How Werewolves Work

get it into him me, neither or that song. Um. I thought when I was young, I was like, oh, that's for old people. And now I'm an old person, I'm like, no, not for me. For you, You're like, give me the band. Oh yeah, any day. So you want to talk werewolves, You've got a good intro. You got some spicy No. Um, I was bored, just gonna talk about some of my face evorite werewolf movies. Well we just talked about my favorite American werewolf in London.

It's pretty tough to top that one. It's great and I watched the transformation scene again today and it still holds up pretty well. In the day of c g U. I think this looks pretty good. It was direct that's John Landis joint, right, Yeah, and the legendary Rick Baker did all the effects, you know. And that's the same team, by the way, who worked on Michael Jackson's thriller video. Yeah, his transformation was pretty good too. It was good, and

I think Rick Baker won. Rick Baker won the inaugural Makeup Award Oscar Award that year, the very first one, and some say they might have even created that award because of that movie. It's like the Grammy for the disco. Alright, remember the one year, the one and only year they had it. Yeah, yeah, they only had one year. Yeah,

I don't remember that. That's pretty funny. Um. There's also did you have you ever seen that Mystery Science Feeders three thousand Werewolf starring um Joe Estaves, who's Martin Sheen's brother. Really good stuff. That one's definitely worth seeing. It's it's really there's people. I don't think anything's in Arizona, but a lot of people in the movie have weird, like Eastern European accents for no good reason. It's almost like if Tommy Wasao had directed a werewolf movie. It's a

lot like that. Um, And then there's another MST three K that was good. It was I was a teenage werewolf Michael Landon. So these aren't your favorite worwolf movies? So your favorite, right? Yeah? Because if I saw him without the mister side of theater applied, it would stink. Who can forget teen Wolf? That was a good one too. Yeah, that's a TV show, didn't it? Or was for a while. There's a cartoon and then now I think it's like a drama on MTV. Oh, it's not like the silly

hidjinks of a Michael J. Fox type. No. I think it's like supposed to be kind of like true Blood, but it's like teenagers. Yeah. Have you seen that Michael J. Fox show? Now? Is it anygain? No? No, No, I watched some of it just out of curiosity. I'm not that much into the network sitcoms, but I love Michael J. Fox, and I thought, let me check it out. It just no, it wasn't that good. That's cool? Yeah, I mean, hey, you gotta take a shot at doing some TV. Can

all be family Ties or Team Wolf things? Is right? Team off? The cartoon that's right. Uh, but yeah, that was a good movie too. Are there any other werewolf movies? What about The wolf Man? Uh? Sure? Or or uh like the Howling. Wouldn't that a werewolf movie? Oh? Yeah, the Howling Silver Bullet. Yeah, that was a good one with the poor Corey uh one of the Corey Corey Haymond uh and Gary Busey. I think, oh my god, that was a doomed cast. Wow jeez. Anyway, so those

are some of our favorite warrewolf movies. Everybody, thanks for listening. But anyway, the Wolfman not the Jack Nicholson version, the classic old version, right. Uh? He did wolf? Yeah, that was called wolf. Yeah, that wasn't very good. It wasn't. Benicio del Toro in one called the Wolfman. I think so, but I have not seen that one, So I wonder if it's based on this this movie. Yeah, I think it's a take on the classic wolf Man Cheney. Yes,

I think it is Laon Cheney. That's right. And he was the Wolfman Long Janey Jr. Okay, so um in this movie you said it was ninety one. I think right? Uh Ln Cheney. Um. Basically they set the rules for werewolves. It was to were wolves. What bram Stoker's Dracula was two vampires or nine of the Living Dead was too zombies. Like,

it's set the rules and um. One of the big rules that it's set was that the if you were a werewolf, you were up the creek for the rest of your life until somebody put a silver bullet in you. You were doomed to Uh. Well, I think in the sequel is when the full moon part right man, before it was seasonal like the fall, you would turn into a wolf, which isn't so bad because I mean, like you turn into a werewolf twelve times a year. The other way this is just like once a year. It's like,

who can't handle that? That's true? The only cure is death. Um. And then of course this is just the wolfman there were there were It was based on folklore, which we'll get into now that had all kinds of different rules. Right. But the many many years before people have been writing about werewolves. But this is the movie Werewolf yet, right.

But I mean when you think of where wolves, you think of being killed by a silver bullet, transforming in a full moon, um, being warded off by wolf's bane, which I didn't know about until I read this article. But it's kind of like two werewolves. What garlic is the vampires? Um, and Uh, the fact that it's incurable that once you're a werewolf bitten by a werewolf, you become a werewolf, and you're going to be a werewolf

until you die. All of those are since the nineteen forties. Yeah, and and not every movie since then has follows that path, but that's definitely the most iconic, like werewolf a template. Right, this is a good word. But but you're right, for werewolves have been present in folklore for many, many millennia. UM. It turns out the first mention of werewolves it comes from the epic of Gilgamesh, which that to me is a clue to what werewolves are really supposed to be.

But in Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar who doomed Um, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman originally, Um is trying to get with Gilgamesh, and Gilgamesh is like, hey, lady, I've heard about your past with other guys. You turned one of them into a wolf, and just to make matters worse, in an ironic twist, the guy was a shepherd, so he's attacking his own flock. He's at odds with his own dogs. That was a mean thing to do. That's cruel. Well, you and I have no no future, that's right, And

she said, fine, outright wolf. So uh that was Gilgama and that's from eighteen eighteenth century BC. Yeah, I thought you're gonna say like eighteen forty something. Another story Ovid's the Metamorphosis UM. A traveler visits King Lion of Acadia and he says, you know what, I think you may be immortal. So I'm gonna have a little test and if you do human meat, which I guess is a a good test back then to see if someone's immortal um. And the guest turned out to be Jupiter, the god Jupiter,

and she said, wait, this is human meat. I'm gonna I'm piste off. Now, I'm gonna transform you into a wolf, like canos exactly. And that's where the word comes from, like oos, the Greek word meaning wolf. And then like anthropy is as well, it's either turning into a wolf or in our modern times, thinking you're a wolf. It's like cancerpy is actually a medical a diagnosis of mental illness, like it's a real delusion a self identity disorder. Wow, where you think you're a wolf or you think you're

a warewolf or a beast. That's pretty crazy. So, um, this was not unique to like shape shifting wasn't unique to a time period or a place, like depending on where you were from, if you were from a place at wolves, it might be wolves. But no, Tracy is making the point. This is Tracy Wilson jam by the way. Um she makes the point that like it's so ingrained into folklore that if you are if a culture is from an area that had wolves, like there's werewolf folklore,

that's right, it's almost a given. But in Africa you might turn into a hyena or in Japan you might turn into a fox, which is nice. Like shape shifting. Yeah, shape shifting inspires spear for three main reasons. I thought this. I thought it was kind of funny. This is one of the funniest bullet lists and the whole site. Reason Number one shape shifting inspire Spear is you become a

powerful carnivores, So that's scary. That wouldn't still fear. Number two, you are actually transforming into something that you fear already, right, So that's even scarier. Yeah, and you have no way of escaping yourself. So everybody is scared at this point, including the werewolf and number three, Um, you are going to have to perpetually deal with this over and over and over until somebody puts a silver bullet in you. So those are the three reasons that shape shifting inspires fear.

So that was so weird, Like everybody like this. This is that's reason enough to go onto the site and look at this article. Yeah, just check out this bullet list. Agreed, it's not even bulleted, it's numbered. Yeah, some quality work. So uh. A lot of times in these in this folklore and literature, um like anthropy is more of a punishment dolled out oftentimes for being some sort of sexual deviant and almost always a dude. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big point. Like vampire ism, it goes both ways. It

can be men women. They're usually clean and they're very sophisticated. Typically vampires are um, at least from bram Stoker onward, but with where well, it's it's very much supposed to be a like the the epitome of masculinity gone feral. Yeah, brutish, yeah, violent, hairy, Yeah, muscular, um strong, sound like they want to add right exactly seeking same right right for some crazy stuff cosplay there you go dress up like vampires. H. So when it's

a punishment, um, it varies. Sometimes it's a permanent thing, you're transformed to a wolf forever. Um. Sometimes it's a number of years, usually seven or nine that comes into play over and over again. Yeah, And um race is making a good point here, like this is their distinctions among like our modern understanding of werewolves and the folklore which was you know, like it wasn't always a punishment. Sometimes it was a positive thing. As we'll see, it

wasn't always permanent. Sometimes it just lasted for a very brief time. But there are folklore, Um, there is folklore what's plural of folklore? There are folklore's I don't know, folklore stumbled upon a huge gaping hole in the language, um. But the in in German folklore in particular, there's um stories of the stories of folk stories of people turning into where wolves on purpose, under their own volition, voluntarily, um, in order to basically become wolf, like to go hunt better, um,

because they're balding. Who knows there's all sorts of reasons to become a wolf, and it's temporary too, So it's voluntary and temporary. Yeah, and a lot of times if that's the case, there's like a like a belt made from wolf skin or something that that will put on that will transform them something like that. Um. In Northern Europe, like Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands, this is pretty common and wolf stories are like big in Northern Europe. Huge. Uh.

Well remember our our Vikings episode, Yeah, the berserkers. Yeah, so they would put on bear skins, eat mushrooms and then just go crazy battle. Yeah, they were berserk, they went berserk. Um. There's an Icelandic tradition also a type of a warrior who would put on wolf skins and think he was transformed into a wolf and would fright viciously like that too. Again probably on mushrooms, right wolf

versus bear. Yeah, mushrooms. Yeah, that sounds crazy. Mushrooms when no mushrooms like the ref okay, like fight, Yeah, that's the equalizer. Um. And some of these tales, clothing has a lot to do with it, Like some of them, you have to remove your clothes um in order to become a werewolf. Yeah, are you're seeing like the dichotomy here, like and some you have to put on a wolf pelt to become a werewolf, and some you have to

take your human clothes off. And do you remember I was saying, like I feel like the epic of Gilgamesh is aclude what werewolves represent. So you know the epic of gils we've talked before is like it's the it was written at a time when civilization is emerging, and like the whole thing of Gilgamesh is basically like, hey, everybody, get on board with society and we'll live in cities and be civilized. And if not, then you're a wild man.

I think that's the same thing with the with werewolf flor Like if you were um, if you acted outside of society's prescribed norms, you would go so far that you would become an actual beast and you would be cursed in this way. And it was basically like a cautionary tale, or it was also a way to kind of, um take a dig at a miscreant, somebody who wasn't living up to society, Like you're nothing but a werewolf, You're a beast? Get it? Together. Man, it became kind

of a catchphrase in certain societies. Sure, not a catchphrase, but like you said something, you would call it that person. But I think that's what the metaphor of the werewolf is supposed to be, although Tracy goes to great links to point out just how sexually based it is. Yeah, like it also ties into puberty and menstruation. I never really considered that. So we're talking about the clothing having

a lot to do with it. Sometimes, of course, you would turn into the werewolf and you would wake up naked and have to put your clothes back on. Sometimes you well, you have to take your clothes off to become the werewolf. Yeah, that's another that's another indication that you're leaving society. You're taking off your clothes and becoming wild. Dude, do you see am I making my point? Okay? Because I feel like I'm all over the place. No, you're

making your point. Um. In one tail, a man removed his clothes pete and a circle around them and calls the clothes to turn into stone, meaning no one could take the clothes anywhere, and when he got back and turned back into a person, he would have his clothes there but it didn't say, and I didn't find the tail how he turned the stone clothes back into cloth. Yeah, maybe it happened after the transformation or something, or maybe

he had to poop on him. No, to transform back into a human, he had to put his clothes back on, so he had to figure out as a wolf how to put on stone clothes. Yeah. I think some of all these stories are so old they don't get into like this pacifics like that. That's just stupid, Like they didn't think a podcast four hundred years later was gonna

nitpick stupid peasant. Um. In one that tale called biz Cleverett, an adulter's wife steals the werewolve's clothes, which keeps them in wolf Modever, he gets her back, he bites her nose off like a good wolf. Um. And in doing so, I don't think in Briton Um they necessarily said that, like canterpy was transmitted, which is another good point about whether the metaphor of it could be disease like transmitted disease. Right, Um, But the she would have, under certain traditions, become a

werewolf her self for being bitten by a werewolf. That's right, But you mentioned that in some lore and stories and movies, it is totally voluntary. As werewolves are a race like a dwarf or a troll like Twilight, they're like wolf people. Then they can transform at will from h hunky, long necked, long torso dudes into long neck long torso. Yeah that guy who the guy in Twilight the wolf. Yeah, I can't think of his name, but the dude's neck and torso are like eight ft long. Really, he's kind of

funny looking, but he can. They can transform Willy Nilly into wolf, bad CG looking wolf right back out, and like an instant. There's no like transformation, just like rent, I'm a wolf. Oh gotcha? Yeah, you've never seen that stuff? At you? You shouldn't. Well, the transformation is very important. Well not in Twilight. Well it's True Blood. It's the same thing. In True Blood, they just like boom their werewolves, right, Okay,

Well that actually follows the tradition. It's um fairly recent, like basically Rick Baker era where the transformation became really important and like just kind of like a hey, everybody check this out. Yeah, I think let's get into that after a message break. Okay, mm hmm Okay, so we're talking about transformation. It's like one of the biggest deals in movies now unless it's Twilight, like I said, and you're just it's really strange. I would have thought that

they I can see what you're saying. Yeah, and Twilight, like they'll it's so fast that they can he'll be like running through the woods and and jump up in the air and come down as a wolf to keep running. It really takes all the and they look so crappy and the cg so bad. Yeah, it's just terrible and they're huge. It's just it's really very poor Werewolf NG So I could but I can see skipping past that. If you are describing a race of people, Yeah, more than one person, get it, and like they need to

come in and out a lot. With a movie like an American Werewolf in London, it just follows the story of one hapless like Ententrope. Yeah, where the transformation is the biggest part of the story, very important, and they show every bit of it. But if you go back and read the literature, the werewolf literature, you're not gonna find too many descriptions of the transformation. It's mostly like a recent film thing. Yeah, and in most of those movies, like if if you are fighting a werewolf and you

cut off his arm, it'll instantly be like a human arm. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's very cool. Yeah. And the same thing goes for when you kill a werewolf. In some traditions, if you kill the werewolf while it's a wolf, he's going to stay a wolf forever. I don't like that. No, he's got to turn back into the human. And I think it was in it was part of the lower in American Werewolf in London, Like doesn't he get hurt?

And like that's how somebody knows he's the werewolf because he sustained an injury as a wolf and now he's wearing that injury as a person again. Wit, how do you become a wolf? Is that what we're talking about? You know? How they knew he was a werewolf? Like, didn't somebody doesn't like the girl he's involved with, No, that he's a werewolf because he's he comes back injured, Like doesn't he get his eyes stabbed out or something? No?

I think he? I mean he and Griffin Donne go off into the moors after being in a pub and get attacked by a werewolf. Griffin Dunn dies. He goes to the hospital and I think the nurses becomes his girlfriend. Okay, so later on somebody stabs the werewolf in the eye, and when he becomes a man again, he's his eyes missing. I think either that I'm just completely making this up, but I feel like I can see it. Well, if

it's not that movie, it's another similar one. But the point is, if you sustain an injury as a werewolf in most traditions, especially modern werewolflor, you will have that same injury as a person actually transformed back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you mean. I couldn't remember too until I rewatch it today how he was, Like, how did he get out of his clothes? Because I don't remember busting

out of the clothes. He looks up at the window and sees the full moon and just gets up and starts screaming and rips his shirt off and takes his pants off. Does think, yeah, and remember that naked, and that's where he starts the transformation once he's like naked in his apartment. That was a really good movie. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Funny and apparently the studio executives had a big problem with it, you know, because they were like it was genre bending. They're like, wait, this is funny,

but it's horror. Like, we don't get it. It's not funny enough and it's not scary enough, and ended up being a big hit. I didn't see the other one though, the American World in Paris. I didn't either. Liked Nathan Hawk and Julie Delpy and that's before Sunrise, but um, Julie Delpy was in it. I think, Okay, that's why I'm thinking that. Yeah, but no Ethan Hawk. Um, so chuck. There's been uh, you know, remember the witchcraft trials that were so famous over here in Salem, mass and the

other colonies. Yeah, so they were actually, um, you know, there were witchcraft trials and witch hunts in Europe before then and at the same time, but there was also werewolf hunts. Yeah. I never knew. This makes total sense though. So apparently between fifteen twenty in sixteen thirty, there were thirty thousand recorded cases of werewolves, reports were reported werewolves, werewolves,

people executed for being werewolves. And some of these things were not just neighbor you know, turning in neighbor, so neighbor, a can get neighbors bees land or wife for children or whatever. Right, Um, there there were some cases of people who were executed because they were self confessed werewolves. Specifically, there's this guy named Gio Garnier. What's his story. He

was a kind of a hermit. He and his wife lived out in the woods, like you had to kind of walk through a lot of woods to get to their place in a village um in uh, France. I can't remember where exactly, but um Geal fancied himself awarewolf. He thought he really was a werewolf, and he was attacking children, like tearing him to pieces with his hands and teeth and then eating them. And he would eat them on the spot and would apparently get pretty far just as a human. He wouldn't like dress up, no,

he but he thought he was transforming. And so finally he was caught in the actor right, well, he was calling act once by some people who confirmed that he wasn't a werewolf. He was in the form of a man, but he was still acting like a werewolf. So um they figured out that he wasn't really a werewolf. But the fact was he still ate a bunch of children that he killed and torn to pieces. So he was burned alive at the steak for just being a murderous

schoon exactly. But another guy, UM, who was named Jean Grenier. Uh, a few years later, he was actually hold up in a monastery for the same crime. But um, they found him insane. Yeah, these were just cannibals, right, but they thought they were werewolf And there's a bit of a attendant lower to the whole thing. A lot of these

cases are thought to be the result of hallucinogens. Yeah, specifically detera, which um has been shown to make people think that they are animals even today, or got the same thing, Yeah, that's the one, and they think that, Um, that's a fungus that can make you hallucinate, and they think that has something to do with the Salem witch trials. To basically people are just messed up on drugs. Uh what else. Hyper Trichosis is another uh strange disorder that

people might have thought. Uh makes you when he's pointing out that guy. Yeah, it's pretty sad. It's um. It's everyone has seen that. They call it like the wolf man syndrome where hair grows all over your face. That does not look sad. He looks suave. He doesn't pretty. Yeah, his his family actually is. He's one of nineteen people on the planet to be affected by a condition called genital generalized hyper trichosis. And they're all the same family

right right in Mexico. Just this family has this condition. He does look suave though he wears it well. Rabies is another reason, Um, if you're bitten by something, you might go a little nutty in the advanced stages hallucinating

things plus agitated. Yeah, and if you if you think about it, if you're just a bystandard peasant in sixteenth century France and you see somebody get bit by a wolf, and then later on that person starts acting kind of wolf like because they're rabid, and you don't know what rabies is. There's your werewolf outbreak. Uh. Wolf hybrids, um, wolves and dogs co mingling and having the sex and making. You can get those. You know, there's pets wolf dog hybrids,

but the same kind of deal. They attack people in villages and they think, you know, we're under attack by werewolves. Yeah, there's this really cool Atlas Obscure article about um the beast of give a don so g E v A you d A N. And it's about like these wolf attacks, but they're like supernatural wolves and they won't go away,

and all these villagers kept being killed by wolves. And then it was the last one was actually killed by a girl, a little shepherdess um who stabbed this charging beast in in the chest and finally ended this like century of wolf attacks. But it's worth reading for sure, So let's take another little second for a message break. Al Right, So moving on, um, as recently as the nineteen thirties in Africa and what's now Ghana, there was belief widespread that you could people could turn into hyenas.

So this isn't like hundreds of years ago. And as recently as the eighties, uh, this practice in the Iberian Peninsula. I don't really get this that there was there was a ritual or a practice to keep people from turning into werewolves where children would act as godparents for their younger siblings. The seventh and ninth child against seven and nine coming into play, so the the werewolves would basically recruit excess children. Family had too many children, gotcha, then

the werewolves would come after those kids. So the older siblings would be like, Okay, well you're my kid, I'm your god parent now. So they would do that up until the nineteen eighties. Yeah, so on paper, it shaves off the number of kids that are right. Family technically has, at least as far as werewolves are concerned. But yeah, they were doing this until the eighties. I don't think we mentioned not all where wolves are bad in literature

and books and films. Um, a lot of them have compassion from the audience because you know, they're kind of saddled with this, with this thing now that they have to deal with. It's a struggle between higher and lower self. You're primitive and your cidified self. But we have to mention in the Harry Potter series, Remus Lupin has been evalent and uh, of course Buffy the vampire slayer oz he learned to control his uh werewolf ng so he could be a good guy. And when Willow back, did

you watch that, Buffy? No, not really, it was pretty good. I'm not gonna say it was the greatest thing other one like some people do. But some people are crazy for that. Oh yeah it was huge, but yeah to eat his song agreed, Uh, let's see you got anything else? I got nothing else and werewolves. That was a good one. Next full Moon watch out. Uh yeah, seriously, I haven't even thought that. And I can't remember the last time I looked at a full moon and thought werewolves. Yeah,

it's been a long time. Well, they haven't had any really good movie Like the Venici Adultur movie wasn't very good. That Nicholson movie wasn't good. It's been a while since they made a really good werewolf movie early. Uh. Well, if you want to learn more about werewolves again, seeing this really interesting bullet list, um, you can type werewolf into the search far at how stuffworks dot com and

it will bring up this article. Uh. And since I said search far, it means it's time for listener mail. I am gonna call this guy dog feedback from Kate. Hey, dudes, I'll listen to you for ages. But never really had anything worth writing about until the Guide Dogs episode. Way back in the day around two thousand, my fifth grade teacher, Mrs McKernan managed to commence our public school system to train a guy dog in her classroom. Her name was Krrick that is k E r i C. And she

was this adorable little black lab. Mrs McKernan would bring her to class every day and took her home every night, And in the meantime, Kirick was not only trained on basic commands by the teacher, but by all of the students as well. Uh yeah, that's pretty neat. That's a lot of input for that dog. I know. Well, Karrock didn't make it. Um Kirik went with our classroom everywhere, including if you field trips, and she got her own school photo for the yearbook that year. That's pretty cute,

I would put on the cover. Needless to say, we all bawled when she was sent off to finish her training. Sadly, she was one of the dogs that did not pass final training. Maybe that's what to do with the thirty kids. So this is how you sit down? You sit down like this. No, I should mention I didn't read this part. But she did say that they got pamphlets on like everyone being consistent. Okay, I'm mrs kidding. You know how

I put in with you know, listener mail share. But in Carrick's defense, she was disqualified under a really hard test for any dog. She had to sit next to a wheelchair while a bucket full of tennis balls were dropped off a balcony and Salve Rubik's cue at the same time was right and she could not grab any of them. So that's like, that's after that. Mrs McKernan took her back though, and officially adopted her and still

brought her into new classes occasionally. Recently Ms McKernan that I have a really hard time and second tell where moved schools and has had Carrot qualified under habit Human Animal Bond and Tennessee is a therapy dog for her new schools students. So she said it was a great experience and um, it's worth telling your listeners that never hurts to ask your workplace and see if they can

do something like we did. And I guess if you're going to train a guide dog, if you want to really get them ready for that test with all of the tennis balls. Yes, man, that's a rough one that is from Kate about the dogget Even ones that do it are just like, is there bleeding out of their ears, concentrating so hard. Kate, thank you very much for writing in.

We appreciate it. Back in the day of two thousand, she's uh, if you want to share a story that makes Chuck and I feel super old, You can tweet to us at s y SK podcast. You can send us something on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, You can send us an email The Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, check us out at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com home. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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