Behind the Scenes Minis: Complicated Werewolf

Holly discusses the complicated nature of the Loudun possessions. Tracy talks about the ways that entertainment media can cause fear.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and
I'm Tracy d Wilson. We talked about the possessions at
LUDO this week. Yep. This is one that's been on

(00:22):
my list for a long time and I find it
super fascinating. One. It's it's one of those things that
I find myself getting frustrated at because people that are
really into the occult will use these instances of historical
mass possessions in religious orders as proof that, you know,

(00:43):
it must be a real thing because they're religious, they're
fighting against demons, and yet there they are like, oh,
we should have a discussion this is. And that's why
this is a good example, because there were people that
came forward and went, no, this whole thing is being
used as a tool to get back at people that
other people don't like and to try to firmly entrench

(01:07):
the Catholic Church as superior to the Protestant Church in
this community, right, And I love it for that reason. Yeah.
This is the other episode that we are recording in
today's session is about a similar place and time, and
like this was a chaotic, difficult time to live in.

(01:29):
Oh yeah, like got the Reformation and the counter Reformation,
large scale disease, epidemics, wars, like so much stuff all happening,
and then a group of people in a religious community
fairly isolated from everybody, adding a whole additional layer of
like the social and psychological things going on. Yeah, yeah,

(01:56):
I mean, I think it also evidences. It's a very
tricky subject because I don't want to denigrate or insult
anyone's religious views. I do think though, anytime you have
an organization that puts itself beyond the reach of transparency
and any legal repercussions by saying no, we're inherently we

(02:20):
have to be secret. It's for the greater good. That's
just like a hotbed of potential exploitation. And I really think,
I mean, it seems so obvious to me, obviously through
the lens of the modern eye, to be like, oh,
they recognize that. Er Van Grandier was like, why don't
we just throw open the doors, get rid of all

(02:42):
of this dogma. We can talk openly about religion and
what it means to be religious and not be so
you know, secretive about it. And they were like, that
guy's gotta die somehow. We have to figure out a way,
which is very fascinating. Listen. He also, though, was seemed
per really happy to use his charms for his own wiles,

(03:04):
because he clearly wanted to get rid of the celibacy
rule right, to make it cool for him to have
sexual exploits with a lot of people, which also, you know,
becomes a whole other issue to debate. Yeah, because there's
a power dynamic involved in a religious figure. There's there's

(03:25):
a lot of problems there, Don't get me wrong. I'm
I don't want to make him into the hero of
the story, although he did appear to be the victim.
But this is also the thing, right, there's so much
humans are inherently gonna mackinate for their own best interest yeah,
or desires, and that's a that's just inherently problematic. I

(03:47):
don't know how to fix it. We haven't figured it
out clearly in several hundred years. It's been hundreds of years.
I'm so tired, so worn out. I really, I do
like reading a lot of the modern assessments of it
that are careful and really thoughtful and try to take

(04:08):
into account all of the things we do know while
acknowledging all the things we don't and we can't, right,
you know that there's also the element of some of
the people involved in these claims of demonic possession were
probably faking and knew they were faking. For others one
hundred percent believed they were possessed. Yeah, and they are

(04:30):
all grouped under one heading, So it makes it very
hard to parse out and pick apart what was real
and what was not. Yeah, because to them some things
were real that other people would say, we're not, and
that makes it very tricky. Yeah. Well, and it's been
a while since I've done an episode on this theme,
but I have kind of a fascination with like the

(04:53):
especially medieval era mystics, some of whom were having experiences
that to to day's ear like they don't sound like
a mentally well person, right, They sound like someone who
is having some kind of delusion going on. But I'm
like really interested in them and their experiences and how

(05:15):
many of them, like sincerely believed the things that they
were describing to people, and how that simultaneously like grew
out of the place and time they were living and
set them apart from the place and time they were living. Yes, yeah, yeah,
I really am super fascinated by Jean des Ange figuring

(05:39):
out this path where she could say no, no, I
was in fact, once I was cleared of demons, there
was divine spirit that entered me. I don't know what
to make of the scars on her arm. It's the
sixteen thirties, so there's no photos. And also this kind

(05:59):
of master stroke of being like I operate in this
structure of the church where they are happy to suggest
and believe and promote the idea that I was exercised
and that you know, I then became in touch with
higher angels. And also, by the way, my angel said

(06:21):
what you said was wrong and now you can't fight
me because you already validated him. I like that is
masterfully played. That part, to me is very interesting. It's
like she found this weird way through to empower herself. Yeah,

(06:42):
it's all very fascinating. I love doing any of the
possession stories because, right one the beauty of them is that,
because of all of these psychological aspects we've mentioned, there's
no one truth, right, so you can't say definitively anything,
and it just becomes a fun examination and of what
was going on, especially the ones in long ago history. Yes,

(07:05):
I do like how much just legal battling there was
in this one. I love the idea that Grandier was
just like lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit, just throwing them out like
shuffling cards. He just suit everybody that irritated him, which
is kind of kind of fun. Fun, probably not for
anybody involved with his life, but fun to read about.

(07:29):
I hope, I hope nobody's possessed. I mean, I have feelings.
I have my own beliefs and thoughts. They may disappoint people.
We talked about werewolves this week sure did, especially specifically

(07:53):
a guy named Peter probably whose name was spelled so
many different ways that we had to stop and have
multiple clarifying conversations while we were recording, which which pronuncisia
would you like me to use here? I was like,
it doesn't matter, I don't actually know that that was
really what his name was. But yeah, So I was

(08:14):
just looking for stuff to talk about in October and
I stumbled across this in realized I was like, oh,
we haven't done this, and actually we have not talked
that much about were wolves, and I did kind of
I wanted to talk about how like this, as the
big witch trials in early modern Europe and North America
were happening, there was also this were wolf focus. I

(08:36):
I wasn't quite prepared for the level of goriness, even
though the last time we talked about a were wolf
it was Gials Garnier and that was gory. I just
had kind of forgotten. I feel a little bit like
a monster, yeah, because I was like, I thought this

(08:57):
was gonna be gory. Well so the parts of it,
but it really got me the like the parts of
me that I was like, oh, okay, that was not
expecting that eating the brain, but no, it was the
like attacking pregnant women and tearing the fetus out of
their body, like oh yeah, that it was just I
was not I was somehow I was like, oh that

(09:17):
that was more than I was expecting here, and then
like eating eating the hearts of his victims. I was like, ah,
not really, yeah, liking that and had no idea when
I got into it that there was also going to
be like an incest element to it. Yeah, that's the
sexual assault and whatnot is probably the part that I
find the most unsettling. But I don't. I don't know

(09:40):
why I don't perceive it as gory, even though those
are all horrific things. I think part of it is
because I don't trust that any of this is accurate.
Oh sure, sure, so my brain is just like, well,
that's what they said, But I know it's not to
diminish how frightening a possibility that is. But just like
I think because of the nature of like these broadsheets

(10:03):
and how many that we've you know, discussed throughout the
run of the show that are like, well they kind
of made stuff up to sell more copies, that I
just perceive none of it is real, Yeah, which is
why I think I'm like, eh, I have a different
level of immersion in reading something versus if I'm watching

(10:24):
a movie. Like there have been movies that I have
watched that I have that have scared me so much
that I have been able to like feel the fear
in my body, Yeah, as a physical experience. And I've
read some books that are supposed to be really scary
that like that just has not been how I engage

(10:48):
with like the content of a book versus a movie
that I'm watching, right, or maybe a TV show that's
really scary. So anyway, we had a lot of things
to from. I tried to leave some of the like
atypical spellings in there. Yeah, but I did clean a

(11:11):
lot of them up because this particular document had a
lot of v's that should have been used, and used
that should have been v's, and a thing that took
me a little while to remember j's that looked like eyes.

(11:31):
There were a couple of words that I kind of
stared at for a minute where I was like, I
don't know what in the world this could possibly Oh
that's a J not an I. Okay, what do you
get met. Yeah, we've talked about our love of unusual
spellings before the push to standardize the spelling of everything

(11:54):
in English. This whole thing just makes me think about
what we do in the shadows. So oh yeah, that's
where my brain was a whole It makes sense. So
it's were wolves not swear wolves. Oh how I miss
that show. That's a very good show. I will say
I am less of a were wolf person if we're
in the zone of you know, classical monsters, uh huh

(12:19):
than some others. And I don't know why, but I
do love the fact that a girdle makes you a
were wolf. I know it's not the girdle in the
modern sense, but it makes me laugh so hard. It
makes me want someone to draw a cartoon of like
someone in a granny style girdle that writes them into
a were wolf. Yeah. I originally was trying to figure

(12:41):
out whether I needed to explain why sometimes it was
described as a belt and why sometimes it was described
as a girdle, because at the time sometimes those words
could be used almost interchangeably. They're both like a sort
of accessory that makes a cinching part around roughly the

(13:03):
middle of your body. Yeah, but like the belt and
the girdle can have slightly different in terms of like
the garment and what is being done with them. And
then I was like, this is not actually that important
to the story. I also, well, I, I mean, that's
actually a thing that I find really fascinating because I
also wonder about that particular type of garment being the

(13:28):
one chosen that is transformative, because of course things that
sinch in your body are transformative in some cases. Yeah,
have not always been accepted, like my tight lacing diatribe
hasn't come up in a long time, but like we
in the modern era. I say we in the grand

(13:48):
sense of we, not me, because I read a lot
about it. There is a proclivity towards talking about how
tight lacing was, this weird habit of the past, blah
blah blah blah blah. No, there were always people who
were like, that's not good for you. And so this
idea of something that transforms your body in a possibly
painful way or an uncomfortable way, being the thing that

(14:11):
makes you into a monster is just a fun avenue
to explore. Oh sure, sure, Like there are also stories
that are clearly fictional stories about were wolves, like werewolf
flore fiction poems things like that from around this era
and the medieval period that it's also like a belt
or a skin like have some similar things to like

(14:34):
these werewolf stories from contemporary with the witch trials. So
it's like, is this sort of just a thing that
was drawn from existing ideas or not. But I also
liked how sometimes it's an ointment or an ungwent, and
either the devil gave you the ungwent or like the

(14:56):
devil gave you the recipe so you could go make
your own unguent to become a wolf. I feel like
there is so much money to be made with a
skin care line called the Devil's ungwent. Yeah, whoever among
you is a modern apothecary of skincare elixers, run with

(15:19):
this all Polly has given you the idea, will buy
the entire line? Yeah. I also it caused me to
have various thoughts about the modern world that we're living
in now and having moved from print culture into online culture,

(15:39):
and how easy it is for misinformation to spread and
feed on each other into a cycle that the thing
that is spreading with the misinformation then informs things that happen,
and then that feeds back into the misinformation cycle, like
as evidence. Yeah, I mean, and it also I feel

(16:01):
like we are experiencing the parallels of what has come
up in a couple of recent episodes with times of
great upheaval also being times when people cling to ideas
of mysticism, for you know, magic being a thing, And

(16:22):
I feel like we're in a little bit of that
right now. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I did not choose
this episode because of current parallels. I chose it because
of were wolves. But there swear wolves. That's maybe why
I don't like wear wolves. If they don't swear so much. Yeah,

(16:42):
I'm here for the Rugaroo and the rest, see ya.
I was telling Patrick what I was working on, and
he was like, oh, is it a were wolf or
is it a lugaro? And I was like, a lugaru
is just a French werewolf. Yeah, and he was thinking,
I don't remember which video game he was specifically referencing,

(17:03):
but like there is some video game where like a
were wolf is one tier of enemy and a lugaroo
is like a more difficult version of the werewolf enemy.
It's got more hit points, got to take more damage.
And then there's the Cajun ruguru that will just bring
you fabulous food. Yeah. Did you went to the Rugaroo

(17:24):
Festival that time? Didn't? I haven't, Okay, I keep trying
to go and the timing never works out. I thought
you did get to go one time. I made up
a fiction in my head where you got to do
this thing that you have wanted to do one year.
It's gonna work for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway,

(17:44):
that's our wandering discourse about were wolves and the Rugaroo Festival.
Whatever's happening on your weekend. I hope it's great. I
hope if there is a strange werewolf running around your
town that it's just a p in an outfit having
a good time, not harming anybody in any way. We

(18:06):
will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will
have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.