Any country or region that has wolves seems also to have werewolves. Also werebears, wereowls, were-whatevers. The amount of folklore is so overwhelming and contradictory that it’s hard to figure out what to do about them—except through plain old trial and error.
Medieval werewolf legends usually equate lycanthropy with sorcery, and with the wearing of a magical skin or belt. Dad made a note about Richard Verstegan’s Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, from 1628:
Verstegan says werewolves “are certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an ointment which they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certayne inchaunted girdle, does not only unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their own thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they wear the said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in worrying and killing, and most of humane creatures.” Verstegan hints that the werewolf has no conscious memory of its actions while it is transformed—“to their own thinking.” Other accounts, not Verstegan’s, have this hand-in-hand with a belief that werewolves can only transform while they are asleep.
Later, the belief in a werewolf belt faded and was replaced with the idea that werewolves turn on their own, often on a full moon. This wasn’t a new invention, though. The Roman writer Petronius, in his Satyricon, mentions the following story of a man who turns into a wolf at the full moon—so the idea’s been around at least since then.
My master had gone to Capua to sell some old clothes. I seized the opportunity, and persuaded our guest to bear me company about five miles out of town; for he was a soldier, and as bold as death. We set out about cockcrow, and the moon shone bright as day, when, coming among some monuments, my man began to converse with the stars, whilst I jogged along singing and counting them. Presently I looked back after him, and saw him strip and lay his clothes by the side of the road. My heart was in my mouth in an instant, I stood like a corpse; when, in a crack, he was turned into a wolf. Don’t think I’m joking: I would not tell you a lie for the finest fortune in the world.
But to continue: after he was turned into a wolf, he set up a howl and made straight for the woods. At first I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels; but at last going to take up his clothes, I found them turned into stone. The sweat streamed from me, and I never expected to get over it. Melissa began to wonder why I walked so late. “Had you come a little sooner,” she said, “you might at least have lent us a hand; for a wolf broke into the farm and has butchered all our cattle; but though he got off, it was no laughing matter for him, for a servant of ours ran him through with a pike.” Hearing this I could not close an eye; but as soon as it was daylight, I ran home like a pedlar that has been eased of his pack. Coming to the place where the clothes had been turned into stone, I saw nothing but a pool of blood; and when I got home, I found my soldier lying in bed, like an ox in a stall, and a surgeon dressing his neck. I saw at once that he was a fellow who could change his skin, and never after could I eat bread with him, no, not if you would have killed me. Those who would have taken a different view of the case are welcome to their opinion; if I tell you a lie, may your genii confound me!
Like Verstegan, Russian stories tend to paint the werewolf transformation as voluntary and sorcerous. Here’s an interesting little spell, if you ever want to try it:
He who desires to become an OBOROT, let him seek in the forest a hewn-down tree; let him stab it with a small copper knife, and walk round the tree, repeating the following incantation:
On the sea, on the ocean, on the island, on Bujan,
On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ashstock lying
In a green wood, in a gloomy vale.
Towards the stock wandereth a shaggy wolf,
Horned cattle seeking for his sharp white fangs;
But the wolf enters not the forest,
But the wolf dives not into the shadowy vale,
Moon, moon, gold-horned moon,
Check the flight of bullets, blunt the hunters’ knives,
Break the shepherds’ cudgels,
Cast wild fear upon all cattle,
On men, all creeping things,
That they may not catch the grey wolf,
That they may not rend his warm skin!
My word is binding, more binding than sleep,
More binding than the promise of a hero!
Then he springs thrice over the tree and runs into the forest, transformed into a wolf.
In the New World, werewolf legends tend to center on isolation from and rejection by humans, often with insinuations that people who become werewolves have been up to unsavory things. This doesn’t happen just in the Americas, either; Armenian folklore tells of women who, as a consequence of some deadly sin, suffer visitations from spirits that force them to transform into wolves and kill children. A New World example of this is the French-Canadian legend of the loup-garou, which has variations all over North America, a creature said to be created when someone refused the sacraments for a certain period of time. The loup-garou comes from France—duh—which has one of the most active werewolf traditions in Europe. French court records are full of werewolf trials, and that’s not even counting the Beast of Gévaudan, which killed as many as eighty people in the 1760s.
Loup-garou legends from precolonial Illinois say that after the initial transformation, a loup-garou was doomed to 101 nights of transformation, followed by days of melancholia and sickness. The only way to get out of the sentence early was if someone managed to draw blood from the loup-garou, and in this case, neither party involved could ever speak of the incident until the remainder of the 101 days had passed. There’s even a Cajun version called a rougarou, which lives in the bayous and can transform into a kind of were-crocodile. Like the loup-garou, the rougarou is often a man transformed because of a rejection by human society, especially religious beliefs.
Werewolves will avoid wolfsbane when they can, as well as holy artifacts and silver. Being stabbed or cut with a silver knife can sometimes force a werewolf to revert to human shape. The silver bullet legend is probably true, but not all hunters believe in it. You hear grumbles around the gathering places. I was at Harvelle’s not too long ago and heard three hunters complaining that either they’d done something wrong when they made their silver bullets, or some werewolves just weren’t affected.
Lycanthropy might have a cure. According to some traditions, killing a particular werewolf removes its curse on all those it’s bitten—severing the bloodline, in a way.
The one time we put that theory to the test, it didn’t work. The werewolf in question was a receptionist named Madison Owens. Nice girl, went walking in the wrong part of town on a full-moon night, got mugged. What she didn’t know was that her attacker was a werewolf, and he managed to take a bite out of her neck. Next lunar cycle, she started turning. Worst part was, she had no idea. She turned after she fell asleep, and woke with no memory of roaming the streets in were form, ripping the heart out of anyone who registered as a threat to her animal instinct.
We did our best. Dean hunted down the werewolf who’d bitten Madison. Shot him through the heart with a silver bullet. But it didn’t work. And by then, a lot had gone on between Sam and Madison. They’d connected. He was ready to do whatever it took to save her. Unfortunately, there was nothing. At least as far as we could find. We scoured every source, called every hunter we knew. Seems like if you’re a werewolf, there’s no cure.
That severing-the-bloodline legend sure is sticky, though. It comes up again and again. We think it originates from the old European idea that if you kill the daddy vampire of a particular infestation, the rest of the nest will die (well, re-die) too.
Of course, then we’d just have to start in on all the rest of the world’s dangerous shapechangers. Hamrammr, boudas, aswang, bruxsa, ilimu, kanima—you’re next.