by Aaron Mahnke
One of the stories in the Volsunga Saga involves a father-and-son pair, Sigmund and Sinfjotli. During their travels, the two men came upon a hut in the woods where they found two enchanted wolf skins. These skins had the power to change the wearer into a wolf, giving them all the characteristics that the beast was known for: power, speed, and cunning.
The catch, according to the saga, was that once put on, the wolf pelt could be taken off only every ten days. Undeterred, the father and son each put on one of the wolf skins and transformed into the beasts. They decided to split up and go hunting in their new forms, but they made an agreement that if either of them encountered a party of men over a certain number—and most translations say that number was seven—then they were supposed to howl for the other to come join them in the hunt.
Sigmund’s son, however, broke his promise, killing off a hunting party of eleven men. When Sigmund discovered this, he fatally injured his son. Thankfully, the Norse god Odin intervened and healed the son, and both men took off the pelts and burned them.
So from the very beginning, werewolves were a supernatural thing. A curse. A change in the very nature of humanity. They were ruled by cycles of time and feared by those around them.
GOING CONTINENTAL
Things get interesting when we go to Germany, though. In 1582, the country of Germany was being pulled apart by a war between Catholics and Protestants, and one of the towns that played host to both sides was the small town of Bedburg. Keep in mind that in this era there were also still outbreaks of the Black Death, so this was an age of conflict and violence. People understood loss. They had become numb to it, and it would take something incredibly extraordinary to surprise them.
First there were cattle mutilations. Farmers from the area surrounding Bedburg would find dead cattle in their fields. It started off infrequently but grew to a daily occurrence, something that went on for many weeks. Cows that had been sent out to pasture were found torn apart. It was as if a wild animal had attacked them. Naturally, the farmers assumed it was wolves.
But it didn’t stop there. Children began to go missing. Young women vanished from the main roads around Bedburg. In some cases their bodies were never found, but those that were had been mauled by something horribly violent. Finding your cattle disemboweled is one thing, but when it’s your child or your wife, it can cause panic and fear. The community spiraled into hysteria.
When we think of historical European paranoia, we often think of witchcraft. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were filled with witch hunts, burnings, hangings, and an overwhelming hysteria that even spread across the Atlantic to the British colonies, where it destroyed more lives. The witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, are the most famous example.
But at the same time, Europe was also on fire with fears of werewolves. Some historians think that in France alone, some thirty thousand people were accused of being werewolves, and some were even executed for it, either by hanging or by being burned at the stake. The fear of werewolves was real.
For the town of Bedburg, it was very real. One report from this event tells of two men and a woman who were traveling just outside the city walls. They heard a voice call out to them for help from the trees beside the road, and one of the men stepped into the trees to give assistance. When the man did not return, the second man entered the woods to find him, and he also did not return.
The woman caught on and attempted to run, but something exited the woods and attacked her. The bodies of the men were later found, mangled and torn apart, but the woman’s never was. Later, villagers found severed limbs in the fields near Bedburg—limbs from the people who were missing. It was clear something horrible was hunting people in the area.
Another report tells of a group of children playing in a field near the cattle. As they played, something ran into the field and grabbed a small girl by the neck before trying to tear her throat out. But the high collar of her dress saved her life, and she managed to scream. Cows don’t like screaming, apparently, and they began to stampede. Frightened by the cattle, the attacker let the girl go free and ran for the forest.
This was the last straw for the people of Bedburg. They took the hunt to the beast.
THE FACE OF THE MONSTER
According to a pamphlet from 1589, the men of the town hunted for the creature for days. Accompanied by dogs and armed for killing, these brave men ventured into the forest and finally found their quarry. Interestingly, though, they claimed that they had spotted a wolf, not a man, and quickly chased it down.
In the end it was their dogs that cornered the beast. Dogs are fast, and they beat the men to their prey. When the hunters did finally arrive, they found the creature cornered.
According to the pamphlet, the wolf transformed into a man right before their eyes. While the wolf had been just another beast, the man was someone they recognized. It was a wealthy, well-respected farmer from town named Peter Stubbe (whose name is sometimes recorded as Peter Stumpp).
Stubbe confessed all, and his story seemed to confirm their darkest fears. He told them that he had made a pact with the Devil at the age of twelve. The deal? In exchange for his soul, the Devil would give him a plethora of worldly pleasures. But like most stories, a greedy heart is difficult to satisfy.
Stubbe admitted to being a “wicked fiend with the desire for wrong and destruction,” and he acknowledged that he was “inclined to blood and cruelty.” To sate that thirst, the Devil had given him a magical belt of wolf skin. Putting it on, he claimed, would transform him into the monstrous shape of a wolf.
Sound familiar?
He told the men who had captured him that he had taken off that belt in the forest, and some were sent back to retrieve it, but it was never found. Still, superstition and fear drove them to torture and interrogate the man, who confessed to decades of horrible, unspeakable crimes.
Stubbe told his captors that he would often walk through Bedburg and wave to the families and friends of those he had killed. It delighted him that none of them suspected he was the killer. Sometimes he would use these walks to pick out future victims, planning how he would get them outside the city walls, where he could “ravish and cruelly murder them.”
Stubbe admitted to going on killing sprees simply because he took pleasure in the bloodshed. He would kill lambs and goats and eat their raw flesh. He even claimed to have eaten unborn children ripped straight from their mother’s wombs.
RATIONALIZATIONS
The human mind is always solving problems, even when we are asleep and unaware of it. The world is full of things that don’t always sit right with us, and in our attempt to deal with life, we rationalize.
In more superstitious times, it was easy to lean on old fears and legends. The tuberculosis outbreaks of the 1800s led people to truly believe that the dead were sucking the life out of people. The stories that gave birth to the vampire mythology also provided people with a way to process the existence of a disease such as TB and its horrible symptoms.
Perhaps the story of the werewolf shows us that same phenomenon, but in reverse. Rather than creating stories that help explain the mysteries of death, perhaps we created the story of the werewolf to help justify the horrors of life and human nature.
The tale of Peter Stubbe sounds terrible, but when you hold it up to accounts of modern-day serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer or Richard Trenton Chase, it’s par for the course. The difference between them and Stubbe is simply four hundred years of modernization. With the advent of electric lights pushing away the darkness, and global exploration exposing much of the world’s fears as just myth, it has become more and more difficult to blame our flaws on monsters. The beast, it turns out, has been inside of us the whole time.
And Peter Stubbe? The people of Bedburg executed him for his crimes. On October 31, 1589—Halloween, mind you—he was given what was thought to be a fair and just punishment. He was strapped spread-eagle and naked to a large wooden wheel, and then his skin was peeled off with red-hot pincers. They then
broke his arms and legs with the blunt end of an axe before finally turning the blade over and chopping off his head.
His body was burned at the stake in front of the entire town, and then his torture wheel was mounted on a tall pole, topped with a statue of a wolf. On top of that, they placed his severed head. Justice, or just one more example of the cruelty of mankind?
Perhaps in the end, we’re all really monsters, aren’t we?
ONE OF THE most chilling historical events of the last two hundred years—one that has fascinated me for most of my life—is the 1846 pioneer journey of the families and employees of James Reed and George Donner.
I can’t think of a last name that evokes as much emotion, as much fear, and as much instant visual imagery as Donner. In the years since that fateful winter, that name has become synonymous with mountain passes, frozen bodies huddled around dead campfires, and of course cannibalism.
The Donner story has a way of stopping us in our tracks. We are morbidly fascinated with their tragic journey, but even more so, we’re amazed at how far they went to stay alive. Their story forces us to look straight into the face of a fear that most people bury deep beneath the surface: people eating other people.
We can look for justification, we can research the reasons behind their situation and write sterile and safe papers about the horrible plight they found themselves in. But at the end of the day we are simply and powerfully horrified.
From the story of Hansel and Gretel to the modern television show Hannibal, we have always maintained a repulsive fascination with those who cross the line. We can’t stand to think about it, and yet we can’t look away, either. Maybe it has to do with the morbid symbolism of one body within another body. Perhaps it’s the realization that, like cattle or wild game, humans can sometimes become food for something—or someone—else.
Or perhaps, deep down, we’re fascinated with cannibalism because we believe maybe—just maybe—it could turn us into monsters.
A DEEP HUNGER
Humans have been confronted with cannibalism for a very long time. Archaeologists have discovered signs of the act that date back tens of thousands of years. In some instances the reasons have clearly been ritualistic, while other situations have been driven by food shortages. There’s a lot we still don’t know, but what we do understand has highlighted the fact that long ago it was far more common than it is today.
In the realm of ancient history, Greek and Roman historians recorded instances related to war and conquest. The Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, for example, resulted in scattered reports of cannibalism. Decades later, when the Romans attacked Numantia, historians in Alexandria recorded similar stories.
One interesting observation is that, over the centuries, the accusation of cannibalism has been a political and colonial tool. The ancient Greeks assumed that all non-Hellenistic peoples were barbarians and cannibals, and used that assumption to justify their hostility toward them. For many empires, even up through to the British Empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was a way to demonize a group of people and to grant themselves permission to come in and take over that group’s territory. To bring the gift of civilization, so to speak.
But the assumption led to deep prejudice against these peoples. One example, from 1820, stands out. That was the year a whaling ship called the Essex was rammed and sunk by one of the whales it was pursuing. If that sounds familiar at all, it’s because that story went on to inspire the novel Moby-Dick. After the accident, the captain and crew of twenty-one boarded three of their whaleboats.
They had two choices for a route to safety: sail three thousand miles against the wind to Chile, or half that distance with the wind to the Marquesas Islands. But the Marquesans were rumored to be cannibals, so they took the longer route. As a result, the crew spent months at sea, and eventually resorted to cannibalism to survive.
Reality can be cruel. And ironic, apparently.
But something darker sits at the center of many cannibalism stories. At the core of almost all Native American cultures across Canada and the northern portion of what is now the United States, there are stories of the supernatural effects that eating other humans can have on a person.
Each tribe seems to refer to the stories with different terms, but they are all eerily similar. Wabanaki legends speak of a man-eating snow giant, the giwakwa. The Cree tell tales of the witiko, also a giant and also a man-eater. The Micmac tribes of northern Maine up through Nova Scotia tell stories of the chenoo, creatures that once were human but were transformed through some horrible crime, usually cannibalism.
The most common name for these creatures among Native Americans, however, is one we already know from popular culture. This is the wendigo, a creature that was once human but was transformed by its hunger for human flesh into a monster that can’t ever be satisfied.
One Native American description of the creature claims a wendigo is taller than a grown man, with a gaunt body and dead skin that seems to be pulled too tightly over its bones. Tales speak of the tangle of antlers upon its head, and the deep eye sockets that seemed to be dead inside. And it smelled of death and decay.
In Cree mythology, though, the wendigo was simply a human who had become possessed by an evil spirit. The spirit would take over a person—a neighbor, a friend, a sister, a son—and then turn its hunger and hatred toward the people around it. There was no hope for those who were transformed into man-eating creatures. Only one solution was available: these creatures must be hunted and killed. It’s fantasy; it’s a cultural meta-narrative about something else, something deeper. At least, that’s what the anthropologists tell us.
But some have taken those legends at face value.
SWIFT AND HUNGRY
Swift Runner was a Native American from the Cree tribe who lived in the western portion of Canada. He was born in the early 1800s and worked as a hunter and trapper in the country north of Fort Edmonton, as well as a guide for the North-West Mounted Police.
He was a big man, standing over six feet tall, and according to the reports, he was well liked and respected among his people. He and his wife had six children. It was said that he was a loving father who cared deeply for his family. Which is why the winter of 1878 will be remembered as a tragedy.
According to the reports, Swift Runner stumbled into a Catholic mission in St. Albert sometime in the spring of 1879. He was distraught and unfocused. He told the priests there that the winter had been harsh and that his entire family had starved to death. He was, in fact, the only one to make it out alive.
But something didn’t sit right with the priests. For one thing, Swift Runner didn’t look like a man who had endured starvation throughout the winter months. He was a solid two hundred pounds and seemed healthy and strong. Another hint that all was not well were his nightmares, which often ended with him screaming.
In the end, the priests reached out to the Mounted Police. A group of investigators was dispatched to look into the matter, and they took Swift Runner back to his winter camp. To his credit, Swift Runner was helpful. He immediately showed the men a small grave near his campsite and explained that it was the grave of one of his boys.
They even went as far as to open the grave, and everything lined up with his story. They were the bones of a child, and it was safe to assume the child was Swift Runner’s. But then the police discovered other clues that began to paint a darker picture. Around the camp in scattered locations, they began to uncover more bones. And a skull.
Not just a few, either. There were bones everywhere. Some of the larger bones were hollow and snapped in half, clearly the result of someone sucking the marrow out. They also found bits of flesh and hair. The evidence began to pile up, and they looked to Swift Runner for an explanation.
That’s when he told them the truth. According to him, a wendigo spirit came to their camp during the winter. It spoke to him and told him to eat his family. At first he resisted, ignoring the voice, but slowly, over time, the wendigo too
k control. And then it took action.
Swift Runner’s wife was the first to die. Then one of the younger boys. One by one, his family was killed and eaten. Then the creature moved on to his mother-in-law and his own brother. To Swift Runner, it was cold fact: a monster had eaten his family. The police agreed. What they disagreed on was the identity of the monster.
The mutilated human remains were collected and transported to Fort Saskatchewan, along with Swift Runner himself. His trial began on August 8, 1879, and it was about as cut-and-dried as it could be. Both the judge and jury refused to accept the story of the wendigo. They saw the man as a murderer and sentenced him to be hanged.
More than sixty people gathered at the fort on December 20 to watch the hanging. One witness to the execution, a man who had reportedly seen several hangings in his life, was said to have slapped his thigh and declared, “Boys, that was the prettiest hanging I ever seen.”
THE HUNTERS
The Severn River in Ontario winds through the homeland of the Sandy Lake First Nation. This area of Canada is so isolated that it wasn’t until the early decades of the twentieth century that the Western world really made the effort to reach out and connect with the people who lived there. It’s way up in the far western corner of Ontario, in the kind of territory where lakes have islands that have their own lakes.
By the late 1800s, the Hudson Bay Company had closed down enough of its trading posts that the closest one to Sandy Lake was more than 140 miles away. That was a fifty-hour walk across rough terrain. I’m not really sure that “isolated” is a strong enough word. This place was practically alien.
Jack Fiddler was born in the 1830s. Or maybe it was the 1840s—most people aren’t sure. But we know he was a Cree Indian, and that he worked as a trader. He made the trek between the villages and the trading posts for a living, and in the process he met a lot of people. He was the son of the Sandy Lake people’s shaman, and over his lifetime he had five wives and many, many children.