Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there, so it's stuff
Speaker 1: you should have. Okay, I'm not gonna sing that song
Speaker 1: what Werewolves in London? Oh that's not what I was doing.
Speaker 1: What was up? Woman? No, it's an American werewolf in
Speaker 1: London Werewolves of Londman by Warren z Evon. I never
Speaker 1: get it into him me, neither or that song. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought when I was young, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's for old people. And now I'm an old person,
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, not for me. For you, You're like,
Speaker 1: give me the band. Oh yeah, any day. So you
Speaker 1: want to talk werewolves, You've got a good intro. You
Speaker 1: got some spicy No. Um, I was bored, just gonna
Speaker 1: talk about some of my face evorite werewolf movies. Well
Speaker 1: we just talked about my favorite American werewolf in London.
Speaker 1: It's pretty tough to top that one. It's great and
Speaker 1: I watched the transformation scene again today and it still
Speaker 1: holds up pretty well. In the day of c g U.
Speaker 1: I think this looks pretty good. It was direct that's
Speaker 1: John Landis joint, right, Yeah, and the legendary Rick Baker
Speaker 1: did all the effects, you know. And that's the same team,
Speaker 1: by the way, who worked on Michael Jackson's thriller video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his transformation was pretty good too. It was good, and
Speaker 1: I think Rick Baker won. Rick Baker won the inaugural
Speaker 1: Makeup Award Oscar Award that year, the very first one,
Speaker 1: and some say they might have even created that award
Speaker 1: because of that movie. It's like the Grammy for the disco. Alright,
Speaker 1: remember the one year, the one and only year they
Speaker 1: had it. Yeah, yeah, they only had one year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. That's pretty funny. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: did you have you ever seen that Mystery Science Feeders
Speaker 1: three thousand Werewolf starring um Joe Estaves, who's Martin Sheen's brother.
Speaker 1: Really good stuff. That one's definitely worth seeing. It's it's
Speaker 1: really there's people. I don't think anything's in Arizona, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the movie have weird, like
Speaker 1: Eastern European accents for no good reason. It's almost like
Speaker 1: if Tommy Wasao had directed a werewolf movie. It's a
Speaker 1: lot like that. Um, And then there's another MST three
Speaker 1: K that was good. It was I was a teenage
Speaker 1: werewolf Michael Landon. So these aren't your favorite worwolf movies?
Speaker 1: So your favorite, right? Yeah? Because if I saw him
Speaker 1: without the mister side of theater applied, it would stink.
Speaker 1: Who can forget teen Wolf? That was a good one too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a TV show, didn't it? Or was for a while.
Speaker 1: There's a cartoon and then now I think it's like
Speaker 1: a drama on MTV. Oh, it's not like the silly
Speaker 1: hidjinks of a Michael J. Fox type. No. I think
Speaker 1: it's like supposed to be kind of like true Blood,
Speaker 1: but it's like teenagers. Yeah. Have you seen that Michael J.
Speaker 1: Fox show? Now? Is it anygain? No? No, No, I
Speaker 1: watched some of it just out of curiosity. I'm not
Speaker 1: that much into the network sitcoms, but I love Michael J. Fox,
Speaker 1: and I thought, let me check it out. It just no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that good. That's cool? Yeah, I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: you gotta take a shot at doing some TV. Can
Speaker 1: all be family Ties or Team Wolf things? Is right?
Speaker 1: Team off? The cartoon that's right. Uh, but yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a good movie too. Are there any other werewolf movies?
Speaker 1: What about The wolf Man? Uh? Sure? Or or uh
Speaker 1: like the Howling. Wouldn't that a werewolf movie? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Howling Silver Bullet. Yeah, that was a good one
Speaker 1: with the poor Corey uh one of the Corey Corey
Speaker 1: Haymond uh and Gary Busey. I think, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that was a doomed cast. Wow jeez. Anyway, so those
Speaker 1: are some of our favorite warrewolf movies. Everybody, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the Wolfman not the Jack Nicholson version, the
Speaker 1: classic old version, right. Uh? He did wolf? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was called wolf. Yeah, that wasn't very good. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: Benicio del Toro in one called the Wolfman. I think so,
Speaker 1: but I have not seen that one, So I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's based on this this movie. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's a take on the classic wolf Man Cheney. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think it is Laon Cheney. That's right. And he
Speaker 1: was the Wolfman Long Janey Jr. Okay, so um in
Speaker 1: this movie you said it was ninety one. I think right?
Speaker 1: Uh Ln Cheney. Um. Basically they set the rules for werewolves.
Speaker 1: It was to were wolves. What bram Stoker's Dracula was
Speaker 1: two vampires or nine of the Living Dead was too zombies. Like,
Speaker 1: it's set the rules and um. One of the big
Speaker 1: rules that it's set was that the if you were
Speaker 1: a werewolf, you were up the creek for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life until somebody put a silver bullet in you.
Speaker 1: You were doomed to Uh. Well, I think in the
Speaker 1: sequel is when the full moon part right man, before
Speaker 1: it was seasonal like the fall, you would turn into
Speaker 1: a wolf, which isn't so bad because I mean, like
Speaker 1: you turn into a werewolf twelve times a year. The
Speaker 1: other way this is just like once a year. It's like,
Speaker 1: who can't handle that? That's true? The only cure is death. Um.
Speaker 1: And then of course this is just the wolfman there
Speaker 1: were there were It was based on folklore, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into now that had all kinds of different rules. Right.
Speaker 1: But the many many years before people have been writing
Speaker 1: about werewolves. But this is the movie Werewolf yet, right.
Speaker 1: But I mean when you think of where wolves, you
Speaker 1: think of being killed by a silver bullet, transforming in
Speaker 1: a full moon, um, being warded off by wolf's bane,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know about until I read this article.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of like two werewolves. What garlic is
Speaker 1: the vampires? Um, and Uh, the fact that it's incurable
Speaker 1: that once you're a werewolf bitten by a werewolf, you
Speaker 1: become a werewolf, and you're going to be a werewolf
Speaker 1: until you die. All of those are since the nineteen forties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and not every movie since then has follows that path,
Speaker 1: but that's definitely the most iconic, like werewolf a template. Right,
Speaker 1: this is a good word. But but you're right, for
Speaker 1: werewolves have been present in folklore for many, many millennia. UM.
Speaker 1: It turns out the first mention of werewolves it comes
Speaker 1: from the epic of Gilgamesh, which that to me is
Speaker 1: a clue to what werewolves are really supposed to be.
Speaker 1: But in Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar who doomed Um, Warren
Speaker 1: Beatty and Dustin Hoffman originally, Um is trying to get
Speaker 1: with Gilgamesh, and Gilgamesh is like, hey, lady, I've heard
Speaker 1: about your past with other guys. You turned one of
Speaker 1: them into a wolf, and just to make matters worse,
Speaker 1: in an ironic twist, the guy was a shepherd, so
Speaker 1: he's attacking his own flock. He's at odds with his
Speaker 1: own dogs. That was a mean thing to do. That's cruel. Well,
Speaker 1: you and I have no no future, that's right, And
Speaker 1: she said, fine, outright wolf. So uh that was Gilgama
Speaker 1: and that's from eighteen eighteenth century BC. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: you're gonna say like eighteen forty something. Another story Ovid's
Speaker 1: the Metamorphosis UM. A traveler visits King Lion of Acadia
Speaker 1: and he says, you know what, I think you may
Speaker 1: be immortal. So I'm gonna have a little test and
Speaker 1: if you do human meat, which I guess is a
Speaker 1: a good test back then to see if someone's immortal um.
Speaker 1: And the guest turned out to be Jupiter, the god Jupiter,
Speaker 1: and she said, wait, this is human meat. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm piste off. Now, I'm gonna transform you into a wolf,
Speaker 1: like canos exactly. And that's where the word comes from,
Speaker 1: like oos, the Greek word meaning wolf. And then like
Speaker 1: anthropy is as well, it's either turning into a wolf
Speaker 1: or in our modern times, thinking you're a wolf. It's
Speaker 1: like cancerpy is actually a medical a diagnosis of mental illness,
Speaker 1: like it's a real delusion a self identity disorder. Wow,
Speaker 1: where you think you're a wolf or you think you're
Speaker 1: a warewolf or a beast. That's pretty crazy. So, um,
Speaker 1: this was not unique to like shape shifting wasn't unique
Speaker 1: to a time period or a place, like depending on
Speaker 1: where you were from, if you were from a place
Speaker 1: at wolves, it might be wolves. But no, Tracy is
Speaker 1: making the point. This is Tracy Wilson jam by the way.
Speaker 1: Um she makes the point that like it's so ingrained
Speaker 1: into folklore that if you are if a culture is
Speaker 1: from an area that had wolves, like there's werewolf folklore,
Speaker 1: that's right, it's almost a given. But in Africa you
Speaker 1: might turn into a hyena or in Japan you might
Speaker 1: turn into a fox, which is nice. Like shape shifting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shape shifting inspires spear for three main reasons. I thought this.
Speaker 1: I thought it was kind of funny. This is one
Speaker 1: of the funniest bullet lists and the whole site. Reason
Speaker 1: Number one shape shifting inspire Spear is you become a
Speaker 1: powerful carnivores, So that's scary. That wouldn't still fear. Number two,
Speaker 1: you are actually transforming into something that you fear already, right,
Speaker 1: So that's even scarier. Yeah, and you have no way
Speaker 1: of escaping yourself. So everybody is scared at this point,
Speaker 1: including the werewolf and number three, Um, you are going
Speaker 1: to have to perpetually deal with this over and over
Speaker 1: and over until somebody puts a silver bullet in you.
Speaker 1: So those are the three reasons that shape shifting inspires fear.
Speaker 1: So that was so weird, Like everybody like this. This
Speaker 1: is that's reason enough to go onto the site and
Speaker 1: look at this article. Yeah, just check out this bullet list. Agreed,
Speaker 1: it's not even bulleted, it's numbered. Yeah, some quality work.
Speaker 1: So uh. A lot of times in these in this
Speaker 1: folklore and literature, um like anthropy is more of a
Speaker 1: punishment dolled out oftentimes for being some sort of sexual
Speaker 1: deviant and almost always a dude. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: big point. Like vampire ism, it goes both ways. It
Speaker 1: can be men women. They're usually clean and they're very sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Typically vampires are um, at least from bram Stoker onward,
Speaker 1: but with where well, it's it's very much supposed to
Speaker 1: be a like the the epitome of masculinity gone feral. Yeah, brutish, yeah, violent, hairy, Yeah, muscular,
Speaker 1: um strong, sound like they want to add right exactly
Speaker 1: seeking same right right for some crazy stuff cosplay there
Speaker 1: you go dress up like vampires. H. So when it's
Speaker 1: a punishment, um, it varies. Sometimes it's a permanent thing,
Speaker 1: you're transformed to a wolf forever. Um. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: number of years, usually seven or nine that comes into
Speaker 1: play over and over again. Yeah, And um race is
Speaker 1: making a good point here, like this is their distinctions
Speaker 1: among like our modern understanding of werewolves and the folklore
Speaker 1: which was you know, like it wasn't always a punishment.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was a positive thing. As we'll see, it
Speaker 1: wasn't always permanent. Sometimes it just lasted for a very
Speaker 1: brief time. But there are folklore, Um, there is folklore
Speaker 1: what's plural of folklore? There are folklore's I don't know,
Speaker 1: folklore stumbled upon a huge gaping hole in the language, um.
Speaker 1: But the in in German folklore in particular, there's um
Speaker 1: stories of the stories of folk stories of people turning
Speaker 1: into where wolves on purpose, under their own volition, voluntarily, um,
Speaker 1: in order to basically become wolf, like to go hunt better, um,
Speaker 1: because they're balding. Who knows there's all sorts of reasons
Speaker 1: to become a wolf, and it's temporary too, So it's
Speaker 1: voluntary and temporary. Yeah, and a lot of times if
Speaker 1: that's the case, there's like a like a belt made
Speaker 1: from wolf skin or something that that will put on
Speaker 1: that will transform them something like that. Um. In Northern Europe,
Speaker 1: like Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands, this is pretty
Speaker 1: common and wolf stories are like big in Northern Europe. Huge. Uh.
Speaker 1: Well remember our our Vikings episode, Yeah, the berserkers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they would put on bear skins, eat mushrooms and
Speaker 1: then just go crazy battle. Yeah, they were berserk, they
Speaker 1: went berserk. Um. There's an Icelandic tradition also a type
Speaker 1: of a warrior who would put on wolf skins and
Speaker 1: think he was transformed into a wolf and would fright
Speaker 1: viciously like that too. Again probably on mushrooms, right wolf
Speaker 1: versus bear. Yeah, mushrooms. Yeah, that sounds crazy. Mushrooms when
Speaker 1: no mushrooms like the ref okay, like fight, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the equalizer. Um. And some of these tales, clothing has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it, Like some of them,
Speaker 1: you have to remove your clothes um in order to
Speaker 1: become a werewolf. Yeah, are you're seeing like the dichotomy here,
Speaker 1: like and some you have to put on a wolf
Speaker 1: pelt to become a werewolf, and some you have to
Speaker 1: take your human clothes off. And do you remember I
Speaker 1: was saying, like I feel like the epic of Gilgamesh
Speaker 1: is aclude what werewolves represent. So you know the epic
Speaker 1: of gils we've talked before is like it's the it
Speaker 1: was written at a time when civilization is emerging, and
Speaker 1: like the whole thing of Gilgamesh is basically like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: get on board with society and we'll live in cities
Speaker 1: and be civilized. And if not, then you're a wild man.
Speaker 1: I think that's the same thing with the with werewolf
Speaker 1: flor Like if you were um, if you acted outside
Speaker 1: of society's prescribed norms, you would go so far that
Speaker 1: you would become an actual beast and you would be
Speaker 1: cursed in this way. And it was basically like a
Speaker 1: cautionary tale, or it was also a way to kind of,
Speaker 1: um take a dig at a miscreant, somebody who wasn't
Speaker 1: living up to society, Like you're nothing but a werewolf,
Speaker 1: You're a beast? Get it? Together. Man, it became kind
Speaker 1: of a catchphrase in certain societies. Sure, not a catchphrase,
Speaker 1: but like you said something, you would call it that person.
Speaker 1: But I think that's what the metaphor of the werewolf
Speaker 1: is supposed to be, although Tracy goes to great links
Speaker 1: to point out just how sexually based it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it also ties into puberty and menstruation. I never
Speaker 1: really considered that. So we're talking about the clothing having
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it. Sometimes, of course, you
Speaker 1: would turn into the werewolf and you would wake up
Speaker 1: naked and have to put your clothes back on. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you well, you have to take your clothes off to
Speaker 1: become the werewolf. Yeah, that's another that's another indication that
Speaker 1: you're leaving society. You're taking off your clothes and becoming wild. Dude,
Speaker 1: do you see am I making my point? Okay? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm all over the place. No, you're
Speaker 1: making your point. Um. In one tail, a man removed
Speaker 1: his clothes pete and a circle around them and calls
Speaker 1: the clothes to turn into stone, meaning no one could
Speaker 1: take the clothes anywhere, and when he got back and
Speaker 1: turned back into a person, he would have his clothes
Speaker 1: there but it didn't say, and I didn't find the
Speaker 1: tail how he turned the stone clothes back into cloth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it happened after the transformation or something, or maybe
Speaker 1: he had to poop on him. No, to transform back
Speaker 1: into a human, he had to put his clothes back on,
Speaker 1: so he had to figure out as a wolf how
Speaker 1: to put on stone clothes. Yeah. I think some of
Speaker 1: all these stories are so old they don't get into
Speaker 1: like this pacifics like that. That's just stupid, Like they
Speaker 1: didn't think a podcast four hundred years later was gonna
Speaker 1: nitpick stupid peasant. Um. In one that tale called biz Cleverett,
Speaker 1: an adulter's wife steals the werewolve's clothes, which keeps them
Speaker 1: in wolf Modever, he gets her back, he bites her
Speaker 1: nose off like a good wolf. Um. And in doing so,
Speaker 1: I don't think in Briton Um they necessarily said that,
Speaker 1: like canterpy was transmitted, which is another good point about
Speaker 1: whether the metaphor of it could be disease like transmitted disease. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: But the she would have, under certain traditions, become a
Speaker 1: werewolf her self for being bitten by a werewolf. That's right,
Speaker 1: But you mentioned that in some lore and stories and movies,
Speaker 1: it is totally voluntary. As werewolves are a race like
Speaker 1: a dwarf or a troll like Twilight, they're like wolf people.
Speaker 1: Then they can transform at will from h hunky, long necked,
Speaker 1: long torso dudes into long neck long torso. Yeah that
Speaker 1: guy who the guy in Twilight the wolf. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't think of his name, but the dude's neck and
Speaker 1: torso are like eight ft long. Really, he's kind of
Speaker 1: funny looking, but he can. They can transform Willy Nilly
Speaker 1: into wolf, bad CG looking wolf right back out, and
Speaker 1: like an instant. There's no like transformation, just like rent,
Speaker 1: I'm a wolf. Oh gotcha? Yeah, you've never seen that stuff?
Speaker 1: At you? You shouldn't. Well, the transformation is very important.
Speaker 1: Well not in Twilight. Well it's True Blood. It's the
Speaker 1: same thing. In True Blood, they just like boom their werewolves, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: Well that actually follows the tradition. It's um fairly recent,
Speaker 1: like basically Rick Baker era where the transformation became really
Speaker 1: important and like just kind of like a hey, everybody
Speaker 1: check this out. Yeah, I think let's get into that
Speaker 1: after a message break. Okay, mm hmm Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about transformation. It's like one of the biggest deals
Speaker 1: in movies now unless it's Twilight, like I said, and
Speaker 1: you're just it's really strange. I would have thought that
Speaker 1: they I can see what you're saying. Yeah, and Twilight,
Speaker 1: like they'll it's so fast that they can he'll be
Speaker 1: like running through the woods and and jump up in
Speaker 1: the air and come down as a wolf to keep running.
Speaker 1: It really takes all the and they look so crappy
Speaker 1: and the cg so bad. Yeah, it's just terrible and
Speaker 1: they're huge. It's just it's really very poor Werewolf NG
Speaker 1: So I could but I can see skipping past that.
Speaker 1: If you are describing a race of people, Yeah, more
Speaker 1: than one person, get it, and like they need to
Speaker 1: come in and out a lot. With a movie like
Speaker 1: an American Werewolf in London, it just follows the story
Speaker 1: of one hapless like Ententrope. Yeah, where the transformation is
Speaker 1: the biggest part of the story, very important, and they
Speaker 1: show every bit of it. But if you go back
Speaker 1: and read the literature, the werewolf literature, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: find too many descriptions of the transformation. It's mostly like
Speaker 1: a recent film thing. Yeah, and in most of those movies,
Speaker 1: like if if you are fighting a werewolf and you
Speaker 1: cut off his arm, it'll instantly be like a human arm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. It's very cool. Yeah. And the same
Speaker 1: thing goes for when you kill a werewolf. In some traditions,
Speaker 1: if you kill the werewolf while it's a wolf, he's
Speaker 1: going to stay a wolf forever. I don't like that. No,
Speaker 1: he's got to turn back into the human. And I
Speaker 1: think it was in it was part of the lower
Speaker 1: in American Werewolf in London, Like doesn't he get hurt?
Speaker 1: And like that's how somebody knows he's the werewolf because
Speaker 1: he sustained an injury as a wolf and now he's
Speaker 1: wearing that injury as a person again. Wit, how do
Speaker 1: you become a wolf? Is that what we're talking about?
Speaker 1: You know? How they knew he was a werewolf? Like,
Speaker 1: didn't somebody doesn't like the girl he's involved with, No,
Speaker 1: that he's a werewolf because he's he comes back injured,
Speaker 1: Like doesn't he get his eyes stabbed out or something? No?
Speaker 1: I think he? I mean he and Griffin Donne go
Speaker 1: off into the moors after being in a pub and
Speaker 1: get attacked by a werewolf. Griffin Dunn dies. He goes
Speaker 1: to the hospital and I think the nurses becomes his girlfriend. Okay,
Speaker 1: so later on somebody stabs the werewolf in the eye,
Speaker 1: and when he becomes a man again, he's his eyes missing.
Speaker 1: I think either that I'm just completely making this up,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I can see it. Well, if
Speaker 1: it's not that movie, it's another similar one. But the
Speaker 1: point is, if you sustain an injury as a werewolf
Speaker 1: in most traditions, especially modern werewolflor, you will have that
Speaker 1: same injury as a person actually transformed back. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you mean. I couldn't remember too until I
Speaker 1: rewatch it today how he was, Like, how did he
Speaker 1: get out of his clothes? Because I don't remember busting
Speaker 1: out of the clothes. He looks up at the window
Speaker 1: and sees the full moon and just gets up and
Speaker 1: starts screaming and rips his shirt off and takes his
Speaker 1: pants off. Does think, yeah, and remember that naked, and
Speaker 1: that's where he starts the transformation once he's like naked
Speaker 1: in his apartment. That was a really good movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it. Funny and apparently the studio executives had
Speaker 1: a big problem with it, you know, because they were
Speaker 1: like it was genre bending. They're like, wait, this is funny,
Speaker 1: but it's horror. Like, we don't get it. It's not
Speaker 1: funny enough and it's not scary enough, and ended up
Speaker 1: being a big hit. I didn't see the other one though,
Speaker 1: the American World in Paris. I didn't either. Liked Nathan
Speaker 1: Hawk and Julie Delpy and that's before Sunrise, but um,
Speaker 1: Julie Delpy was in it. I think, Okay, that's why
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that. Yeah, but no Ethan Hawk. Um, so chuck.
Speaker 1: There's been uh, you know, remember the witchcraft trials that
Speaker 1: were so famous over here in Salem, mass and the
Speaker 1: other colonies. Yeah, so they were actually, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there were witchcraft trials and witch hunts in Europe before
Speaker 1: then and at the same time, but there was also
Speaker 1: werewolf hunts. Yeah. I never knew. This makes total sense though.
Speaker 1: So apparently between fifteen twenty in sixteen thirty, there were
Speaker 1: thirty thousand recorded cases of werewolves, reports were reported werewolves, werewolves,
Speaker 1: people executed for being werewolves. And some of these things
Speaker 1: were not just neighbor you know, turning in neighbor, so neighbor,
Speaker 1: a can get neighbors bees land or wife for children
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, Um, there there were some cases of
Speaker 1: people who were executed because they were self confessed werewolves. Specifically,
Speaker 1: there's this guy named Gio Garnier. What's his story. He
Speaker 1: was a kind of a hermit. He and his wife
Speaker 1: lived out in the woods, like you had to kind
Speaker 1: of walk through a lot of woods to get to
Speaker 1: their place in a village um in uh, France. I
Speaker 1: can't remember where exactly, but um Geal fancied himself awarewolf.
Speaker 1: He thought he really was a werewolf, and he was
Speaker 1: attacking children, like tearing him to pieces with his hands
Speaker 1: and teeth and then eating them. And he would eat
Speaker 1: them on the spot and would apparently get pretty far
Speaker 1: just as a human. He wouldn't like dress up, no,
Speaker 1: he but he thought he was transforming. And so finally
Speaker 1: he was caught in the actor right, well, he was
Speaker 1: calling act once by some people who confirmed that he
Speaker 1: wasn't a werewolf. He was in the form of a man,
Speaker 1: but he was still acting like a werewolf. So um
Speaker 1: they figured out that he wasn't really a werewolf. But
Speaker 1: the fact was he still ate a bunch of children
Speaker 1: that he killed and torn to pieces. So he was
Speaker 1: burned alive at the steak for just being a murderous
Speaker 1: schoon exactly. But another guy, UM, who was named Jean Grenier. Uh,
Speaker 1: a few years later, he was actually hold up in
Speaker 1: a monastery for the same crime. But um, they found
Speaker 1: him insane. Yeah, these were just cannibals, right, but they
Speaker 1: thought they were werewolf And there's a bit of a
Speaker 1: attendant lower to the whole thing. A lot of these
Speaker 1: cases are thought to be the result of hallucinogens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically detera, which um has been shown to make people
Speaker 1: think that they are animals even today, or got the
Speaker 1: same thing, Yeah, that's the one, and they think that, Um,
Speaker 1: that's a fungus that can make you hallucinate, and they
Speaker 1: think that has something to do with the Salem witch trials.
Speaker 1: To basically people are just messed up on drugs. Uh
Speaker 1: what else. Hyper Trichosis is another uh strange disorder that
Speaker 1: people might have thought. Uh makes you when he's pointing
Speaker 1: out that guy. Yeah, it's pretty sad. It's um. It's
Speaker 1: everyone has seen that. They call it like the wolf
Speaker 1: man syndrome where hair grows all over your face. That
Speaker 1: does not look sad. He looks suave. He doesn't pretty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his his family actually is. He's one of nineteen people
Speaker 1: on the planet to be affected by a condition called
Speaker 1: genital generalized hyper trichosis. And they're all the same family
Speaker 1: right right in Mexico. Just this family has this condition.
Speaker 1: He does look suave though he wears it well. Rabies
Speaker 1: is another reason, Um, if you're bitten by something, you
Speaker 1: might go a little nutty in the advanced stages hallucinating
Speaker 1: things plus agitated. Yeah, and if you if you think
Speaker 1: about it, if you're just a bystandard peasant in sixteenth
Speaker 1: century France and you see somebody get bit by a wolf,
Speaker 1: and then later on that person starts acting kind of
Speaker 1: wolf like because they're rabid, and you don't know what
Speaker 1: rabies is. There's your werewolf outbreak. Uh. Wolf hybrids, um,
Speaker 1: wolves and dogs co mingling and having the sex and making.
Speaker 1: You can get those. You know, there's pets wolf dog hybrids,
Speaker 1: but the same kind of deal. They attack people in
Speaker 1: villages and they think, you know, we're under attack by werewolves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this really cool Atlas Obscure article about um the
Speaker 1: beast of give a don so g E v A
Speaker 1: you d A N. And it's about like these wolf attacks,
Speaker 1: but they're like supernatural wolves and they won't go away,
Speaker 1: and all these villagers kept being killed by wolves. And
Speaker 1: then it was the last one was actually killed by
Speaker 1: a girl, a little shepherdess um who stabbed this charging
Speaker 1: beast in in the chest and finally ended this like
Speaker 1: century of wolf attacks. But it's worth reading for sure,
Speaker 1: So let's take another little second for a message break.
Speaker 1: Al Right, So moving on, um, as recently as the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties in Africa and what's now Ghana, there was
Speaker 1: belief widespread that you could people could turn into hyenas.
Speaker 1: So this isn't like hundreds of years ago. And as
Speaker 1: recently as the eighties, uh, this practice in the Iberian Peninsula.
Speaker 1: I don't really get this that there was there was
Speaker 1: a ritual or a practice to keep people from turning
Speaker 1: into werewolves where children would act as godparents for their
Speaker 1: younger siblings. The seventh and ninth child against seven and
Speaker 1: nine coming into play, so the the werewolves would basically
Speaker 1: recruit excess children. Family had too many children, gotcha, then
Speaker 1: the werewolves would come after those kids. So the older
Speaker 1: siblings would be like, Okay, well you're my kid, I'm
Speaker 1: your god parent now. So they would do that up
Speaker 1: until the nineteen eighties. Yeah, so on paper, it shaves
Speaker 1: off the number of kids that are right. Family technically has,
Speaker 1: at least as far as werewolves are concerned. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they were doing this until the eighties. I don't think
Speaker 1: we mentioned not all where wolves are bad in literature
Speaker 1: and books and films. Um, a lot of them have
Speaker 1: compassion from the audience because you know, they're kind of
Speaker 1: saddled with this, with this thing now that they have
Speaker 1: to deal with. It's a struggle between higher and lower self.
Speaker 1: You're primitive and your cidified self. But we have to
Speaker 1: mention in the Harry Potter series, Remus Lupin has been
Speaker 1: evalent and uh, of course Buffy the vampire slayer oz
Speaker 1: he learned to control his uh werewolf ng so he
Speaker 1: could be a good guy. And when Willow back, did
Speaker 1: you watch that, Buffy? No, not really, it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it was the greatest thing other
Speaker 1: one like some people do. But some people are crazy
Speaker 1: for that. Oh yeah it was huge, but yeah to
Speaker 1: eat his song agreed, Uh, let's see you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else and werewolves. That was a good one.
Speaker 1: Next full Moon watch out. Uh yeah, seriously, I haven't
Speaker 1: even thought that. And I can't remember the last time
Speaker 1: I looked at a full moon and thought werewolves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time. Well, they haven't had any
Speaker 1: really good movie Like the Venici Adultur movie wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: That Nicholson movie wasn't good. It's been a while since
Speaker 1: they made a really good werewolf movie early. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about werewolves again, seeing
Speaker 1: this really interesting bullet list, um, you can type werewolf
Speaker 1: into the search far at how stuffworks dot com and
Speaker 1: it will bring up this article. Uh. And since I
Speaker 1: said search far, it means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I am gonna call this guy dog feedback from Kate. Hey, dudes,
Speaker 1: I'll listen to you for ages. But never really had
Speaker 1: anything worth writing about until the Guide Dogs episode. Way
Speaker 1: back in the day around two thousand, my fifth grade teacher,
Speaker 1: Mrs McKernan managed to commence our public school system to
Speaker 1: train a guy dog in her classroom. Her name was
Speaker 1: Krrick that is k E r i C. And she
Speaker 1: was this adorable little black lab. Mrs McKernan would bring
Speaker 1: her to class every day and took her home every night,
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, Kirick was not only trained on
Speaker 1: basic commands by the teacher, but by all of the
Speaker 1: students as well. Uh yeah, that's pretty neat. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of input for that dog. I know. Well, Karrock
Speaker 1: didn't make it. Um Kirik went with our classroom everywhere,
Speaker 1: including if you field trips, and she got her own
Speaker 1: school photo for the yearbook that year. That's pretty cute,
Speaker 1: I would put on the cover. Needless to say, we
Speaker 1: all bawled when she was sent off to finish her training. Sadly,
Speaker 1: she was one of the dogs that did not pass
Speaker 1: final training. Maybe that's what to do with the thirty kids.
Speaker 1: So this is how you sit down? You sit down
Speaker 1: like this. No, I should mention I didn't read this part.
Speaker 1: But she did say that they got pamphlets on like
Speaker 1: everyone being consistent. Okay, I'm mrs kidding. You know how
Speaker 1: I put in with you know, listener mail share. But
Speaker 1: in Carrick's defense, she was disqualified under a really hard
Speaker 1: test for any dog. She had to sit next to
Speaker 1: a wheelchair while a bucket full of tennis balls were
Speaker 1: dropped off a balcony and Salve Rubik's cue at the
Speaker 1: same time was right and she could not grab any
Speaker 1: of them. So that's like, that's after that. Mrs McKernan
Speaker 1: took her back though, and officially adopted her and still
Speaker 1: brought her into new classes occasionally. Recently Ms McKernan that
Speaker 1: I have a really hard time and second tell where
Speaker 1: moved schools and has had Carrot qualified under habit Human
Speaker 1: Animal Bond and Tennessee is a therapy dog for her
Speaker 1: new schools students. So she said it was a great
Speaker 1: experience and um, it's worth telling your listeners that never
Speaker 1: hurts to ask your workplace and see if they can
Speaker 1: do something like we did. And I guess if you're
Speaker 1: going to train a guide dog, if you want to
Speaker 1: really get them ready for that test with all of
Speaker 1: the tennis balls. Yes, man, that's a rough one that
Speaker 1: is from Kate about the dogget Even ones that do
Speaker 1: it are just like, is there bleeding out of their ears,
Speaker 1: concentrating so hard. Kate, thank you very much for writing in.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. Back in the day of two thousand,
Speaker 1: she's uh, if you want to share a story that
Speaker 1: makes Chuck and I feel super old, You can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s y SK podcast. You can send
Speaker 1: us something on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: You can send us an email The Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, and as always, check us out at
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com home. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how Stuff Works dot com. M brought to you
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