RedHanded - DAY 2: Werewolves (ShortHand’s 13 Days of Halloween)

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--Recorded under a full moon, RedHanded’s guide to all things lycanthropic tells the whole hairy story: from Ancient Greek tales of curses, through the gruesome wolf trials of the Middle Ages, all the way through to whatever yassified teen-heartthrob vibe we’ve got going on nowadays. Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Listen to scamplencers now wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that the crime of the century is the one being waged on our planet? Introducing Lawless Planet, Wondry's new podcast exploring the dark side of the climate crisis. Uncover shocking tales of crime and corruption threatening our world's future. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, that's spooky listener. It's October, our favorite time of the year. And so to celebrate and give you all a well-deserved treat,

we're bringing you the 13 days of Halloween. Short-hand edition. Usually, every single week over on Amazon Music, we release brand-new episodes of our bite-sized sister show, Short-hand. It's like Red Hand's little friend, where we delve into all sorts of fascinating topics. From hell in different religions, Haitian voodoo, the death of Edgar Allan Poe,

Katad Syndrome, Japan's Suicide Forest. and so much more. And this Halloween, from the 19th of October to the 31st of October, we are going to be pulling out 13 of our most terrifying episodes of shorthand to drop straight into your red-handed feed every single day. But beware. Each episode will only be available for 24 hours. So get listening or abandon or hope.

Enjoy. Hello. Hello and wolf. And actually, very appropriately, we are recording this under the light of a full moon. It's as if we planned it. I know. If your algorithm keeps pushing those weird alpha-omaga werewolf erotica stories onto your feed and your for you page, well, it's only going to get worse after this, I'm afraid. So why not? Just say fuck it, like my earrings. I'm very pleased with my new earrings, they say fuck it on them. So why not, join me and my earrings and come with us on a journey to track the curious history of vampires, weirdo cousins, from the earliest myth-based superstitions of ancient Greece, through the skulking demonic beasts of the dead.

dark ages, to whatever yassified teen heartthrob vibe they've got going on these days. From the old English were, meaning man, and wolf meaning wolf the encyclopedia Britannica defines a werewolf as

a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, peoples or corpses, but returns to human form by day. In modern times, these guys are linked intrinsically to the full moon, during which their thought to transform and wreak havoc on the world, before presumably resuming their roles as law-abiding citizens

for the rest of the lunar cycle. But where did it all start? And have they always appeared in the form that we recognise today? This is another Halloween shorthand. The earliest written record of man-to-wolf transformations is where everything else fucking is for the first time in the epic of Gilgamesh. And the epic of Gilgamesh is like, it's the first written Great Flood Story and blah-bidi-blah-blah-de-blooddy-blah.

It's the oldest surviving work of literature in the world ever. And it's a story and Gilgamesh walks around loads and he rejects a goddess called Ishtar's sexual advances, reminding her of how she once cursed one of her exes by turning him into a wolf. Not the worst thing to be turned into. It's, yeah, I would have turned my ex into... A slug.

I was going to say, a slug. Mm-hmm. And then I'd cover him in salt and watch him disintegrate. So murder. Can't murder a slug. No court can convict me. Hope he's doing so well.

But the werewolf, as we know it, a bloodthirsty man-wolf hybrid creature, only really started to knock about a few thousand years later in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. The first official account of a werewolf can be found in the Republic as in Plato's Republic

and that's from about 380 BCE and there's also a man wolf in metamorphoses by Ovid which I trudged through in my GCSE classics like fucking boring. Basically it's a really really really long book it's like that fucking thick

and it's just stories of people turning into animals that's it. I mean you need one we've got the fucking picture. That's my Yelp review. Anyway, so those are very early notations of men being turned into wolves, but they're myths.

No one is saying that they are even remotely true. No one's even attempting it. Still though, even though I think of it is boring as shit, the account that he gives of Zeus turning someone into a wolf actually transformed the basis of our modern concept of a werewolf,

which is a man who is a man who cursed with wolf-like bloodlust as a punishment for previous immoral behaviour. So during the ancient era, were warwolves were part of a mostly fictional storytelling realm, rather than something people truly believed in. But, by the Middle Ages, scholars were talking about them, as if they were the real deal. Jervais of Tilbury, an English statesman,

who compiled the encyclopedia Otia Imperiala in the early 13th century, wrote this. In England, we have often seen men change into wolves, according to the phases of the moon. Cool. Cool. No reference. No evidence. Is this like that puma that everybody thinks exists in Essex? Oh, the wildcat? Yeah. That's real, though. Oh, is it? Yeah. Oh, Escape from a zoo. Oh, no. I love really near a pink forest. Date quite a lot of edibles and go walking in the woods. Though I do piss myself, so I don't think They'll attack me. Sure fire trick to survive.

I don't want this defective human. Isn't that what they say? Soil yourself? What? I've never heard that in my life. Oh my God, yes. If a bear is coming for you or a wild animal is coming for you, you should lay down on the floor, pretend to be dead and soil yourself.

Because they'll think you're rotten and they won't eat you or attack you. They'll be so like, ugh, and then they'll leave. I'm going to Google this, but I'm pretty sure. there's a whole Quora article on it should you soil yourself when you're being attacked but they're talking about a person anyway we don't need to get into this I think it's worth a shot

great I'm so glad I'm just about to go and spend two weeks in the wilderness with you are we not wildernessing in New Zealand yeah is it pretty wilderness I promise not to soil myself okay cool I'll hold you to that and if you do I'm just going to throw you to the best

You won't want to hold me to anything if I don't. So how did we get here talking about you shitting yourself in the woods? I did not, I'm not going to shit myself. It doesn't soil mean shit. It does, but I don't like that. I do. So you wouldn't even do it to save yourself from a being eaten by bear? I don't know if I could, I ironically think that I know like shitting yourself is like, obviously I'm scared.

I think if I was scared, I don't think I could have a bowel movement. I think I need to be very relaxed to have a bowel movement don't you if you're under pressure I just don't think I've ever been under that much pressure sure maybe I'll surprise myself shit my pants like if I just put a gun to your head now

and I was like go on Hannah have a bowel movement or I'm going to shoot you in the head I don't know I don't know maybe look I'm sure there will soon be some sort of horrible Netflix reality show about it and we can wonder about it then They've already done it in Japan, probably. Yeah, I was going to say.

Anyway, where we'll... It's Squid Game Season 2. Yeah. It's commonly known that the entirety of Europe got a bit weird in the medieval era when it came to a religious zealotry. And that was all exacerbated by the Black Death, which by the 14th century was sweeping across the continent and wiping out 50% of its population.

Yeah, I'd probably become a bit more godsy if 50% of people I knew just died. I mean, I'd be dead, so... One in two. In rural areas, most affected by the plague, bodies would pile up and that meant that they were scavenged by lots of things, but wolves mainly. And the wolves got so brave that they started to sniff around human settlements. Oh my God, do you just think Christmas came early if you're a wolf?

Oh, yeah. Just piles and piles and piles of dead bodies. Wolves were pretty unpopular back then, so unpopular in the UK, we killed them all and we don't have them anymore. Dr. Amanda Hopkins of Warwick University noted that wolves were linked with greed and gluttony in the allegorical tradition. So no one was wearing those horrible t-shirts or had those throws on the wall. I just acquired a t-shirt with three wolves on it.

It was given to me as a present. How do you feel about that? I feel, I haven't tried it on, but I feel pretty good. Okay, great. About it, I think. It's the blankets for me. I can't do blankets. I'll be wearing it in a strictly ironical way.

Great. That's fine. Yes. So as the wolves are chomping on dead plague bodies, paranoia, unsurprisingly, was at an all-time high when it came to disease and also moral righteousness. So it makes sense that anxieties surrounding the until now completely mythical werewolf might get a bit more intense. Werewolves, over time, turned from a fun bedtime story fodder

into a very real fear for the people of medieval Europe. And before long, the 50% of them that weren't dead and being eaten by wolves decided to do something about it. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests. but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices.

Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling, they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. All right, should we talk about the signal awards? Sure. Sure. That is the level of enthusiasm. We would love you guys to have for us too.

Because if you remember, we made the podcast series Flesh and Code with Wondry. We were super excited like the minute they brought that story to us. Because if we haven't listened to Flesh and Code, it's essentially about following people who essentially fall in love with their like AI companions. It's about Russian interference and all sorts of crazy things and about how these AI companions are to be trusted, whether this is a good thing, how it was impacting on a larger scale,

and the ramifications when a replica that was the company at the heart of it took away the erotic roleplay function and didn't go well. spoilers. So we loved making it. We spent, what, 18 months making that show, and we worked so, so hard on it. And so we are going to ask a very small favour of you guys, shockingly to us. Flesh and Code has been put up for the listener's choice category of the Signal Awards 2025. So we would love you guys to please help us out and basically try get some more eyes and ears on Flesh and Code because it was a real labour of love for us. What you guys need to do is go to the Signal Awards website and vote for Flesh and Code. Again, it's in the listener's choice

category and you can find us under documentaries. That's the category you're looking for. And then under limited series and specials. Voting is open until the 9th of October, so you really don't have much time, like literally go do this now. And we would just be so incredibly grateful because if we did win the listeners choice for Flesh and Code at the Signals Award, then it would just mean the world to us. Thank you. That's right, it's time for some werewolf trials, baby. Although it's worth pointing out that only a small fraction of witchcraft related a persecution was linked to accusations of werewolfery,

there's still plenty out there for us to sink our teeth into. Originating in the valet and vowed regions of modern-day Switzerland, in the early 15th century, trials of so-called werewolves spread throughout Europe in a wave of hysteria, before eventually quietly dying down in the 18th century which is crazy how people just go mad for it they weren't mad for it for three centuries

before someone was like what are we doing we've got farms to fucking till France became known as a veritable hot spot for werewolves in fact they were mad for a bit of lupine action sounds like English propaganda to me I was going to say

Men were accused and executed on suspicion of being bloodthirsty lupgaras whatever that means I wonder if it's also because of that quote from the Englishman that was like Englishmen turn into wolves all the time the French like get him Yeah, yeah yeah yeah

still at least some of them it seems were legitimate wrong ones the people that were being executed in these faux trials in 1521 Pierre Bergo and Michael Vedant admitted they'd sworn allegiance to the devil and had an ointment to turn themselves into wolves,

a form that they took to go at and murder children. Parroting their story was a guy called Giles Garnier, more commonly known as the werewolf of Dahl, although he went a step further by eating the kids too. The majority of these guys could have been what we'd recognise today as your common garden variety serial killers, but their vicious crimes were so incomprehensible to the puritanical society of the time that it was thought they must be beasts, not men.

That, or their confessions, were helped along somewhat by some good old-fashioned medieval torture. Either way, they were burned at the stake in a bit to destroy their cursed bodies. One of the most notorious executions was that of Peter Stump, Double P. The werewolf of Bedburg. News of a werewolf brutalising women and children in Bedburg spread like wildfire in 1589. Stump's trial largely rested on testimony that the wolf,

that had been doing all of this brutalising, was missing its left front paw. Oh my God. It's like Kif, Keph. I'm sorry to break it to you, everybody, but Stump wasn't Peter's real surname. No. He didn't have a left hand.

It's so good. I mean, who knew that the medieval folk running around burning people at the state for being werewolves also had a good sense of humour? Still had just office pants. Yeah. It is like the Keff joke, which we've told so many times, but I just love that joke so much. I was like, I worked at a factory once and there was a guy there who everyone called Keff. And I didn't work out for years that they were calling him Keff.

His real name was Keith, but it's because he only had one. an eye. No, so they take the eye out and then it's just K-E-T-H. Oh, it's because he lost an eye. I love that it's your favorite joke and you didn't even really understand it. No, I feel like I understood it the first time I read it when it was written like that and then I've been retelling it wrong. Great.

Or retelling it and getting a laugh but not understanding it myself. Everyone else understands the joke you're telling except you. I did wonder deep down. I said, there's only one eye. Now I get it, because he lost an eye. It's so much better when you tell it right. Anyway, there you go, everyone. And yes, that is my favourite joke.

Anyway, let's get back to Stump. Evidence bit weak, but it was absolutely nothing compared to what Stump had up his sleeve. His door has two sleeves. How do you know? Were you there? We should also note that Peter Stump had been seriously tortured. He'd been on the rack, and after that he confessed to practicing black magic from the age of 12 and using a belt given to him by the devil himself to transform into a greedy devouring wolf.

Stump confessed to having killed and cannibalized 14 children and two pregnant women ripping fetuses from their wombs and eating their hearts, panting hot and raw, as dainty morsels. One of these children, Stump claimed, was his very own son. Peter Stump was executed on Halloween, 1589. He was placed on a cartwheel and had his flesh torn off by red-hot pincers and then he was beheaded before being dumped on a burning pyre

just to make totally sure he wasn't coming back. If this October anybody is like, I really want some horrible. fucking torture shit to listen to medieval in format I would highly recommend Dan Carlin's painful attainment episode I can't find it anywhere what oh my god so Dan Carlin fucking genius yeah but he's taken a lot of his stuff off no not painful attainment I've not been able to find it anywhere and I've been looking for it for a couple of years because you keep talking about it I will try to find it and I will post

the link in this episode description yeah I'll just just send it to you. If you can find it, it's so fucking good. I, like, struggle to get through it. It's also four hours long. Sick one. It's sick in every sense. So anyway, let's stick with this.

The trials were far from just a handy way of catching bona fide bad guys. In fact, they disproportionately targeted vulnerable groups such as beggars, hermits and immigrants. In Austria, some destitute elderly men were known to peddle charms and incal charms and, in cantations to paranoid citizens, which was a bit too close to sorcery for the authorities' liking. Some of these spells were known as Wolfgerson, a protective ward against wolves, or their darker cousin, Wolfburn, a malevolent spell causing a wolf attack. What was likely, just a harmless money spinner, was taken a sacrilege, and several of these men were put on trial as alleged werewolves. Why would you sell protection against wolf attack?

if you're a level. A good point. But it didn't matter. As in the witch trials running concurrently, many of those accused only confessed under extreme torture. As for why they were targeted, it theorized that some of the men could have suffered from diseases like porphyria,

causing sensitivity to light, reddish teeth and psychosis. And blue pea. Oh, wow. Or maybe they even had genetic conditions, like hypertryctosis that causes excessive hair growth. But like people are also putting pigs on trial and stuff, you know. People were fucking bored. I don't think we need to rationalise it to Porphyria, to be honest.

Others might also have been suffering from what is sometimes referred to as clinical lycanthropy, a mental illness under the umbrella of delusional misidentification syndrome, in which a person believes that they are a wolf, which was actually all the rage back then. Cases of this syndrome are pretty heavily influenced by existing cultural factors and beliefs. And given that medieval Europe was gripped by werewolf mania, it makes sense that people's psychosis might have latched on to this particular theme.

As with all crazes, though, from Shagban's to the Kardashians, the tide would eventually start to turn. I think the Kardashians are here to stay, to be honest. While superstitions continued to persist in the most rural areas of central and eastern Europe, gradually most people stopped believing in werewolves as a real threat. So it all went a bit quiet on the werewolf front for a while, until the Victorians brought it back in a big way. Werewolves were never as popular as vampires or ghosts, they still aren't,

but they were a topic of interest in scholarly circles and featured in several pieces of Gothic literature, notably Clements Hausman's 1896 novel The Werewolf whose inclusion of a female werewolf is thought to be indicative of anxieties around the changing role of women at the time, sounds about right. And since we all know that the Victorians were secret perves

in buttoned-up corsets, it's hardly a surprise that their fascination with werewolves centred around the idea of repressed beastly desires in humans, particularly women. Now, not to bring down the Bible or anything, but you know who else was into werewolves? The Nazis. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

We actually did a shorthand on weird Nazi occult shit that briefly touched on werewolves, so if you want to know more, go and check that episode out. I can't remember the number. But basically, Hitler and his cronies made werewolf imagery a key part of their propaganda campaign, running an anti-Semitic smear campaign

that compared Jewish people with life-leaching vampires and the Nazis as heroic werewolves. It's fucking Nazi twilight. Hmm. Apparently the woman who wrote Twilight is a Mormon. I just googled, how does Twilight relate to Mormonism? And apparently in an interview, she says, that it links to the Mormon belief that humans can become divine

and live in a resurrected condition. Ah. So the Cullins, the vampire family, represent humans, quote, in that state, since they were once human and now live without death. Hmm. There you go. I reckon we could do a whole shorthand on that. Anyway, that's not what this episode is about.

No, I'm reading just one more side part. I'm reading a book called Hitler's People and they make a really interesting point about all of like the occult stuff is that in Germany there was a bit of a crisis of faith because Jesus is a Jew. Yeah.

So a very Christian country kind of had nowhere to go. So Himmler was like, I've got an idea. Yeah. So interestingly, this whole Nazi werewolf vampire hunting situation

is one of the earliest examples of werewolves and vampires being pitted against each other as mortal enemies. A trope we've rammed down our own throats for years now. And while modern law leads us to believe that werewolves versus vampires is an eternal beef, it's actually pretty modern, and we can thank Hollywood for that. And Stephanie Meyer, Mayor. Don't know, don't care. While the creatures do have minor clashes in golden age flicks like the House of Trouble.

Dracula and Supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows which aired in the 60s, the rivalry was truly cemented in the early 2000s film series Underworld, where vampires and werewolves are locked in an all-out war. And of course,

obviously, then twilight happened and all of our lives were over overnight. But it doesn't have to be this way. Both werewolves and vampires represent kind of the same thing, the intersection between humaneness. and beast, and how we're all quite unhappy all the time. So whether your team Edward or you are team Jacob,

maybe vampires and werewolves, have more in common than they might like to admit. As we look over their bloodstained history, one thing jumps out to us. Of all the things we take for granted as part of werewolf law, most actually took their cues from the movies. The majority of tropes we associate with werewolves today, such as their transformations only on a full moon, their weakness to silver bullets

and even their troubles with the incurable curse of lichanthropy all bear little resemblance to the way they were presented back when people actually believed in them. Classic horror movies such as 1941's The Wolfman, 1981's an American Werewolf in London, and The Howling, and modern takes such as Underworld, the Twilight Saga and Teen Wolf have all contributed to the shifting face of werewolves across pop culture.

but despite these changes one thing has remained constant werewolves are almost always male but why is it such a boys club for a start the phrase wherewoman would literally translate to man woman

oh yeah which just wouldn't make any sense and admittedly werewolves aren't really the epitome of the feminine ideal they're hairy they're aggressive and they're just pretty gross and like I know this is something we've talked about I think people look at cats and they always think they're female

because they have quite a feminine energy. And people always look at dogs and think they're all boys. Like, good boy. Like, it's just baked in. You might argue that a woman could fit right into the like-canthropic lifestyle because we are begrudgingly beholden to cycles of our own. There have been some attempts to portray female werewolves, like a 2000 film called Ginger Snaps,

which conflates the horrors of female puberty and girlhood with the brutal transformation into a werewolf. It's not rocket science, is it? But for the most part, female werewolves just don't really exist. And maybe the key to that can be found in the Middle Ages, where anti-warwolf persecution came into its own. Society already had a way to get rid of all of the women that were calling as witches instead.

So there you have it. The whole glorious history of werewolves, from antiquity to the present day. quite literally an underdog story from persecution to adulation obscurity to hysteria and then back again in the 21st century

the rise of shows like teen wolf has led the vanguard for a renaissance of all things like anthropic with the motto basically being make werewolf sexy again but when you next see a 35 year old actor playing a teenager with his pecs out under a full moon

take a moment to think of those who came before him The ones who felt the wrath of gods were burned at the stake. And those who were just a bit nuts. Happy Halloween. Oh! Ooh! How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our time. And crimes like that, they don't just happen. We call things accidents. There is no accident. This was 100%. preventable. They're the result of choices by people, ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet, stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us, and the things we're doing to either

protect the earth or destroy it. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-research.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group. With a touch of humor. Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapists out of years. There's been like eight of them. a dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

That mother f***er is not real! And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast. Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.