So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Werewolves

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Werewolves have been terrorizing our collective psyche for millennia. Can we still separate the men from the monsters from the myths? 

There's something about the full moon. It can add this charge to the air and put you on edge. A lot of people say they can actually tell where we are in the lunar cycle without ever looking at the sky. They can feel the moon making them more passionate, more aggressive, more animalistic. And to be honest, I don't think that's new age nonsense. For centuries, there have been legends about the full moon transforming humans into ravaging monsters. That's right, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, I'm tracking one of the world's oldest supernatural creatures, the werewolf.

Reports of the beast date back as far as 2700 BCE, continuing to pop up in ancient Greece and Rome. And some say that the creatures are still lurking in rural America today. I have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. There's something, dare I say, romantic about the concept of werewolves. The idea that we all have this untamable wild animal living inside of us. One that just needs a little help to come out. And of course, we always cast extremely attractive men to play them in movies like Michael J. Fox, Hugh Jackman, or Taylor Lautner. But werewolves weren't always this fangirl fantasy. In the past, werewolves were seen as real predators. They ravaged your

livestock and your wife and your daughter if you weren't careful. The worst part is they were usually hiding in plain sight. And if you crossed paths with the wrong person at the wrong time, you too were in danger of becoming the deadly creature. And I have to give the werewolves some credit here. They've really withstood the test of time because the first mention of them isn't just from a couple of centuries ago. It dates back millennia, all the way back to 2700 BCE. Somewhere around the Sumerian city of Uruk, there's this local shepherd who I'll call Jacob. He's fallen madly in love with a woman named Ishtar, who also happens to be the goddess of fertility, love, and sex. So Jacob's clearly got good taste in ladies, or at least he thinks so.

He begins sending Ishtar gifts, and for a while she plays into it, kind of leading him on. But one day, Ishtar gets bored of this young shepherd. She decides to turn him into a wolf, just for kicks. Afterward, Ishtar sets her sights on a new man, the most coveted bachelor in the city, King Gilgamesh. Now at first, Gilgamesh is into Ishtar. I mean, she's pulling out all the stops. But once he hears what she did to poor Jacob, the king pretty much ghosts her. Like, he's not going to get anywhere near Ishtar and her magical powers. This story makes its way into the epic of Gilgamesh, which is said to be one of the oldest written biographies on the planet.

So there's got to be something to it, right? While this story is somewhat vague, the reports of men turning into wolves becomes more detailed as history ticks on. For instance, a Roman author named Petronius included a story about a werewolf in a novel that he wrote in 66 CE. It's fiction, but it shows that by this point in time, werewolves are becoming part of the cultural lexicon. As the story goes, one morning around dawn, this guy named Nicaros is playing host to a Roman soldier when he's like, hey man, I have to go run an errand. Do you want to tag along and see the town? The soldier agrees, so they head out by foot, walking the five miles to

their destination. But at one point, the soldier just stops and stares up into the sky. It's early enough that the moon is still hanging low, and the soldier seems to be transfixed by it. But Nicaros just shrugs it off and keeps skipping along, until he realizes the soldier isn't keeping up. When he turns back around to look for the guy, he sees him taking all of his clothes off, which is certainly odd. But then he neatly lays them alongside the road and transforms into a wolf. Apparently, the soldier lets out this piercing howl and then darts off into the woods. Meanwhile, Nicaros is just standing there like, what the heck did I just see? He heads back to his little neighborhood where one of the local farmhands stops him. She says,

there's been this horrible tragedy. That morning, a wolf came onto the property and butchered all of their cattle. She says there was one brave servant who ran after the animal and stabbed it with a pike. Nicaros rushes back to his house, and lo and behold, he finds his visitor in bed back in his human form, and there's a doctor by his side, tending to a giant pike wound in his neck. Now, even if this story is pure imagination, a lot of people are thinking of werewolves as more truth than fiction. See, from ancient Rome up to the Middle Ages, people have a legitimate reason to worry about wolves. They frequently go after livestock. And for some, losing their herd means losing every dime of their life savings.

And these wolves don't discriminate. Cows, sheep, dogs, even children start going missing in small villages. Compound that with the superstitious mindset of the Middle Ages, and suddenly, everyone believes there must be something more at play. Like an ordinary wild animal couldn't possibly be responsible for all this. Magic, or at least some supernatural element, has to be involved. And you know what? Maybe they're right. At the turn of the 16th century, two Frenchmen are accused of being werewolves. Simply because the violence in their surrounding

villages was so gruesome, it needed an otherworldly explanation. And I'll warn you, this is where things start to get a bit gory. Around 1502, a terrible storm devastates the French countryside. A man named Pierre Bourgeau loses his flock of sheep because of it. They're scattered all over the village and Pierre goes out looking for that one by one. During the search, Pierre spots three men on black horses galloping toward him. They stop and Pierre explains the situation. One of the men says something like, don't worry, you're going to find all of your sheep really soon. I promise you that.

Like he's almost guaranteeing it. Then he offers Pierre a little money for the lost time and ominously says, I'll see you again in four or five days. So Pierre's like, OK, that's weird. But shortly after that, Pierre finds his entire flock, every last sheep, just like the stranger said he would. And sure enough, four or five days later, the horseman returns and tells Pierre a secret. He works for the devil. Satan helped Pierre regain his flock that afternoon. So Pierre's like, well, I also prayed to God and clearly that didn't help, so screw it. He renounces Christianity, kisses the horseman's ice-cold hand, and pledges his

allegiance to Satan. For the next two years, he doesn't worry about his sheep at all because he feels confident the devil's keeping watch over them. But over time, Pierre gets bored of worshiping Satan. He decides, I'm going to pop back over to church, just see what's happening with my old buddies. And it's around that time that he meets another seemingly demonic fellow named Michael Verdun. Now, I'm not sure if Michael just shows up at his house one day, if they met at church or something else. I do know that Michael's there to entice Pierre away from God and back to the dark side. All it takes is a little bit of money and an invitation to a wild party. One evening, Pierre and Michael head out to the woods behind this old castle. They're in the

company of other men and women who Pierre has never seen before. They're all dancing and having a great time when everyone starts taking off their clothes. They're also passing around this ointment and slathering it on each other from head to toe. Now, Pierre knows how to have a good time, so he's just going with the flow. He even lets Michael apply the balm to his bare skin. And that's when everything goes sideways. Pierre watches as his feet transform into paws. Then his skin grows this thick coat of fur, and he feels like he can run faster than he ever could before. And when he looks over to Michael, he realizes the same thing has happened to him. They've both just turned into werewolves.

This lasts for several hours before the men return to their human forms. But this is just the beginning of an extremely gruesome friendship. Pierre starts turning into a wolf on the regular. He gets these monstrous urges, this primal instinct to kill. One of his first targets, a six-year-old boy who narrowly escapes Pierre's clutches. The next time, he goes hunting with the more experienced Michael. Together, they trap and eat a young woman, as well as the man who comes to her rescue. As time goes on, they brutally kill and devour several children, some as young as four years old. But this sadistic romp

eventually comes to an end. One evening, werewolf Michael tries to attack a man in the woods, but his prey fights back, severely injuring him. The man returns to the scene of the crime later just to see if the wolf is still alive, but instead he follows a trail of blood to find Michael in his human form. Michael's alive, but he's arrested, and he rats out his protege, Pierre. In court, both confess to making a pact with the devil, and they also admit they are werewolves. As punishment, the two men are burned at the stake, marking the beginning of an all-out war against werewolves. Coming up, grab your silver bullets, cause we're going werewolf hunting. Now, back to the story.

In the 1500s, many small villages across Europe fell into this werewolf pandemonium. If your neighbor had a unibrow, werewolf. If they had long curved fingernails or low set ears, werewolf. And if they got too tired in the sun, most certainly werewolf. I mean, it was out of control. Possibly thanks to Pierre Bourgault, people were terrified to apply ointments or drink water from streams because both were thought to be cursed by wolves.

If a man slept outside on a Wednesday or a Friday night with a full moon on their face, they also had the potential to be transformed into one of these creatures. Allegedly, some families even killed their seventh-born child because they thought they were doomed to become a werewolf. While I'm not sure where these very specific legends originated, I do know that everything came to a head in 1582 in one small German town called Bedburg. There's some serious religious turmoil in Bedburg because Catholics and Protestants are fighting for political dominance. The place is constantly playing host to soldiers on their way to the

battlefields. The town sees a lot of death, not just from war, but also from outbreaks of the Black Plague. Needless to say, these people are stressed. To top it off, they're still dealing with that timeless question of how to protect their livestock from deadly predators. And things take a darker turn when, yep, you guessed it, women and children go missing as well. People have certainly seen wolves around Bedburg in the past, but there's a new creature that's got people's attention. Because a few have seen a wolf that's, well, accessorizing. Like it's wearing some sort of belt. So when Bedburg citizens hear about this, they're going, ah darn it, we've got ourselves a werewolf. But the question is, who is it?

Cut to the outskirts of town, to the home of a wealthy, well-respected farmer in his 60s named Peter Stoop. People really like Peter. I mean, he's got a lot of money, so that helps to buy influence, but he's a widower, so he also has people's sympathy, especially because he's now raising his two kids as a single dad. Peter probably hears the rumors of a werewolf in town, but he seems like the kind of guy who mostly minds his own business.

So when the villagers decide we're going out in a Beauty and the Beast style monster hunt, Peter doesn't go along. Apparently though, this wolf hunt goes on for days, until one evening when the locals spot the belted creature and send a pack of dogs after it. The mob follows, but when they get there, the dogs aren't circled around a wolf. They've trapped old Peter in his human form. So Peter's arrested and he confesses he's a werewolf. He tells the authorities that he made a pact with the devil at age 12. But unlike Pierre Bourgeau, he didn't conspire with the devil over a couple of lost sheep and a cool party. He wanted to carry out his deep-seated desire to kill. So the devil gave him that belt, which somehow gives him the ability to turn into a werewolf. Apparently, he'd been acting on his dark impulses ever since. Peter eventually confesses that he'd

go after anyone who insulted him or just flat out annoyed him. Sometimes he'd just linger in the woods and wait for someone to be there at the wrong time. After his kills, he'd go into town in his human form and wade to his victims' families. All told, Peter confesses to killing countless livestock, two pregnant women, and 13 children, one of them being his own son. But Peter only admits to these crimes when he's placed on a torture device called the rack. So you have to wonder, is Peter telling the truth or is he just trying to keep his limbs attached to his body? Some say that Peter's confession isn't credible. Maybe the authorities are seizing on an opportunity, a chance to show that the devil is very real and an imminent threat.

Maybe they're pressuring Peter to admit to crimes he never committed so they can get people to return to Catholicism. Either way, a confession is a confession at this time. And at the end of October 1589, Peter isn't just executed, he's publicly tortured first. So maybe skip ahead 15 seconds if you're not into the gore, but here it goes. They place Peter on this large wooden wheel, naked. Then they use scalding iron pinchers to peel his flesh away from his body.

Next, they take a wooden axe and break every bone they can find. And finally, they show some mercy by beheading Peter and throwing his remains into the fire. They execute his girlfriend and daughter too. Now, this does not sound like a punishment designed for a man. This is meant for a monster. So maybe they have good reason to believe Peter did commit those crimes after all. On the other hand, those who don't buy into the idea of werewolves say maybe Peter was just a brutal serial killer and nothing more, which, okay, that might be the case. After all, they never do find that magical belt of his. But Peter was a grown man with some sense of agency. What's stranger and more horrifying is that there was a 13-year-old killer who had an almost identical penchant for violence.

And apparently, he made a similar pact with the devil. That boy's name is Jean Grenier. At the turn of the 17th century, somewhere on the west coast of France, a few girls are tending to their sheep near the sand dunes when they notice their flocks are spooked by something. Lying in a hole a few feet below the ground is a little boy just kind of spying on the girls. He's about 13 years old and he has matted red hair, long fingernails, and these sharp canine teeth that stick out over his lower lip. The girls are terrified of this feral child, probably because he has this glimmer in his eye, like this kid is up to no good. So one of the girls asks the boy, what's his deal? And why does he look so dirty?

The child says it's because sometimes he wears, quote, a wolfskin. One that was given to him by a strange man named Pierre Labyrinthe. According to the boy, Pierre lives in a place of gloom and fire, where he has many other companions burning in flames. So, kinda sounds like the devil in hell to me. Every Monday, Friday, and Sunday, Pierre comes by to wrap the boy in the wolfskin, and for a few hours, he runs around killing dogs and, well, little girls. The girls aren't sure if the boy is just playing a prank, but they all leave unscathed. Still, their story spreads around the local villages like wildfire until it reaches another young girl named Marguerite, who's like, oh yeah, I know that kid. That's Jean Grenier.

Apparently, Jean once said the same thing to Marguerite, that he had sold himself to the devil, and after dusk, he turns into a full-blown wolf, killing dogs and young girls. The only difference is, Jean actually follows through on his threats to Marguerite. One afternoon, Marguerite is tending to her sheep when she hears something moving in the bushes. Suddenly, this beast leaps out, tearing at her clothes.

Marguerite is able to fight the thing off with her staff because she says it's much smaller than the average wolf. But it also has this familiar red hair. So news of Marguerite's encounter reaches the church, which presumably tracks down little Jean and brings him in for questioning. And when they ask if he attacked Marguerite, he says, well, yes, I did, but she fended me off with a stick.

Which, unless this kid was watching the wolf attack from afar, proves that Jean was the wolf. He knows exactly what Marguerite did and identifies her weapon of choice. Plus, he goes on to confess to several other killings. He even says that his stepmother recently left the household after she watched little Jean vomit out a child's finger. And when Jean's father and stepmother are brought in for questioning, they corroborate his story like, yep, that's little Jean for you. But maybe because he's a kid, Jean actually gets off fairly easy compared to Peter Stoop. He's sent to a monastery. When a judge from Bordeaux visits the boy seven years later, he says that he's kept his long teeth and his pointed claws and still has a taste for human flesh.

So it appears Jean wasn't able to shake that wolfish form like ever. Shortly after this visit, Jean dies at the age of 20, but I don't know what from. What I can say is the werewolf sightings don't end there. They stay prevalent well beyond the 17th century, and not just in Europe. There are a few modern tales that suggest werewolves are still alive and well. They might even be hiding in our backyards. Coming up, an American werewolf in Wisconsin. Now, back to the story.

Back in the 17th century, werewolves were perceived as a very real and dangerous threat, but that was a long time ago. Nowadays, society is a little more rooted in science. Like, our biological composition doesn't allow for us to transform into a beast at the sight of a full moon. All those old stories about werewolves have to be a myth, right? Well, maybe not, because a very similar beast was caught terrorizing a small Midwestern town as recently as the 1990s. Out near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, there's this three-mile thoroughfare known as Bray Road. It's not totally off the beaten path because it connects two major highways, but it's quiet, peppered with farms, cornfields, and marshes. And on this stretch of land, locals have repeatedly seen something that they cannot explain. Around 1991, a local bus driver named Pat Lester is driving a few high

schoolers home when she overhears them talking. Apparently, there's this rumor going around that one of the kids spotted a werewolf in town. What she hears is, on Halloween night, a girl named Doris Gibson is driving down Bray Road. It's smoggy, and since she's in her teens, I imagine she's a fairly inexperienced driver so she's probably already a little on edge and that's when she hits something. Panicking she stops the car and gets out looking to see if there's an animal or somebody who might need her help only there's nothing there so she goes around to the back of the car just to be sure and that's when she sees it. A giant wolf-like beast running in full speed toward her. Doris sprints back to the driver's side door fidgeting with the

handle just watching in horror as this wolf comes at her. She finally unlocks the car, climbs in and slams the door just as she hears the creature leap onto the trunk. Then she smashes the gas pedal, escaping unscathed just in the nick of time. Now, I imagine that Pat, the bus driver, would have brushed this whole story off as nothing more than some ridiculous rumor. If her daughter hadn't seen the exact same creature two years earlier. In 1989, Pat's daughter Lori is driving home at around 1 30 in the morning. She makes a turn onto Bray Road when she sees an animal on the side of the street. It has these pointy ears and a thick brown coat, but as she gets closer,

she realizes it's on its hind legs, kneeling down over some roadkill, and it's much larger than any other dog or coyote she's ever seen. In fact, she says it looks to be the size of a full-grown man. She guesses it's about 5 foot 7, maybe 150 pounds. And this thing has muscular calves, like a guy who spent way too much time at the gym. As she's passing the creature, Lori feels this sense of doom wash over her. Like whatever she's seeing is some supernatural being, almost demonic. Rumors about this werewolf start spreading around town, and the more people hear about it, the more they come out of the woodwork to say, uh, yeah, I actually saw that thing too. For instance, in 1989, a dairy farmer named Scott

Bray, whose family the street is presumably named after, spotted the creature lurking around his yard. In 1990, a different dairy farmer named Mike Etten drove by a similar creature squatting on the side of the road. Also that year, a 13-year-old girl named Heather Bowie was out sledding with her friends, and they all saw a wolf-like beast stand on its hind legs, and then it chased the kids all the way home. But here's the part that really stumps me. One evening, a man named Mark Shackelman is working security for a Catholic convent outside Jefferson, Wisconsin, about a 45-minute drive from Bray Road. He spots this wolf-looking creature lurking around the property.

He describes it exactly like the Bray Road Beast. Same color, same claws, same fangs, roughly the same size and height. But let me say, Mark is freaking brave because instead of running away from this animal, he grabs his flashlight and heads toward it. As he gets closer, he notices this rotten stench coming from the beast, almost like the smell of death. It makes eye contact with Mark before letting out these weird growling noises that faintly resemble a human voice. Like it's almost trying to speak to him. Now Mark's realizing he's gotten a little too close for comfort. So what does he do? Well, he's at a convent, so he starts praying. As soon as he

does, the creature gives him this little sneer. Then it just turns and casually walks off. Mark never sees the creature again after that, but he is convinced that the power of God drove it away. The wildest detail about this story is that it happened back in 1936, more than 50 years before the other sightings. So if this is the same creature, then it has to be at least 60, maybe 70 years old when it resurfaces around 1989. And in fact, the Bray Road Beast was spotted as recently as 2018. Allegedly, someone even snapped a photo that you can find online. And it looks like, well, a werewolf walking on two hind legs with this snarl. And if it is a costume, let me just say that it is definitely Hollywood worthy.

While Wisconsin's creature is still an ongoing mystery, people have proposed a few theories to explain the werewolf pandemonium of the 16th and 17th centuries. If you listened to my episode on the Beast of Gévaudan, this first one may sound familiar. It's called clinical lycanthropy. Essentially, it's a medical condition that makes some believe that they're an animal and act like one as well. Today, it would most likely fall under the category of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but it doesn't necessarily lead to violent outbursts. And as for people physically seeing a human-wolf hybrid, like with Jean Grenier, there's another explanation called hypertrichosis. This is a genetic mutation that causes excessive hair growth on the body. It's also correlated with being sensitive to light,

which might explain why people only reported seeing werewolves at night. Except this condition is extremely rare. Like there have only been 50 reports in the last few centuries kind of rare. So while this might explain one, possibly two cases, any more seems like a stretch. My final and most favorite theory is ergot poisoning. Ergot is a fungus that people accidentally baked into bread in the 16th and

17th centuries, causing hallucinations. Some historians blame the Salem witch trials on an outbreak of ergotism that triggered mass paranoia. Perhaps the same can be said for the small villages that accused men like Pierre Bourgeau and Peter Stoop of their crimes. But the question is, why did they admit to them? Was it the torture that they were put through? Mental illness? Or was there some truth to these legends? People whose inner wolf had become unleashed, not just figuratively, but literally. Maybe we all have a beast hiding somewhere inside of us. Next time there's a full moon, just try to keep it at bay. Thanks for listening.

I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.