Werewolves
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The myth of the werewolf, a human who transforms into a wolf, is one of the most enduring and pervasive tales in folklore. Tales of werewolves could be found in many countries for the last 2,000 years. In the Middle Ages, people suspected of being werewolves were hunted alongside witches and vampires. By the 20th century, the werewolf myth had evolved into a common narrative and has appeared in a multitude of media properties.

Learn more about werewolves, their origin and legend, and how the modern version was created on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What do Mattel, Banana Republic, ButcherBox, and Glossier all have in common? They power their businesses with Shopify. Shopify is the most innovative and scaled commerce platform on the planet.

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While each type of monster has a unique history, certain elements are common to all monster histories. And werewolves are no exception. They were created in ancient legends, codified in 18th and 19th century literature, and established in popular culture in 20th century movies. Before I get into the legends of werewolves, I should note the one fundamental difference between werewolves and every other type of monster I've discussed.

Werewolves are alive. Zombies, mummies, vampires, and Frankenstein, to one degree or another, are monsters that were formerly dead. The werewolf archetype doesn't involve anything coming to life. It just involves the metamorphosis of a person. The origins of the werewolf myth are ancient, stretching back to some of humanity's earliest recorded tales.

One of the earliest mentions of something that could tangentially be called a werewolf story is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written about 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. In one passage, Gilgamesh rejects the goddess Ishtar's advances, recounting how she cursed a shepherd who had once been her lover, turning him into a wolf. This transformation is explicitly punitive, betraying lycanthropy as a divine punishment inflicted upon mortals who displeased the gods.

Another early reference to werewolves comes from ancient Greece. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about the Nuri, a people believed to turn into wolves for a few days each year. In Greek mythology, there is also the story of Lycaon, the king of Arcadia. According to the myth, Lycaon, known for his impiety and cruelty, sought to test Zeus' omniscience by serving him a meal made from the flesh of his own son.

Enraged by this heinous act, Zeus punished Lycaon by transforming him into a wolf, making him as a symbol of savagery and moral degradation. This tale actually provides the origin of the word lycanthropy. It comes from lycos meaning wolf and anthropos meaning human. Lycanthropy is the ability in folklore to assume the form and characteristics of a wolf, which is in essence what a werewolf is.

The Saga of the Volsungs is a Norse epic that tells the legendary story of the Volsung clan, renowned for their strength, bravery, and tragic fate. Central to the saga are Sigmund and his son Sinfjoldi, who become outlaws and at one point don enchanted wolf skins that allow them to transform into wolves. In this form, they gain great power but are also overwhelmed by uncontrollable primal urges.

The French term loup-garou refers to a werewolf, stemming from the French words loup, which means wolf, and garou, which comes from the Frankish werewolf, which means man-wolf. In French folklore, the loup-garou is a creature that transforms from human to wolf, usually as the result of a curse or punishment for immoral behavior. Similar to werewolf legends across Europe, the loup-garou was believed to transform under the full moon and could only be killed with silver.

French legends often depicted the Loup-Garros as a tragic figure, someone cursed to suffer uncontrollable transformations and forced to terrorize villages or roam in the wilderness. These tales were particularly strong in regions like Normandy and Brittany, and played a role in the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries where individuals accused of being Loup-Garros faced persecution. The myth of the Loup-Garros traveled with the French to other French-speaking colonies all over the world.

In the Middle Ages, fear of werewolves intensified, particularly in Europe where belief in werewolves became interlinked to witchcraft and demonic possession. The werewolves of Poligny were a notorious werewolf case in 1521 where several people were accused of transforming into wolves to commit murders and other violent acts in the town of Poligny, France. These accusations took place during a period of intense witch hunts when fear of werewolves was widespread.

The cases often involved suspects who were believed to have made pacts with the devil, allowing them to transform into wolves at will. One of the most famous cases involved a man named Gilles Garnier, who confessed under torture to having killed and eaten several children while in wolf form. Garnier was later executed for his supposed crimes.

The werewolf of Bedburg refers to the case of Peter Stump, a German farmer in the late 16th century who was accused of being a werewolf responsible for a series of brutal murders around the town of Bedburg. Stump was alleged to have made a pact with the devil, giving him the power to transform into a wolf, and, under torture, he confessed to killing and eating multiple people, including children.

His trial and execution in 1589 were publicized widely across Europe, feeding into the era's fear of werewolves and the supernatural. There were dozens of similar cases throughout Europe up until the 18th century of people who were accused of being a werewolf. In one case, the Wolf of Ansbach in 1685 in Bavaria was an actual wolf that was caught killing livestock.

The locals, however, thought it was the deceased former mayor of the town who had returned from the dead and became a werewolf. The townsfolk eventually hunted down and killed the wolf, but still believed it was a werewolf even after they captured it. With so much fear in Europe over werewolves at this time, the subject of werewolves naturally made for great subjects for scary stories.

Writers began to expand upon the werewolf myth in the 19th century, and Gothic writers like Charles Nodier, Clemens Bretano, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge began incorporating lycanthropy into their supernatural tales. The short story The White Wolf of the Hearts Mountains by Frederick Marriott, published in 1839, presented a tragic werewolf character, reflecting the romantic fascination with tormented beings.

British author George W.M. Reynolds wrote Wagner the Werewolf in 1846, which was an early werewolf novel. One of the most important books of the 19th century that relied heavily on werewolf legends but wasn't actually a werewolf book per se was Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, published in 1886.

While these books mentioned and used werewolves as a plot device, none of them really had the same impact as, say, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Bram Stoker's Dracula did in their respective genres. None of the 19th century werewolf books set the rules for what a werewolf was supposed to be. That distinction belongs to the 1933 book The Werewolf of Paris, written by Guy Endor.

It reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list and broadly laid the framework for future werewolf stories. Despite being the best-selling book in the world that dealt with werewolves, at least its plot was not the basis of any movie until the 1960s. Just two years after the publication of The Werewolf of Paris, the first feature-length werewolf movie, 1935's Werewolf of London, was released.

Werewolf of London was instrumental in introducing or popularizing several tropes that would shape werewolf lore over the next century. This included transformations having something to do with the moon, establishing the werewolf as a tragic figure, and the use of a catalyst either for transformation or staving off transformation. Just as an aside, Werewolf of London was produced by Universal Studios.

And this was the same film studio that in the span of just a few years released many of the films I've mentioned in previous episodes, including The Mummy, Dracula, and Frankenstein. All of these films were instrumental in defining those monsters in popular culture. As groundbreaking as Werewolf of London was, it wasn't the quintessential werewolf movie. That came with the release of The Wolfman in 1941.

Starring Lon Chaney Jr., this film established much of what would become the werewolf canon in popular culture. It introduced the idea that the full moon transforms werewolves, not just that the moon was somehow involved, as was suggested in The Werewolf of London. It also established that werewolves were vulnerable to silver bullets. The film proved popular and spawned several sequels, including Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman in 1943.

werewolf films remained mostly dormant for several decades, until there was a revival in the genre. The 1980s saw a resurgence of werewolf films, with 1981's An American Werewolf in London, The Howling from the same year, and 1985's Teen Wolf. The decade's films are noted for pioneering impressive transformation effects, turning the werewolf into a visually horrifying spectacle.

The 21st century saw a brand new take on werewolves that had never really existed before, either in literature or in legend. Multiple TV and movie franchises painted werewolves to be the opponents of, or at least living alongside, vampires. Traditionally, these were two completely distinct genres, but over the last 20 years, they have become intertwined. The Twilight books and movies showed werewolves and vampires as being mortal enemies, as did the underworld movies.

The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, and Supernatural all had vampires and werewolves coexisting in the same world. I want to conclude this episode by touching on something that may have placed werewolves, slightly, in the world of fact. If you remember back to my episode on zombies, I mentioned that there were actually a few documented cases of a zombie-type paralysis that was induced by neurotoxins.

While it was a far cry from the zombies of fiction, it provided a kernel of truth to the zombie stories. So true is there a small kernel of truth about the legends of werewolves. It concerns a condition known as hypertrichosis. Hypertrichosis is a rare medical condition characterized by excessive hair growth. The hair growth could be light and fine, similar to the hairs that cover a newborn, or it can be thick and coarse, resembling normal body hair.

There are different types and causes of hypertrichosis, which may vary in intensity, pattern, and distribution across the body. But in its most extreme cases, hypertrichosis can cause hair to cover the face completely. And such people look like classic werewolves. Hypertrichosis has been documented in various cultures and eras throughout history, often leading to misunderstandings and discrimination.

In the past, individuals with congenital generalized hypertrichosis were sometimes displayed in freak shows and labeled as wolfmen or dog-faced people due to their appearance. So, it's entirely possible that people with hypertrichosis may have helped spur tales of werewolves. Even if that's true, it's unlikely that hypertrichosis could have been responsible for the werewolf panics of the Middle Ages, as there were just too many of them given the rarity of the disease.

From ancient Greece to modern-day Hollywood, the werewolf myth has morphed and grown over time. From stories of people transforming into wolves, to panics of the Middle Ages, to becoming the mortal enemies of vampires, werewolves have a firmly established place in modern folklore. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiefer.

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