October is a great month to revise another Werewolf Fact. This one got a great makeover!
I've heard some people claim that werewolves in folklore have no relation to the full moon or to the moon at all. Some even say they have no relation to night as opposed to daylight, and they pin all these concepts squarely on Hollywood and modern media. I say those people need to do more research.
The revised Werewolf Facts will be shared with my patrons first as I prepare to polish them and publish them in book form. However, I want to make sure everyone knows I'm still doing nonfiction work (especially since I hope to keep everyone excited for my upcoming folklore collection), that Werewolf Facts will return in a big way, and that they will be so much better than they were before - so I wanted to share this one publicly very early!
This is very much a ROUGH DRAFT. This is not yet ready for wide publication (such as in my official Werewolf Facts masterlist and in the upcoming book), and it'll undergo further revisions before I do that. Please remember this is rough and DOES NOT REFLECT EXACTLY WHAT WILL BE FOUND IN THE WEREWOLF FACTS BOOK COMING SOMETIME IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS.
But this is my starting point!
Expect many more updates ahead. And before you ask, yes, I am technically supposed to cite myself if I pull anything from my own works - I'm not being egotistical. Weird, right?
Enjoy!
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The full moon and the werewolf are inseparable. Today, some media tragically shies away from it, ashamed of holding to tradition, yet the iconic imagery of a werewolf howling at the baleful visage of the full moon will always persist in the subconscious mind, as it has for so many ages. So, what is the connection, how old is it really, and where did it come from?
Werewolves being associated with the moon, and specifically the full moon, is an old association indeed. Although perhaps best known for an early appearance in film with the movie Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), the idea of a werewolf turning beneath the light of the moon appeared in stories long before.
One could naturally discuss in depth the age-old concept of moon-induced madness - "lunacy" - and studies and arguments on how the moon phases affect human and animal behavior and aggression levels, not too unlike how they affect the tides. However, I'm not here to dive into those matters; I'm here to talk about werewolves specifically.
Examples abound in folklore and are well-documented by the two foremost werewolf scholars, Sabine Baring-Gould and Montague Summers, as well as assorted folklore stories besides. Associations with the full moon and moonlight existed among, and were not limited to, the Gauls, legends from France, and Italy; an association with moonlight is also alluded to in tales from Russia and ancient Rome. The following is by no means an exhaustive list, but the aforementioned examples will be detailed, as follows...
Beginning with several examples found in Summers' work on werewolves, he states point-blank when discussing several werewolf legends, "In the first place, the transformation is effected in the moonlight" (Summers 155). He goes on to discuss, in particular, a set of tales around Palermo, which is located in Italy...
"In Palermo they say that as the moon waxes to her round the werewolf begins to feel the craving; his eyes sink deep and are glazed (si cci'nvitrianu), he falls to the earth wallowing in the dust or mud, and is seized with fearful writhings and pangs, after which his limbs quiver and contract horribly, he howls and rushes off on all fours, shunning the light, especially (they say in Menfi) torches, candles or lanthorns [sic]. The lycanthrope dashes to and fro, and he will bite anyone whom he may meet in his wild courses. His hideous cries may, however, be heard from afar and all hasten to avoid the wolf-man" (Summers 163-164)
Quite the graphic description of a man turning into a "wolf-man" (interesting quote, as well) under the light of the full moon. And yes, I personally love this quote. This represents, perhaps, one of the most directly classical werewolf descriptions that has survived to this day. We really have to thank both Baring-Gould and Summers immensely for protecting tales such as these from being utterly lost to time.
Not yet done discussing the legends from Palermo, Summers also says, "A certain wealthy man, the scion of a noble house, at the full of the moon was seized with lycanthropy [...] [they] wondered who this dread werewolf might be, seeing that my lord's face and features were so convulsed and hideous lupine as to be unrecognized even by those of his intimacy and own household" (164-165).
These are certainly not every single example Summers gives of a relation between werewolves and the full moon, nor is it every example of a relation between werewolves and the moon, or moonlight itself, in general. Indeed, Summers gives quite a few cases in which werewolves are connected to the moon in more ways than one - but most often by a full moon inducing their beastly transformation, after which they utterly lose control.
Further examples connecting the full moon, and moonlight itself, to werewolves can be found in the single best source for werewolf folklore that still exists: Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Werewolves...
Baring-Gould details on page 115, citing the writings of Gervaise of Tilbury in his work Otia Imperalia, “Vidimus frequenter in Anglia, per lunationes, homines in lupos mutari, quod hominum genus gerulfos Galli vocant, Angli vero wer-wlf, dicunt: wer enim Anglice virum sonat, wlf, lupum."
In my own edition of Baring-Gould's work, I translated this passage as, roughly, “We have frequently seen in England, through means of the moons, men are changed into wolves, a race of men the Gauls call gerulfos, but the English specifically say wer-wlf: for in English wer sounds like man, wlf, a wolf" (115n45).
Similarly, Baring-Gould gives a mention of legends in France: "In the south of France, it is still believed that fate has destined certain men to be lycanthropists—that they are transformed into wolves at full moon. The desire to run comes upon them at night" (119-120). Here, we see specificity about the full moon yet again, and this time from an entirely different region than previous examples.
Also coming from France, Baring-Gould mentions "the Périgord," wherein "[c]ertain men, especially bastards, are obliged at each full moon to transforms themselves into these diabolic beasts" (120).
Though less specific regarding the full moon, Baring-Gould also mentions tales from Russia, saying that one who wishes to become a werewolf (here called an "oborot," meaning "one transformed" [132]), will need to recite an incantation that includes the lines, "On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ashstock lying," and, prominently, "Moon, moon, gold-horned moon" (133), as though addressing the moon itself when reciting the spell, asking it for protection and transformation.
In terms of popular culture, the previously mentioned Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) helped bring the full moon and werewolf connection to the forefront with the alteration of the curse from the film's predecessor, The Wolf Man (1941), in which the werewolf rhyme specifies...
Even a man who is pure at heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright
However, the werewolf transformation's specific timing was altered in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), in which the rhyme instead says...
Even a man who is pure at heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
And the moon is full and bright
However, much earlier, in 1935, the film Werewolf of London had werewolves that transformed beneath the full moon, but it is much lesser-known.
Thus, it is quite obvious that a connection has long existed between the werewolf and the full moon. This is not some newfangled concept, and there's a reason they are so endlessly iconic. Indeed, even in the mind of those who do not turn their thoughts often to werewolves, the sight of the full moon may inspire them to recall these sundry legends - as it should be.
Works Cited:
Baring-Gould, Sabine. The Book of Were-Wolves. 1865. Justin & Maegan Stebbins, 2023.
Stebbins, Maegan. The Werewolf: Past and Future - Lycanthropy's Lost History and Modern Devolution. Justin & Maegan Stebbins, 2017.
Summers, Montague. Werewolf. 1933. Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino, 2012.
And as always...
Happy Howl-o-ween!
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Time for Werewolf Fact #72! Wow, that's a lot. And that's not counting all the books and articles and ask responses and other things I've done over the years. It's been a fun ride.
But for now, let's turn our attention to something a patron pointed out I've never actually discussed... what makes a werewolf return to human form?
I'll be honest: popular culture has taken much more of an interest in laying out the details about returning to the human form than did folklore, overall. In folklore, the act of changing to and from was certainly the centerpiece of the horror, but popular culture and its emphasis on werewolf characters led into a deeper evaluation of such an experience. Folklore also generally discussed the transformation into a monster much more than out of it, at least in more laborious and horrific detail (see Lykaon, Niceros, etc).
We see painful transformations to the werewolf form in folklore quite a bit, as I've discussed before. In fact, the prime example is one of the earliest surviving recorded werewolf legends. And yet even turning into the bestial form was occasionally painless in folklore, involving donning a magic skin or performing a simple ritual to suddenly become a wolf. As for the werewolf returning to the human form, as far as folklore is concerned, that often seems almost or entirely effortless.
Obviously, in popular culture, it's much more common to have the dramatic to or from in either form. I'm personally a big fan of this, as you'd know if you've read any of my fiction (be sure to check that out at my website!), but if you really want to get down and dirty with werewolves being true to folklore, frankly it is overall common for neither transformation to be painful. And certainly it is even less common for the return to human form to be a particularly traumatic or jarring event. That doesn't make for a super dramatic story, though, so we see - especially in past werewolf stories, ones that emphasized horror more - the traumatic tos and froms.
With that out of the way, here are some methods of returning to the human form in folklore...
End of certain timeframe - The most common of triggers to return to the human form, many werewolves will reassume the human form after a certain amount of time has passed. For instance, werewolves in Greek myths like those of Arcadia could return to their human form after seven or ten years, if they hadn't devoured any human flesh. Likewise, other werewolves would return after a certain number of days or even weeks had passed, with or without other circumstances.
At will - There are cases of the werewolf returning to human form at will throughout folklore, or else it is unspecified if there are any other required circumstances or acts.
Removing the magic skin/item - This can vary from being difficult (such as with Sigmund and Sinfjotli) to being as easy as "peeling back the wolf skin," such as in the tale of the werewolves of Ossory. There are many other examples as well, with varying degrees of difficulty or triggers.
Using a salve - In some stories, a salve is rubbed on the body to reassume the human form. This is also the case with assuming the wolf form. This is more common in the Renaissance/Early Modern period, overall, often with Satanic werewolf or even witches-rebranded-as-werewolves-by-modern-scholars, though there are a few cases otherwise.
Putting on your clothes again - In some stories, a werewolf who sheds his clothes turns into the wolf form, and in order to don the human form once more, he must return to his clothing. Sometimes, the clothes turn to stone in the meantime, until he returns to put them back on. Or, such as with Bisclavret, the clothes may be hidden, trapping the werewolf in bestial form.
Curse removal - In some stories, whoever cursed the werewolf must lift the curse in order to return the werewolf to human form. This is the case in tales wherein the werewolf doesn't go back and forth at all but is someone cursed to become a wolf and stay that way until said curse is lifted, less like a traditional werewolf.
Daybreak - Some werewolves returned to the human form at daybreak. While this didn't appear in stories directly very often, it is mentioned in assorted sourcebooks, such as Baring-Gould and Summers discussing werewolves and how "the desire comes upon them at night." It can also be speculated based on events in stories, such as Niceros's Tale, but the circumstances there were never explicitly stated. So this one may be slightly more questionable than the others if you want direct story sources, but I'd say there are plenty of sources around enough to justify it being on this list.
I am not including those funky ones you see all across the internet that weirdos bandy about in their clickbait list articles, like "tossing iron over the werewolf's head" or whatever, because I need a lot more cross-referenced actual examples of those to include them in a list such as this, as opposed to unfounded Google results that D&D players then like to grab and turn into le silleh memes.
Note that this list, as always, doesn't cover every single possibility seen in folklore. I'm not even going to pretend I'm trying to do that here. That will be in the future Werewolf Facts book that I'm publishing in a few years (yes, I am working on that).
And that just about covers the general overview! Hope you enjoyed the post. Be sure to check out the links below. Until next time!
( If you like my blog, be sure to follow me here and elsewhere for more folklore and fiction, including books, especially on werewolves! You can also sign up for my free newsletter for monthly werewolf/vampire/folklore facts, a free story, and book previews.
Werewolf Fact #73 - Hypertrichosis, excessive hair growth ("werewolf syndrome"), Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard
Today I'll be covering something else clinical: hypertrichosis.
You may have heard of "werewolf syndrome," a condition of excessive hair growth. It isn't to be confused with clinical lycanthropy, which is something else entirely. "Werewolf syndrome" is also called hypertrichosis - and it's occasionally associated with and/or can even be derived from another condition, porphyria, that was also associated with "werewolves" throughout scholarship. Likewise, the most well-known kind of hypertrichosis that involves excessive hair growth all over the body is also often associated with gum and teeth problems; such issues could lead to unusual teeth and mouth shape.
Interestingly, however, despite a lot of modern scholars retroactively assuming that werewolf victims of the past could have suffered hypertrichosis, many of the werewolf legends in question specifically describe lycanthropy sufferers to look quite different. The legends in question are later era ones from the Early Modern period, during which time lycanthropy had become a madness and a disease under clinical and scientific supervision, very much unlike previous time periods, as I cover extensively in my book The Werewolf: Past and Future as well as other werewolf facts.
These legends describe sufferers of the werewolf curse variably to only be "hairy" when in their wolf form specifically (other than, occasionally, having long hair without mention of unusual body hair), highlighting how they were not unusually hairy in human form, or to "always [have] some hairs in the hollow of his hand" (as noted by Sabine Baring-Gould in The Book of Were-Wolves; taken from page 121 of my own edition of his work). Hypertrichosis often specifically does not have hair growth on the palms, conversely. Likewise, many legends of later time periods even specifically say that werewolves are not hairy "on the outside," but that their hair "grows inward" when they aren't in their inhuman form.
Still, scholars entertain the notion of connections that I still question to a healthy degree, so I have studied it as a result. I think it's best to simply summarize it as, the syndrome reminds people of what werewolves are meant to look like, rather than asserting that "this is why some people believed in werewolves" and the like.
Hypertrichosis is rare, and any kind of proper documentation only began perhaps around the 1600s. During this time and for a very long time after, sufferers of hypertrichosis were often called a variety of terms like "ape-men" or "wolf-men." They were considered spectacles and often were brought to noble courts like exotic animals, to entertain high society. Many were circus freaks. Not all examples are before our time, either.
But, Mav, you ask, how is this related to Beauty and the Beast and Bluebeard? Aren't those fairytales?
One famous example of someone with hypertrichosis is the one whose related image began this post: Petrus Gonsalvus, who lived from around 1537 to sometime past 1617. He was called assorted names, such as "the wild gentleman of Tenerife," "the man of the woods," and of course, "the Canarian werewolf." He lived in assorted courts throughout both Italy and France, including the court of Henry II, King of France, around 1547 - he was sent there when he was but 10 years old as a gift from a regent (Margaret of Parma) of the Netherlands. He moved about various courts over time and even married.
Much of Gonsalvus's family inherited his condition (four of his seven children), including some of his daughters. Like their father, they were often traded amongst courts as pets of a sort. Here is Madelene Gonsalvus, a portrait from 1580:
It is believed that the marriage of Petrus Gonsalvus to his wife, a woman believed to be named Catherine and a lady-in-waiting to Catherine de Medici, may have provided some inspiration for the tale of Beauty and the Beast, which was first written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.
Beauty and the Beast may not be the only fairytale inspired by hypertrichosis, either. The tale of Bluebeard, as also discussed by Baring-Gould in his Book of Werewolves, describes Bluebeard as "His hair and moustache were light brown, and his beard was clipped to a point. This beard, which resembled no other beard" (232), similar to some elements of hypertrichosis variations, as well as mention of his gum condition: "At intervals he ground his teeth like a wild beast preparing to dash upon his prey, and then his lips became so contracted, as they were drawn in and glued, as it were, to his teeth, that their very colour was indiscernible" (233).
Sidebar: if you're interested in the story of Bluebeard and what it was based on, definitely check out Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves, as he has an unmatched documentation of it. I don't think it really has a place in a book about werewolves, but obviously I preserved his work in its original condition, so you can find it in my edition of his book, as well. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's morbidly very interesting.
So, connection to werewolves or not, it's still certain that hypertrichosis was seen as an inhuman condition. There are many examples of people who had or have the condition and records of how they were treated throughout history.
As mentioned, I have to wonder how much of this was actually associated with werewolf legends - given legends always explicitly involved transformation, which was the entire basis of it - but scholars eat this kind of thing up. In academia, everyone is always trying to come up with "new arguments" to "add to the conversation" or whatever, so we end up discussing and studying hypertrichosis alongside werewolf legends that specifically state such things weren't a part of the legends. Weird, isn't it?
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the post. Until next time!
And stay tuned for news and updates on a major [werewolf] book release later this year!
If you like my blog, be sure to follow me here and elsewhere for more folklore and fiction, including books, especially on werewolves! You can also sign up for my free newsletter for monthly werewolf/vampire/folklore facts, a free story, and book previews.
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Well, I thought this month would be about something else, but my patrons spoke differently! And I always listen to my patrons when it comes to folklore facts.
So, without further ado, let’s finally get back to werewolf facts! This is a big one, as it’s a lifelong favorite topic of mine!
An ancient Egyptian mask worn by a priest during rites performed for the dead, who would have “taken on the aspect” of the wolf-headed god Anubis
Let me just open by saying that I absolutely love ancient Egypt. It’s fascinated me since I was a small child and I was reading a tiny children’s book about cats, and ancient Egypt was discussed. Naturally, when I found out about Anubis, I was even more interested. Then came games like Age of Mythology and many movies... especially The Mummy (1999), of course. Anyway!
Ancient Egypt didn’t have a negative opinion of wolves. In fact, several important deities had wolf heads and were associated with wolves. Let’s begin with something that’s always interested me, which is the city of Lykopolis (as it was called in Greek)...
More under the cut, since this post got so lengthy!
Lykopolis (ancient Egyptian transliteration is something like “Zawty”) was an important city located on the western bank of the Nile, capital of the Thirteenth Nome of Upper Egypt during about 3100 BC. The primary deities of the city were - as you might imagine - Anubis and Wepwawet, both wolf-headed gods. Mummified wolves (golden wolves, not jackals; more on this momentarily) have been found in various excavated chambers throughout the city ruins, of which very little still survives.
The city has a very fun story behind it, as told by Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. In the first century BC, an army of Nubians invaded from the south - but they were repelled by packs of wolves. These wolves drove the army from the southern borders of Lykopolis and then back beyond the borders of Egypt. According to Diodorus, this is why Lykopolis was called “the city of the wolf” and revered wolves and wolf-deities so greatly.
Some sources claim that these wolves were summoned by the god Osiris, who was also worshiped as a wolf in Lykopolis, and had also, at one point, taken the form of a wolf. I will admit I personally haven’t read this source, as it’s in French, so I can’t fully attest to that element of the story - I haven’t seen that one cited very often in various specifically ancient Egypt history sources. Regardless, it’s fun if true. Either way, the tale of the wolves driving back Egypt’s enemies was definitely recounted in detail in a primary historical source!
By the way, you’ll hear a lot of people refer to these deities as “jackal-headed.” It’s very popular still to call Anubis the “jackal god.” We now know, though, that the animals in question were in fact not jackals - they were indeed wolves. Scientists for a long time asserted that they for some reason knew things better than the ancient Egyptians and Greeks who actually lived during the time period and retroactively dictated that they weren’t wolf gods, they were jackal gods.
However, the Egyptian jackal was discovered to be a species of gray wolf. You can read a lot about that here in this article, regarding how people didn’t believe wolves lived in the area during those time periods, but we found out they did, and we also found out that the mummified wolves in Lykopolis were - yes - wolves, like their contemporary cultures said.
A quote from the article: “the Egyptian jackal is in fact a gray wolf. ‘We now know that wolves were indeed in Africa in the days of the ancient Egyptians—and long, long before,’ says Stenseth.”
I honestly don’t know why everyone thought wolves couldn’t have lived in the area during these time periods (when we know perfectly well a wide variety of animals inhabited regions they no longer inhabit, and that we discover new species in the deserts even to this day) or decided the ancients didn’t know what they were talking about, but anyway...
Another fun fact, by the way, is that the word “jackal” didn’t even enter the English language until the 1600s, borrowed from French, which in turn was most likely borrowed from Persian - not Egyptian. The animals in Egypt were wolves, and we now know that they were also wolves scientifically. In fact, some scientists even believe it’s possible that jackals (as in actual scientific jackals, not golden wolves) didn’t find their way into the Egyptian region until much later, when these wolf gods would have been well-established. They may have followed travelers out of Arabia. This is speculation, though, but regardless, the long-believed-to-be “jackals” of ancient Egypt were all wolves. So it sounds like we should’ve believed the ancient Egyptians and Greeks in the first place, huh?
Long story short - Lykopolis was indeed a wolf city, wolves drove invaders out of Egypt, and Anubis, Wepwawet, and Duamutef were wolf gods. Not jackals.
Please note that there are those who would argue with me that some of them are jackals and some are wolves, or that they were all jackals, or whatever else, but in my personal opinion (and the opinion of many historians and scientists), it’s very clear across depictions, mummified wolves, historical accounts from both Egyptians and Greeks, etc., that these many Egyptian wolf-related beings were what we now call “golden wolves” or “Egyptian wolves” (and sometimes referred to as “jackals” still despite their genetics), which are indeed gray wolves, and not a species of true (genetic) jackals. There also exist theories that these wolves are something that no longer exists, and also that the modern animals we have are interbred wolves and jackals. Theories abound, whatever the case.
Then of course there are those who say that Anubis was the jackal-headed god and Wepwawet was the wolf-headed god, due in no small part to inherent biases that wolves only come in “gray.” I think those are all very silly, especially as we already know that colors in ancient Egypt were highly associated with ritual and meaning, rather than directly stating that Anubis’s head was black because he’s some kind of black-backed jackal - which don’t even have black heads, anyway. We have multiple associations between Anubis and wolves, and just because Wepwawet was often depicted with a grey or white head doesn’t make him a wolf and Anubis something different. Therefore, I personally will continue to refer to all of these as wolf-headed gods, and I apologize if that bothers anyone.
Sorry. Brief Mav-rant there. More important things to follow, because we haven’t even talked about those deities yet!
So now let’s talk about these gods themselves...
Anubis in the book of the dead (which was not actually a book)
Easily my favorite thing in all of ancient Egyptian mythology, Anubis (known by many other epithets, including but not at all limited to "Lord of the Sacred Land," "He Who is Upon his Sacred Mountain," "Master of Secrets," and "He Who is in the Place of Embalming”) is the god of the dead. He was the protector of graves, guardian of the dead, the shepherd of souls passing into the afterlife, and many more roles, including the ever-important Weighing of the Heart (as seen above), the results of which would dictate whether or not someone was allowed to enter the afterlife - or if their heart was devoured by the monster Ammit and their soul destroyed forever.
Anubis was depicted with the black head of a wolf. His head was colored black because black was the color associated with life, the life-giving soil of the Nile River, regeneration, and embalmed bodies, and he, of course, is also the god of mummification. Anubis is one of the single most important deities in all of ancient Egypt, depicted and mentioned very frequently, even more than most any other deity - however, despite this, there are almost no stories actually involving him.
But no, Anubis was not “evil,” as much of modern pop culture would have you believe! (Sorry The Mummy Returns, I love you to death, I really do - but it was super rude to make Anubis evil.)
Long story short, Anubis was freaking awesome, and there’s way too much to say about him and his awesomeness for just one post. Maybe I’ll do a separate post all about him later, because he’s a personal obsession of mine.
Anubis’s brother (at least, he is considered to be this by some) was the god Wepwawet, another wolf-headed deity. Wepwawet was a man with a white or grey head of a wolf (though some think he may have also had a black head like Anubis, but others claim that is not the cause and the coloring was on purpose as we have seen it in too many different places - still more claim it was just the artist’s preference; it’s hard to know any of these things for sure)...
Wepwawet with Pharaoh Seti I (try not to read that in Ardeth Bay’s voice, I dare you. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to, though)
Like basically all deities of ancient Egypt, Wepwawet is a complicated god, a deity involved in some funerary rites, but especially associated with war and royalty. Wepwawet means “opener of the ways,” and he was depicted as a man with the head of a grey or white wolf, as well as wolf at the prow of a solar boat, sometimes said to lead armies, to scout, and even to have the honor of going before the pharaoh himself. He is also known by the title “one with sharp arrows more powerful than the gods.”
A very important god, Wepwawet is one of the oldest gods of Egypt ever recorded, and he was always associated directly with royalty and specially the pharaoh. He was said to accompany the pharaoh on his hunts, as well as protecting the pharaoh in life and the afterlife - he is a symbol of divinity of rule and of kings in general. He is, for certain, a very good deity, rather than some kind of evil wolf of Western literature.
And lastly among the prominent wolf-headed deities, we have one of the four sons of Horus, Duamutef...
The four sons of Horus were depicted upon the canopic jars (jars containing certain organs of the mummified dead) starting in the First Intermediate Period of Egyptian history, which was around 2181-2055 BC. Each deity protected a different important organ; Duamutef, the wolf-headed god, always protected the stomach and represented the direction of the east. Please note he was not always depicted with a black head like Anubis; sometimes he also had a white or grey head. It varied. Likewise, in later periods, the forms of these various gods were sometimes mixed up, and a different son of Horus would have the wolf head. These deities were depicted not only on the canopic jars, but also on many other funerary artifacts, including the sarcophagi that would contain the jars.
So we have all these wolf-headed deities... but does any of this tie into werewolves at all?
Well, it doesn’t, really. There seems to be no indication that Anubis, Wepwawet, Duamutef, or anyone else did any particular shapeshifting, and they certainly weren’t cursed. They were gods. Anubis and Wepwawet are both sometimes depicted as simply a wolf as opposed to a wolf-headed man - as many of the Egyptian gods are depicted as their animal counterparts, including Ra, Horus, Hathor, Sobek, and many, many others - but that’s merely his animal aspect counterpart. Depictions and aspects of the gods of ancient Egypt (and also, later, how Rome and Egypt intermingled some of their deities during the Roman occupation, such as Hermanubis) are extremely in-depth topics. I’ve always loved studying them, but they are immensely complicated - certainly far too complicated for this post! So let’s get back to the matter at hand...
I’ll be honest, I have yet to find a credibly-sourced legend that talks about anything like an ancient Egyptian “werewolf.” I’m pretty darn sure they didn’t have anything remotely like what we consider among actual werewolf legends, my friends, and especially none that meet my personal criteria. The ancient Greeks, however, absolutely did, as you probably know if you’ve spent time browsing my werewolf facts masterlist (link at the bottom of this post!).
Wolf-headed gods, however - yes, they definitely had those, and no, they were not “evil gods.” In fact, some of them were very highly revered and associated directly with necessary aspects of life and death, as well as with pharaohs.
Speaking of, if you love ancient Egypt (and also adventure movies), you should absolutely check out my new novella that came out just this past June - Wulfgard: The Tomb of Ankhu!
It is the first of two short novellas that tell an exciting tale about adventure, an ancient curse, mummies, memorable characters, and last but not least lots of Anubis and other legends, all of it set in the vast ancient-medieval dark age fantasy realm of Wulfgard: a world where all myths are true.
Every book release means the world to me, and this one is no different. I’m very proud of this story, and I really think you’ll enjoy it.
Deep in the southernmost deserts of Wulfgard lies the resting place of Pharaoh Ankhu the Endless, one of the greatest evils the land of Kemhet, or the world, has ever known. So terrible was his power that the gods themselves cursed him, sealing him away in an underground labyrinth. Ankhu rises with each darkening of the moon, a walking mummy, wandering this tomb in search of his own still-beating heart, without which he can never reach the afterlife.
Over untold ages, Ankhu’s tomb remained undiscovered, a secret protected always by the loyal Medjai, an order sworn to guard Kemhet from all threats. And now, a new threat has arisen: Lord Tefnahkt the Red, a powerful warlock, drives his cult and his many slaves to uncover Pharaoh Ankhu’s resting place and steal the mummy's power.
While a small group of Medjai desperately work to stop Tefnahkt’s plans, one slave may become the key to putting an end to this evil once and for all: Djedar Rath. In a race against time, Djedar must lead the Medjai to prevent Tefnahkt from opening the tomb of Ankhu before the coming of the new moon, when the undead Pharaoh will awaken once more. For, if Ankhu escapes, the world will never survive his wrath.
Inspired heavily by real-world ancient Egyptian and other mythologies - but with many original additions and elements - as well as the classic character-driven adventure genre that mixes aspects of action, thriller, and horror, with a tasteful sprinkling of levity, The Tomb of Ankhu is a tale of non-stop adventure and excitement that will leave you on the edge of your seat! Now available in ebook and paperback!
Go here to purchase on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8897R1K
Readers have been really enjoying this one! The second one has been in the works for quite some time already, so expect news about that in the coming months, as well.
Hope you enjoyed the werewolf fact this month, even if it was kind of more a wolf fact. But, myself, I have spent my entire life captivated by ancient Egypt, so I love this kind of stuff.
Thanks for reading, and until next time!
( If you like my werewolf blog, be sure to follow me here and check out my other stuff! Please consider supporting me on Patreon or donating on Ko-fi if you’d like to see me continue my works, including my folklore blog and writing my own novels, werewolf and otherwise. Every little bit helps so much.
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Werewolf Fact #70 - Werewolves in medical history + "clinical lycanthropy"
The results of the werewolf fact poll over on my Patreon are in, and now we have this month's werewolf fact: all about werewolves in historical medical treatises of the Renaissance/Early Modern period and the term "clinical lycanthropy," as well as what all that means and how it still impacts werewolf studies and werewolf pop culture today.
This post will make use of a lot of primary sources, which I always find fun, so buckle up!
I've done several posts touching upon subjects similar to this before, you might be familiar with them, such as how werewolves in folklore are the result of a curse instead of a disease, and my two-parter on when werewolves became associated with insanity (Part 1 and Part 2 are here). You can also read a whole lot more about that topic and my arguments regarding it in my thesis, which was on werewolves, and can be found here on Amazon.com (hardback coming soon!).
However, I have never really delved in detail into a few of the actual medical treatises written during the Renaissance/Early Modern Period - in other words, primary sources - of which we have several. In this post, I will cover a few, but not all. I'm also going to make mention of a few more modern ones in regard to clinical lycanthropy, but let's start with older first...
First of all, there was a lot of discussion of "melancholy" in the 1500s in regard to werewolves. This was even referenced in the play The Duchess of Malfi (and I actually have an academic article dedicated to the discussion of the lines involving werewolves in said play). This is, of course, related to the ancient Greek theory of humors, in which the composition of the human body and health required the balance of four humors: black bile (earth), blood (air), choler (fire), and phlegm (water), each related to one of the classic elements.
Throughout the Renaissance, "wolf-madness" was attributed to a case of melancholy, or an excess of black bile. There are many examples of this. And, of course, there are also many attributions to Satan... which was not a thing at all before this time period, as before this, werewolves were even sometimes associated with Christianity (see: werewolves of Ossory, among others).
An oft-referenced source in both werewolf studies at large as well as my own works is "Admirable and Memorable Histories" by I. Goulart, from around 1607 and translated from French by Ed Grimeston; I use this source from my book A Lycanthropy Reader by Charlotte F. Otten. Please note that the language of the piece is dated, so it will read funny to modern audiences.
Goulart discusses "Licanthropes and mad-men, the which wee will consider of two sorts," not necessarily equating those suffering from "lycanthropy" as mad-men, but as those "in whom the melancholike humor doth so rule, as they imagine themselves to be transformed into Wolves." He refers to them as "counterfet Wolves" and discusses how they "runne into Church-yardes, and about graves," something not uncommonly seen in the newfangled werewolf sources of the 1600s onward but not commonplace in werewolf legends of previous time periods.
Goulart also discusses men "tormented with an evill spirit, that at a certaine season of the yeare, hee imagined himselfe to bee a ravening Wolfe," and references other elements seen only in the later werewolf trials as opposed to previous werewolf legends. I also can't help but wonder if the "certain season" element is something Curt Siodmak saw and carried over into the original werewolf in The Wolf Man turning during a particular season (when wolfsbane blooms in autumn)...
Anyway, another of Goulart's sources is Job Fincel in 1541, who describes werewolves in ways we see around a lot when googling and finding garbage on the internet but not so much in legends previously, such as how those afflicted with the "disease" of believing themselves to become a wolf (but not actually turning into one) "are pale, their eyes are hollow, and they see ill, their tongue is drye, they are much altered, and are without much spittle in the mouth." This is consistent with particular illnesses rather than anything seen in werewolf legends, as these are not the people who truly become wolves, only those who believe that they do - and Goulart was still drawing lines between those with hallucinations, those who actually change shape, and those who are werewolves by other means. For example, Goulart also discusses the idea of people whose souls fly from their own bodies and enter into the forms of wolves instead.
There are other examples that discuss these same topics, of course, including but not at all limited to "Diseases of the Mind" by Robert Burton and "A Treatise" by Robert Bayfield, both of which are also featured in A Lycanthropy Reader, and there are plenty of others in assorted other werewolf studies publications.
Now, in addition to these older examples, we also have much more recent medical studies regarding what is known in modernity as "clinical lycanthropy."
Here's a fun fact: the term "lycanthropy" wasn't ever used in antiquity to refer to werewolf legends. It was created by the medical profession in the 1500s to refer specifically to a form of madness, not shapeshifting. It referred to what was recognized as a mental illness that they called lycanthropy: someone believing that they turned into a wolf, not to someone actually turning into a wolf (as in, not referring to the legends in which this happened).
Today, we call this "clinical lycanthropy," because the term "lycanthropy" was basically taken by werewolf media and werewolf studies and retroactively applied to werewolf legends. But the term "lycanthropy" was never actually used in said legends.
The term "lycanthropy" to refer to a "werewolf disease" is just another way in which medical studies and Renaissance writings turned werewolf legends into a "werewolf disease" instead of a magical curse, as it always used to be.
Now, of course, the medical world doesn't really recognize "clinical lycanthropy" anymore. It's considered to be a part of other mental conditions, the result of drug-induced hallucinations, or something entirely different. Several cases were attributed to schizophrenia instead, for example. So the term "clinical lycanthropy" in itself is all but outdated.
I won't be including or directly quoting from the case reports from the 1970s in this discussion, as this post is already enormous and, frankly, the case reports are not things that could be easily discussed in today's environment, as the language in the reports would certainly be considered offensive today, and that's not something I want to navigate. So I won't get into all that. They're out there if you want to read them, but I won't bother breaking them down here.
There are also certainly other examples of medical history relating to werewolves and werewolf legends, but I'll save all that for the werewolf facts book or another publication of mine!
Medical treatises are just another example from the Renaissance (and for quite a while after, into at least the 1800s and even early 1900s) of trying to rationalize and find "scientific explanations" for all manner of folklore and mythology. This also resulted in a considerable amount of condemnation for those who still believed in this sort of thing, as well as those who believed themselves to be experiencing it. As mentioned in some of my other werewolf facts, this didn't always include punishment (many victims of clinical lycanthropy at the time were actually well taken care of), but it did include things like being locked away from society for being declared insane. And, of course, if the victim in question was not a victim but a perpetrator, then it would result in a trial and punishment - and often execution. However, this was much more likely to happen to witches rather than werewolves. Just another way in which the trial of Peter Stubbe were very obviously witch/sorcerer trials and had nothing to do with werewolves at all.
Now, of course, you'll also recognize that a lot of the things you see in the treatises I used as examples don't follow up with many or even any werewolf legends you're very familiar with. Things were getting a bit weird at this point in history in regard to folklore and the like, and the reaching for rationalizing something like a person turning into a wolf or wolf-monster of any sort certainly resulted in some wild connections.
While this is far from the werewolf legends that personally fascinate me most, they are an important part of werewolf studies - hugely so. In fact, they're often discussed more than almost anything else, because unfortunately werewolf scholars are overly obsessed with later time periods that I personally find less fun and interesting than the Middle Ages and ancient times. But, hey, I love all of it.
Until next time!
And remember, if you want to vote on the next werewolf or vampire or other folklore fact, be sure to check out my Patreon. Thanks for reading!
( If you like my werewolf blog, be sure to follow me here and check out my other stuff!
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I’m back with another vampire fact! In fact, all folklore facts are now back, so expect to see more of these!
The winner of the last vampire fact’s Patreon poll was “how to identify a vampire” (that was a hot minute ago because I had to take a break from these), very much like my previous werewolf fact on how to identify a werewolf.
I won’t be covering pop culture vampires in detail/providing a list of how to identify vampires in pop culture. I’m not so deeply versed in vampire pop culture as I am werewolf pop culture; I only study vampire folklore, not their modern media, unlike with werewolves. I familiar with some of it, for sure, but I’d never pretend to be any kind of expert on broader vampire pop culture.
Please note the following is not to be considered a 100% complete list, as there are many, many vampire legends out there! This is just several of the more “popular” methods of identification and perhaps some of the better-known.
Some Folklore Vampire Identifiers
Pale - There are some stories in which vampires actually are pale in folklore, and in which being particularly pale might be a sign of vampirism.
Reddish or purplish skin - Conversely, vampires can also be identified - especially in Eastern European regions - by having “reddish” or “purplish” skin and perhaps even a swollen appearance. All of this comes from drinking too much blood. It’s basically the opposite of being pale: they look flushed and reddened instead of pallid. This one was not uncommon.
Red eyes - This didn’t always mean red eyes as in red irises, like in a lot of popular culture. Often, it could also mean similarly to the flushed appearance: it meant bloodshot eyes, eyes full of blood. But some might also be interpreted as having red irises, and let’s face it, red irises are very cool.
Unnaturally beautiful - This one isn’t uncommon in legends, either: unnatural beauty. Vampires in many stories seduced their victims, and it wasn’t too unusual for things to get steamy, either. Again with the conversely, though...
Unnaturally hideous - Vampires can also be unnaturally hideous. We’re talking like really nasty, because they’re monsters - often these are the monster vampires, demons, not vampires that were ever actually human. However, sometimes signs of being a vampire could also be just human traits that are considered hideous, such as having a caul, being exceptionally hairy (judgmental much?), etc.
Only comes out at night - This is an obvious one in both popular culture and folklore. Often in folklore, however, vampires also only came out at night because it was the only time they actually left their graves. Vampires didn’t come out only at night because they were burned by the sun in folklore (they actually weren’t!), but because they were nocturnal.
Signs of undeath in coffin - Often, vampires were identified via actually unearthing the coffin and taking a look at the corpse. There were many signs that might show a corpse was actually leaving the grave as a vampire, such as growth of the hair or fingernails, the eyes being open or partially open, blood around the mouth, reddened eyes, or a swollen reddish or purplish appearance, as if the corpse is engorged with blood.
Well, there’s a few, at least! There are so many vampire legends I won’t cover “all” of them until, you know, I write the Vampire Facts book someday (maybe? Werewolf Facts the book is definitely on the way, though). At any rate, be sure to tell all your friends how to find vampires today by reblogging this post!
Oh, and no, fangs are not included in folklore.
Also, if you are curious about vampire weaknesses, be sure to check out my post on that, too, as well as the vampire masterlist (linked at the bottom of this post)!
Until next time!
( If you like my blog, be sure to follow me here and elsewhere for more folklore and fiction, including books, especially on werewolves! And please consider donating and/or supporting me on Patreon - not only will you help me keep this blog running, but patrons get cool stuff and rewards in return! You’ll find lots more cool stuff over on my personal website.
Werewolf Fact #71 - Book Review: Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Werewolves
While it may not be a "werewolf fact" of the traditional nature, it's very important when studying folklore to know and understand one's sources.
One of the very best sources for werewolf folklore - and indeed other folklore and mythology besides - is Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Werewolves (or The Book of Were-Wolves as he called it), written in 1865. However, like any academic/rhetorical source, it shouldn't be taken at face value. Let's dive into why it's such a useful source - and why you shouldn't always take to heart everything Baring-Gould attempts to assert.
Already a scholar, Baring-Gould was a skeptical guy. It all began when, during his travels, Baring-Gould encountered several people terrified of a werewolf. He was baffled they truly believed in such a thing, and that it would stop them from wanting to traverse a road at night...
“If the loup-garou were only a natural wolf, why then, you see”—the mayor cleared his throat—“you see we should think nothing of it; but, M. le Curé, it is a fiend, a worse than fiend, a man-fiend,—a worse than man-fiend, a man-wolf-fiend.”
Baring-Gould, not intimidated, walked the road alone. However, along the way, the words of the others got to him, and he found himself frightened. The manner in which such preposterous superstition (naturally, he wasn't exactly a believer) would actually make him afraid at all made him very curious about such things and why people would believe in them...
This was my first introduction to werewolves, and the circumstance of finding the superstition still so prevalent, first gave me the idea of investigating the history and the habits of these mythical creatures.
I must acknowledge that I have been quite unsuccessful in obtaining a specimen of the animal, but I have found its traces in all directions. And just as the palæontologist has constructed the labyrinthodon out of its foot-prints in marl, and one splinter of bone, so may this monograph be complete and accurate, although I have no chained werewolf before me which I may sketch and describe from the life.
The traces left are indeed numerous enough, and though perhaps like the dodo or the dinormis, the werewolf may have become extinct in our age, yet he has left his stamp on classic antiquity, he has trodden deep in Northern snows, has ridden rough-shod over the mediævals, and has howled amongst Oriental sepulchres. He belonged to a bad breed, and we are quite content to be freed from him and his kindred, the vampire and the ghoul. Yet who knows! We may be a little too hasty in concluding that he is extinct. He may still prowl in Abyssinian forests, range still over Asiatic steppes, and be found howling dismally in some padded room of a Hanwell or a Bedlam.
Baring-Gould has his biases, but he also has an open mind about some topics, even if he's shut tighter than a bear trap on others, especially where anything scientific is concerned, as he was a big believer in the science of his time (not all of which is applicable to today). He's a complicated bag of tricks, and reading his work is quite an experience.
Whatever his biases and whatever one might think of his occasionally very judgmental and overly authoritarian words (i.e., he can sometimes think he knows better than everyone, including the people who actually lived during the time periods he's discussing), he is nothing short of phenomenal at his work of gathering and examining sources... even if he isn't always right. He contradicts his own research at least once, namely in relation to berserkers, but I won't go into all that (unless you read my edition of his book, of course; I discuss it extensively there).
He even spins some of his sources into thrilling tales. He honestly isn't bad at narration, able to paint an impressive and thrilling picture when retelling various werewolf (and other) legends...
But when dusk settled down over the forest, and one by one the windows of the castle became illumined, peasants would point to one casement high up in an isolated tower, from which a clear light streamed through the gloom of night; they spoke of a fierce red glare which irradiated the chamber at times, and of sharp cries ringing out of it, through the hushed woods, to be answered only by the howl of the wolf as it rose from its lair to begin its nocturnal rambles.
Something to note with Baring-Gould is that some of his sources are actually no longer with us. They did clearly exist, and he could access them during his own time, but they've since been lost, especially in such original formats (or they might be gone altogether). This is just another reason why Baring-Gould's work is irreplaceable as a source for many, many fields, not just werewolf studies. He cites and discusses works about many kinds of folklore, mythology, and even history, and he even provided the first English translation of the trail of Giles de Rais, a famous killer (and basis for the fairy tale Bluebeard). It's a fascinating read, even if you're just there for general folklore and mythology or if you're there specifically for werewolves or, broader spectrum, all manner of shapeshifters - he even talks a little bit about dragons!
However, when reading, bear in mind that Baring-Gould is not without his biases, as I mentioned before. He can be very judgmental of other scholars, especially from the past, but that isn't exactly uncommon even in modern scholarship. It's easy enough to read around, as long as you don't take everything he writes as fact. No scholar is perfect, no matter how impressive their work is, and that certainly includes Baring-Gould. He also approaches his work with werewolves specifically with the determination to relate them to "madmen" and serial killers, which is a consistent theme throughout the book. He will discuss werewolf legends and detail them well, but toward the end of each section, when providing his own assessment, he will generally offer how such things could be rationalized in his own mind. In doing so, of course, he does offer interesting discussion and food for thought, regardless of whether you agree with him (I agree with him at times but can also find him very disagreeable; it's like that with most everything one reads, so no shocker there). And, of course, his work even if only used for informational purposes is still impressive.
Biases is no reason to pass on what might be the best single source on these many topics. Besides, reading around potential biases is a skill everyone should learn.
One of his biggest downsides is that he doesn't provide English translations of all his quoted passages and sources. This was a problem in the original publication from the 1800s, and it continues into today with nearly all editions...
However, if you do want translations of nearly all of his quoted passages from various sources (as well as extensive annotations discussing werewolf studies, mythology, and more, and putting his scholarship into a modern context and even pointing out his errors, such as when he contradicts himself), then you need to see my edition of his work!
I personally translated and annotated The Book of Werewolves this year, and it's now available for purchase both through Amazon.com and my personal website, with a cover that's a different take on the book's original 1865 release...
Be sure to check it out at Amazon.com and my personal website!
If you buy it directly from me, I'll sign it for you, too. You can also download an ebook, if you prefer.
I assure you it's the best edition of this book you'll find. I know because I've bought nearly all of them trying to find one that's at all easy to reference. My edition even includes a bibliography that will assist you with further related reading, among other useful things. I've made sure the formatting is easily readable, so it's good for both casual reading and citation/quotation in research/academic projects. This was a lot of work, and I'm very proud of how it turned out, especially as I myself have worked with this book for years.
Final words: even with all my own personal biases about werewolves, the study of werewolf and other legends, and my opinions on some of Baring-Gould's assertions, I have to give Baring-Gould's work a 10/10 for being a must-read for anyone interested in werewolves. Trust me - if you love werewolves and studying their folklore like I do, you won't be able to put this book down, and you'll walk away with far more knowledge than you had before. Reading this book alone will give you a decent foundational knowledge of werewolf studies, while also touching upon other fields.
However, of course, I do recommend reading mine. Obviously. Especially because Baring-Gould is just so wrong about berserkers (hence, my own assertions)! But anyway.
That's all for now. Until next time, and be sure to check out my newsletter linked below!
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Werewolf Fact #68 - The Importance of The Wolf Man (1941)
For Halloween this year, and in celebration of almost 70 werewolf facts, let’s take an extra deep dive yet again and review something everyone who likes werewolves should know...
It is virtually impossible to overstate the sheer importance of one single piece of media on the general perception of werewolves today.
This piece of media came from a time when going to the theater was a riveting experience, when movies chilled you, when you watched in awe and wonder, captivated by the practical effects that, to you, as you were fully engrossed in this storytelling experience, were reality. With no famous literature about werewolves having created a foothold of concepts, as Dracula by Bram Stoker did with vampires, and with only forgotten films and stories too strange to resonate with the common people about werewolves before it, this movie alone was allowed set the bar and establish all expectations for all werewolf media to come...
I’m talking about one of the classic Universal Monsters pictures - I’m talking about The Wolf Man (1941).
Other than it’s very fun filmmaking and great use of many different oldshool film tricks and, of course, practical effects, as well as its original Universal Monsters film charm, The Wolf Man is a timeless classic for another reason: without it, modern day werewolf media wouldn’t even be half the same.
Sure, there were other films that came before (though very few) that may have or certainly did influenced it, like Werewolf of London from 1935, but that doesn’t change that Curt Siodmak’s work with his original screenplay for The Wolf Man solidified almost all of our baseline modern werewolf concepts in popular culture. So just how influenced by folklore was he, anyway?
He was certainly influenced somewhat, in many obvious ways, but you may be surprised to learn just how much of our modern werewolves we see during Halloween and all around Hollywood and even, today, in many popular books, games, and other media, have The Wolf Man to thank for more than one major element - or at least derivatives of those major elements.
As a DISCLAIMER I first want to say that I absolutely adore The Wolf Man and almost (but not quite) everything it did for werewolves in media. My favorite werewolves will always be the ones that run close to what Curt Siodmak came up with, because I just love it. It’s a great story full of drama and sympathy and horror and tragedy. I personally prefer my werewolf hero to be different, and to end up different, but that’s an aside.
I just want to make a point here that I am NOT saying “not folkloric = bad,” and I don’t ever mean to infer that in every single situation. I love a lot of Hollywood werewolf concepts and I use many of them, myself, because they’re my favorites. I am merely pointing out what is and isn’t folkloric or original about the film (while probably lavishing praise upon its concepts because, again, gosh, I just love these concepts if they’re actually handled well, they make for such a great story!).
Let’s get into the film (you can find a link to watch this film legally and for free on the Internet Archive at the end of this post, by the way!)...
Even as early as the first shot in the film, after the opening credits, we are treated to some of Curt Siodmak’s original werewolf concepts. This is found not only in the description of the lycanthropy around one Talbot Castle, but also in the addition at the bottom of the fictional encyclopedia entry on lycanthropy that says “the sign of the Werewolf is a five-pointed star, a pentagram.” This is patently untrue in folklore, of course, and that’s just another thing Siodmak made up for the movie.
Sidenote: I appreciate the lines “Oh, another dog.” “No, that’s a wolf.” Wolves aren’t dogs, kids. Although Gwen isn’t exactly right about Red Riding Hood being a werewolf story... Anyway, details.
We come next to the poem. The one that Gwen first recites to Larry in the shop, and we hear it throughout the film, as it becomes extremely important...
Even a man who is pure at heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf with the wolfsbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright
This poem was entirely made up by Siodmak. As was, as you might imagine, this business relating to pentagrams being the werewolf’s symbol and one he sees in the palm of his next victim’s hand.
By the way, whatever you do, please don’t go picking wolfsbane like they claim to do in the movie. Just saying.
Next up we have the fact that Larry’s bite heals overnight. This is certainly folkloric in nature, to a degree (more on that later in my overview/rundown), but it’s just as feasible that Siodmak hadn’t heard those legends and just wanted to make his werewolf scary and powerful - and because the healing wounds relates to the silver concept. By the way, I absolutely adore the rapidly healing wounds.
Another aside: this movie is such a joy to watch. I hadn’t seen it in years until I started writing this post. Many, many years, despite knowing it like the back of my hand and studying it all my life. It’s so incredible to watch all the classic werewolf elements we know and love unfold on the screen in their original form. It helps that I’m a massive cinephile movie nerd weirdo anyway and movies are my favorite form of entertainment by an extremely wide margin, despite enjoying many kinds of entertainment.
Anyway, next up for werewolf lore, we have Frank’s dog barking at Larry - because the dog knows he’s a monster. It’s not uncommon in many stories for animals to sense things people can’t, but this is also something else we often see highlighted in werewolf media to follow.
Something to note about silver in this film is that Larry is obviously still carrying his silver cane around even after he’s been bitten by the werewolf. It obviously isn’t burning or harming him even after he’s been bitten and his wound healed, unlike a lot of werewolf media today (admittedly, including my own works), in which silver can cause a werewolf pain just to the touch, even in human form.
Next up we hear about whoever is bitten by the werewolf becomes a werewolf. This, I want you to know, is speculated to have been started sometime in French werewolf legends - some scholars hold to that. But even if it wasn’t originated by this movie (I honestly kind of think that it was originated by this movie), it was certainly popularized by this movie and sticks in the modern psyche thanks to this film alone. Yes, there was a time when lycanthropy may have been associated with rabies, and that may even be where Siodmak got the idea, but no matter what, that concept is timelessly popular solely because of this film.
Next up we have the buildup to the single most important moment in any werewolf movie... the transformation scene.
This film, as you might expect, also established the importance of the transformation scene. Really, such a scene has been important in werewolf media and highlighted even since Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but this movie really emphasizes the horror behind a man becoming a monster. And it’s so right to do so.
After all, what is most unique about werewolves and why do they stick with us so strongly? It’s the transformation. The idea that a man can become a monster and then return to a human form - and be cursed to live out a life turning back and forth. That’s really the heart of any werewolf story. That’s how it all begins. That’s the backbone.
So anyway, the transformation scene in The Wolf Man is of course excellent. We see Larry undergoing all the stages of the werewolf transformation as all werewolf media will follow after it - he freaks out, he runs home, tries to find seclusion, he looks at himself, looks in a mirror, tries to notice any changes... because he at once doesn’t think it’s real but also is certainly starting to believe it, with everyone freaking out so badly around him, especially the gypsies.
Larry’s first transformation begins and ends in his feet, as they don’t want to show us the werewolf himself yet - they build up to it, and we first see him in the dark forest. The werewolf feet are of course famous as a result of being our first glimpse of the famous wolf man.
Larry goes to a graveyard - a favorite haunt of werewolves and many other folkloric monsters - and kills a guy, biting his throat out. It’s noteworthy, of course, that Larry doesn’t leave humanoid wolf prints. He leaves wolf prints, to the point that everyone assumes it is a wolf, not some kind of monster.
Larry then finds a pentagram on his chest, about where the werewolf bit him or so. He realizes he left a trail and starts covering it up, only to discover the detective is tracking him. Again, the pentagram thing is not in werewolf folklore at all.
The rundown of lycanthropy that Larry’s father gives to him is actually a pretty good one. He isn’t wrong about finding werewolf legends almost everywhere, and it did become recognized as a clinical disease in much later years, around or after the Renaissance. He’s also right about it being Greek, in a way, given the assorted Greek werewolf legends, though we can never really know where it “originated,” per se, as werewolves are a universal legend. And, fittingly, he of course thinks it’s all in the mind - when it very much isn’t, not in this film. Silly practical fellow.
Even at this point, Larry still doesn’t seem wholly convinced that he is a werewolf. This seems to be highlighted in the following scene, when the werewolf gets caught in a trap, and Maleva arrives in time to rescue him. She returns him to his human form - and he has no idea where he is or what is going on. He doesn’t remember: another werewolf element established by this movie.
Larry outright tells his father everything, but of course, his father doesn’t believe him. Not all werewolf media followed the trend of being modern enough to be about people who outright don’t believe in the werewolf legend, of course, but this is still a popular trope.
Next we have yet another popular trope - restraining the werewolf so that he can’t escape. Larry’s father does this to protect him and in an effort to prove to him that the werewolf isn’t real. Obviously, it doesn’t work. Restraining a werewolf isn’t exactly ever easy, now is it?
Again we receive emphasis - a werewolf doesn’t even care about ordinary weapons, like normal bullets. The weapon in question absolutely must be silver to even affect it. And that is, of course, how Larry’s father ends up killing him using his own silver cane - the one Larry begged him to take with him - and the hunters’ bullets didn’t hurt him at all. Really, he doesn’t even seem to notice them.
And so the werewolf is killed - tragically, of course - beaten to death by his own father. This establishes yet another trope that werewolf media has scarcely left behind: the werewolf always dies. That’s certainly one of my least favorite elements this movie established about so many werewolf stories and especially films forever afterward.
So here’s the basic rundown, the tl;dr if you will. The Wolf Man popularized the following elements in media...
Silver - The fact that the werewolf can only be killed by silver - as Maleva says, a bullet, a knife, or silver like the silver-headed cane - was popularized by this film. The silver, as mentioned, doesn’t burn the werewolf’s skin on contact, but the silver is required as a weapon to actually kill him. Some people hold that the Beast of Gevaudan included a silver bullet vs a werewolf (not that I consider that a werewolf legend, anyway, per se), but the idea that the Beast was slain with a silver bullet comes from a novel published in 1946: Henri Pourrat’s Historie fidèle de la bête en Gévaudan. It’s likely Siodmak lifted the idea of silver slaying werewolves from witch folklore. For more info, see my werewolf fact specifically on Silver.
Wolfsbane - Now, the wolfsbane itself didn’t really interact with the werewolf in this movie other than to signal when the werewolf would turn. But this did, of course, start an association between wolfsbane and werewolves. For more info, see my werewolf fact on belladonna and wolfsbane.
Quickly healing wounds - We see the werewolf’s wounds - Larry’s bite, namely - heal “overnight” in the film. This is definitely a reigning trope about werewolves forever after, and one of my favorite ones, to boot. For more info about this sort of thing, check out my werewolf fact on Powers and Abilities.
Pentagram association - The idea that the pentagram is the sign of the werewolf, and that the werewolf has a pentagram on him somewhere, as well as that the werewolf sees a pentagram on the palm of his next victim, was entirely made up by Siodmak - though some may argue that pentagrams can be related to werewolves solely by association with witches and witchcraft in the later years of the Renaissance/Early Modern period. I think it’s very important that we differentiate between werewolves and witches (as the people back then did, themselves), however, so I don’t buy into that theory.
Werewolf bite spreading the curse - This is, obviously, a huge element popularized by this film. So many things have one becoming a werewolf via a werewolf bite - which is very fun, by the way. I love this trope. For more info about it and other methods of becoming a werewolf that are much less common (because they weren’t in this movie), see my werewolf fact on How to Become a Werewolf.
Bipedal werewolves - Obviously the movie included a wolf werewolf as well (except it was very clearly played by a dog), but this movie popularized too the idea of bipedal werewolves. It’s not exclusive to the movie - there were werewolves that weren’t 100% just wolves in folklore, too, despite what you may hear. For more info on that, see my werewolf fact on Physical Appearance. This is also associated with the werewolf fact Hands and Claws.
Turning at a certain time of year - This one didn’t really catch on. However, as will be noted after the end of this list, that doesn’t mean that The Wolf Man didn’t still decide when it is werewolves do transform...
The werewolf hunting humans specifically - It’s noteworthy that the werewolf is never shown actually eating anyone, only killing them, but this movie certainly helped establish the idea of a werewolf specifically hunting people, which they didn’t generally do in folklore. For more info about how folkloric this is or isn’t, see my werewolf fact on Did Werewolves Eat People?.
The werewolf as evil - Directly related to the previous point, the werewolf in this film is absolutely evil, as it seeks out specific people to hunt and kill each night. This is not really folkloric, and sadly, this movie absolutely helped establish werewolves firmly as villains - even if the human cursed to become the werewolf is sympathetic. I have a lot of werewolf facts on this kind of thing, perhaps key among them being this two parter: Part One and Part Two. My fact on werewolves vs evil is also a little relevant.
The transformation sequence - As mentioned in the main body of the post, the transformation sequence has some folkloric roots, but this film certainly helped established its incredible importance in werewolf media. This movie doesn’t have quite the dramatic sequence as does some of its sequels (where we actually see the wolf man’s face as he turns), but it still emphasizes it, for sure. For more info, see my werewolf fact on Transformation Sequence.
Memory issues - A very important concept to the future of werewolf media was the issue of Larry losing his memory about what the werewolf did. This is seen in so much werewolf media after, because, frankly, it’s a fantastic plot element. For more info, see my werewolf fact on Memory.
Werewolves associated with London and England - This obviously didn’t start with The Wolf Man specifically, given one of its predecessor werewolf films is - as mentioned - called Werewolf of London (1935). However, that doesn’t change the fact that the film taking place in England specifically had a massive influence on films after it, and, later, other media, that decided for some terrible reason that now werewolves are intrinsically associated with later time periods of Britain and London, which they shouldn’t be, really. Here are some more reasons why, if you’re wondering.
Hiding being a werewolf - This was certainly not entirely originated/popularized by the film, as it was occasionally a thing in folklore, for sure. But this film definitely highlights that being a werewolf isn’t a desirable thing or something you want to advertise, even though Larry admits it to Gwen when he still isn’t fully convinced it may be real. For more info on this, see my Hiding Being a Werewolf fact.
The werewolf always dies in the end - My least favorite by far of the tropes popularized by this film is very simple... the werewolf always dies in the end (or sometimes even before the end). You see this in almost every werewolf film to follow The Wolf Man and, indeed, many other pieces of werewolf media. This movie firmly established the classic Hollywood concept of the tragic werewolf hero who dies because of his curse.
Later, The Wolf Man - the character - would establish the concept of turning during the full moon, but this didn’t happen in The Wolf Man (1941) - this started in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943. For more info about that, see my werewolf fact on the Full Moon here. The famous rhyme from The Wolf Man was changed for it, too, to alter the line “when the autumn moon is bright” to “when the full moon is bright.”
And that just about covers it (mostly, sort of)! Hope you enjoyed the werewolf fact - and if you haven’t seen it, please do watch The Wolf Man (1941) in its entirety right here, free and legal!
And as always...
Happy Howl-o-ween!
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