National Park After Dark - Making a Monster: Werewolf Hiking Trail

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Before America had witch trials, Europe had werewolf trials - and they were as dark as they sound. One of the most infamous cases of time was that of Peter Stumpp, a man who was convicted and executed for serial murder, cannibalism, incest, and practicing black magic to transform into a werewolf. The Werewolf of Bedbug has cemented its place in German history not only for its gruesome nature, but as an example of a case in which people focused on villainizing wolves. Looking back on the case in present day, it ultimately revealed that the depths of human depravity seem to know no bounds.  Vote for us to win a Signal Award for Best Roadtrip Podcast! COME SEE US ON TOUR For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Bilt: Download the Bilt app and join the membership for where you live, at http://joinbilt.com/parkFi: Get peace of mind, with Fi. Get up to 30% off and free shippingwhen you visit FiTracking.com and use promo code NPADKa’Chava: Go to https://kachava.com and use code NPAD for 15% off your first order.WhatNot: Download Whatnot today and get $20 off your first purchase. Search Whatnot, W H A T N O T, in the app store, sign up, and start finding the best deals on the products you love with $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. SimpliSafe: Save 60% off with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com/NPAD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A walk in the woods can be calming, grounding, and peaceful. Hearing the wrestling of small critters, smelling the sickly sweet aroma of decaying leaves, and feeling the warmth of the sun is bliss. Time like this spent in the forest can feel like medicine, and if you feel that way, it's not just in your head. The benefits of being outside run the gamut. Research has shown it, among other things,

improves sleep, reduces stress, boosts happiness, and increases attention, memory, and creativity. In recognition of this, medical professionals around the world are giving patients green prescriptions, written directives advising patients to visit parks, gardens, or spend time outdoors to treat various physical and mental conditions. While this should be celebrated, not every walk in the woods is sunshine and songbirds.

We are humans, after all, and for as long as we have been wandering groves, thickets, and woodlands, we have felt something different. We have felt fear. And this isn't unfounded either. Our brains evolved to view dark, dense, and unfamiliar wilderness as a place where we are vulnerable to predators, getting lost, or risk encountering hidden threats.

Much of this can be explained by survival instincts, but our reactions aren't purely physical. They're deeply psychological. Cultural studies pass through generations paint the woods as the home of monsters. wicked witches, wily tricksters, devious ghouls, and of course, bloodthirsty werewolves. But stories of the big bad wolf are usually not what they seem, but rather reveal something far, far greater to fear. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

Hello everyone. Welcome back. I'm Cassie. I'm Danielle. And are you Team Jacob or Team Edward? Oh, it's coming up later. You know, I have. to but can't talk about wearwolves and not talk about that damn it you know i'm team wolf in general you know but team edward here ride or die for wolves but when it comes to like being with one intimately it's got to be edward for sure so i was obsessed with i was a um what they called twihard twy hard is that what they call them i never got into I never have heard that though, but that doesn't really mean anything.

I went to Forks like for during the whole, well, not during the whole thing. It was after, but I was still thriving. I tried to go. I think it was during the pandemic and they had it closed where you couldn't go into their town unless you lived there. I was there during the pandemic and I was all up in that town with Ian. He was like, what the fuck are we doing? Or maybe there was something else going on. that like they weren't letting people in. But I remember we tried to go and they were only letting

residents in. Yeah. Well, it was the tail end of the pandemic when I went in. And I mean, this was like 20, 21. Like this, the heyday of probably it was over. Yeah. Well, I think when we tried to go was right after I saw you and Ian in an Olympic. I think it was right after that, like same day. Oh, and they're like, yeah, no, get out of here. Yeah. They're like, We're closed. Vampires only. Fires only. Well, okay, so before we get into the whole werewolf of it all, because yes, we are talking in part about wherewolves today.

And not really much about Twilight, believe it or not. But for right now, before we kick that off, two things that we want to tell you guys about. Super exciting stuff. First of all, we are up for another award. We are, which is really exciting. Who knew? People liked us so much. I know. It's another people's choice award, which is really exciting. This time, it's the Signal Awards, which is a big deal. I mean, it's kind of like the Webby's and Signals for the

podcasting industry are huge honors. So we already took home a couple of Webbies. We want to add a Signal Award to it. And the category couldn't be more perfect for us. Yeah. It's the road triping podcast territory category yeah so um if you want to vote for us our like how to do that and the link and stuff will be in the episode description for this episode if you've listened to us on a road trip please you're contractually obligated it was in the writing fine print yeah yeah and nobody reads that and we're here to tell you that's what was hidden in there um so get on get into that and that would be greatly appreciated by us closing for voting ends October 15th. So only a few days left to do it. But it would be appreciated. Yeah. Thanks guys and gals. And the other thing that we need you to do for us.

One more thing. It's come to our show because Chicago is right around the corner. So you only have a couple days left if you're listening to this on the day. It airs where we are in Chicago October 9th, which is really exciting. And there are some tickets left for that. If you're not in Chicago and you want to see some other places. We'll also be in Boston, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco after that. And for Seattle, we have been fighting so hard for the scalpers to release their death grip on the tickets that they scooped up because Seattle sold out pretty much almost immediately, except for this large chunk of tickets that scalpers scooped up right away. And they were holding them hostage. Yeah, they gouged the prices. They were,

selling them for a crazy price. We officially got them back. However, whether or not they're still available when this episode airs, who knows, because we did let our Patreon members know first. But check it out because there might still be some tickets left for Seattle. Okay. So that's enough of all the things that you can do for us. Let me do something for you and share a story with you. Of course, this one does have to do with wolves. So it's of particular interest to me and hopefully you. But we are also going to be covering a, I checked, I double checked on our map on our website. We have not covered a story in this entire country before.

So we're going to a new country and we're going to a new time period, I think, because I'm pretty sure we have never talked about the 16th century before in any of our episodes. Okay. And what country are we going to? Germany. Wow. We've never went to Germany yet.

Unless we didn't put it on our map, but no, we haven't. Wow. We've done some Austrian ones. There's some couple other European countries, of course, that we've covered, but none in Germany. And that changes now. So let's get into it. Oh, yeah. Warning.

Warning. This episode is really messed up. It's like just kidding. Hold on a set. Hold on. This episode's messed up. It's pretty violent. It's brutal. And I'm not going to get super graphic about it, but I have to detail what went down. And what went down is pretty disturbing. So here's your warning for that. There's a lot of violence in this episode. Medieval coded violence also, which we all know goes crazy. extra horrific. Yeah. What if I was just like, hey, I'm not in the space to listen to this. Cassie. I'm like, okay, everyone except for you. Like the trigger warning does not pertain to me. What would we do, actually? I'm not sure what we would do. I would have to just do it by myself.

And I would just have, you'd just have to put like a stuffed animal in your seat. And I, so I could like see something to talk to, but you could leave the room. Or it would be funny if you then filmed reactions later with a like a blonde wig or something on. And then you just filmed back and forth of your reactions pretending to be me. Wow, that was awful. And then you're like, and then. Okay, well, let's, good thing we don't have to do that. Let's not do that. I'll stay for this episode.

Okay, thank you. We'll cross that bridge if we ever get to it. The year was 1589, which was the tail end. of the medieval era in Europe. During this time, Germany was going through a lot of different changes. It was in the midst of religious wars and a renaissance of the arts, but most common folk, most families lived on farms. They kept pigs, raised cattle, grew fields of grain and brewed beer, and the town of Bedburg was no different. It was a community on the outskirts of town, right on the edge of the woods, the last stop before the wild. It was not uncommon for a farmer to

walk out and find one of his sheep torn to pieces. Sometimes a dog would venture too far out and never come back. Occasionally, a child sent to work in the pasture would go missing never to be seen again. And on occasion, villagers would find blood and human limbs scattered in their fields. This pattern of violence was horrifying, but it was not a mystery. They knew that wolves were to blame. Farmers in places like Bedburg could sometimes hear their haunting calls in the distance, filtering through the trees as they tossed and turned in their beds at night. Wolves were once common across Europe's forests and in its folktales. Stories like Little Red Riding Hood and the boy who cried wolf told of a creature that is cunning,

sometimes charming, and always dangerous. So as disappearance is mounted and evidence of violent deaths grew, the village of Bedberg did what they had always done. they went looking for a wolf. Maybe they would kill it, and if nothing else, they could at least drive it back further into the woods. But this creature did not retreat into the forest like you'd expect. More than once, it walked straight through the middle of the village in broad daylight, greeted townsfolk by name, and smiled at parents whose children it had just killed. And for 25 years, nobody knew. Because the creature was not a wolf, nor was it a man, it was. It was a man. It was

was a monster. So depending on your interests, this story may already sound familiar, as it is one of the most infamous stories out of all of medieval European history. But if you're new here, like I'm guessing Cassie probably is, look at her. She's wearing purple. Her cheeks are a little apple pink. Why would I know this? Like, why would I know this? Why would a girl like you know a story like this? Be in a place like this. this. Yeah. Yeah. No. So I kind of thought that. So welcome. Today we will be sharing this story of Peter Stump. Also in sources, either cited as Peter Stubb or Stumpf, but regardless of the spelling of his last name, he is gone down in history as the werewolf of Bedberg. So not ringing a single bell.

This show never gets old for me, ever. It's always new for me, too. It's a gruesome tale of horrible crimes and a horrific punishment. And I hope that it will also change your perspective on wolves a little bit. Just a little extra there on the side. So when all of this unfolded in the 16th century, Stump's story spread widely across Europe thanks to its number one is graphic detail. people were just totally hooked on the depravity of this story that we'll get into.

And there was this thing called the printing press that was a relatively new invention and it was pretty new and it allowed the story to be spread further than just local gossip. The few OG German versions of the story, just so you know, also, were a whole one page long. so the original source material is a bit limited, but an English author later stretched that one-page document into a 21-page horror story, and since then it has been told and retold and warped and kind of gone through the telephone over the centuries into what it is today and the different versions of the story that are being passed around now and on the internet and all of that. So for this episode, I just wanted to, number one, call that out. But number two, just also say that I'm going to try and streamline all of the information that most people agree on.

So is this kind of a mixture of truth and lore? Yes. Okay. Yes. All right. So first off, we need to lay some groundwork because we need to get to know werewolves. And you might be imagining, like Cassie did right off the bat, like the twilight version of a werewolf, or a howling wolf under a full moon that kind of like just undergoes this transformation from man to animal. But that is kind of a new spin on a very old idea because werewolves and folklore aren't as cute as Jacob. In many of our oldest stories, being transformed into a wolf was a punishment at the hands of the gods. In the epic of Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar turned a shepherd into a wolf once she grew

tired of him. In Greek mythology, a ruler named King Lyokon tests the god Zeus by serving him human flesh. And as punishment, Zeus turns him into a wolf. And both of those punishments were permanent. There was no changing in and out of form as you pleased. Then in medieval France, were wolves were often portrayed as sympathetic victims. men who had been trapped in wolf form by women who meant them harm. In one tale, an unfaithful wife wants to run off with another man so she trapped her husband in wolf form, which was, you know, kind of tricky. Smart.

You can have your man and have a dog. You really can't have it all. Yeah. Smart woman. In another, a wicked stepmother turns a prince into a wolf so her son can sit upon the throne instead. But even as time goes on, these tales lack the hallmarks of modern werewolves. No full moon and no hulking half-human half-wolf monsters that you see in the movies. Werewolves of old transformed due to magical rituals or the channeling of animal spirits.

Others used enchanted items like wolf pelts or clothing or even made deals with the devil. These stories were pagan delusions in the eyes of the church, but nonetheless, werewolves were explained. by packs with Satan. So a lot more devious and evil compared to what we grew up with when it comes to werewolves. On top of that, while wolf attacks are extremely rare worldwide today, it was fairly common for wolves to eat livestock and even attack people in Germany in the 1500s. And according to those early pamphlets from the time, Bedberg and the surrounding area had been plagued by wolf attacks in both lanes for years. In Bedburg, people had come to live in fear of the bloody and devouring wolf, which plagued their fields and families for some 20 years.

Townspeople set traps, kept mastiffs and different types of guard dogs, and sent hunting dogs to follow its trail, but they could never find the wolf responsible for all of these like disappearances, the livestock, depredations, the limbs that are like scattered about their fields that they're finding. They're thinking there's this one animal that's responsible and

it just is super elusive and they can't catch up to it. And this went on for years, which should have been indicator number one, wild wolves don't live that long honies, but whatever. It's like it's been 25 years. It's like, yeah, okay. This wolf is really.

This wolf is like, the longest-lived wolf of all time. Yeah, because it has plenty of food. Well, anyways, so one day, that all changes, because it suddenly appeared. A farmer was out walking on the road when a wolf appeared from the trees. The animal looked hungry, and it was looking directly at this man. For all the fear that he must have felt in the moment, the farmer didn't run. As the wolf ran towards him with its teeth bared, the farmer,

stood his ground and drew his sword. Somewhere in the chaos the farmer swung, the wolf yelped, and it turned to retreat. It bolted for the tree line and quickly disappeared into the woods. You can imagine how the farmer must have felt watching it run away, a mixture of relief that he had just survived and his heart pounding with adrenaline. And then he looked down. Resting on the ground between the farmer's feet was the reason the wolf had run away. He had cut off its paw. So he Went down to pick it up, wrapped it in some spare cloth, and walked back into town. When he got back into town, he told his neighbors what had just happened, but they initially didn't believe him.

Escaping unscathed after a run-in with the wolf that had just plagued this town for years, taken sheep, livestock, apparently shredded adults and left their limbs on the ground. And this guy just, like, walked away with its paw. They're like, impossible. No one could do that. We don't know. It feels a little suss. And so the farmer must have anticipated that they wouldn't believe his story.

But luckily for him, he has proof, right? He has this wolf paw with him. So he takes it out. He puts it on the table and he's unwrapping all the cloth. And when it's finally revealed, everyone is shocked, including the farmer, because on the table is not a wolf paw, but a human hand. Oh. plot twist. The werewolf.

How long do werewolves live? That might be in my notes later. I'm not sure. We'll get back to that. In the days that followed, word came that a nearby man had taken ill in his bed

and that he had one arm always hidden under his blanket. Whether or not it was out of kindness or curiosity, the farmer decided to check in on his sickly neighbor, and so he paid him a visit. But before he could say anything,

the sick man spoke first. Not a greeting or a thanks, but a confession. He said, I was the great wolf during the night who had run towards you and you have cut off my hand. Then the man immediately begged the farmer, please don't tell anyone. It's like, what? Excuse me? I am about to tell everybody I know. I just cut off a werewolf's hand.

Like, I'm telling everyone immediately. It's like, I'm going to be famous. So the man with the missing hand was named Peter Stump, a local farmer. Was it his name that before his hand? Or this is his name after. That's a fucking brilliant question that I did not even clock. Like, was he destined for this to happen to him? Or did he get this name after?

I don't know. It's so funny because when I said earlier, there's a couple different versions of his name that has been recorded. down through different sources. And one is stump, like, st-U-M-P-F, and one is stoop. So I just am curious now if it's just been transformed to stump because of that. I bet it was, but I bet it was already really close to stump. And this faded for this to happen. It's so funny.

God. Okay. So by most accounts, Peter was a fairly prosperous and well-respected member of the town, a pillar of the community, some may say. And at first, when Stump begged his neighbor to keep his secret, the farmer actually agreed, even though just days before this guy just admitted to trying, he was just trying to kill him. But for whatever reason, he was like, yeah, sure, okay, water under the bridge, I guess. He doesn't say anything.

Maybe he liked him, or maybe it was just out of like the neighborly thing to do. Or maybe he was just stunt and in shock. and didn't know what to say to people. But either way, he kept it a secret, but it started to eat away at him. And he had to confide in somebody. So he ultimately spilled the beans to his wife about the entire ordeal. And from there, the story spread. And shortly after, Stump was arrested.

Because he basically was like, hey, I was this werewolf, the one that's been wanted. Terrorizing. the community for years and killing everybody. And his wife was like, oh, I'm spilling this tea. Oh, yeah. I'm telling all my girlfriends right away. And it's worth noting that different versions of this story disagree on some of the details. And there are various different versions, like the spelling of Stump's name, for one, whether

he was not only a farmer, but also a highway robber and how the townsfolk discovered his secret. Instead of the severed paw story, which comes from a German retelling, the English version describes townspeople finally locating the troublesome wolf and cornering it. With their mastiffs and tracking dogs, they managed to cut off every escape route and cornered the animal. And with no way out, the wolf appeared to reach down towards its hind legs. Suddenly, it slipped off a magical belt and stood up on two legs as a man. And that man was stump, holding a walking stick, like he had been out for a stroll. The townsfolk recognized him immediately

and marched him back home to confirm his identity before he was arrested. But in every version of the story, Stump was brought before the magistrates of Bedburg. And these judges were tasked with extracting a confession and in a playbook familiar to anyone who has studied the witch trials, their tool to do that was torture.

And quick sidebar on that. I am, we are off the heels of our trip. to Scotland and our last book club read was How to Kill a Witch, which was all about the Scottish witch trials. And I am literally begging, especially American-based listeners, to please look into any other witch trial other than just the Salem witch trial because there's so much more to learn. And I'll leave it at that. Well, you won't have to look too far because I am going to be covering another witch trial. That was not US. based for Halloween.

Not the Scottish one. Scottish based or no? Nope. Oh, okay. Don't. We won't say anything more, but I am excited. Okay. Great.

Oh, yay. I'm so excited. Okay. So the magistrates demanded that Stump confess or be put to the rack. Stump would have known what that meant. Everyone in that time knew what that meant and shuddered at the thought of it. Towns like Bedburg kept torture devices on hand, and the rack, and the racked, was a very feared tool. Imagine a large table that people were placed onto. Their feet and wrists

were each bound in leather straps, which were attached on each end, essentially to a winch. Slowly, the accused limbs would be pulled further and further apart, tearing their muscles until their shoulders dislocated and then their hips. We saw one of these at the Tower of London, remember? Yeah. We saw a lot of different torture devices there. We did. Yeah. But that was one of them. I remember. And if they had still not admitted to their crime, the ratchet would be turned until their elbows and knees were pulled from their sockets along with their ankles and wrists. Anyone who managed to survive an encounter with the rack was likely to be permanently paralyzed or lose the use of one or all of their limbs. And aside from seeing them in the Tower of London,

I believe I kind of, I meant to go back and listen, but I believe we talked or I discussed briefly torture devices in my Edgar Allan Poe episode. Do you remember that? I do remember it vaguely. It was years ago. So if you're into medieval torture, then maybe look into that. I know it wasn't the focus of the episode, but we definitely went into it a little bit. But before that dislocation business could all happen to Peter Stump, he confessed everything. He's like, please, please don't. No need to torture me. I'll tell you whatever you want. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Okay. It's crazy that the rack came up right now because I just saw it's fucked up. But I just saw this. My algorithm is definitely different than yours. But my algorithm served me this meme. And it was definitely a medieval. drawing depiction of the rack and its use and somebody strapped to it and it's starting to be

pulled apart. And someone had written low-key, I bet this felt really good for like a second. Probably did. Like cracked your back. Like really stretched. Yeah. Like, ah. Not to make light of medieval torture.

Okay. But they had a point. So Peter Stump told the magistrates that he had held an interest in the dark art since he was a kid, and between the ages of 12 and 20 became consumed by the desire to possess magic and sorcery. In time, he learned that the devil keeps a ready ear for desires of wicked men. So when Satan approached him, Stump did not ask for wealth or social status, but the power to act out his malice upon others in the shape of a beast, the chance to commit violent acts without the danger of being caught or recognized. In exchange for Stump's soul,

Satan granted him an enchanted girdle or a belt that would instantly transform the wearer into a ferocious wolf. Four legs, fiery eyes, fearsome claws, and sharp teeth. Stump could roam the world as a wolf and become human again by simply taking the belt off. Stump said that he had took the belt willingly and used it to enact his will upon Bedberg for the last 25 years. So after he described how he got to be this shape-shifting werewolf and the deal with the devil that he made, he began to confess to his crimes. Stump said he murdered 13 children in those 25 years, including, okay, and here we go with the detail, including his own son, whose brains he had eaten straight from his skull. He described killing two pregnant women and cutting their unborn children out of their wombs. He confessed to running down a group of travelers on the road outside of town, two men and a woman.

He lured the men away from the group one at a time and killed them and then chased the woman down in wolf form when she tried to run away. She didn't stand a chance, as he said he could run faster than the swiftest greyhound in all of the country. He also admitted to raping women and young girls he found alone in the fields before ending their lives. If it felt too risky to go after humans, he said he would turn to livestock instead, sheep, goats, and cattle to satisfy his bloodlust. If a farmer found their livestock torn to shreds out in the field, they'd just blame it on a wolf. And nothing ever was traced back to him. Finally, Stump mentioned a few details that really caught the attention. of the magistrates. He described that when his appetites could not be satisfied, Satan sent him

a she-devil or a succubus disguised as a beautiful woman. He also said he seduced his godmother, a well-liked woman in the community, to become his mistress. And the last detail, he'd also been raping his own daughter, a 15-year-old girl at the time, for years. So given the detail about stump eating, his son, some modern commentators have feared that Stump actually fathered the child with his own daughter. That's awful. Faced with these confessions, the magistrates of Bedburg were determined not only to put an end to Stump's crimes, but to punish those who had failed to stop him. So as they prepared to announce their verdict, they had both his godmother and his daughter arrested. Whatever Stump would meet, so too with the women in his life.

Why would, after he admitted all that, why would his daughter be arrested? Thank you for asking. Well, it's definitely, you know, messed up that both of those women, I mean, the girl and the godmother, would have to go down with stump. I mean, they were victims of his. But for them, like the magistrates basically had the view that they were complicit in his life of crime because they had knowledge. So in their eyes, which we clearly don't agree with, but we have to say, they were basically like your accessories to this crime. You knew of it. You knew there was murder going on.

Sorcery was afoot. You obviously knew he was this, you know, werewolf. And I'm sure they were fearing for their lives. I mean, his daughter was being sexually abused by him and probably other violent atrocities. But sure, she's complicit. Yeah. So it was definitely a cruel form of quote unquote justice with a long precedent in early courts of the day. Both were charged not merely as bystanders who looked away or even as victims, but as participants in several of the murders.

Looking back on it now, the historical record is pretty slim and most surviving accounts are pretty sensationalized. Historians believe it's quite possible that Stump was a real serial killer or murderer. Maybe in the eyes of the court it was easier to attribute his extreme brutality to a pact with the devil rather than the acts of a mere person. Like to them, they're like, there has to be another explanation. A person cannot be this violent and, like a serial killer to this degree to them. They had to reach for another explanation. They couldn't understand that.

A person was capable of doing this. Yep. Yeah. There's also the chance that Stom's confession was made up. A man caught in a hysterical witch trial who would say anything to avoid being tortured on the rack and whatever else was in store. And, I mean, we do know about that through our studies. That's a fair point. You know, of different witch trials.

There have been hundreds of false confessions because of things like this, because of. The threat of torture. Precisely. There's certainly reason to believe that the judges had an outcome in mind, or even a script that they wanted Stump to follow. Books on demons and sorcery spread across German in the 16th century, with detailed warnings about witchcraft and werewolves. And reading them, some sections offered manuals

for what to do in the event that you captured a werewolf. Standardized sets of questions could get them to confess to a pact with the devil, an enchanted belt, a transformation, murders, and cannibalism. Is it a coincidence that the magistrates pressed Stump to confess to each and every one of these details? Whether or not Stump was a murderer, they had his confession and they sentenced him to death. Which, I mean, to look at this with a critical eye, and I actually really love, sorry, break in the story, I really love that I'm doing this. story as someone who has heard it before years ago. And even now, just refreshing and for this episode and prepping for the research for the episode and watching a lot of, there are so many

different YouTube videos and coverage of this story and so many different creators who put their own spin on retelling this. And I'm not trying to like put down or shame or be like, I'm better than that. But I feel like I'm better than my old views of this. this story because I have studied history more since the last time that I've heard this story. And there are so many things with, yeah, there were literal manuals going around of this is what you do in a case. And there's so much in the historical record about different tools and ways to get people to confess to certain things you want them to say. And just, I'm not trying to say this guy is Scott free and didn't do anything wrong because there is a huge possibility that he was a killer.

But at the same time, it's like you can't help but wonder. It just seems, you know, how we... Well, it's an interesting take to say, yeah. And it's an interesting take that I wasn't even thinking of until you brought it up, that this could have just been another witch hunt. And then it kind of brought me back to where you were saying that this man went to visit someone who was sick. And then they said, this person confessed that they were a wolf.

But it kind of makes me wonder if they went, saw that they couldn't see their hand and was like, which? Like you did the like, you're the wolf or something. And kind of like, because accusations like that to women were happening all the time, not to this exact degree. But I kind of wonder if that's where it started and then morphed from there. Yeah. It's just something to think about.

And when you're contemplating the story instead of just taking it for what it is. And I know a lot of people do know that it's been sensationalized to a certain degree. But even at its core, just accepting it of like, yeah, he probably was a killer. The werewolf thing is we know now, not real. But it was their way of making sense of a deranged killer. It's like, was he? I don't know. I have a question for that, I guess.

is he, it sounds like he confessed to pretty, like, detailed things where he said there were two people here, there were children here, and stuff like that. Was anything verified his victims of, like, was he speaking about real people that they could verify? There were real people who were killed, for sure. But, like, in his confession, could they be like, when he found the traveling couple kind of thing, could they verify that there was a travel? couple that died. I'm not exactly sure because again, this original source material is a 1580 something pamphlet that is one page long about this entire story. So I can't cross-reference certain things and the detail just isn't there. But there is for sure people who lost loved ones and who either went missing or were found murdered. So there is that. But as far as like really getting down to individuals and placing him at scenes of crimes and things like that, I don't think that exists. Okay. So back to Stump and the day of his execution, October 31st, 1589.

Happy Halloween. Before a gathered crowd of townsfolk and nobility. And this execution was planned to be both intentionally gruesome and theatrical, an elaborate opportunity for those in power to demonstrate their authority to the public, and in an effort to satisfy the vengeance for justice so many victims' families desperately wanted. Executioners tied stump to a heavy wooden wheel, wide awake, with his arms and legs outstretched. Once he was immobilized, an executioner walked over to a pile of burning coals. From within the flames, they pulled a pair of metal pinches. Red hot in smoking, they gripped Stump's flesh with the pinchers and ripped it away in strips, one after the other to symbolize the 16 victims he was accused of killing. Next, the executioners

repeatedly struck Stumps arms and legs with a wooden hatchet until his bones were shattered. A step meant to prevent him from roaming the world as either a man or a beast. Finally, and perhaps mercifully, they raised an and decapitated him. After he was dead, the executioners tossed his body into a blazing pile so it would be burned to ash, ensuring that no demonic magic could reanimate his remains or contaminate the land. Next to his corpse, his daughter and his godmother were burned alive, accessories to his murderous past. And as the screams faded away and the fire burned to ash, authorities erected one final warning

to anyone who would follow Stump's murder. A tall pole was raised through the breaking wheel that Stump had been tied to during his execution. Around the wheel, 16 wooden pegs were hung to represent his murder victims, and at the top of the pole, for all to see, they placed a wooden carving of a wolf and Stump's severed head. Stump may be one of the most memorable cases of a werewolf trial, but he was not the first person to be executed as a werewolf. A pair of shepherds were executed almost 70 years earlier in France's first known French werewolf trial.

Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun confessed to making a deal with the devil in exchange for food. A man in black who gave them an ointment instead of a belt that turned them into werewolves. And once transformed, they would attend midnight witch gatherings and participate in hunting and eating children. Both were convicted and burned at the stake along with a third person who refused to confess. In 1573, another Frenchman, Gilles Garnier, was burned at the stake after he was accused of torturing children, killing four children, and feeding their bodies to his family. Despite his confession, there were doubts of his ability to commit the crimes as he lived nearly 40 miles away from these victims.

And without going into more and more gruesome detail, I think you get the picture here. Werewolf trials were not rare. Several hundred people were prosecuted and often executed in Europe's werewolf trials, which reached their peak in the mid to late 16th century. But while Stump's Werewolf trial was not the first or the last of its kind, it was the first to essentially go viral across the continent. Were some sea heroes and other see egos? Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes.

While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. As I mentioned at the top, the Gutenberg printing press was invented in Germany in the 1400s, and by the time of Stump's trial, it was easy and cheap to print stories for mass consumption. Several versions of Stump's trial emerged in Germany on broadsheets, which were basically the short one-page print-off. Some of them told the story in a rhyme, written to be read out loud on street corners to get people to buy them. And at the top of each version were eye-catching woodcut illustrations, which were intricate, graphically illustrated retellings of the story that kind of read like a comic book.

And there was dual purposes for that, which is really interesting. They depicted scenes of Stump as a wolf attacking the farmer, of him tied to the breaking wheel, and then of his head on the spike in various different scenes. intermittently between. And the illustrations were not only used to grab people's attention. They were super graphic. There were something interesting to look at. It wasn't just a bunch of writing on a piece of paper. But they told the story to anyone who was illiterate and unable to read the words at the

bottom of the page. Because at the time, a large portion of the population were unable to read or write. Gotcha. With a sensational story and easy to follow illustrations, the story was able to travel further than any werewolf trial had before it. Once the German broadsheets made it to England, an English author translated and expanded the tale into a 21-page horror story. And while it is where most of the detail from this episode came from,

historian Nathan Bailey joked that the pamphlet reeks of excessive embellishment in his analysis of this whole trial, which I'll link in the show notes. I mean, it's pretty thorough. his analysis of this. So if this is your thing and you want to know what an historian thinks of this story, his analysis is really great. So that'll be in the episode description. As it happened and as it was retold across Europe, Stump's story was used not only as entertainment, but also as a tool. Local Catholic rulers used the high profile execution as evidence of their authority, while rival Protestants framed Stump's crimes as a symbol of Catholic moral decay. The Christian Church had fractured

and the two groups were at literal war across Europe at the time and this was just another piece of ammo that they utilized. But while the church had been destabilized, other used Stump's tale as a sort of moral warning against violence. The English author who added the 20 odd pages to the original story did so with detailed descriptions of Stump's crimes. the cannibalism, incest, murder, and infanticide. He also lingered on the horrific details of Stump's punishment, how he was laid alive and then decapitated. It's easy to believe part of this was meant to attract readers with a sensational story.

Yet others have argued it was an attempt to fill a moral role that the church once did through biblical stories before the wars over religion erupted. Whatever the writer's intent was, print shops were happy to sell a lot of copies, and they found plenty of readers and communities living at the edge of the woods, people who saw their own anxieties in Stump's story, missing kids, and the constant threat of wolves. In the years after Stump's trial, there was a noticeable rise in werewolf accusations, which continued for another hundred years or so.

During that same time, werewolf in German was actually used as a slur if you wanted to call someone inherently dishonest or violent. And it was such a serious thing to be called that. If you were on the butt end of that, the receiving end of that slur, a lot of people filed lawsuits over defamation. Well, it sounds like it was really similar to being accused of a witch. You're like, if someone's going to call you a werewolf, you're going to try and save your name there because the results are pretty horrific if someone believes it.

It can spiral and devolve really quickly. Yep. And while it is more difficult to measure in the minds of everyday people, the horrific acts of stump, the werewolf, and others like him, became associated with real wolves. Perhaps unconsciously, wild animals were held accountable for our wildest fears and our own species depravity. An already disliked animal became deeply hated. Church rulers and local authorities made wolf hunts mandatory, conscripting hunters and peasants alike for hunts, held whenever necessary. Between hunts, regions maintain their own small team of professional wolf hunters and a bounty system to encourage others. And they would essentially give out money, you know,

for different levels of payment were given if it was an adult were wolf versus a pup. And we've seen that in more recent times as well. They set up networks of traps called wolf's angels where essentially they would hang a piece of meat from a tree, but concealed within the meat was a large jagged hook. When they hung the meat just high enough off the ground, a wolf would have to jump up to grab the meat, and they would impale themselves on the hook on the way down. The result, alongside encroaching farmland, was that wolves were eradicated from Germany. The last wild wolf shot inside its borders was in 1904. And that was actually up for, I went down a rabbit hole in that. And there was

a wolf shot in 1904, but they think that it was a rarity because, or maybe just a lone wolf kind of wandering through because most wolves were eradicated far before that in the country. Perhaps it's not fair to blame all of this on Peter Stump. Maybe it's more fair to say that his fate was a product of our relationship with wolves, a relationship that is complex and constantly evolving, much like our image of werewolves. When the 1935 movie Werewolf of London came out, it rewrote the rules of werewolves. It replaced Peter Stump's deal with the devil with a contagious bite like a vampire, and replaced Stump's magical belt with the light of a full moon.

Both of these elements have helped reshape werewolves from mythical beasts into modern movie monsters. A 1941 movie called The Wolfman introduced a half-man, half-wolf hybrid, which walked on two legs instead of four. And by the 1980s, Michael J. Fox made a campy movie about a werewolf who played basketball. The first Academy Award for Best Makeup went to an American Werewolf in London for its incredible Werewolf transformation scene. After seeing the movie, Michael Jackson hired a director to film The Thriller music video, where Jackson played a Ware Cat. And if nothing else, the 2000s have been the golden age of werewolf media with a lusty spin. All of this to say, werewolves are not one fixed thing. They are what we make of them.

And on some level, wolves are too. So you might be wondering, where's the park? Show me the park. I was wondering that, actually. Throughout the episode, I was like, she's going to get to it. But I feel like at the very end. Well, I'm not getting to it. because it's not in a park.

But it is a hiking trail. It's called, and I want to say this as... It's not a park. It's a hiking trail. It is a hiking trail. I guess it counts. People are outside walking this path, and let me get into it. And I want to pronounce this in my American brain,

Weirwolf Wanderwegg is how it's spelled. But I know. that it's not pronounced this way because I've watched a lot of YouTube videos of people going through this trail and just to get a real like eyes on what's happening here. And 95% of them were in German. So I know that this is pronounced Vervovandavig. That's how it's pronounced. And it's in Bedburg. Say that three times best. Vivil van der Vig. That's about as good as a German I'm going to get. But of course, it's in Bedburg.

Thank you. And hiking, you know, it's labeled a hiking trail, but I do want to be for real here. And hiking is a pretty generous term, I think. It's more of just like a walking path. But it's a six-mile loop and it's not far from where Stump lived. And it has all of these different interpretive signs along the whole route that retrace the events of his story. So you can read about his crimes, his capture, and his execution. beneath detailed woodcut illustrations that were first printed on those old pamphlets.

And if anyone out there, if anyone has hiked this, that would be the most niche connection we've ever had on the show. So please, if you have, or at least know of it, please let me know. It would be really cool. But as people walk the trail, the signpost that mark the root have an icon of a howling wolf. It's a charming symbol to the modern eye, yet it represents the same sound that inspired fear in Stumps' community. People who lived in farms at the edge of the wild trying to explain dead livestock and missing loved ones. Maybe it was all Stumps doing. Maybe it was wolves.

But both of them were killed in the end. For nearly 100 years, there were no wild wolves in Germany. But in the 1990s, they returned. All on their own, they walked across. the border from Poland. Through natural recolonization, they've made a comeback. The first wild litter of wolfpups in Germany and over a century was born in 2000 near the Polish border, and the population has since grown to over 1,200 individuals. Similar to the return of the wolf in the United States, for decades following their return to Germany, wolves held the highest possible protection status

under the Federal Nature Conservation Act, making unauthorized shooting of them a criminal offense. But that protection was then moved from strictly protected to protected before being downgraded again when Parliament passed legislation to reclassify wolves as a huntable species in an effort to control growing populations and reduce livestock conflict. However, general protections for them remain fairly strict and shooting individual animals is tightly regulated throughout the country. As far as I know, none of them live around Bedburg. You're not likely to see one of them on the Werewolf Wanderweig. But maybe if you hike the trail bathed in the light of the full moon and you're fortunate enough, you'll hear one of nature's most beautiful sounds, the haunting howls of a wolf in the distance. And that is my story of the Werewolf of Bedberg.

Well, that was really cool. Thank you for telling it. And I really enjoyed how you linked it to real. Like, when you talk about werewolves, I think a lot of us immediately go to fantasy, but I really like how you linked it to real life animals and the plight of wolves. I'm not surprised you did it. I just enjoy that you did. Thank you. I mean, there's a lot to unpack in that episode for sure.

But the thing that stuck out to me among, you know, was this guy falsely accused? I mean, if people were being murdered, somebody else. to have been doing it, you know? Mm-hmm. So, like a human. But regardless of that whole thing and was this another witch hunt and all of that, I just couldn't help, but as a wolf lover, I could not help but just think of the plight of wolves. And we've talked about this extensively so much.

And I don't want this to become like a whole, let's talk about wolves for the next hour and how unfairly they've been treated forever. But you have to think of, you know, they're such a divisive species. And we think a lot in present day about they kill livestock and this and that. But it's like, and they're predators and they could attack people. And that's true. They are predators. And they do have livestock conflict.

And they do pose some sort of risk to people, although it's, dismal. It's so small. Other predators do that as well, yet we don't have the same vitriol and hatred towards them. And it's because of things like this. It's like they have had centuries and centuries and centuries worth of hatred towards them and them becoming the scapegoat for the depravity of people. in a lot of cases. And I think this is a great time to recommend a book. This book is so good. It's called Wolfish by Erica Berry, Wolf Self and the Stories We Tell About Fear. And I'm not going to read the whole synopsis because you can do that on your own time, but I will read the first two sentences

to give you an idea of it. And it reads, in this enthralling, kaleidoscopic. exploration of wolves both real and symbolic, Erica Berry weaves historic and scientific findings alongside cultural criticism, journalism, and memoir to illuminate the strands of our cultural constructions of predator and prey and what it means to navigate a world in which we can be both. And it's all about just the history of how wolves have just become so embedded in our mind to equate with, you know, we're just fear. Like wolves equal fear. Like wolves equal fear. Wolves are bad. And why is that? Where did that start? Is that justified? Is it not? And she's just, it's a really, really great book. And it covers that topic so well. Very cool. So I think I've

talked about it before in the past, but I'm not sure. Just your annual reminder, I guess. But yeah, that's that on that. Happy spooky season. I had to do a werewolf episode. Yeah, we're in October. We have to talk about spooky things. And like I mentioned, I had. the witch episode that's coming out. And I know you have another like kind of spooky one coming out to vampire. So we're kind of the trifecta, which is werewolves and vampires. Ghosts. We're missing ghosts. Oh, shoot. We're missing ghosts. No, we're not because my subscriber story has ghosts. Oh, thank God. That was a close one. Yeah. That we weren't doing our jobs. No. Okay, good. Thanks for saving us. Well, thanks, thanks, everyone.

listening. Please let us know in comments. If you enjoyed it, we love hearing back from you either on Spotify, on our socials, YouTube, whatever it may be. Yeah, thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you back. Bye. Bye. Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more MPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one, with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions.

If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. The Village of Bedberg didn't know. You're doing great, sweetie. Thanks. I'm not in headspace to do this episode. Right. Can I tell about?

It's just two stuffed animals here. Oh, serious. So as disappearance is mounted and evident. Okay. We can't be trusted to accurately convey that information. So take it out. Take that out. I don't know if there was a clean cut there, but do your best.

Good luck. Good luck. May the odds be in your favor. Okay. Going downhill fast. Okay. They had his confession. and they sentence him to and they sent in and they sent in I can't what why why can't I fucking

sentenced sentenced him to death okay I'll say it again in 1573 another Frenchman I don't know how to say this gillis gill is G I don't mean I really actually I don't even really need to say it's whatever um okay I'll say it though okay say it okay Say it out loud.