercy Thompson series. The series follow the life of a character, Mercedes Thompson, who was raised by werewolves. In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series there are several werewolf characters. Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea series features animals being created by a wizard who eventually forget that they were once human. One excellent short story, Lusus Naturae, by the author of a science fiction classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, centres around a young woman whose parents fake her death to hide the fact that she is a werecat.
A pair of the superstar series of fantasy fiction also contains shapeshifters. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the main villain, Sauron, is a shapeshifter and in the later, Silmarillion, he takes on the form of a gigantic werewolf at one point in the novel. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has several transforming creatures, including one character who is able to transform into a cat as well as wizards or witches called Animagi that can transform into other animals at will. There are also a couple of werewolves in the series, one of which is afraid of infecting others with his curse and the other more in keeping with the werewolf of horror stories.
Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos features a main werewolf character. It is a science fantasy (containing elements of science fiction and fantasy) that takes place in an alternate universe where lycanthropy is not a social deviance. The tale also contains other shapeshifter characters one being a weretiger and the other a werefennec (small African desert fox). Larry Niven also wrote a science fiction/fantasy crossover story in his What Good is a Glass Dagger a part of his The Magic Goes Away series. The series is about a world where magic is powered by something called mana, a limited natural resource that will eventually be exhausted. At the opening of the story an Atlantean werewolf, Aran, tries but fails to steal a warlock wheel, an instrument developed by a Warlock character. The instrument is rapidly depleting the mana. Unfortunately, as the mana continues to be used, Aran reverts to his human form. At the end of the story, he is found working as a rug merchant.
What could be the source of werewolf and other werebeast beliefs? What could cause a human to turn to committing the heinous crimes attributed to werewolves and other werebeasts? One idea is that the mythology was started with an attempt to explain the horrific disease of mammals, especially carnivores like canids: rabies. Rabies is a disease that is transmitted through the inoculation of another mammal with the virus-laden saliva of an infected animal. The animal, once symptoms start, will become increasingly irritable, sometimes salivating heavily and will often show exaggerated responses to stimuli. A rabid animal may wander aimlessly, becoming increasingly vicious, often snapping at other animals, people and even inanimate objects. Fear of water caused by the paralysis of the larynx muscles is a common symptom attributed to rabies; rabies is also known as hydrophobia for this very reason. Rabid wolves in medieval Europe were a scourge that did exist, much like the Black Plague, but on a more localized level. Rabies is a cyclical disease, predominately affecting wild populations of canids that tends to go through peaks and valleys through the years. Infected rabid wolves would descend into small villages, reaping carnage and terror to everyone in their paths only to disappear again when the virus burned out the local canid population. It has been speculated that the wolves that terrorized Gevaudan, known as the Beasts of Gevaudan, were the result of a persistent epidemic of rabies in the local wolf population. The mass killing of the wolves was probably what truly stopped the attacks, and the final killing of the two wolves at the end was merely the last of the infected population. Only with the creation of the rabies vaccine in 1885 by Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, did this illness cease to further plague the populace.
Rabies was to be feared on two levels. Firstly, the initial attack by a rabid animal, but secondarily, there was something more sinister. A human that was bitten by a rabid animal will normally begin to develop symptoms about two to eight weeks after the infected bite, if left untreated with rabies vaccine, though it can also be as short as a few days or even months and in one particular case documented by the Centers for Disease Control, ten years. The time delay all depends on a number of factors, the amount of virus injected into the system from the bite and the distance of the bite inoculation from the brain. The further that the bite occurs from the brain generally means the slower the development of rabies. Once it begins, though, it causes in the victim, hyperactivity, disorientation, hallucinations, stiffness of the neck and biting objects and other animals and people. It is truly a horrific and painful death in most cases. There has been one documented case of someone recovering from rabies but only with massive modern medical technology, often referred to the Milwaukee protocol.
Another possible explanation for mass irrational behavior on the level of a ravenous werewolf is drugs. In Europe, during medieval times, rye was a staple food for the poor and was used mainly in the making of bread. The wealthier classes were more privileged and ate wheat bread. Rye, unfortunately, is prone to a fungus called, Clevicseps puepeura. It appears as a black club-shaped growth on top of rye seeds; the toxin produced by the fungus is not broken down by any food processing including the extreme heating needed to bake the bread. The mould is hard to miss, being about four times the size of a grain of rye, but in a poor hungry class of people, even mouldy food was not to be shunned. The alternative of starving to death was not an option.
Unfortunately, ergot, the toxin produced by the mould, not only can cause gangrene, it also contains an alkaloid constitution not unlike of the hallucinogenic drug, LSD, an acronym for lysergic acid diethylamide. LSD changes a user’s mood and thoughts and can even cause alterations in one’s perceptions of space and time. Sensory perceptions can become so skewed that users have reported being able to “hear” visions and “smell” sounds. The drug can increase heart rate and blood pressure. It can even result in rapid reactionary movements. Pupils become dilated in a fixed eerie stare, something that is often reported by those who have claimed to have seen a werewolf. Ergot and LSD can also cause a tingling sensation of the extremities which some scientists have likened to the sensation of shapeshifting. The gangrene caused by ergot poisoning can cause affected areas of the face and limbs to take on the appearance of flesh sloughing off, perhaps giving the victim the appearance of a monster, a werewolf.
In modern times, there was an outbreak in 1951 of ergot poisoning, in a small village in France. The local populace had eaten bread that was contaminated with the ergot mould. Reports from the town indicated that people described being pursued by horrible monsters and beasts.
Other drugs can also affect the behavior of the user. Some the alleged werewolves from 1400’s to 1600’s Europe reported that they had rubbed an ointment on their bodies prior to committing their heinous crimes. The ingredients change, depending on the accounts that are read; however, there is one consistent ingredient and that is belladonna, a member of the nightshade family, the same family as the tomato and potato. Belladonna is a native plant of southern and central Europe that grows to between two and four feet in height. The single stem rests atop a six inch white root. The leaves are a dull green and varied in sizes. The plant also grows berries, also known as Devil’s Cherries, in September. Since they are reportedly very sweet, they can entice a consumer to not just eat one but perhaps several. The results, however, in sharp contrast to the taste, are extremely unpleasant. Loss of voice, uncontrolled movements of the fingers, the unrestrained bending of the trunk of the body (sensation of shapeshifting?) and dilation of the pupils are all symptoms of belladonna poisoning. Eating of the berries is not even required to feel their effect either. Merely rubbing the berries onto the skin which may be abraded with small cuts is enough to begin to experience a belladonna poisoning. Belladonna toxin, like that of ergot, has alkaloids very similar to that of LSD.
More recently, a man displayed symptoms of therianthropy (transformation into animals other than wolves) due to the consumption of Ecstasy, claiming that he changed into animals such as a donkey, horse and a pig.
Many North American indigenous people had a legend of a mythical monster, the Wendigo. It could appear as a monster with some human characteristics or as a spirit possessing a human. The monster appeared gaunt, as if it were starving, like a skin covering a skeleton with an odour of decay. In some cultures it would appear as a giant. In all cases, the monster was cannibalistic. Is it possible that perhaps the legend of a werewolf or other transformations of humans into animals or other creatures has its basis in something more basic? Perhaps starvation, all too common in many early societies, may have caused hallucinations of physical transformation into animals or alternatively it may also be a way to rationalize cannibalism, a taboo in most human cultures.
A couple of fiction writers have certainly taken advantage of this mythical beast. The first one that appears in non-indigenous myths is found in Algernon Blackwood’s The Wendigo. The story takes place in northwestern Ontario and centres around a couple of men who embark on a moose hunt with two guides only to find that one of the guides has transformed into a hideous beast. August Derleth, who is perhaps most famous for publishing H. P. Lovecraft’s bizarre works, also wrote some horror fiction of his own. The Wendigo appears in two of his short stories, The Thing that Walked in the Wind and Ithaqua.
What about transformation being a mental disorder? Clinical lycanthropy (or therianthropy) is a real but rare condition and is often associated with a psychotic episode caused by schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression. Those afflicted with clinical lycanthropy actually believe that they have either transformed fully or are in the process of transforming into an animal. In some cases they will actually take on animal behaviors such as howling, growling or moving about on all four limbs
In 1975, the Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, reported on the investigation of a case of a twenty year old male who thought that he was a werewolf. He was diagnosed with lycanthropy (from the Greek lycos for wolf and anthropos for man). The cause of the young man’s condition was from the ingestion of a combination of LSD and strychnine (a poison used, ironically for predator control-it acts by paralyzing its victim). Only with drug and psychiatric therapy, did the man make a full recovery.
Another case was a thirty-seven year old man who not only acted in an violent manner, he also let his hair and nails grow giving him the appearance of a werewolf. He would even howl at the moon. The cause of his bizarre behavior was due to a form of psychosis. When placed on antipsychotic drug treatment, his condition stopped.
Science certainly appears to be able to explain lycanthropy or therianthropy as a mental disorder. What about the appearance of a werewolf? Ergot poisoning with its gangrenous symptoms is one explanation but there are others. One is a series of genetic disorders known collectively as polyphoria which is an affliction of the heme, the essential component of hemoglobin, the oxygen carrying molecule of red blood cells. The disease’s symptoms include light sensitivity, reddish brown teeth and ulcers that destroy the cartilage and bone tissue of an individual resulting in facial and limb deformities. Sometimes the lips are so deformed that the victim may have a permanent sinister snarling appearance.
Another condition that gives the sufferer the appearance of a werewolf is called congenital hypertrichosis universalis. It is a rare genetic disorder that is characterized with the individual experiencing excessive hair growth, especially on the face. It has even been suggested that those suffering from the more common Down’s Syndrome were the original source for werewolf myths.
We can see that there are many explanations for the existence of werewolves, but none fit the pattern entirely. Some diseases explain the appearance of the werewolf and others the behaviors though ergot poisoning could explain both.
Perhaps much like the vampire of legend, the werewolf and its shapeshifting kin are nothing more than a way to explain diseases or conditions that to early populations, caused fear. There is also the possibility that lycanthropy and therianthropy were ways of getting rid of undesirables much like the witch hunts of Europe and later in Salem, Massachusetts. It could also be explained as being the result of something as simple as outlaws dressing up in wolfskins and other animal skins such as those of a bear, to terrorize travellers. In fact, the Vikings had a group of warriors, known as Berserkers, who dressed in wolf and bear skins and were known for ruthless ways, terrorizing the coastal European populations. All in all, when one looks at how we dealt with the accused werewolf, such as the horrible execution of Peter Stumpp, in spite of his monstrous crimes, or worse, the execution of tens of thousands of innocents but still accused werewolves in France by burning them alive, one must really look at where the true monster lay. Perhaps it is looking right back at you.
References
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