Of Wolves and Men

For centuries people believed that human beings could transform into wolves. Why? Could werewolf legends simply be cover stories for the violent acts of deranged humans?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Welcome
back humans, this is stuff they don't want you to know.
With your hosts. I'm Ben and I'm married, and today

(00:24):
we are talking about something that is might might sound
pretty silly to some people, but a few centuries ago
terrified entire countries, so this was very serious back in
the day. We are talking about where wolves or if
you want to be fancy about it, licanthropes, Yes, uh

(00:45):
like canthropy. The idea that a human being could turn
into a wolf is um kind of a specific manifestation
of a much older, much more general idea of something
called theory and trophy. And uh, this mispronunciation that I

(01:05):
have just made is about um. It comes from a
Greek idea of just a human who can turn into
a beast, which shape exactly. Yeah. And what's weird about
this is that across the spectrum of cultures of time
and space, all human beings have, at some point in

(01:28):
their early uh folklore beliefs or spiritual beliefs, thought that uh,
humans themselves could change into animals, or that humans came
from some sort of animal, or that gods might be
combinations of animal and human characteristics, or yeah, or that
a god could turn someone into an animal if they

(01:50):
wanted to, as a curse for instance. Well, and the
coolest thing about that is that throughout the in the
different cultures, it's in there. It's not everyone's not turning
people into wolves or being able to turn into wolves.
But they are turning into in these stories, into carnivorous,
scary animals generally, right, yeah, And they might or they

(02:12):
might be turned into If they're turned into something that
isn't carnivorous, then often it's because they have some sort
of spiritual kinship with it, or because they are cursed,
you know, like the old, the old idea that a
um a witch could use a magic bridle to turn
somebody into a horse and ride them away to a

(02:35):
black sabbath or something, you know, or into a frog
that could easily be squeehed. Right, yeah, exactly, And that
comes in through fairy tales and stuff too. But we
know that, Okay, so we know that this predates our
written records. When I say our matt, you know, of
course they don't mean you and I. I mean it's
just humanities written records. Yeah, it goes all the way

(02:58):
back to one of the earliest story he's the epic
of Gilgamesh. Basically, Gilgamesh is like, look, I don't want
to be your lover, Ishtar, because you've been treating your
lovers pretty poorly. Okay, you you turned one of your
lovers into a wolf and you made him. Oh, because
here's the really bad part. The guy was a shepherd.

(03:18):
Ishtar turned him into a wolf, and now he's the
enemy not only of a sheep, but also of his
best friends, his dogs. No, don't do that. That sounds
like classic Gilgamesh. There's UH. There's another thing that might
surprise a lot of people. That's that the idea of changing.
While the idea of changing into various animals existed for

(03:41):
a very long time, UM, the animals were often gonna
be like the predators or the apex animals associated with
that region. So in Native American war there were often
stories of where bears um. One thing that's strange to
me is that UH in Central Asia in a lot

(04:04):
of places, UH. Central Asia had this weird reputation for
a long time of being a home of where dogs
basically people who could change into wild dogs. And strange
when you think about it, because um Chinese legends had
the idea of this where these ware dogs, and the
far West would be the far West for China. The

(04:27):
European idea of these dog men, which might recognize from
some of the purported reports of Marco Polo, who people
still aren't sure if you actually existed, at least the
idea we have of Marco Polo. Story for another day. Anyway,
dogmen mentioned in the famous travels of Marco Polo uh

(04:48):
were placed by Europeans somewhere in the east. So trying
to say it's West Europe, saying it's in the east,
Hindu mythology uh puts them in the far north of India. UH.
So it's weird. They're all these rumors about this one
place somewhere in shady Eurasia where people are turning into
dogs and back into men. It's very love crafty and

(05:09):
I think it's man. We can also put the kabash
on a lot of the questions that some people doubtlessly
asked themselves when they clicked on the title for this episode,
which was hey Ben and Matt, are you going to
reveal some truth? Are you gonna tell us that werewolves
are real? Yes? Oh oh wait, is that when we

(05:30):
I got it wrong in my notes that you're right,
We're not going to do that. We're we aren't, but
we we were interested in this episode because way back
in the days of your and the shadowy past of
stuff they don't want you to know, you and I
covered the idea of werewolves and a troubling explanation for

(05:52):
for this concept. Right, yeah, that's right, And it was
actually just as a historical note. It was the first
video that went up on our new channel when we
started our new channel. Ah, yeah, that's right. We have
our our street names should be two channels because we
saw videos on how stuff works, and we still have
videos on a new channel which is just conspiracy stuff

(06:13):
and stuff that want you to know. But we do
know that there have been numerous cases throughout history of
people being tried and executed after conviction of like Cantherpy,
which was historically also uh subset of witchcraft in general, right,
devil worshiping. So uh so we know that there are

(06:34):
some old, old cases. We um we talked about a
couple of them in our video podcast. Right, Uh, Peter Stump,
I think we mentioned him and uh, he's one of
the people who said, Yeah, I did it, I turned
into a wolf and I ate those kids. Now do
it again and sad a skin or a belt or

(06:55):
something that could help him turn into a werewolf, right, yeah,
which is one of the um one of the historically
more popular ways of turning into a werewolf. He said
that he had he had been given a magic belt
by the devil, if I recall correctly, and that when
he anointed this belt um in the proper ritualized fashion,

(07:16):
he was able to uh put it on, and his
form would change to that of a wolf. And all
that the devil required of him to do at that
point was to kill and murder as he saw fit. Um,
you know, until dawn. Uh. Then there's another case, um,
a very old case where this this guy named or

(07:36):
I said, say, kid, check this out, Matt. This guy,
Jean Grenier Um was only thirteen when he confessed that
he was a wolf, and he had been since he
was ten years old. That a man in the forest
or a man of the forest gave him a potion
infer to transform and he said that he had been
not only transforming into a werewolf, but had been eating

(07:58):
dogs and infants and little girl. Um yeah, and that's
a sad case because you know, a kid at that
age could easily be um bullied into confessing something they
didn't do and'd be very interested to hear the stuff
they don't want you to know about that story, or
maybe drugged and manipulated by somebody. But here's where we

(08:23):
get to some weird stuff. You'll notice that he said
he had a skin and that he took a potion.
There are a couple of different ways historically to transform
into a werewolf, right, yeah. So one of the ways,
which you mentioned already with our boy Peter s not
really our boy, ps uh, is the idea that you
can take off your clothes, put on a wolf skin

(08:45):
belt or pelt, and then uh transform. Another idea is
that you rubbed yourself with something, maybe the fat or
blood of a wolf, or the fat or blood of
an unbaptized child or something, and then you could even
do something as simple as drinking rainwater out of the
footprint of the animal you want to transform into. So

(09:08):
don't pick something lame like a muskrat, or a badger.
Nobody's gonna be uh, it's gonna be scared of that.
You can't really further your cause of evil and satanism
with that. UM. What one interesting thing that I've learned
is we were going as we were researching this, is
that one of the ways to transform back into a
human if you're a werewolf and you don't want to

(09:28):
be the werewolf anymore, or you have the ability to
understand that you're a warewolf, because sometimes it's just this
rage that you go into, depending on what a story
of wherewolf you're in, UM, is to put your human
clothes back on. So that's really strange to me. Just
that's all you gotta do, put your clothes back on.
Now you're good. Yeah, and it says a lot. I

(09:50):
think there's somebody who's probably made a PhD or a
dissertation off of analyzing that relationship between what what clothing
says about humanity verse his animal nature. But you know,
in other countries, being becoming a werewolf, were becoming a
wolf was frighteningly easy in uh. In one case parts

(10:12):
of Sweden. UH, there was the idea that you could
just drink special kind of beer and repeat a magic formula,
just like Captain Marvel would say shazam. Uh. In parts
of Europe, including Italy and Germany, Uh, it would be
easy enough as just sleeping outside on a summer night
with the full moon shining on you on a particular

(10:34):
Wednesday or Friday, and then boom your wolf. Accidentally you
got caught up in the wolf game. That's what happened. Uh.
So where you went those few weeks? Okay, sure, well,
I'll believe it. But clearly, when we're we're being a
little offhand about this, when we're talking about stuff that

(10:54):
could be serious. One thing that is a serious note
that we need to make is that you and I
said at the top that this idea seems funny to us.
Now seems a bit you know, provincial and bit gullible maybe,
But at the time, the average human being was much
more likely to run into dangerous wild animals. Oh yeah,

(11:16):
dangerous wild wild animals. And there wasn't a lot of
surveillance going on with people by police forces or any
other enforcement agencies. It was kind of it was a
scary world out there in the dark. There weren't a
lot of lights. There's danger, there's real danger when you
go out into the woods at night. Right, and depending

(11:38):
upon the time of year, in the dark of winter,
wild animals that would usually be intelligent enough to avoid humans,
or at least worry enough not to be seen by them,
uh would be driven by hunger to attack someone who
might be easy prey. So there really were packs of

(11:59):
wolves attacking people who, for one reason or another, we're
traveling by their lonesome in the dark of winter in
the forest. That that stuff actually happened. And we know
that licanhropes um have a role to play even in
biblical canons, So this isn't just pagan stuff, uh St

(12:19):
Patrick Right? St Patrick, the Irish guy apparently transformed the
Welsh king very Ticus into a wolf. And then there
are other miracles by saints that you know clearly echo
these pre existing pagan traditions um, which makes me makes

(12:39):
me think that now we've talked enough about the magic, right,
maybe it's time for us to get into some more
real life explanations or some some current theories about what, yeah,
what could these stories really be about? Yeah? But before
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(13:07):
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(13:27):
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(13:49):
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(14:10):
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So now it's time to talk a little bit about

(14:50):
like can therapy as we understand it in the modern day.
We know that there are two things that closely equate
to like can therapy. UM here uh in the twenty
one century where we have the benefit of science, and
one of those cases is something called hypertrichosis, which is

(15:12):
a UM a very rare genetic condition that results in
human being being covered with fur. Now, these people still
have completely human anatomy. They are totally human beings. They're
not monsters at all. Um, they just have a condition
that produces an abnormal amount of hair, really thick hair

(15:36):
to write all over their bodies. Right, and if you could,
if you check out the pictures, Um, there is to
be completely honest. Uh. There is a passing resemblance to
Lawn Cheney's The Wolfman, the original version of what we
think a werewolf looks like, or at least this right,
if you grew up in the US. Right. Then there

(15:56):
is the other condition, which is dark, uh. And that
is like cantherrapy as a mental illness. That is, somebody
who has the belief that they somehow transform into a
wolf physically or some sort of mad beast, or they
believe that they have the mind of a beast. And
interestingly enough, the word like cantherrapy actually comes from that,

(16:20):
the idea of a mental illness where a push a
person is delusional in thinking that they can actually become
a werewolf. Right. And there are a couple of things
here that we should go ahead and just knock out
in our address. Um, there are there is a community
of people, um who refer to themselves as other kids.

(16:40):
And these are people who identify UM often on a
spiritual or perhaps metaphysical level with a particular animal, one
that could be regarded as real or one that could
be regarded as fictitious. So we're not lumping in these people,
are this community with someone who suffers from the mental

(17:04):
disorder of like antherapy. Um, Neither are we lumping uh
these mental disorders in with the sad, unfortunate case of
what's often referred to as feral children. Um. There are
real kids who throughout history have been found living with
wild animals with very little contact with human beings. It

(17:26):
doesn't happen is often now, but the results are are
documented and there are tragic. It turns out that there
is a window of time for learning human language after
which a person can't do it too well. And language
isn't the only thing that can be impaired if it's
not learned within a certain time span. Walking on two

(17:48):
legs is part of that. There's so many, so many
social uh physical actions right that just if you're not
around other humans, you're not going to learn it. Okay.
So with those two um at most tangentially related ideas
out of the way, let's look at the concept of

(18:09):
like anthropy as a mental disorder. There's a really interesting
thing that an FBI profiler named Greg McCrary said. Uh.
He said that, Um, there's a reluctance to admit that
someone in our community would be capable of the kind
of evil that we can see in brutal murders. Evil,
he said, is so overpowering that we want to attribute

(18:30):
it to a monster. But the reality is that many
good people can have some terrible flaws. Although I do
think he's understating it when he says that last part
of the sentence, Um, it is true that there's this
tremendously alienating thing about, you know, finding out that quiet

(18:53):
neighbor down the way had a basement full of bodies
or something, you know. And with with this in mind, uh,
we have to understand that not only is it not
only is it true that people can have a mental
disorder that makes them awarewolf, but it also makes it

(19:14):
possible that throughout history, uh, the the current the towns
that were plagued with murders or something like that may
have been trying to address the concept of a serial
killer of some sort through their existing cultural framework. Well,
it's also strange to me, it can it It strikes

(19:34):
me that one it's almost the not guilty by insanity
kind of plea, And I could see that being used
back in the day, perhaps like I've turned into this
monster when I put this belt on, I turned into monster.
And you know it's it wasn't me who killed those people.
It was the thing that I become when I down

(19:57):
this thing or drink this or you know of this substance. Yeah,
and that's I think that's a really good point because
we know that often when we talked about some stuff
with witches in the past, we noted that people who
like elderly women who are suffering from dementia might have
been called which is unable to defend themselves, or the
mentally disabled could have been accused of that. The sickening

(20:21):
truth of the matter is that we know it is
frighteningly plausible that that in the past, especially people who
were mentally infirmed for one reason or another, we're easy
pickings as scapegoats. So maybe, you know, like, let's put
ourselves back there a few centuries. Maybe, Um, this small

(20:43):
town in France is getting attacked by a pack of
wolves that have acquired a taste for vulnerable human flesh.
And they need to blame someone, but they can't catch
the wolves, so they blame you know, the old lady
down the street, uh, who has no living family and

(21:04):
is nuts, and they they have this scapegoat. So it's
sort of, um, a pressure hatch for the community at large.
It doesn't solve the problem, but it makes people feel
like they're doing something and uh, as we can see
in the actions in a rock Post nine eleven. Often

(21:25):
when you have a group of people fired up about
a tragedy, giving them something to lash out at or
the illusion of doing something effective can be very effective
for maintaining a status quo. Yeah, I walked down the
street for that point, but I think it was worth it, alright, Sorry,
I like it so. UM. So we also know, and

(21:45):
this is this is the last of why I've got here, Matt.
We also know that this mental disorder, this delusion that
one is actually a wolf for werewolf, um, is not
limited to bizarre history racle footnotes. Have you heard of
a guy named Bill Ramsey? Sounds really familiar, But I

(22:06):
I don't. I don't think so. Well. This could be
a this could be a total hoax. I haven't checked
into this, but um, Bill Ramsey was experiencing savage seizures
since he was a kid, and he would growl and
snap and bite, and he convinced himself allegedly that he

(22:27):
was a wolf. Eventually, UM, these two self identified demonologist
Ed and Lorraine Warren, upon who the conjuring is based
um concluded that Ramsey was possessed by a werewolf demon. Uh.
And then he was skeptical as as you might be,

(22:49):
you know, and uh, they finger quotes exercised him. He
said that he felt the werewolf demon leaving his body
and didn't suffer from it again. So I don't know
if this is a hoax. I don't know if this
is true, but I do know it's interesting. Where wolf
demon That's a new one for me. Uh. Just quickly,
I wanted to bring up a couple other reasons that

(23:10):
people may act or believe that they turned into a
wolf or act as though they are a wolf. Um,
a couple of things we've brought up before when we
were talking about witchcraft and uh, the sale witch trials,
and also the vampire what do we call that one?
The vampire plague vampire panic. Oh man, that's still one

(23:33):
of my favorite episodes. Meant oh me too, dude. The
the idea of ergot poisoning, Uh, fairly simple poisoning that
occurs when just grain and barley or wheat it goes
bad and when you eat it you can have some
serious hallucinations. Um, it can. It can be pretty brutal
on you and you got you know, if you're under

(23:55):
the influence of ergot poisoning, you may be led to
believe things by someone else or just internally, that you're
the things that you're seeing are real. So it could
be a bad trip, could be a really bad trip.
One interesting thing about that is the idea of you know,
this ergot poisoning has been advanced, um controversially for a

(24:15):
couple of other historical events like saying Almo's fire, Um,
the uh what's it called the dancing plagues, which I
think stuff mom never told you it was probably gonna
have a good episode on if it hasn't come out already.
And uh, someone's even advanced that maybe the Salem witch
trials were results or the hysterious rounding them. Um. Interesting

(24:36):
fact about ergot poisoning. It can also have physical um,
physical symptoms, so it can cause extremities to swell uh,
making you look totally bonkers and maybe like you're transforming jeez. Uh.
And and the other thing ben I wanted to mention
is rabies. This is something that spread much like in

(24:58):
the way the stories of like a thro pree year
spread through her body. Um, and it's pretty fatal. That's
the one thing that kind of makes me think that
it might not be rabies is because it's usually fatal,
especially in the advanced stages. So anyone who would be
caught as a werewolf or a lichanthrope would probably be

(25:20):
dead within a few days. Um. Although several of these people,
especially in the historical cases. The when you mentioned stub Stobs,
I mean he was he was executed. UM. So perhaps
someone who was suffering from rabies just gets executed. Um,
and just take that guy was being attacked by the wolf.

(25:42):
There's another another recent self professed werewolf we should mention,
a murderer named Jack Owen Spillman the third Um. When
he was locked up, he referred to himself as a
werewolf and said he loved to stalk his prey. Uh.
He was a um. He was a real life monster.

(26:03):
Because you know, you can be technically human being and
still be a monster. As a matter of fact, I
would argue that most monsters are exactly that. UM, and
we and I just bring this guy up because um,
murderers or you know murderers and some like rapists, uh,
can can go off the deep end and identify themselves

(26:27):
as you know serial killers or as Jesus Christ for
some reason, or as you know God or some other
delusional idea. And this happening in the modern day to
me means that it could have easily happened as well
in the past, but without the benefit of a psychologist

(26:49):
or neuroscientist or an expert to say, Um, you're crazy,
because it could have been somebody saying wow, maybe, oh yeah,
I guess he really does work for eton. I guess that.
I guess we should kill this guy. And UM, with that,
I think it's time to uh throw it to the audience.

(27:10):
Usually this is the part where we say, um, if
you want to learn more, I think we have an
article on the site right. Yes, a lot of the
information that I got from this site is from an
article by Tracy V. Wilson, the fantastic host of Stuffy
missed in history class. One of the fantastic hosts. Uh,
the other being holly free and uh yeah, just check

(27:32):
it out. It's a great read. It kind of goes
over some of the same stuff we talked about, not
not in quite as much detail, but it's fascinating. Yeah,
and we'd like to hear from you right to us
or comment on our Facebook page or tweet us and
let let us know, uh what you think about the
idea of like can therapy as mental illness and as

(27:54):
um historical stuff. Especially, let us know if you believe
that people really can shape shift. We didn't even touch
on skin walkers, will save that for a different show. Uh,
but if you let us if you do believe this stuff,
then let us know why. We'd love to hear it. Um.
Do you have any video evidence or pictures? Totally send

(28:14):
that to us. I would love to be able to
help prove that it's real. Well, we would put it
on the air if we could find proof of it. Uh.
But another question, which I think we might get more
responses to here, um is which monsters should we cover next?
We're up for anything, lock nest, minotaur, I don't know,

(28:37):
from the sea, from the mountains. What do you want
to tell us about it from the air from the
nether regions and I don't mean but uh yeah, So
tell us what you think about that we are conspiracy
stuff on both Facebook and Twitter. It so happens that
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it automatically after not being fired. Uh, as long as

(28:58):
we have so far, it's our watch it we get
Oh yeah, knock on wood, Let's see how long it last. Uh.
And the best way to support our show is actually
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(29:20):
of a meeting about that in just a few minutes.
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(29:40):
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Put monsters in the title and our email address is
conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From more on this topic,
another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.

(30:06):
You can also get in touch on Twitter at the
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