It’s believed that the
transformation was achieved by any of the following methods:
Curse: An ill-fated
man could become victim of witchcraft or fall under curse of evil spirits. The
person then would involuntary turn into werewolf.
Bitten by Werewolf: Another common believe was that anyone could become one if saliva of an
werewolf could find a way to blood stream; might be from bite or scratch.
Putting on Wolf Skin: Most easiest way of becoming werewolf; however, there have been debates
concerning effectiveness of the method. An evil minded person could put on hide
of a dead wolf and become a werewolf. In case the complete skin was unavailable,
a belt or girdle of wolf hide would supplement it.
Occult or Devil Worshiping: A wicked person can start worshiping the Devil and surrender his soul to
it. The Devil then would grant him the power to become a werewolf. In some
cases it could be any evil spirit answering to devotion.
Magic Salve or Ointment: A good number of recorded cases mention a potent salve or ointment with
which werewolf would rub their bodies for transformations. The compositions of those
ointments were different, but generally contained plant ingredients like
nightshade, belladonna and henbane. Pig fat, turpentine and
olive oil were used as solvent for them. Later when the distillation of spirits
was perfected, alcohol served the purpose.
Rituals: Evidence
of ceremonial rituals is often mentioned in the werewolf cases. The rituals
were mainly any combination of the voluntary methods of becoming a werewolf. First the afflicted man
would locate an isolate place and trace a big circle on the soil. On the centre
of that circle he made a fire and prepared his magic ointment. (After rubbing
his body with the ointment, he would wear the wolf hide and concentrate on
prayer to the Devil. At the end of the process the man turned into a wolf and
ran in quest of prey.
Whatever triggers the transformations the fact is werewolves are
portrait to history as evil creatures. Herewith are a few episodes:
DRUKEN WEREWOLF TERRORIZES CAMPGROUND
When Ohio
deputies were called in to deal with a disturbance at a local campground they
had no idea that they were about to come face to face with a vicious but completely passed-out lycanthrope with a penchant for way
too much vodka. It may be that you can only kill werewolves with silver, but
apparently getting them totally sloshed doesn't constitute much of a challenge.
According to an arrest report filed on the
incident, Thomas Stroup, 20, of Sheffield Township, was taken into custody on
May 29, 2011, around 12:30 a.m. at the Timber Ridge Campground.
Ohio Lorain County Sheriffs deputies had received a call of a man acting angrily and becoming violent with campers and animals. When deputies arrived at the scene, according to the report, they found Stroup passed out in a trailer. Deputies say Stroup smelled of alcohol and when he was eventually were able to wake him up, he began growling at them.
Stroup was placed under arrest for underage consumption and told authorities that he had blacked out from drinking too much vodka that evening.
According to the report Stroup went on to say that ever since he was scratched by a wolf in Germany he blacks out when the moon comes out and goes on the attack.
Ohio Lorain County Sheriffs deputies had received a call of a man acting angrily and becoming violent with campers and animals. When deputies arrived at the scene, according to the report, they found Stroup passed out in a trailer. Deputies say Stroup smelled of alcohol and when he was eventually were able to wake him up, he began growling at them.
Stroup was placed under arrest for underage consumption and told authorities that he had blacked out from drinking too much vodka that evening.
According to the report Stroup went on to say that ever since he was scratched by a wolf in Germany he blacks out when the moon comes out and goes on the attack.
It should be noted that the deputies did not actually observe Stroup's
paranormal shape-shifting, but keep in mind that May 29th was nearly a New
Moon. The next Full Moon doesn't happen for another week, so the authorities
will probably need to keep him in jail until then if they want to, say, film
his transformation for posting on YouTube. He'd have to give his permission for
that, of course, but I'm thinking they could always convince him to sign a
release by bribing him with more vodka.
Williamette Werewolf Attacks (on his own words)
In 2007 my fiancé and I decided to meet late at
night and lie beneath the stars and make out. We decided to choose a place that
was well lit but private. So we chose Montieth Park in Albany, Oregon where the
both of us live. At the park they have this wooden deck that juts out over the
water, so we decided to lay there on some blankets. It was around one in the
morning. I laid down the covers on the deck and we had just both snuggled into
the blankets when we heard a very big splash in the water behind us. This was a
really huge splash, like something really large jumped into the water.
We jumped up real quick and looked over the railing
at the water. Something about 7 feet or longer that was black in colour and it
had hair all over it. It swam clear around the deck. The deck is 14 feet wide
and 25 feet long. It swam really fast and around the deck in about 20 seconds.
In the process of getting to the bank on the side of the deck it had grabbed a
sleeping duck and bit into it whole. It then went onto the bank breaking limbs,
and crunching on the duck.
My fiancé was extremely frightened, as was I. But I
wanted to see this "thing" up close. So I jingled my keys over the
deck to attract the "thing". It then let out a very deep growl from
the shadows of the trees. Sort of like a dog does when you approach his bowl
when he is eating. But times that by 1000. Both of us were very concerned and
scared crapless by now. I went over and grabbed the blankets to get out of
there. Just as we turned to leave and go up the ramp and into the park, the
growl got closer to us. But we lost sight of the "thing." We took a
few more steps up the ramp towards the park, there was another growl.
I don't know how to accurately describe this growl,
but it was deep, guteral, almost from the very bowels of the thing. It held the
tone of the blackest anger with the lust of killing. And it made both of our
blood run cold. We both thought at the time that we were seriously going to
die.
Anyhow, my fiancé and I took off running. The only
thing I thought of was to protect her by running directly behind her and
putting myself between her and the "beast." I never told her but
where the ramp ends; there is foliage on both sides that lead down to the river
banks. As I crossed the threshold of the ramp, I caught a glimpse of the
"beast" to my left standing by a tree. It was huge and the most evil
thing I have ever seen. It reeked of wildness and had very angry eyes.
We made it back to our car and took off at high
speed.
Since that day, often I dream of being an animal
myself, running on all fours and hunting in a dark city that is barren. I can
taste the thrill of hunting in my mouth as I salivate.
A year later I was playing with my children in the
front room, my fiancé was at work. We were playing tag around the furniture and
when they both ran behind the couch and then down the hallway, I jumped over
the couch; clearing it by two feet and landed on all fours and ran on all fours
after them while growling. They had stopped and stared at me and screamed. I
don't remember this, but they had told me afterwards.
I believe that I became "linked" with the
"thing" in the park and now know how it feels. Like I mentioned
above, there have been 23 other accounts in the past two years of this beast or
more of them, in the area. And over half of the people I talked to that saw the
beast says that they have dreams of being an animal hunting. We call it being
"marked."
SHAPE-SHIFTING WEREWOLF OF TEXAS
Mrs Delburt Gregg of Greggton, Texas, told of her
encounter with a shape-shifting creature in the 1960 issue of Fate. The other
surveyed sightings below are of creature that looked like man-wolves but no one
have seen one becoming another. Mrs Gregg have not seen a man turned into a
wolf but she has actually came closer than anyone else in telling a tale that
sounds like a chapter from a werewolf novel than a real life experience.
Mrs Gregg said that one night in 1958 when her
husband was on a business trip, she moved her bed close to a screen window
hoping to catch some cool breeze from a thunderstorm brewing on the south
western horizon. She heard a scratching sound from the window shortly after she
fell asleep. In a flash of a lightning, she saw a huge, shaggy, wolf-like
creature clawing at the screen and staring at her with baleful, glowing, silted
eyes. She saw its bared white fangs.
The creature fled from the yard into a clump of
bushes as she leaped from her bed to grab a flash light. Mrs Gregg said "I
watched for the animal to come out of the bushes, but after a short time,
instead of a great shaggy wolf running out, the figure of an extremely tall man
suddenly parted the thick foliage and walked hurriedly down the road,
disappearing into the darkness."
WISCONSIN WEREWOLF SIGHTING
Mark Schackelman was driving east of highway 18 near
Jefferson, in southeastern Wisconsin on an evening in 1936 when he saw a figure
digging in an Indian mound. He saw a hair covered creature that is over six
feet tall with both ape-like and dog-like features with pointed ears standing
erect. Its hands have shriveled thumb and a forefinger on each and also three
fully formed fingers.
Schackelman went back to the sighting the next
evening hoping to see the creature again and he did. The creature was making
"neo-human" sounds with a three syllable growling. Years later, his
son who is a Kenosha newspaper editor, wrote that his "father's first
thought was that it must be something satanic."
WEREWOLF CREATURE IN OHIO
Between July and October 1972, a number of residents
of Ohio allegedly saw a werewolf-like creature. Some people reported
encountering a six to eight-foot tall creature that a witness described as
"human, with an oversized, wolf-like head, and an elongated nose."
Another said it "had huge, hairy feet, fangs, and it ran from side to
side, like a caveman in the movies."
WEREWOLF ATTACK REPORTED IN NEW MEXICO
Four Gallup, New Mexico, youths allegedly
encountered a "werewolf" along the side of a road near Whitewater one
day in January 1970. One witness reported "It was about five feet seven,
and I was surprised it could go so fast. At first I thought my friends were
playing a joke on me, but when I found out they weren't, I was scared! We
rolled up the windows real fast and lock the doors of the cars. I started
driving faster, about 60, but it was hard because that highway had a lot of
sharp turns. Someone finally got a gun out and shot it. I know it got hit and
fell down, but there was no blood. I know it couldn't be a person because
people cannot move that fast."
NAVAHO SKIN-WALKER
Skin-walker is another name for a werewolf that the
Navahos of the southwest. In 1936, in Yale Publications in Anthropology,
anthropologist William Morgan recounted an interview with a Navaho identified
only as Hahago. Hahago said of skin-walker "They go very fast. They can go
to Albuquerque in an hour and a half" - a four-hour trip by automobile,
according to Morgan.
RED EYED WEREWOLVES OF PENNSYLVANIA
In the fall of 1973 western Pennsylvania played host
to dozens of reports of strange apelike creatures, sometimes seen in
association with UFOS, said to have (in one witness's words) "fire red
eyes that glow in darkness." To be seven to eight feet tall, and gives off
a strong unpleasant odour. "Another type of creature" investigator
Stan Gordon noted, "was said to be between five and six feet tall. It was
described as looking just like an extremely muscular man with a covering of
thick dark hair. Again in these reports, the arms were very long and hung down
past the knees. This creature appeared to have superior agility exceeding that
of a deer. From footprints discovered, the stride of creatures varies between
52 and 57 inches. In these reports there was no indication of odours."
WISCONSIN WEREWOLF ATTACK
On October 31, 1991 at
8:30pm, a woman drove on Bray Road near Delavan, Wisconsin which is
approximately thirty miles south-southeast of Jefferson(site of Schackelman
encounter in 1936), felt her right front tire jump off the pavements if it had
hit something. The woman stopped her car and looked into the misty darkness and
saw a dark hairy creature with a bulked-out chest racing towards her. She went
back into her car and tried to speed away when the creature leaped onto her
trunk. The creature eventually fell off from the trunk because the trunk was
too wet to have a firm grip. Later, the woman returned with a friend and they had a
glimpsed of a big form rising from the side of the road.
WISCONSIN WEREWOLF ENCOUNTER
Lorianne Endrizzi had a similar encounter as above
in the fall of 1989. She was driving on Bray Road, a half a mile away from the
above encounter, where she thought it was a person kneeling in a hunched
position at the edge of the road. She slowed down and to her surprise, the
figure stared at her at no more than six feet across the passenger side of the
car. The figure was covered with greyish brown hair, with big fangs and pointed
ears. "His face was long and had a snout, like a wolf." She told
reporter Scarlett Sankay. The figure's eyes glowed in the darkness and they
were a yellowish-gold colour. 'The arms were really a kind of strange; jointed
like a man or woman would be," she said. "He was holding his hands
with his palms upward. The arms were muscular 'like a man who had worked out a
little bit." The backed legs looked like they were behind him, like a
person kneeling." The sighting lasted about 45 seconds and she had no idea
what the creature could have been until she saw an illustration at the library
of a werewolf.
WEREWOLF SIGHTING
Around that same time as above in Elkhorn, near Delevan, a dairy farmer named Scott Bray saw a "strange looking dog" along his pasture on Bray Road. It was bigger and taller than a German shepherd; it had pointed ears and hairy tail, with long, scraggly greyish black hair. It is "built heavy in front - a real strong chest." In the soft soil nearby he found enormous footprints which are four to five inches in diameter.
WEREWOLF TIMELINE
1550 BC – King Lycon
of Arcadia serves human flesh to the god Zeus and is transformed into a wolf as
punishment. The term “Lycanthrope” is derived from this story.
440 BC – In “ "Histories of Herodotus", the traveller Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BC –
425 BC) writes of the Neuri people, who transform into wolves once a year.
400 BC – A victorious Olympic boxer by the
name of Damarchus,
an Arcadian of Parrhasia, is said to have transformed into that of a wolf at
the sacrifice of Lycaean (Wolf) Zeus, and nine years after he became a man
again.
37 BC – Roman poet Virgil (70 BC – 19 BC), in
the “Eclogues”, tells of the change of Moeris to the form of
a wolf by the use of herbs.
2 BC – 8 AD – Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD)
writes "Metarmophorsis"
including a verse about Lycaon, who is transformed into a wolf by the god Zeus.
60 – "Satyricon", by Roman
writer Petronius (27-66 AD), contains a detailed account of a soldier who is a
werewolf.
970 – A man named Baianus is believed to be
able to turn himself into a wolf through the arts of necromancy.
1020 – First use of the word “Werewulf”
recorded in English
1101 – Death of Vseslav Bryachislavich, the
most famous ruler of Polotsk, believed by many to be a werewolf.
1182 – Welsh historian Giraldus Cambrensis (1146 – 1223) encounters Irish werewolves who transform during the Yuletide feast. The werewolves were reportedly natives of Ossory, whose people had been cursed by St. Natalis for their wickedness.
1194-1197 – Guillaume de Palerne composed.
1198 – Marie de France composes Bisclavret.
1250 – Lai de Melion composed.
1502? 1521? – The three werewolves of Poligny,
Pierre Bourgot, Michel Verdung (or Udon), and Philibert Mentot are burnt at the
stake being werewolves.
1541 – In Pavia, Italy, a farmer in the form
of a wolf is said to have torn many men in the open country to pieces. After
being captured, he assures his captors that the only difference between himself
and a natural wolf, was that in a true wolf the hair grew outward, whilst in
him it struck inward. In order to put this assertion to the proof, the
magistrates cut off his arms and legs, and he dies from wounds.
1555 – Olaus Magnusrecords strange behavior of Baltic werewolves.
1573 – Gilles Garnier the Werewolf of Dole, is burnt at the stake.
1578 – Jacques Rollet goes on trial in Paris.
He was found guilty of being a werewolf.
1588 – The Werewolf of Auvergne is
burned at the stake.
1589 – Peter Stubbis executed in Germany after terrorizing the countryside near Cologne in the
form of a wolf.
1590 – Michel Jaques confesses to becoming a
wolf seven or eight times after anointing himself with an unguent given to him
by the devil.
1598 – The Werewolf of Chalons, known also as the “Demon Tailor”, was arraigned in
France on December 14, on murder charges.
1598 – The same year, the Gandillon family,
a sister, brother and two of the man’s children were tried together in France.
1598 – Jacques Roulet,
a begger, is arrested in Caude in the vicinity of Angers, France for being a
werewolf.
1602 – Michée Bauloz, along with Jeanne de la
Pierre and Suzanne Prevost are condemned.
1603 – Teenage Jean Grenier tried as werewolf and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
1623 – There are a series of court trials in
which eighteen men and thirteen women are tried for lycanthropy.
1692 – An 80-year-old man named Thiess
is tried in Jurgenburg, Livonia. He confesses to being a werewolf. Judges sentence
Thiess to ten lashes for acts of idolatry and superstitious beliefs.
1764 – 1767 – The Beast Of Geaudan Beast Of Geaudan terrorizes the former province of Gévaudan, in the
Margeride Mountains in south-central France. There were over 100 victims.
1812 – Grimm Brothers publish their version
of “The Little Red Ridding Hood.”
1824 – Antoine Leger tried for werewolf
crimes and sentenced to lunatic asylum.
1852 – Traveling vendor Manuel Blanco Romasanta confesses to the murders of thirteen people. Romasanta
was tried in Allariz and eluded capital punishment by professing he was a
werewolf.
1865 – “The Book of Were-Wolves” The Book of Were-Wolves is written by the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould.
Still considered one of the leading books on werewolf history.
1920 – Right-wing terror group “Operation Werewolf” established in Germany.
1933 – British Occult writer and clergyman
Montague Summers publishes “The Werewolf.” He is still known today for his
ridiculous writings on witches, vampires, and werewolves.
1941 – The film “The wolf Man”
starring Lon Chaney Jr. is released.
1948 – Robert Eisler delivers his lecture
“Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and
Lycanthropy” to the Psychiatric Section of the Royal Society of Medicine in
London, England.
1981 – The film “An American Wereeolf in London” is released and includes first four-footed
werewolf.
1989 – The first sighting of "The beast of Bray Road"