Werewolves

by Graeme Davis

  Introduction

  Viral Werewolves

  Shamanic Werewolves

  Sorcerous Werewolves

  Cursed Werewolves

  Obsessive Werewolves

  Werewolf Society

  Werewolves at War

  Other Were-Creatures

  Werewolf Hunters

  Further Reading, Watching, Gaming

  In 2013, I received an email from Joseph McCullough, the author of Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide. During the course of writing his book, Joe had been granted unprecedented access to the US Army’s 34th Specialist Regiment, nicknamed the Nightmen, and had been approached to compile an official unit history of this remarkable group of men and women. Impressed by what he had seen of my research into the Knights Templar, Joe invited me to collaborate with him on the Nightmen project. Both flattered and intrigued, I agreed and began working on background research.

  It was while I was researching the 34th’s operations in World War II – in particular, their encounters with the Werwolf guerillas of SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann in Cologne and elsewhere – that I first heard of the Tyana Institute. I began with orthodox sources, and made a number of inquiries through contacts in various European universities, but this initial research hit a dead end.

  In the interests of the Nightmen project, I should probably have moved on. However, the few snippets of information I had unearthed on the Tyana Institute convinced me that there was more to find. I turned to less orthodox avenues of inquiry, and what I found fully bore out my first instincts. There was a story here, I knew – though what I could not have anticipated was just how many stories there were, and how many different groups were involved. I called Joe, and after looking at my initial findings he agreed to give me time to continue this line of research.

  Werewolves are far from unknown. From the Big Bad Wolf of nursery tales to the computer-generated beasts of the movies, they have earned a prominent place in popular culture. Everyone knows that one bite from a werewolf is enough to pass the curse of lycanthropy on to the victim; that the full moon forces them to change shape and surrender their human reason to savage animal passions; that wolfsbane and silver are their only weaknesses. Almost no one knows that there are many forms of lycanthropy, and not all of them are occult in nature.

  The following pages tell a few of the stories I have uncovered. There is much work still to be done, many facts to be verified and many more leads and sidetracks to be followed. A definitive treatment of the subject may take a lifetime – perhaps more than one lifetime – and the deeper one delves, the more elusive hard information becomes.

  The 17th-century painting Jupiter and Lycaon by Jan Cossiers. In the ancient Greek myth, Lycaon decided to test the god Zeus (called Jupiter by the Romans) by serving him human flesh. Zeus punished Lycaon by turning him into a wolf. Many believe that Lycaon was the father of all werewolves and that the original virus can be traced back to him. Others think he is just one more example of a man cursed by dark sorcery.

  I still hope, one day, to return to the history of the Nightmen. Of course, there is always the chance that when I do, I will stumble upon yet another irresistible side-track. Until then, I offer my thanks to Joe for the email that began this whole journey, to the personnel of the 34th who were unfailingly patient and helpful in answering my questions, and to others – many others – who for various reasons prefer to remain anonymous.

  The viral werewolf is sometimes called the “true” or “classic” werewolf. This is the werewolf of movies and literature: active around the full moon; vulnerable to silver; capable of transforming into beast or “wolf man” form; and able to pass on its condition through a bite or scratch. While viral werewolves are not the only werewolves, they are by far the best-known type.

  Based on reports dating back to Classical antiquity, scientists believe that viral werewolves originated somewhere in southeastern Europe, in the heavily wooded, mountainous country now occupied by Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and eastern Austria, and stretching southward into the Balkans, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and northern Greece.

  In ancient times this form of lycanthropy was mostly confined within the borders of that region, known then as Moesia and Dacia, owing to its remoteness and the lack of significant outside trade. The region’s evil reputation as a haunt of werewolves, vampires, witches, and other monsters also contributed to its isolation.

  The area lay largely outside the bounds of the Roman and Byzantine empires, so Classical writers like Pausanias and Pliny the Elder record only occasional rumors of lycanthropy in the area. They make no distinction between these viral lycanthropes and the werewolf cults of southern Greece and Anatolia; to them, all werewolves were alike. However, a few documents from the Roman provinces of Moesia and Dacia contain hints of the truth.

  Crassus the Younger, the grandson of Octavian’s colleague-turned-rival, conquered Moesia for Rome in 29–27 BC, subduing an area that covers present-day Serbia, Macedonia, and adjoining parts of Romania and Bulgaria. However, the emperor Augustus denied him the usual honors and titles due to the conqueror of a new province, and it was only after some persuasion that he was even permitted a triumphal procession on his return to Rome. It was rumored that he had become unpredictable following a wound received on the battlefield; the poet Catullus, ever a thorn in the emperor’s side, published a scurrilous verse that had Crassus urinating on his own doorpost and sniffing the backsides of every woman he met. Crude as these images are, they strongly suggest that Crassus had contracted lycanthropy in Moesia. Also interesting is the fact that he produced no natural heirs, adopting the son of the old but declining Piso family.

  While most werewolves spend a majority of their time in either human or wolf form, it is the rarer wolf man form that has caught the popular imagination thanks to modern media. Illustration by Hauke Kock.

  It was more than a century before the Roman Empire regarded Moesia as stable. In AD 87, the emperor Trajan used it as a springboard for his Dacian campaign, which is recorded on Trajan’s Column in Rome. The Dacian Wars dragged on for almost 20 years, and Dacia remained a battleground until it was finally abandoned in AD 275.

  Roman exploitation brought Roman administrators, Roman tax-collectors, and Roman merchants into the area, creating more vectors for the spread of lycanthropy across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. In AD 193, the emperor Pertinax used the Praetorian Guard to suppress a cult of Selene Sanguinea (“the Blood Moon”) which had arisen in Rome, citing “the great violence of its rites and its profaning of the Lupercalia” (a very ancient Roman festival honoring the she-wolf who had suckled Romulus and Remus). His enemies claimed the move was political, since his predecessor, the notorious Commodus, had been an initiate of the cult, but documents in the Vatican’s secret archives record a full-blown outbreak of lycanthropy in Rome between AD 190 and 192. Pertinax was murdered shortly after ordering the suppression of the Blood Moon cult, apparently by Praetorians who were secretly members – and very possibly lycanthropes – themselves.

  After the fall of Rome, Moesia and Dacia were occupied by the expanding Goths and Huns. Some writers believe that it was through the Goths – originally from the region of Götland in modern Sweden – that lycanthropy reached Scandinavia and gave rise to the famous berserkers and ulfhednar of the Viking Age. The Goths were followed by a succession of short-lived states until the Ottoman Empire conquered the area in the 14th century, setting the stage for an eastward spread of lycanthropy.

  In 1542, the area around Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was so overrun with werewolves that the Ottoman emperor Suleiman the Magnificent was forced to take action. In one hunt alone, according to contemporary writers, Suleiman and his janissaries killed 150 of the creatures who were “prowling the
streets and lanes of the city.”

  By now, lycanthropy was well established across Europe and the Middle East, and with the dawning of the Age of Exploration its worldwide spread became inevitable. As early as 1693, a settlement on Cape Ann in the Massachusetts colony had gained the local name “Dogtown” along with a reputation as a haunt of witches and shapeshifters. Since then, werewolves have been reported across North America as well as in their older European haunts.

  Case Studies

  Châlus, 12th century

  The 12th-century English writer Gervase of Tilbury tells of one Calcevayra, who was active around the town of Châlus in western France. At the full moon this individual “was wont to go apart to a distant spot and there stripping himself mother-naked… he rolled to and fro in the sand until he rose up in the form of a wolf, raging with a wolf’s fierce appetites. With gaping jaws and lolling tongue he rushed violently upon his prey.” Unfortunately Gervase neglected to record how this Calcevayra first became a werewolf, or what became of him when his nature was discovered.

  Wyoming, 1906

  Celebrity encounters with werewolves are very rare indeed, but in 1906 William F. Cody, the showman known the world over as Buffalo Bill, had a desperate encounter with a creature that he described as a werewolf.

  The story has been dismissed by some scholars as another piece of the self-promoting fiction with which Cody habitually surrounded himself, and the body of the supposed werewolf was never recovered. However, the archives of the Tyana Institute contain a letter to Senator (and former Wyoming governor) Francis E. Warren from respected Wyoming academic Grace Raymond Hebard in which she states that “I have personally interviewed several people from Wolf River Canyon and the surrounding area (transcripts enclosed) and see no reason to suppose that Cody’s tale is false.” Frustratingly, the transcripts referred to in the letter seem to have gone missing.

  In the 12th through 16th centuries, werewolf incidents were especially common in France and Germany. These werewolves preyed on livestock, children, and occasionally lone women. Some lycanthropes lived undetected for decades and confessed to scores of killings at their trials.

  Werewolf detection was in its infancy at this time. Most arrests depended upon the reports of neighbors, which could be unreliable. The surest proof was when a local person showed identical wounds to those inflicted on an attacking wolf.

  A posed photo of the famous ‘Wyoming Werewolf Posse’ that supposedly killed or captured half a dozen werewolves in the 1880s. (Library of Congress)

  Wolf River Canyon takes its name from an Arapahoe tradition, and despite some evidence to the contrary, it seems possible that the creature Cody encountered may have been a skinwalker rather than a werewolf of the European type. The Tyana Institute sent an expedition to the area in 1908 under cover of a survey for the Shoshone Dam project, but it failed to trace any local traditions of either werewolves or skinwalkers, and its report was inconclusive.

  Creation

  As its name suggests, viral lycanthropy is spread by contact. The most common form of transmission is through a bite or scratch that does not prove fatal. A person who survives a werewolf’s attack is doomed to become a werewolf in turn, changing shape uncontrollably as soon as the next full moon rises. Unless the new werewolf is contained he or she will run amok, maddened by new and unfamiliar animal passions, and cause untold carnage.

  Since the birth of germ theory in the 18th century, researchers have looked for some micro-organism – a parasite, bacterium, or virus – that causes lycanthropy. Research over the last two centuries has established that lycanthropy is a separate condition from rabies, porphyria, and various other afflictions that have been suggested as a scientific explanation for the condition. However, the virus itself has not yet been identified.

  A determined and well-funded – if secret – search for the lycanthropy virus has been under way since the 1930s, but has yet to yield any definitive results. Current research is focused on two distinct avenues: a virus that cannot be detected with existing equipment, perhaps because it is an isomer of another well-known virus whose structural peculiarities give it unexpected properties; and a currently known virus that interacts with the DNA of susceptible victims to cause lycanthropy in them alone, while leaving others unaffected.

  A 16th-century depiction of a werewolf. One of the major difficulties of werewolf studies is the paucity of information regarding most historical occurrences. This 16th-century drawing offers no visual clues about the type of werewolf, although given the time and place (Germany) either a viral or cursed werewolf seems most likely. (Mary Evans)

  Several reports dating back to the Middle Ages suggest that viral lycanthropy can also be inherited from one or both parents. Lycanthropy was common among the post-medieval aristocracy of Courland in modern Latvia and Lithuania, for example, and the inherited susceptibility, or perhaps the virus itself, may have been passed down in increasing concentrations through the restricted aristocratic gene pool. However, it is not inevitable that the child of a werewolf will also be a werewolf. For example Ulf Bjalfason, the grandfather of the Icelandic hero Egill Skallagrímsson, was a known werewolf called Kveldulf (“evening wolf”) by his neighbors. However, neither Ulf’s son Skallagrimm nor his grandson Egill ever showed any signs of lycanthropy.

  Documents from the Tyana Institute note the Sicilian belief that a child conceived at the new moon will become a werewolf. However, Benjamin Franklin discounts it as superstition in a letter to Thomas Jefferson:

  The New Moon occurring thirteen times in each year, which is one night out of each twenty-eight, and at all times of the year so that the effect of any particular season may be discounted, inclines me to regard such arguments as invalid; for surely, if it were true, then lycanthropy must surely manifest in one man or woman of each twenty-eight, and yet these creatures are rarely reported even in our greatest and most populous cities. If there be any lunar influence at work, I confess myself more inclined to believe that one upon whose face the rays of the moon fall upon a certain Wednesday or Friday in summer may be afflicted with this condition; such a thing has often been said to cause the mania we call lunacy, tho’ I never heard of any trial or experiment that bore out either proposition.

  VAMPIRES AND WEREWOLVES

  In modern horror literature and film, vampires and werewolves have become traditional enemies, but this was not always the case. The folklore of Greece makes very little distinction between them, often using the same word, vrykolaka, to describe both creatures. Sabine Baring-Gould cites a Greek superstition that a dead werewolf is doomed to rise from the grave as a vampire.

  Bram Stoker may have referenced this belief, consciously or otherwise. His Count Dracula is seen to have an affinity for wolves, and in the short story Dracula’s Guest – an out-take from the original manuscript that was published posthumously by Stoker’s widow – the protagonist’s life is saved by a gigantic and possibly supernatural wolf, apparently at Dracula’s behest.

  Over the past 300 years, though, studies of both vampires and werewolves have failed to find any evidence of significant physiological or supernatural links between the two. For more on vampires, the reader is recommended to this book’s companion volume Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide by Steve White and Mark McKenzie-Ray.

  Identification and Threat

  According to folklore, viral werewolves show two main signs of their condition while in human form; however, these have been found to be unreliable as means of field identification.

  The first is that the eyebrows meet, forming what is commonly called a “unibrow.” This characteristic is by no means restricted to lycanthropes, however, and has become part of a common Western stereotype image of eastern Europeans. In addition, it is easily disguised by shaving, plucking, or waxing.

  The second is the unusual length of the ring finger, which is longer than the middle finger in some individuals. While it is a more reliable indicator than the eyebrows, it is difficult to observe in
an unwilling subject, and it is by no means universal.

  Other traditional signs, such as hair on the palms, casting a wolf’s shadow, and leaving wolf tracks instead of footprints, have been found to be pure invention.

  The most obvious identifying characteristic of a viral werewolf is its ability to assume the transitional “wolf man” form in addition to purely human and lupine forms. Newly infected viral werewolves often adopt this form spontaneously as the human and wolf sides of their nature struggle for dominance, but more experienced shapeshifters can assume wolf man form at will.

  In wolf form, it has been claimed that the eyes of a werewolf remain human in appearance. Again, this is difficult to observe under field conditions, where distance, poor light, and the subject’s motion do not generally permit such close observation. The main visible difference between a human eye and the eye of a normal wolf is in the amount of white that shows, and it is not uncommon for the whites of the eyes to be visible in angry or fearful canines. Many field biologists have remarked on the gaze of a wild wolf, saying that it conveys the impression of an almost human-like intelligence but admitting that this is a very subjective matter with no scientific basis. So far it has been impossible to draw any conclusions about werewolf eyes by autopsy or examination of tranquilized werewolves, because death or unconsciousness invariably trigger a return to human form.

  A typical Hollywood depiction of a werewolf. Although the look is basically accurate, Hollywood has done more than anything to sow confusion and spread misinformation about werewolves. (Photos 12 / Alamy)

  While in wolf form, viral werewolves retain their human intelligence but gain the wolf’s advantages of strength, speed, ferocity, as well as superior hearing, smell and low-light vision. Old Norse sources claim that a shapeshifter’s strength was greater than that of either man or wolf; the wolf’s strength was added to the man’s rather than merely replacing it.