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Lycanthropic Howls
Is believing in the unbelievable so difficult for the human mind, or is it merely conditioning that has led us down a path of disbelief. With the advance of technology and the further exploration of science as a means of explanation, many have left behind the myths and legends that they once held onto. Even the stories of monsters, demons, and ghosts, has paled with the advance of science. We are no longer scared by the threat of vampires and werewolves stealing us away into the night, and our hearts seldom pound with fear at the mention of a demonic possession. Our fears have become more tangible in that of being shot on the street or brutally assaulted not by a monster but by one of our own. But perhaps we should still fear the things that go bump in the night, for they have a very long history and a very credible history at that.
When one thinks of werewolves, images of slavering monsters creeping through foggy underbrush or leaping out and howling at the moon before they leap at their human victim come to mind. For most the first encounters with werewolves began back in 1941 when the movie The Wolf Man debuted. Lon Chaney Jr. played the part of a simple man who was forever cursed to change beneath the light of the full moon when he was bitten by a werewolf (Bella Lugosi) while out on a nightly stroll.
Since that time the image of the werewolf has grown considerably and changed with the passing years, but the werewolf is not merely a creature of Hollywood. Even as vampires gained their notoriety from the silver screen's production of Dracula, the werewolf too became famous but what was the birth place of the werewolf? Unlike Dracula and vampires there was no evil lord that reveled in blood shed, or was there?
Jean Grenier was one of the first recorded trial of what some claimed was a werewolf. He was born in France in the seventeenth century and was perhaps the most famous killer of his time. In fact today he would have been thought of as a serial killer because he preyed upon the same types of victims. He preyed on young women and he did not rape them or molest them but he ravaged them like a beast and devoured them. He believed he was a werewolf and was transformed as such by donning a wolf's skin and rubbing various salves and ointments upon his flesh. Jean claimed until the day he died that he was in fact a werewolf but no one was able to prove it, then again they were unable to disprove it as well. So was Jean a werewolf? Perhaps but if so he was a very poor example of one but then again what kind of example did Vlad the Impaler set for vampires?
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Copyright © 2000-2004
LV426, All Rights Reserved
(Information provided by Time Life Books:Mysteries of the Unknown, Transformations 1989, Baring-Gould: The book of Werewolves,Cohen, Daniel: Werewolves,Daniel Cohen Douglas, Adam: Beast Within, Adam, Douglas Otten, Charlotte: Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves In Western Culture, Pijoan, Teresa: White Wolf Woman and other native America transformation myths.
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