The Complete Idiot's Guide to Werewolves

by Brown Robert

  In Tanzania, a country on the western coast of Africa, during the early twentieth century, a mystical lion-rite cult violently rose to power. This cult would purchase mentally disabled children and hold them in complete social isolation until they reached adulthood. Needless to say, this caused the children to grow up with extremely savage and sociopathic tendencies. Once adults, these prisoners would be dressed from head to toe in the skins of lions in order to give them a frightening appearance. They were regarded with fear throughout the region and were referred to as “The Lion Men.” The cult then sold these Lion Men to local tribal leaders, usually as war-slaves. They were also used at times as assassins because their savagery often allowed their attacks to be dismissed as committed by lions or some other wild beast.

  The Curse

  Some people attempt to draw parallels between the Lion Men of Tanzania and the wolf-skin wearing ulfheðnar warriors of the Norse. While members of both groups were formidable fighters and both wore animal skins, this is where the similarities between them end. The ulfheðnar were neither mentally disabled nor slaves, but were voluntary warriors who used the widespread fear of their wolf rites to gain fame and fortune for themselves on the battlefield. The Lion Men, sadly, were the involuntary victims of a cruel and greedy religious cult.

  The western world first came to know of Tanzania’s Lion Men in the early 1920s. At that time, Tanzania was a colony of the British. Colonial authorities began receiving reports that hundreds of people in the Tanzanian region of Singida had been killed in what appeared to be lion attacks. However, more detailed examinations of the corpses later proved this was not the case, and it was discovered that the bites and scratches from these attacks were more likely from humans.

  The British colonial authorities, during the official investigation, learned of the Lion Men that were hired as mercenaries. They discovered that the cult had been using their Lion Men in order to extort the villages of the area (many of which had little with which to pay for their safety). If a village did not pay the cult, then the Lion Men would be unleashed upon them.

  Were-Tigers of Asia and India

  In regions of the Far East, tigers are perhaps the most feared animal in the eyes of the people. The Chinese once believed that all other races were actually tigers that had disguised themselves as humans. In Chinese myths, it is sometimes said that a person who is killed by a tiger will later haunt the living as an evil spirit. Some were-tiger myths from China even claim that were-tigers are created whenever a human being becomes possessed by the evil spirit of someone who was killed by a tiger. However, a vast majority of the Chinese were-tiger legends also claim that the condition is a familial trait and therefore one that must be inherited.

  In Hindu legends, were-tigers are almost always portrayed as evil sorcerers. These dark wizards often use their powers to steal or kill livestock. If these were-tiger-sorcerers spend a little too much time in their tiger form, many of the Hindu legends claim that they will become overcome by twisted bloodlust. This will soon cause them to desire human flesh, and they will turn cannibal. If they feast upon enough human flesh, they will forget that they are humans and will permanently remain in tiger form. It was commonly believed that tigers that turned to man-eating had originally been human sorcerers.

  The Least You Need to Know

  • In Africa, the word “bouda” has come to mean “were-hyena.”

  • A bruxsa, or cucubuth, is a creature that is both werewolf and vampire, though opinions differ on which came first.

  • Were-cats, popularly referred to by some enthusiasts as bastets, have some things in common with werewolves, but the two are not at all the same.

  • The Lion Men of Tanzania were the unfortunate victims of a religious cult.

  • In Asian lore, were-tigers are often believed to be evil sorcerers.

  Part 2

  A History of Werewolves

  Werewolves have a long, turbulent history. In the eyes of the medieval church and other religions, wolves became the epito mic symbol of evil. They were mercilessly hunted, and when they could not be caught, innocent people sometimes paid the price as “werewolf scapegoats,” executed to appease the mob. In France, werewolves were long considered a very real threat to human existence, agents of evil whose sole purpose was to bring harm.

  Chapter 6

  Werewolves on Trial

  In This Chapter

  • The crimes and execution of convicted werewolf Peter Stubbe, also known as the Werewolf of Bedburg

  • The presidential decree that saved the “seventh sons” of Argentina

  • The famous werewolf trials of Gilles Garnier and Antoine Leger

  • The trial of the Gandillon family, also known as the “Werewolves of St. Cloud”

  • The unusual Benandanti tale that was told to the courts by Theiss, an accused Russian werewolf

  The idea of a person being placed on trial for being a werewolf may sound rather ludicrous. However, just a few centuries ago this was a real part of the human world. Between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, a number of people were tried for, and found guilty of, lycanthropy. Most of them were executed, often in terribly gruesome ways. Many today believe that these werewolf trials of the past were nothing more than cases of murder or undiagnosed madness. Some believe that, in the minds of medieval people, branding a criminal a werewolf was simply a way of explaining how a human being could be capable of committing the most unspeakable of crimes such as rape, murder, infanticide, incest, and cannibalism. What follows is a basic collection of the most famous—or, rather, infamous—accounts of these werewolf trials.

  Peter Stubbe: The Werewolf of Bedburg

  Among the multitude of so-called “werewolf trials” that occurred between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, perhaps the most well known is the 1589 trial of a German farmer named Peter Stubbe. (His first name is sometimes seen spelled Peeter and his last name Stub, Stumpf, or Stump.) Much of what is currently known about this alleged incident of lycanthropy is based on a combination of hearsay and a lone secondary account published in a London pamphlet (likely based on information gleaned from the tattered remains of the official documents, most of which were lost when many German church registers were destroyed between 1618 and 1648 in the violence of the Thirty Years War). However, Stubbe is known to have spent the majority of his life as a farmer somewhere near the village of Bedburg, just outside Cologne, Germany.

  The Savage Truth

  The only surviving documentation of the Peter Stubbe incident is a pamphlet published in England on June 11, 1590. The story was transcribed by George Bores. The pamphlet proclaims that Bores “did both see and hear the same” as what is in his account. Considering that the date of publication predates the Thirty Years War (when the German records were destroyed), it’s entirely possible that Bores’s work is based on the lost church registers. However, this cannot be verified.

  Little can be confirmed regarding just how Stubbe found himself in the position in which he was apprehended. According to the record of the incident, a werewolf (or an unusually large wolf) was sighted wearing a belt (though some sources call it a girdle) around its waist. How it was discovered or why it was in the area is not explained in any detail. The available account makes it seem as if the wolf was just strolling through the town and then it was caught (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense). Authorities gave chase, apparently knowing that this was actually a werewolf. Once they had the creature cornered, they removed the girdle, and it immediately transformed into the human form of Peter Stubbe. He was dragged before the church courts, where he soon confessed to a laundry list of extremely heinous crimes.

  It is unclear whether Stubbe gave his confession as a result of torture, just confessed under the threat of torture, or first confessed and then was tortured. Regardless of how the confession came about, Stubbe eventually took the rap for the killing of 14 children, 2 pregnant women, and a good number of assorted livestock. In addition,
he also confessed to having partially eaten the flesh of the children and livestock, as well as the fetuses of the pregnant women he’d slain. The court also got him to confess to having sex with his own teenage daughter (which added the charge of incest to the list), to having sexual intercourse with a succubus, and to committing adultery. (Stubbe kept a mistress, who was also the mother of his daughter.) Apparently, these crimes are alleged to have occurred over a span of about 25 years.

  Beastly Words

  A succubus (the plural form is succubi, sometimes spelled succubae) is a female demon commonly known for seducing men as they sleep. This likely originated from a demonic female figure from Judaic folklore, known as Lilith. In the Judaic tradition, men are not supposed to sleep alone in order to avoid encounters with Lilith.

  The truth regarding whether or not Stubbe really committed any of these crimes can no longer be verified with the surviving documentation (though it is probably safe to say that at least the one about him keeping a succubus as a sex slave can be dismissed). He may indeed have been a demented serial killer. Then again, there is a possibility that he was merely a scapegoat for unsolved crimes that were committed by more elusive criminals or animals.

  Having confessed, Stubbe was convicted of murder, cannibalism, incest, rape, infanticide, adultery, killing livestock, keeping a demon familiar, and (of course) lycanthropy. His execution was scheduled for October 31, 1589, and it would be remembered as one of most brutal in history.

  Beastly Words

  The term familiar refers to an idea, widely from church propaganda, that witches (and, in this particular case, a werewolf) kept demonic spirits to assist them in their work. In order to avoid being discovered, church authorities claimed that these demon servants remained invisible in the presence of others, assumed the forms of household animals (the most popular being cats, especially black cats), or just possessed the bodies of animals/pets that were already in their masters’ homes.

  Stubbe was first stripped almost naked before being lashed to a large wooden wheel. A pair of large iron pincers was applied to a fire until red hot and then was used to rip the flesh from 10 places on his body. As if this were not bad enough, a heavy wooden axe (a few alternate accounts claim it was just the blunt side of an axe) was taken to each of Stubbe’s limbs, one by one, until every major bone had been broken. He was then beheaded and his mangled corpse burned to ashes. Sadly, his daughter and mistress were tried and convicted of being accessories to Stubbe’s long list of heinous crimes. Both of them were burned alive at the stake soon after his execution.

  What about the belt that Stubbe was said to be wearing when he was apprehended? Well, in his confession, Stubbe claimed to have received the belt, which gave him magical powers in addition to lycanthropy, as part of a pact with the devil. According to the surviving account, all later attempts to locate the belt were unsuccessful. As for the official explanation for the missing belt, provided by the presiding German authorities? Well … they decided that the devil must have taken it back.

  The Seventh Sons (Argentina)

  In the countries of Argentina, Portugal, and Brazil, there was once a firmly held belief that if one’s seventh child turned out to be male (especially if preceded by six female offspring), he would be cursed with lycanthropy and referred to as El Lobizon (spelled lobis-homen in Portuguese). In Argentina, this belief was so ingrained in the culture that these “seventh sons” were almost always abandoned (or, at best, given up for adoption or sold) by their parents soon after they were born.

  Beastly Words

  The term Lobizon is actually a Spanish transliteration of the Portuguese term lobis-homen, from which it originated. The word is a combination of the terms lobos, meaning “wolves,” and homen, which is most commonly translated as “men/males” but can also be read as meaning “son.” So the term could be considered to mean something like “sons of the wolves.”

  Just giving birth to a Lobizon often caused a family to be stigmatized by the village community (causing social expulsion and financial hardships). In such cases, these newborn babies would be immediately abandoned, “discarded” into a river (meaning murdered by drowning), thrown off of a cliff, or suffocated before the truth of the child’s sex could be discovered by anyone outside the family. This grew into such a widespread practice that Argentinean orphanages were often overcrowded, and acts of infanticide were becoming frighteningly commonplace.

  The Savage Truth

  Seventh sons were not as uncommon as one might initially expect. At this time in Argentina, especially in rural or agricultural communities, it was often beneficial for couples to have as many children as they could. More children meant more hands to help with the large amount of work farming required. More work meant more income, and this often meant a better standard of living for the entire family.

  In 1920, Dr. Juan Hipolito Yrigoyen, the president of Argentina, came up with a most ingenious plan to bring an end to the superstitious stigma of evil that had long been associated with his country’s outcast seventh sons. He officially declared that he would now be the legal god-father of any seventh son born in Argentina. In addition, Yrigoyen also decreed that a gold medal would be awarded to parents at the baptisms of all seventh sons in Argentina.

  Furthering his generosity, Yrigoyen also put into law that all seventh sons would receive full educational scholarships until they reached 21 years of age. As one might imagine, the occurrences of abandonments and infanticides soon decreased dramatically. As a result of President Yrigoyen’s brilliant plan, the birth of a seventh son now came to be seen by parents as a blessing instead of a curse. Having a seventh son now provided unprecedented opportunities to many rural and lower-class families, giving them a chance to have well-educated children, which in turn enabled them to improve the conditions of their families’ lives.

  The Burning of Gilles Garnier

  Something terrible was happening to the children of Dole, France, in the summer of 1573. The children of the area were vanishing one by one and with astonishing frequency, never to be seen alive again. Sadly, many of these missing little ones would later be found in the woods … dead. Their bodies were often mutilated beyond recognition, and large sections of their flesh appeared to have been torn from their limbs as if by some powerful animal. It didn’t take long for the people of Dole to realize that their children were not just being murdered by this bloodthirsty creature. They were also being eaten by it. With every passing week, the terrible situation only grew more and more desperate.

  As the seasons changed, the situation did not. In early November, a boy inexplicably disappeared from the area. Shortly thereafter, the bodies of three other missing children were discovered. In December of that same year, the French authorities in Dole officially declared that these murders were the work of a werewolf. A hunting warrant was immediately issued for the child-killing beast, and a large number of hunting parties were formed to track it down.

  This is where things get a little difficult to follow when it comes to the information available. According to the official records of the incident, the werewolf was soon caught in the act of attacking another child. However, the locals in the hunting party testified that they recognized this werewolf as Gilles Garnier (because it would seem that, even though in werewolf form, he retained enough of his human features to be recognizable). Garnier was well known by the villagers as a local hermit.

  According to the official account, Garnier immediately returned to his human form upon being apprehended. The local hermit did not deny any of the accusations brought against him. In fact, it would appear that he openly admitted to the killings. (Of course, his confession could still have been the result of torture or coercion.) He even offered a gruesome account of how he’d murdered and eaten some of the children. He was sentenced to death for his crimes.

  On January 8, 1574, Gilles Garnier, the long hunted “Werewolf of Dole,” was tied to a stake and burned alive for committing crimes related to the forbidde
n practice of lycanthropy.

  The Werewolf Family of St. Cloud

  The Gandillons of St. Cloud, France, might have been one of the most unusual families in history. No one can say for certain what criminal actions, if any, they truly committed before their apprehensions. The case first began in 1574, when two children were savagely attacked by a woman named Pernette Gandillon. Pernette appeared to have been the violent matriarch of her own “werewolf pack,” which included her brother, Pierre, and his two children (a son and daughter).

  In her attack on the two children, she killed the younger. The older child managed to escape and reported the attack to authorities. Pernette Gandillon was soon located, and the surviving child identified her as the attacker. There wasn’t really a trial. Apparently, a lynch mob had formed and immediately fell upon the crazed woman, who is said to have snarled and howled at them as she walked around on all fours. The mob, according to accounts, tore Pernette Gandillon to pieces on the spot. They more than likely believed that she was a werewolf, if her behavior was truly as accounts describe.