Forbidden History - Halloween Special: Werewolves

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

In this Halloween special of the Forbidden History podcast we delve into the history of the mysterious werewolf. From Europe's 17th century "werewolf trials" to modern day silver-screen shapeshifters, we trace how the myth of this mystifying creature has evolved throughout centuries of fear and folklore... Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://surfshark.com/forbiddenhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠ or use code FORBIDDENHISTORY at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! Go to ⁠nakedwines.co.uk/forbidden⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines for just £39.99, with delivery included. Cast List: Tony McMahon: Former BBC news producer, author, print journalist and historian  Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. The werewolf. Half man, half beast. A creature that has haunted the human imagination for centuries. Cursed to transform under the light of the full moon.

Condemned to kill without mercy. From the myths of ancient Greece to the trials of medieval Europe, from the battlefields of the Vikings to the terror of Nazi Germany, and even now on our cinema screens and in our songs, the werewolf still stalks the public's imagination. But why does this monster endure? Is it simply a story to frighten children? Or does the werewolf reveal something far deeper?

Is it something more real than most would like to admit? This is a Halloween special, the forbidden history of the werewolf. In today's episode, we're joined by historian and author Tony McMahon. For as long as humans have told stories, there have been tales of men cursed to become wolf. In the sands of Egypt, worshippers admired Anubis, the jackal-headed god who guided souls to the afterlife. In the deserts of Mesopotamia, clay tablets called Enkidu, the wild man of the epic Gilgamesh, who lived among beasts before being tamed by civilization. Among the Celts, warriors were said to wear wolf pelts into battle, believing the spirit of the animal would possess them.

In American culture, we see the werewolf come up in Navajo stories of something called Skinwalker. And the Skinwalker is a kind of witch who can shape shift shift into animals and use their powers for harmful purposes. And these witches are, they're everything that the Navajo think is evil and destructive. And so these skin walkers are, they're feared, they're not discussed outside of the Navajo community because of the taboos that surround them. And the skin walkers typically transform into wolves or coyotes to carry out thoroughly evil deeds.

And they possess supernatural powers, immense speed, mind control and the ability to mimic voices. Also in Greek mythology, we have a story from the Greek historian Herodotus, the father of history, as he's often described, who talked about a tribe called the Niorai, and they were a nomadic tribe of magical men who changed into wolves several days of the year. Now, this tribe were what are called Scythians. They came from central Russia, from the Russian steppe. And in real life they undoubtedly used wolf skins for warmth. But what Hereditus seems to suggest is that they not only use these wolf skins for warmth, but they became wolves themselves. If we go back to Greek mythology, there's a character called Lyxon, who's the ruler of Arcadia. Now, Likeson invites Zeus to

dinner and serves him human flesh. Zeus is furious and he punishes Lyson by trance. transforming him into a wolf. And in wolf form, he has to eat anything, absolutely anything that crosses his path. This myth of Lycaon gives us the very word lycanthropy, the condition of becoming a werewolf. As it says in the story, he began to take pleasure in blood.

His clothes became fur and his arms turned into legs. So this is a punishment from the gods, from Bount Olympus for daring to mock Zeus. As centuries went on, the werewolf myth persisted, adapting as beliefs changed. And we see in the Middle Ages the continuation of this fascination with half human, half wolf, half animals. And this is something that appears even in Christianity. So we have the phenomenon, for example, of the doghead. And it may have originated among Egyptian Christians where there is, of course, this phenomenon of the half-human, half-animal gods that goes back into ancient Egyptian mythology, and maybe then it was taken up by Christians.

In these stories, the wolf and the dog were no longer pagan spirits, but strange beings who found their way into Christian belief itself. And there is one saint, Saint Christopher, who is often depicted. in medieval churches as a doghead. Now, it's possible that he was a doghead originally and then when he met Jesus, he was cured when he carried Jesus across the river. But nevertheless, whatever the truth of it, we see St. Christopher depicted with a dog's head.

It's maybe not surprising that St Christopher is now no longer regarded as a saint by the Catholic Church. He has had his halo removed. From the pagan world to the medieval church, the werewolf endured. It was no longer simply a curse from the gods. It was a vision of sin, of otherness, and of men transformed into beasts that walked among the faithful. As Christianity tightened its grip on Europe, the werewolf was pulled firmly into its orbit. The church taught that Satan could corrupt the body as well as the soul.

twisting men into beasts. And so, just as witches were said to fly through the night at the devil's command, so too were men believed to prowl as wolves, carrying out his will. By the late Middle Ages and early modern era, the werewolf had become more than a legend. It was a crime, and like witches, supposed were wolves were trialled, tortured, and burned. As the witchcraft trials took off from the 15th century in Europe, we see them combining on occasion with the werewolf myth. So somebody who is suspected of being a witch is also suspected of being a werewolf. And it's this idea that somebody who is in league with the devil acquires these kind of dark supernatural powers

that allows them to transform themselves into a wolf. and as a wolf, they commit deeds that are outside decent human standards. And we can see instances where the Inquisition investigated cases of werewolves, for example, the Valé witch trials in Switzerland. There were also werewolf-related trials in Estonia and also in Utrecht. In 17th century Estonia, which was then part of the Baltic region known as Livonia, Belief in werewolves was widespread among the local populations. Between 1520 and 1725, 140 witch trials were documented in Estonia,

many of which, though formally labeled witch trials, involved allegations of werewolfery. In these trials, around 18 women and 13 men, were accused of transforming into wolves, or using wolf's skins, literal or imagined, to shift shapes and harm livestock or property. Torture was used to extract confessions. The accused admitted to hiding their wolf garments under rocks, possibly to use them for transformation. Although local people often didn't believe in Satan or devils in the Christian sense,

under the pressure of the courts, deviance was reinterpreted as witchcraft in least. league with the devil. One of the most famous cases from Livonia is Tis of Kaltenbrun in 1692. An elderly man claimed that he and other werewolves transformed three nights each year, traveling to hell to battle witches and reclaim grain and animals stolen by them. Because he refused to say that he was working for Satan, he was surprisingly not executed, and instead instead was beaten and exiled. This case showed how old pagan beliefs and Christian legal systems clashed, and how sometimes the accused could avoid the worst punishments if they resisted being cast explicitly as

servants of the devil. Around the same time, a dramatic trial took place in the province of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, where witchcraft and werewolf accusations were fused into a single trial. The central defendant was Fokt Dirkz, a farmer from Hugland in Utrecht, along with his children and other members of their coven. In 1595, Dirk's and his 17-year-old daughter Hendrika were executed. Dirk's sons, 13-year-old Albert and 14-year-old Hessel, testified that the family had accepted a pact with the devil

and were given magical items that allowed allowed them to transform into wolves or cats. Elbert's testimony was vivid. He said the family under this pact would change at night, carry out attacks on livestock, drink blood, and even dance in animal form at Sabbaths. Several other accused were also convicted, some executed. Others died in prison or escaped.

This pattern of entire families being accused of witchcraft and werewolfery was unfortunately all too common in early modern Europe. Whole families were condemned not for what they had done, but for what their neighbors believed. In 1598, we get an absolutely bizarre story where there is an entire family, the Gandhians, who believe that they are wolf-like creatures, that they are werewolves. And one member of the family, a girl called Perinette Gandillon, viciously attacks a brother and sister while they're out picking fruit in a field. And she's then hunted down and killed by a mob. And her sister Antoinette also confesses to being a werewolf and attending a witch's Sabbath, as do her father and brother.

Now, they may all have been tortured, we don't know. But this is an entire family who confess to the village that all of them our werewolves. But it was not only the living who were feared, sometimes even the dead were said to return in wolf form. In 1685, the small town of Ansbach in the Holy Roman Empire was grappling with its own undead nightmare. The wolf of Ansbach, who was a man-eating wolf who attacked a whole load of people

in the area of Ansbach in 1685. and people in the area came to believe that this werewolf was actually somebody who had recently died, somebody called Michael Leicht. And nobody was missing him. He was unlamented. He wasn't a popular person. But they now believed that he had climbed out of his grave and assumed a wolf-like form. And the villagers got together and they actually hunted down what they believed was Michael Leich in wolf form.

And they eventually found a wolf-like form. and they eventually found a wolf. It was dressed in men's clothing, and they hanged it in public. The wolf's body was hanged from a gibbet for everybody to see, and it was then preserved and put on display at a local museum. In the trials of Europe, peasants and villagers were condemned as werewolves, cursed, shunned, and executed.

Such was the fear of the beast that to take on the power of the wolf for some was no crime, It was celebrated. Some did not fear becoming beasts. They sought it. This whole idea of human beings taking on animal characteristics is something that we can see in warriors. For example, down the ages. I mean, we have Romans who wore bear skins. There's even in the British Museum a crocodile skin that a Roman soldier once wore.

And the hope was that they could somehow adapt, adopt to the characteristics of these animals, that the violence of these animals would become part of them, that this Roman soldier could attack people like a crocodile. To wear the skin of a beast was to summon its spirit. The brutality of the animal became the brutality of the man. It was a transformation to a path of strength. And we see this with the Vikings, for example, with their wolf skins, what came to be known as the Ulf-Hednar.

And we have the bizarre behavior of the Viking berserkers. who chewed on wood and stones and bashed into each other and beat each other up and smack the heads against objects and so on before going into battle, you know, achieving a sense of madness. But this idea that a wild animal had entered into them, they were becoming an unfeeling animal in order to be able to kill. The power of the wolf was long revered in ancient customs, going back before the Vikings to the time of the Romans or in lands even further than Europe. often in stranger almost maternal matter. Now some people have wondered whether the whole werewolf legend originates with a phenomenon that does occur throughout history with children emerging from either a jungle or a forest having allegedly been reared by wild animals. One of the most famous examples of that is Romulus and Remus who founded Rome.

Now they claim to have been suckled by wolves. You know, in a society where children were often abandoned by their parents because they weren't wanted, they couldn't be afforded. There grows this idea that these children might then be reared by animals. Possibly, it's something that even happened. But extraordinarily, we have the founders of the Roman Empire, Romulus and Rhenus, who are basically said to have been reared by a wolf and are depicted in Roman sculptures suckling at the teats of a wolf. India has also produced several examples of children who have emerged from the jungle claiming to have been reared by wild animals. I mean, for example, if we think about it, Mowgli in the jungle book, the book written by Rajad Kipling,

who served in India under the British Empire. Mowgli is an example of a child who lives with wild animals. And there are several real-life cases in India of children who emerged from the jungle claiming to have been reared by wild animals. animals in 1867. We have the Dina Sanichar case. There are other cases in 1895, 1954 and 1976. The latter case was called the wolf boy of Lucknow and he was handed over to Mother Teresa of Calcutta to be raised by her nuns and he died tragically still quite young in 1985. We do have to wonder whether some of these wolf boys are suffering either from a psychological or a physical condition. One of these conditions is hypertricosis, which is sometimes a rather

unfairly called werewolf syndrome. But what we can see if it's a psychological thing is children who are howling and barking like wolves. So that's something that's affected them mentally. But of course we also have people who are incredibly hairy, basically, who have hair all over their face, and that is a recognised medical condition. But in pre-modern society, might those people have been dubbed as werewolves. In ancient myth, in Indian forests or in medieval towns, the line between man and wolf was blurred. To some, it was a mark of divine or animal blessing. To others, a sign of sickness. But in every case, the sight of a human with the traits of a wolf was enough to spark fear and stories. Beneath the legends of trials, cursory,

and transformations lies a deeper truth. The werewolf has always been more than a monster. It is a mirror reflecting the parts of humanity we fear the most. In the 16th century, the case, for example, of Jean Grenier in France, there's often this kind of theme of unrestrained male sexiness, sexuality. These are boys, men who are not able to control themselves. if you want the werewolf is a kind of metaphor for the fact that they can't keep control of their basest passions. So it's not surprising that when we get to werewolf movies in the 20th century and in the 21st century even,

we get this idea of the teen werewolf. Of course, Michael J. Fox being one example, but this idea of the teenager who cannot control himself. And so the werewolf is a kind of symbol of unrestrained male sexuality. So how did the werewolf become what we know today? To find the answer, we must look not to the forests and swamps of medieval Europe, but to the busy streets of 18th century London. We continue the story after the break. The werewolf began as a symbol of lust and temptation in the witch trials, but by the 18th

and 19th centuries it was reborn through literature. Gothic horror drew on medieval fears and reimagined them for New Age tales of transformation. Writers like Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker shaped the way we think about monsters, and the werewolf took its place alongside Frankenstein and Dracula. And nowhere did this vision come alive more vividly than in London. One aspect of the werewolf myth that is worth noting is how London, the capital of English, and the capital of Britain so often features in the werewolf stories. Why is this?

I think it really goes back to Victorian and early 20th century London, this smoggy, gothic city with its cobbled streets, slightly spooky. This may, of course, also be combined with the stories of people like Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who stalked the streets of East London. And so the concept of a werewolf lurking in a city like London, We see this over and over again. In the horror movies, we see the werewolf based specifically in London with its foggy streets, its dark alleys, its forbidding housing. As the werewolf stalked into the modern day, a new lens was cast onto the legend in an unexpected way.

For centuries, the werewolf was cast as a male. But in time, women reclaimed the myth. The werewolf became not only a black. predator, but an avenger. It's often assumed that the werewolf is male. In fact, the werewolf is often female. An early example of that was a werewolf created by the early feminist author Clement's Hausman.

She was a leading suffragette who campaigned for votes for women. And she wrote a novel, The Werewolf, where the monster was female and went around killing men in a rampage. There are other examples from modern times, so we have Leah Clearwater from the Twilight Saga, or Eleanor Michaels from Kelly Armstrong's Otherworld series, or Serafin Piggott from an American werewolf in Paris, the movie that was made after American Werewolf in London, and Debbie Pelt from True Blood.

So the idea of the werewolf being a woman has become increasingly popular in recent years. As people began to use the werewolf, as a symbol of female strain. A much darker organization also used the legend of the werewolf for their own destructive beliefs. The whole thing with the werewolves and unrestrained machismo

had an appeal to the Nazis, and they created paramilitary units called werewolves that did not abide by the usual rules of war. And this was towards the end of World War II when the Nazis were basically doing anything in order to survive. So the werewolves were soldiers who would not abide by the Geneva Convention, who would perform any act of cruelty in order to win.

These so-called Verwolf units waged guerrilla warfare against the Allies in the final months of the war, striking from the shadows, leaving propaganda and terror in their wake. To the Reich, the wolf was no longer a monster of folklore, but a symbol of savagery unleashed in the service. of the state. Formed in 1944 by Heinrich Himmler, organized into small packs, they were trained in sabotage, assassination, and guerrilla warfare. At Schloss-Hulkrach, recruits, often SS men or members of the Hitler youth, learned to operate behind enemy lines, striking at Allied troops as Germany collapsed. Propaganda broadcasts boasted of a hidden army waiting to rise, a ghostly force prowling the ruins of the Reich. But the reality was far less powerful

than the myth. Missions were sporadic and mostly ineffective. Only a handful of assassinations and sabotage attempts were ever carried out. The most infamous being, the killing of Franz Oppenhoff, the Allied-appointed mayor of Aachen. Fear of the Verwolf, however, was real. Allied troops imposed curfews, suspected every teenager of being a gorilla, and reprisals against civilians spread terror. The wolf may not have saved the Reich, but the image of Nazi werewolves lingered long after the war. And Hitler's headquarters on the Eastern Front was also called the Wolf's Lair.

The Nazis weaponize the wolf as a symbol of terror. But once the war was over, the werewolf was really. reclaimed. No longer the tool of dictators, it returned to the realm of imagination, where it found new life in modern society. The werewolf has been a creature that has fascinated popular culture for centuries. And with cinema, we get the American werewolf in London, which really is the seminal werewolf film. In music, we get Michael Jackson's thriller, where we see somebody turning into a werewolf. And there's something about this transformation that's horrific, but it's also compelling.

We're drawn into it. We want to see it and we are fascinated by it. By the 1980s, the werewolf had leapt from horror into music, immortalized in the most watched music video of all time, Michael Jackson's thriller. And yet, the fascination was not just with fear. From Gothic horror to pop videos, from the cinema to television sagas like Harry Potter, the werewolf adapted to every age. I think one of the reasons that werewolves have been very popular in Hollywood is they're kind of a way of expressing many of our fears,

fears about our social anxieties, how we might appear in public, whether we lose control of ourselves, and also our kind of dual nature, our good side. and our evil side. But it really is about losing your sanity as well. This is another reason I think why the idea of transforming into a wolf, not knowing who or what you are anymore. And we see werewolves popping up in a lot of movies, like Van Helsing, for example, in 2004, where one of the characters is transformed into this monstrous being with superhuman strength. In Harry Potter, we also see werewolves, as as humans who are transforming into wolf-like creatures under the full moon.

And so we have the character, for example, of Remus Lupin, a professor at Hogwarts and a member of the Order of the Phoenix who turns into a wolf. And there's another significant werewolf character is Fenrir Greyback, who is a violent and cruel werewolf who sides with Voldemort and his death-eaters. Each incarnation reflected the fears of its time. Adolescence, disease, violence, or simply the monster within. From the myths of ancient Greece to the deserts of the American southwest, from medieval witch trials to the propaganda of Nazi Germany,

and from the wolf skins of Viking warriors to the flickering glow of the cinema screen, the werewolf has never left us. It has been a symbol of lust, of violence, of madness, and of fear. a creature of punishment in the hands of the gods, a heretic in the eyes of the church, a weapon in the grip of tyrants, and a monster in our modern imagination. Perhaps that is why the werewolf endures.

This has been the forbidden history of the werewolf. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below, and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out Where Did Everyone Go, Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind forgotten places, available now on your favorite podcast platforms.

Thanks for listening.