But are werewolves just a figment of the imagination, the
product of fevered delusion of poor peasants, the superstitious dwellers of the
thickly wooded forests of medieval Europe and Asia?
Or did they actually exist? And are there still men, and women, who can be
transformed into snarling monsters who shun the light and attack with fang and
claw to rip at human flesh?
Amazingly, scientific and medical evidence shows that
werewolves may not be creatures of myth, but ordinary men and women –and even
blue blooded royalty –who have actually developed some of the characteristics
and ferocity of wolves.
Tales of werewolves go deep back into history. Herodotus,
the Greek historian in the fifth century BC, wrote of explorers returning from
the settlements around the Black Sea with
Tales of local natives who could transform themselves, by magic, into wolves.
Two centuries later the Roman administrator Pliny described how transformation
into a wolf was punishment for anyone foolish enough to try to placate an angry
god with a human sacrifice. According to Pliny, the victim would be taken to a
distant river and forced to swim to the far shore. If he survived the freezing
water, he reached the other shore only to be transformed into a werewolf, where
he would roam the forest in the company of other packs of werewolves for a
period of nine years. If the werewolf resisted the temptation to eat human
flesh during that time, he would be changed back to his original form and
allowed to rejoin his fellow humans.
Other myths and legends grew and grew. Men born on
Christmas Eve were said to be more likely to become werewolves. It was also
said that there were men who inherited the curse of the werewolf, passed down
through the generations from father to son as a punishment for some terrible
sin committed in the past. Some men became a werewolf by choice, because they
used the magic of the Devil to give them power to change shape and to go about
their evil deeds and there were the benevolent werewolves, the poor
unfortunates who could not help but change into beast during the full moon, but
who were bitterly ashamed of their involuntary weakness and who struggled to
keep their guilty secret from friends and family.
The terror that the wolf struck into medieval man can
easily be imagined. Packs of ferocious wolves roamed around the woodlands of
most of the northern hemisphere and even the hot, dusty plain of India. Hunting
in the groups, they were a predatory menace to other wild animals, livestock
herds, and man himself if they became bold.
By the end of 16th century, wolves had been
hunted to extinction in England,
and within 200 years had been eliminated throughout the rest of the British Isles. But they still prowling freely in the rest
of Europe, where fear of the wolf showed
itself in folklore, such as the cautionary tale of Little Red Riding Hood, the
innocent girl lured to a grisly encounter in a woodland cottage by a cunning
wolf.
During the 16th century, when the European
colonies in North America were being settled, Henry VIII was on the English
throne and Galileo was making his first astronomical studies with his newly
invented telescope, France was in the midst of religious frenzy where the mere
accusation of being a werewolf resulted in thousands of innocent people being
hanged or burned at the stake, along with other unfortunates charged with being
witches or wizards. In one period of just over 100 years, between 1520 and
1630, there were 30,000 trials of werewolves in France. Most of those found guilty
were quickly executed by their fearful fellow countrymen. Luckily, by the end
of 16th century, a growing sense of doubt about the strength of
superstitious belief, as well as the feeling of communal guilt, led to more
lenient treatments of ‘werewolves’. After all, most of them were simply
tormented and mentally deranged peasants, afflicted by lycanthropy, the belief
that they could be transformed into werewolves.
An example of lycanthropy occurred in 1598 in Caude,
northern France, when a villager stumbled across the half-gnawed body of a boy.
They gave chase to two wolves that ran off as they approached. Searching a
nearby wood, they discovered Jacques Rollet, a half-wild peasant who suffered
from mental illness. He was almost naked, with a long hair and a straggling
beard and claw like nails which were clotted with blood and human remains.
The young boy had not been his first victim. At the trial,
Rollet admitted to the judges that he believed himself to be a wolf and he
confessed to several charges of killing and eating young children. He was
sentenced to death, but the legal authorities in Paris commuted his sentence to life
imprisonment and he was kept in a madhouse.
A few years later, the pathetic figure of 13-year-old Jean
Grenier appeared in court in Bordeaux
as a self confessed werewolf, Jean was mentally retarded and his face was
dominated by a large, misshapen jaw, which jutted out and revealed, pointed
sharp teeth. He had been startled by some young shepherdesses as he prowled
among their flocks, and he had terrified them by telling how he made a pact
with the Devil to turn himself into a werewolf. When one girl was attacked a
few days later by a creature with red hair and sharp claws, the townsfolk
scoured the fields and forests until they tracked down Jean Grenier. In court
the pathetic teenager stuck to his tail of a meeting with the devil, in which
he has sold his soul in exchange for a magic ointment and a shred of wolf’s
pelt which would turn him into a werewolf any time he wished.
There was doubt that the boy was deranged, but equally
little doubt that he had been responsible for several murderous attacks on
children who had been killed and eaten. On 6 September 1603, Jean Grenier was
found guilty of multiple murders while acting under the influence of
lycanthropy.He was ordered to be held
for the rest of his life in the Franciscan Friary of St. Michael the Archangel. When the monks led their new prisoner to Friary,
he dropped on all fours and ravenously tore into a craps of raw, stale meat he
found in their kitchens.
Jean Grenier lived another only seven years, howling at the
full moon, unkempt and unwashed, still utterly convinced that the Devil had
turned him into a werewolf.
With the near extinction of the wolf in Europe,
the scourge of lycanthropy looked as if it might die out. Surprisingly, it
surfaced again in modern times when Hollywood
film makers hit on reviving the myth. In a new genre of horror movies, the
werewolf and the human vampire were portrayed as ‘up-to-date’ demons.
In 1975, the myth of the werewolf so aroused one disturbed
English teenager that he committed suicide. The 17-year-old apprentice
carpenter from Eccleshall, Staffordshire, had become obsessed by studies of the
occult, and had attended a number of séances in the hope of ‘contacting’ his
dead father. At one of these morbid sessions, he revealed to friend that he had
become possessed by the Devil.
A few nights later, the teenager telephoned his friend
again. By this time, the delusion of lycanthropy had taken an overwhelming hold
of his imagination. His friend later told an inquest: ‘He told me his face and
hands were changing color and that he was turning into a werewolf. He would go quiet
and then start growling.’
The young carpenter’s body was found near the village
crossroads by the postman next morning. He had thrust a knife into his own
heart.
Although an attack of lycanthropy had plunged that
particular teenager into fatal depression, it had a different effect on
43-year-old building worker Bill Ramsey of South end, Essex.
Ramsey went into frenzied rampage in the local police station in July 1987,
after ha had driven himself there in the state of wild agitation. Inside the
police station, he suffered a mental blackout, and fought a four hour battle
with eight terrified policemen. One officer was scratched across the face as
Ramsey arched his finger like claws. Others were hurled across the yard as they
tried to restrain him. He was partly subdued when a doctor gave him a double
dose of powerful sedative, but then he smashed his head through a one and a
half inch thick wooden hatch in the door of a detention room and had to be cut free
by firemen.
Chief Superintendent Charles Harper describes the scene:
‘The man was snarling, his lips were turned back and he held his hands rigid
like claws. He seemed possessed of extra ordinary strength and attacks the men
with a ferocity that was frightening to all who observed him.’
Ramsey was ordered by the local magistrates to be detained
for 28 days for medical test. At Runwell hospital, near his home, he admitted:
‘This has happened to me three times in six years. I do bare my teeth; I do
drool at the mouth. I do snap and snarl and howl. I go on all fours, and my
hands turn like claws. I display some tremendous strength and do incredible
things, but I never seem to hurt myself. Why it happens, I don’t know. I only
know what people tell me happened afterwards. I just act like an animal. It’s
just a freak form of temporary insanity. The only thing that seems to affect me
is walking into churches. I can’t explain it.’
There are number of rational scientific explanations which
appear to give some clues to the mystery of lycanthropy. According to medieval
superstition, a man who survived a wolf bite would later become a werewolf
himself. The suspicion grew from the fact that the majority of those bitten buy
wolves would, within a few days, begin to suffer a horrific transformation.
They would get fevered convulsions; their facial muscles would tighten into
spasms which bared their teeth. Then they would fly into a wild fevered fits
and begin to foam at the mouth. This was usually followed by collapse, and then
death.
These are symptoms known only too well to modern doctors as
the clinical effects of rabies. Most wild wolf packs are infected with the
virus, and those animals with a savage enough to attack men are most likely to
be suffering the disease themselves.
However, not all recorded cases of men behaving like mad
animals were caused by a bite from a rabid wolf. The potent medicines of the
day included extract from plants and animals, such as mushrooms or toads these
could often cause wild fantasies, including the delusions of turning into an animal.
Even the grain storage methods caused the spread of the fungus ergot, which
produces a natural version of the drug LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide. Man
‘werewolves’ were merely experience the wild horrors of ‘bad acid trips’.
Some could also have been sufferers of the rare disease
causes mental confusion, which can border on madness, excessive growth of hair,
contraction of the muscles to reveal the teeth, and a necessity to hide in the
dark places, away from the sunlight which the sufferers find too painful. Sufferer
also experiences a need to take blood from others, to replace the constituents
missing in their own system.
There is nothing demonic about porphyria. It is an
inherited metabolic disease, once known as the ‘Royal Disease’, because its victims
included Mary Queen of Scots, James I and George III, the disease was so
pronounced that his fits madness and his bizarre, ranting behavior almost
brought the Government of the country to a halt. His wild delusions about his
own powers in stemming the disaffections among the British colonies in America, was
said to have provoked the American War of Independence.
Although George III. Reigned for 60 years, for the last
decade of his life, when his insanity became permanent and reduced him to
behaving like a degenerate animal, his son, George, had to rule for him as
prince Regent from 1811 until his death in 1820.
It seems remarkable to think that America might
still be British had it not been for a king who, by medieval definition, was a
mad werewolf!
