Werewolf stories, p.6
Werewolf Stories, page 6
Sources:
Redfern, Nick. Interview with Bob Carroll, September 1996.
Black Dogs
While the Somerset region in England has a tradition of a large, benevolent black dog that accompanies lone travelers as a kind of protector and guide, the vast majority of black dog folklore depicts the dark canine as an ominous creature that forebodes death to those who behold it.
Great Britain seems to have more than its share of demonic hounds. In Sidney Paget’s iconic illustration for The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson catch sight of the tale’s title character.
Great Britain, especially, seems to have more than its share of demonic hounds. The very glance from the devilish eyes of the black hound of Okehampton Castle on Dartmoor means death within the year. The Black Dog Woods in Wiltshire are haunted by a black dog whose appearance signals a death before Christmas. Knaith, Lincolnshire, is a site where many frightened travelers have seen a large black dog with a woman’s face.
According to an old story that is often told in England, a terrifying thunderstorm descended on Bungay on Sunday, August 4, 1577. The storm transformed the day into a darkness with rain, hail, thunder, and lightning beyond all imagining. Fearing the worst, a number of the townsfolk gathered in St. Mary’s Church to pray for mercy.
As the lore tells it, it was while the people knelt in fear and prayed for deliverance that a large black hellhound manifested suddenly in their midst. Without any challenge from the cowering congregation, the massive black hound charged many members of the church with its terrible claws and large fangs. According to a verse taken from a pamphlet published by Rev. Abraham Fleming in 1577, “All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, and passing onward to the quire, he many people slew.”
After the hellhound had finished ravishing St. Mary’s Church and chewing up a good number of its members, tradition has it that the creature next appeared in Blythburgh Church. Its appetite for human flesh had merely been whetted by its attack on the people of Bungay, for it viciously mauled and killed more churchgoers at Blythburgh.
According to the accounts of the hellhound’s attack at Bungay, the beast used more than its teeth and claws to kill. Fleming testified that in some instances, the monster wrung the necks of two churchgoers at the same time, one victim in each of its paws as it stood upright.
At Blythburgh, the hellhound burst through the church doors, ran into the nave, then dashed up the aisle, killing a man and a boy. In addition to leaving bodies strewn about before it departed the church, the monster left numerous scorch marks about the church — marks that people swear can still be seen to this day.
For over four hundred years, Newgate prison has been haunted by the Black Dog, which appears shortly before executions. According to legend, in 1596 a man named Scholler was brought into the prison to face accusations of Witchcraft. Before the man could even come to trial, starving prisoners had killed and eaten him. Not long thereafter, the Black Dog appeared, its huge canine jaws eager for revenge. Whether the phantom hound was the spirit of Scholler returned in another form or his familiar come to avenge its master, the cannibalistic prisoners were so terrified of the apparition that they murdered their jailers and escaped. According to the legend, however, the Black Dog hunted down each one of the men who had dined on Scholler. Then, its mission of revenge completed, it returned to Newgate to haunt the prison walls.
In August 1977, before serial killer David Berkowitz was sentenced to 365 years in prison, he stated that he had been ordered to kill his victims by demons speaking through his neighbor’s black Labrador.
Sources:
Gaskell, G. A. Dictionary of All Scriptures and Myths. Avenel, NJ: Gramercy Books, 1981.
Steiger, Brad. Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2011.
Wright, Bruce Lanier. “Hell Hounds and Ghost Dogs.” Strange Magazine 19, Spring 1998.
Boguet, Henri (1550–1619)
In 1598, Perrenette Gandillon, a werewolf, was seen attacking two small girls who were picking strawberries near a village located in the Jura Mountains. When the girls’ 16-year-old brother came to defend them with a knife, the werewolf grabbed the knife away from him and slashed his throat. Enraged villagers, hearing the cries and sounds of struggle, cornered the werewolf and clubbed it to death. Amazed, they beheld the grotesque beast in its death throes turn into the nude body of a young woman they recognized as Perrenette Gandillon.
In his Discours des Sorciers (1610), Henri Boguet, the eminent judge of Saint-Claude in the Jura Mountains, writes that an official investigation of the matter led to the arrest of the entire Gandillon family, and he states that he personally examined and observed them while they were in prison. According to his testimony, the Gandillons walked on all fours and howled like beasts. Their eyes turned red and gleaming; their hair sprouted; their teeth became long and sharp; their fingernails turned horny and clawlike.
Antoinette Gandillon freely admitted to being a werewolf and said that she had had intercourse with Satan when he assumed the form of a goat.
Her brother, Pierre, was accused of luring children to a Satanic Sabbat, where he turned himself into a wolf and killed and ate them. Pierre’s son, Georges, confessed that he had become a wolf by smearing himself with a special salve. When the Gandillon family hunted, they said that they ran on all fours to bring down their victims. Antoinette, Pierre, and Georges were convicted as werewolves by Judge Boguet, and they were burned at the stake in 1598.
As a judge, Boguet was known for his cruelty, especially toward children. He had no doubt that Satan gifted Witches with the ability to change shape into a variety of animal forms, especially the wolf, so that they might devour humans, and the cat, so they might better prowl by night. In another of the cases recounted in Discours des Sorciers, he tells of eight-year-old Louise Maillat, who in the summer of 1598 was possessed by five demons: wolf, cat, dog, jolly, and griffon. In addition, the little girl was accused of shape-shifting into the form of a wolf.
Sources:
Masters, R. E. L. Eros and Evil. New York: The Julian Press, 1962.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. The European Witch-Craze. New York: Harper Row, 1967.
Bridges
All across the world, one can find tales of strange creatures that lurk on, around, and below ancient bridges. More than a few of those tales revolve around the world of the shape-shifter. They appear to have a particular liking for bridges — something worth keeping in mind should you find yourself crossing an old bridge late one night when the moon is full.
Her name might be inclined to provoke laughter and amusement in some quarters, but there is nothing to joke about when it comes to the matter of the Donkey Woman of San Antonio, Texas. She is a terrifying shape-shifter who haunts a particular old bridge in a suburb of San Antonio known as Elm Creek. Her strange story is one that began in the latter part of the nineteenth century. As the old tale goes, the woman in question resided with her family in a run-down wooden shack on the edge of the creek in question. They earned their living from raising chickens, pigs, and goats and selling them to the local folk. Life was hard, but the woman, her husband, and her two children — a boy and a girl — got by and, by all accounts, had a happy life. That is, until one day when a certain man arrived on the scene, and tragedy and death soon followed in his ominous wake.
Bridges around the world have earned a reputation for being places where things mysterious and magical can happen.
Although the family did not know the man, they were fully aware of his reputation — that of a cruel, spoilt local tyrant. In his early twenties, the man didn’t need to work: his father was a powerful figure in a nearby community who had a large house, acres upon acres of land, and a great deal of money, much of which went to the son. He was a disturbing character who got his kicks from hurting and even killing animals. When the man happened to be riding near the family home one particular morning, he caught sight of their pet mule doing nothing but happily munching on the grass of the small field that the family owned.
The man brought his horse to a standstill, jumped off it, and began punching the mule’s face and body. When the mule cried out, both husband and wife ran to the field to see what on earth was going down; their first thought was that the mule was being attacked by the likes of a mountain lion or something similar. When, however, they saw the young man assaulting their mule, they quickly retaliated with a barrage of rocks, several of which caught the man on the arms and back. He immediately turned his attention away from the mule and vowed that they would pay for their actions — ironically, actions that his crazed character had provoked in the first place. And pay they did, unfortunately.
In the early hours of the following morning, as the landscape was blanketed by darkness, a group of men hired by that aforementioned spoilt tyrant stealthily descended on the family home. They torched it as the family slept. Such was the speed with which the old wooden building burned that the two children were unfortunately burnt to death. As for their father, he received a bullet to the brain, which killed him instantly. The woman, meanwhile, was fried to a crisp and just about managed to stagger her way to Elm Creek, into which she plunged, never to be seen again. At least, not in human form.
In the immediate years that followed, reports regularly surfaced of sightings of a frightening-looking woman with the head of what appeared to be a donkey. She would prowl around the area where her dead family had lived and her destroyed home once stood. That the skin of the strange woman was described as blackened, burnt, and smoldering is a solid indication that this was the spectral form of the murdered woman. There was, however, another aspect to this saga that revolves around the matter of shape-shifting.
A local rumor — which persists to this very day in the Elm Creek area of San Antonio — suggests that the donkey woman returned from the grave as not simply a woman with a donkey’s head but as a combination of human and mule. As the story goes, the spirit form of the woman, angered by what was done to her family and their pet mule, returned to our plane of existence in the form of what might most accurately be termed a mule-woman. She has most often been seen at what is called Elm Creek Bridge. Could it be the case that after death, we can come back and shape-shift into the form of something that is half-animal and half-human? That is precisely the theory that circulates among those who live in the Elm Creek area and who take the legend of the animal-woman very seriously. Even in the twenty-first century, shape-shifting in South Texas is perceived as being all too real. Perhaps the people of the area know something the rest of us do not.
Cambrensis, Giraldus (c. 1146–1220)
Until the end of the eighteenth century, Ireland was known in England as “the Wolfland,” a country that abounded with accounts of werewolves. As early as the twelfth century, Giraldus Cambrensis (in his account Topographia Hibernica) tells of a priest who was met by a wolf in Meath who beseeched the cleric to accompany him to be with his dying wife.
The wolf explained that they had been natives of Ossory, whose people had been cursed for their wickedness by St. Natalis to change their shapes into that of wolves for a period of seven years. The priest was at last persuaded to give the she-wolf the sacrament when she was able to turn her skin down a little and reveal that she was an old woman.
Sources:
Eisler, Robert. Man into Wolf. London: Spring Books, 1948.
Cannibalism
There are a number of serious scholars who believe that we are all descended from carnivorous lycanthropes. Although humankind may have begun as peaceful tribes of fruit-collecting, seed-planting, root-digging agriculturalists, climatic changes at the end of the last pluvial period forced our ancestors to become meat-eaters — and sometimes meat could only be found in the flesh of other humans. While child-bearing women and children huddled in their caves or huts, human wolf packs attired in wolf skins hunted down whatever meat entered their territory — animals or slain members of other tribes. Thus it is thought by some that all humans bear the genes of the werewolf, the man-beast who will eat even his fellows to become the fittest to survive.
At the same time, some scholars argue, there exists an atavistic sense of guilt within the collective human psyche that our species so freely partakes of the flesh of other beings to increase the bulk of our own flesh. Thus, while the eating of all flesh is at best a necessary evil, to taste human flesh would be the most abhorrent of taboos.
Ingrained in our history and even our DNA, cannibalism appears often in our myths, legends, and literature. In one tale, the Arcadian king Lycaon served his own son’s flesh to Zeus, who in turn transformed the man into a wolf — the origin story of the term lycanthropy.
Of course, the strict vegetarian may consider the consumption of any creature’s flesh to be as bad as cannibalism, but for some unbalanced minds, breaking the ancient taboo of dining on the meat of one’s own kind may represent the greatest single act of rebellion against the rules of established decency, proper social behavior, and ecclesiastical doctrines. And, in a sense that is extremely sickening to the sensitive mind and the weak of stomach, there may also be a great empowerment in eating the flesh of one’s enemies. How better to gain the strength of a mighty foe than to eat his flesh and absorb his prowess? And how better for a werewolf to achieve the strength of a dozen men than to eat a dozen men? Furthermore, as frightening as it may seem to the sensibilities of twenty-first-century idealists, we still have any number of cannibals among us.
For some unbalanced minds, breaking the ancient taboo of dining on the meat of one’s own kind may represent the greatest single act of rebellion against the rules of established decency.
In July 1970, tall, bearded Stanley Dean Baker contacted Detective Dempsey Biley of Monterey County, California, and the resident FBI agent at the substation and convinced the astonished officers that he had a rather unique problem. “I am a cannibal,” Baker confessed.
Baker explained that he had killed and dismembered a young social worker, James Schlosser, who had made the fatal mistake of giving him a ride outside of Yellowstone Park. He admitted murdering Schlosser while he slept, then cutting out his heart and eating it.
Investigating officers discovered a blood-stained survival knife near a riverbank and noticed a patch of ground saturated with blood. To their disgust, the officers found what appeared to be human bone fragments, pieces of flesh, teeth, and what appeared to be the remains of a human ear. Informants came forward to relate ghastly accounts of Baker’s demonic activities around his home base of Sheridan, Wyoming. A teenage boy told of devil worshipping rites that had occurred in the Big Horn Mountains. He testified that small wild animals had been eaten alive and human blood had been drunk.
In 1993, Omaima Nelson testified before a court in Orange County, California, that after she and her husband Bill quarreled, she struck him in the head 24 times with an iron, then stabbed him with a knife. Next, the 24-year-old woman hacked his body into pieces with a meat cleaver, cut all the flesh from his bones, and ground the leftovers in the garbage disposal. Twelve hours later, she fried her husband’s hands and feet, baked his head in the oven, and stored it in the refrigerator.
When these tasks were completed, she told court-appointed psychiatrist David Sheffner, she barbecued her husband’s ribs. She sat at the table and commented that the ribs were sweet and delicious — nice and tender.
In January 1998, South African police in Johannesburg found the mutilated remains of three children with their heads and feet hacked off and feared that 12 other missing children had met a similar fate. Certain tribal shamans in South Africa reportedly seek human flesh to add special potency to their mystical potions. The flesh of children is thought to be the most powerful.
Sources:
Eisler, Robert. Man into Wolf. London: Spring Books, 1948.
Steiger, Brad. Bizarre Crime. New York: Signet, 1992.
Cannibalism in the U.K.
Jon Downes, director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, notes of the wild men seen in the counties of Devon and Cornwall: “From the Cannibals of Clovelly to the Brew Crew of Treworgey, the whole area has attracted people who wish to live outside of our recognized society; and these people have often degenerated into a wild and lawless existence, sometimes even reverting to a surprisingly primitive lifestyle.” They are not of the hairy and subhuman variety, such as true werewolves, but they are, by definition, men living wild, sometimes very wild, and in quite recent times. Thus, in their own odd and unique ways they have become staple parts of the legend of the British wild or wolf man. Here we will focus on the alleged cannibals among them.
Preserved in an eight-page chapbook in the Pearse-Chope collection at the Bideford Library in Devon is a sensational and controversial story of one John Gregg and his assorted family of murderers and thieves. The text is estimated to date from the latter part of the eighteenth century and recounts the story of how the Gregg family took up residence in a cave near Clovelly on the north coast of Devon in the 1700s, and where they were to live for an astonishing 25 years.
So the legend goes, during this period they passed their time by robbing more than a thousand unfortunates and merrily devoured the corpses of all those they robbed. Such was the horror the story generated that even the king himself — along with 400 men — allegedly resolved to bring to an end their prehistoric-like and abominable existence. The cave was supposedly discovered and reportedly contained, according to the chapbook, “such a multitude of arms, legs, thighs, hands and feet, of men, women and children hung up in rows, like dry’d beef and a great many lying in pickle.” Gregg’s distinctly less-than-charming family was found to consist of a wife, eight sons, six daughters, 18 grandsons, and 14 granddaughters all begotten by incest, many said to have been as mad as hatters, and all of whom were taken to Exeter and on the following day executed at Plymouth without trial.
