People were always fascinated by the Moon. Almost every culture has believes about it’s cycles that attribute it a special meaning, for a good reason - literary for thousand s years watching it was crucial for human survival and every agricultural development was at least partially influenced by it.

While being offset by technology in modern times, there is no doubt that every civilisation and culture that has ever existed, was at least partially possible thanks to the cycle of Moon. Some of them had subjected their entire existence to it. And there may be more to that than just cultural connotations. Many emergency workers and police officers say that in the few days of full moon people they deal with happen to be more aggressive and more accidents happen at this time. Moreover, even in ancient times, people have believed in mystical influence of the Moon. It was usually associated with some kind of primal or animistic powers. The most common of these powers was definitely the curse of person changing into the wolf. 

The punishment

One of the ancient Greek myths tells the story of a king of Arcadia, named Lycaon. Said to be one of the great heroes of Greek culture, as a respected man who has founded cities and created some of the oldest Games, Greek festivities and athletic competitions, that we know of today. He was also known of fathering over 50 children. Howeven, in the end he met a gruesome end. One day he had tried to put in question the very divinity and omniscience of Zeus. He did it by killing one of his sons, Nictimus, to serve his roasted flesh during the feast. Zeus, being the Greek god he was, immediately knew what has happened. He punished Lycaon by changing him into a wolf, along with all of his other offspring, and then bringing Nictimus back to life. Lycaon’s name have become the origin of the name of such transformation, lycanthropy.

He wasn’t the only person in Greek mythology to meet with such fate. On the slopes of the highest mountain in Arcadia, every nine years was a festival in honouring Zeus and commemorating Lycaon’s punishment, called Lycaia. During this festivities local people performed a horrific ritual that involved a human sacrifice and a very weird kind of trial. They had mixed the flesh of sacrificial man with food served during the feast. Whoever ate human flesh changed into a wolf. After nine years the changed turned back, but only provided they had abstained from eating human flesh during that time. Otherwise, they stayed in the animal form forever.

Mythological transformations to this specific animals aren’t the only ones that ancient Greeks have described. Multiple accounts, including Herodotus, describe a Scythian tribe of Neuri. They said that once a year every man of this tribe had changed into a wolf for a few days. However, maybe this transformation can be explained in the other way than a literal taking form of an animal. The term change into a wolf may connect with some ancient tribal rituals, mostly those of becoming a warrior. It was not a literal transition into animal, just a symbolic ritual during which a boy entered adulthood. 

The warriors

This symbolic transformation may sound familiar thanks to the Norse mythology. It is hard to find a person who never heard about the berserkers, elite Scandinavian warriors believed to change into bears while in fight. Historical records describe them as the warriors who entered the state of frenzy caused by some drugs or massive amounts of alcohol. Either way, there way said to draw the power from animal and were some of the most known warriors in history. Even sources from ancient Rome depicted them as a fearsome force, and Christian literature sometimes described them as a “heathen devil”. However, a little less known fact is that the berserkers were one of three cults of animalistic warriors, and one of other were Úlfhéðnar, the wolf warriors. Mentioned in many sagas, they too left their mark in Roman culture and symbols, such as decorations on shields and sculptures.  People of the time said they were special warriors chosen by Odin himself. Norway ruler outlawed them in XI century after Christianisation of the country as forces devoted to pagan god and most likely to limit drug addiction among some of the most elite warriors in the country.¹ They disappeared entirely around XII century. 

The dark ages

XI century is also a time when the first written mentions of black sorcerers transforming themselves into wolves, and curses that caused people to transform. At those times transformations occurred in rather unspecified conditions. One of those mentions is the poem Bisclavret. Around this time the German term werwolf was used for the first time², but its use wasn’t widespread until at least the late XV century. Not much mentions of werewolves from this time period have left today. Most likely because people thought them to be a pagan belief, and those were times of strong Christianisation of central and northern parts of Europe. Eventually such mentions were culturally suppressed.

In XVI century those mentions slowly start to appear regularly in both literature and written cultural references. However, it does not mean it was not existent in spoken tales and culture. Works of Martin Luther about the right of resistance introduce in the most extreme statements concept of beerwolf. It meant a kind of tyrant, who is not only above the law but also above the morality. At the same time, Beerwolf is one of synonyms to the werewolf. This means that this was a meta reference, so back then the concept of werewolf must have been widespread in at least some circles. It wasn’t just mentioned a lot in writing. Although later they have become very popular.

There is a magnitude of accounts of werewolf attacks on humans, and officials have followed such attacks with trials. Those events were mostly widespread in France. Most of those accusations were actual murders, some of them horrific and sometimes even carrying marks of cannibalism, with no connection to the wolves. Some of them were just wolf attacks that had nothing to do with a person brought to the trial, and their fundamental cause was just plain fear of the terrifying creature. However, werewolf trials were also a significant part of witch trials from almost the beginning of this practice - the trials of Valais, one of the earliest in history, featured many accusations of people changing into wolves and killing livestock. As with most of the witch trials, those weren’t particularly unfair or bloodloost³. Most investigators didn’t believe in werewolves and explained them by some illusion or hallucination, as they thought metamorphosis to beast was impossible. Even when believed guilty, the punishment was usually isolation in a monastery, not death.

The most notable werewolf investigation was in the nearby region of Vaud. That land was reported to be literally infested by child eating werewolf from around the year 1448, when the first incidents were reported up to the 1650s or even 1678 according to some sources. Throughout this time multiple people confessed to be some kind of witch or werewolf. Whatever one’s stance on those trials are, one thing is sure - there children murders and cannibalism in that area long into the age of Renaissance. Interesting is also the fact that in 1650s most werewolf occurrences have suddenly ended not only in Vaud, but virtually in whole Europe. Many of werewolf reports where based on actual murder that has happened, not some imaginary crime we usually think about when talking about witch trials. One of the most known of such stories has happened in German village of Bedburd.

The monsters

The Bedburg was a place of one of the most recognised werewolf trials in history that took place in the year 1589. The story has started with local farmers finding mutilated cattle in the fields. The wounds looked like made by teeth and claws of some enormous animal, namely dogs or wolves. However, the genuine terror had started soon after, when the attacks targeted also people who wondered alone into the nearby woods. And with time, the attacks were becoming more and more bold. The bodies had started to show up. First alone, then entire groups of people had shown up dead, bodies mutilated and torn into pieces. Apparently, they were all killed by some kind of beast. The villagers, horrified, tried to hunt the animal with no effect. And people still died. Sometimes only a few body parts were found as a mark of the attack. Official documents have stopped counting the number of victims, instead describing the number of victims as many. For the 25 years, they lived in terror, until one day local folk have organised a successful hunt for the monster which cast a shadow of fear onto their lives. However, the success was not what they had expected. The tracks did not lead them to any animal. Instead, they  found one of their own, the farmer by the name of Peter Stübbe. 

The trial 

Those attacks have finished in the year 1589 and were followed by one of the most known werewolf trials in history. Peter Stübbe have confessed, without torture⁴ to making deals with the devil and receiving from him a magical belt that allowed him to change into a strong and mighty wolf. The actual description sounded like

the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws.

~ Return of the Wolf: Conflict and Coexistence by Paula Wild ~

He has confessed to killing, among others, two pregnant women and fourteen children, including his son. He did also admit he had eaten their corpses and had intimate relations with his daughter, thus making her his accomplice⁵. The executions of the man and daughter following this trial was one of the most brutal of all recorded throughout whole known history. Even considering that delivering justice of in those times was rather cruel by modern standards, what happened could only be described as full of rage torture, meaning to inflict as much pain before killing the convict as possible. I will not even try to describe it here. It was not really a punishment, but revenge for making people live in fear and killing their loved ones. Bloody and painful revenge. Which also was the way justice worked at a time. To give others an example in such gruesome and cruel punishment that nobody else will try anything like it for a long time.

To some, the story of Peter Stübbe may be an example of how the authorities have tormented common people during the time of inquisition. To others it may be a story of a serial killer that thrived before people have developed a society able to deal with such threats. But maybe this story tells a different tale. The one told by the entire world throughout the ages. The story of fear and terror that we feel when we walk lonely in the woods and want to rationalise this fear by creating some mystical creature. Of blaming this creature for unimaginable and inhuman things that human can do to others. Perhaps those stories just try to hide the truth that is too horrible to bear - that the most terrifying monsters may just be plain people, someone we think we know. Maybe it’s just easier to believe that it must be some supernatural being. Because as horrible as he was, Peter Stübbe wasn’t even the most horrible killer during his lifetime. Those dubious honour would belong to the man named Peter Niers. It is worth to remember that sometimes the monsters are real, and those men definitely belonged to them.

Best,
— Wiktor

Title image is a courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and can be found here

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• supernatural