Inside the Legend : full moon
Inside the Legend: Full Moon
Supernatural: The Full Moon
Premise: This fanfic teleplay acted as a prequel to the series. Dean hunts werewolves. Sam’s dreams of Jessica emerge. And John Winchester hunts the Woman in White.
WEREWOLVES
In mythology, werewolves are entities that are human but shape shift into wolf form during lunar timeframes. This phenomenon is also known as lycanthropy, from the Greek lyoki, “wolf,” and athropos, “man.” The change from man to wolf is held possible by witchcraft or magic, and can be voluntary or forced by certain cycles of the moon and certain sounds (such as howling).
The Pages of Shades: Werewolves
Bloody Disgusting
HOW TO BECOME A WEREWOLF
There are many different ways to become a werewolf. Such as through black magic, pacts with the devil, curses, incantations, and infection. Lycanthropic literature of the past is filled with such eerie chants as that found in THE FULL MOON. The chant is delivered in desolate locations, sometimes from within the perimeters of mysterious circles scratched onto the ground and generally beneath the ghostly light of a full moon.
HOW TO KILL A WEREWOLF
In some folklore Werewolves are immune to aging and most physical diseases. Contrary to popular belief, there are other ways to kill a werewolf. The most common second method of killing a werewolf is by inflecting a wound that destroys the heart or the brain. Or by any form of death that causes brain or heart damage (such as hanging or other oxygen-deprivation methods).
IS THERE A CURE?
There are many cures to lycanthropy found from many legends. In many German legends the cure is an “exorcism” that involves a carved circle, candles, mixing ingredients, and the repetition of the words “Foul spirit release this persons' soul, return to the great unknown!”
Another popular means of protection is water. This can be based upon the relation of lycanthropy and hydrophobia, since a real canid who is affected by this disease fears water. Thus the drinking of salt water and splashing the werewolf with holy water is known to get rid of the curse.
The other possible methods of curing lycanthropy include: drawing 3 drops of blood, addressing the werewolf three times with a Christian name, and saluting the werewolf with the sign of the cross.
PETER STUBBE: THE FIRST WEREWOLF
“When he was 12 he sold his soul to the devil. He made a pact that he would recruit “lost wanderers,” and in return he would be granted with the powers of a wolf.”
Werewolf legend originated from the countryside around German town Colongne and Bedburg in 1591. At that time Europe was under the dark shadow of ignorance and superstitions. Towns were underdeveloped and people lived near woods. A few people cornered a wolf and set their dogs upon it. They attacked it with sharp sticks and spears. Surprisingly the ferocious wolf did not run away; it stood up and turned into a middle-aged man. They could recognize the wolf shaped man; he was Peter Stubbe of the same village. This Peter Stubbe was the first werewolf mankind has ever faced with.
He had started to practice sorcery when he was only 12 and was so obsessed with it that he even had tried to make a pact with the Devil. Wearing a magic girdle he started to attack his enemies, real or imaginary, for revenge. After several months, he took the guise of a wolf and continued his evil with more brutality. In the wolf form he used to tear up victims’ throats and suck warm blood. Gradually his thirst for blood grew and he roamed around fields in search of prey. The savagery of his crimes was beyond imagination. Stubbe committed the most gruesome crime upon his own son. He took his son to a nearby forest, cracked the poor child’s skull and ate brain.
No punishment could match the magnitude of Stubbe’s crime. He was put on the torture wheel, where he confessed 16 murders including two pregnant women and thirteen children, and his flesh was pulled off with red-hot pincer. His arms and legs were broken, and finally he was decapitated. His carcass was burned to ashes. As accessories to his misdeeds, his daughter and mistress were also burnt alive.
The words of Stubbe’s trial and execution spread across the lands. His brutality, their ways and atrocity were beyond human experience. His ferocity was readily related with the behavior of wolf. People started to believe that such creatures with the shadow of wolves were living among them. They named them Werewolves.
The Otherworld: Peter Stubbe
PSYCHOLOGY AND THE WOLVES (A SCIENTIFIC LOOK)
A few people searched for a better explanation for all of these werewolves than "the Devil made me do it." Hundreds of years earlier - in seventh century Alexandria, Egypt, to be precise - Paulus Aegineta included "melancholic lycanthropia" in his medical encyclopedia that described animal transformation as a malfunction of the brain, upsets in the humoural balances and/or brought about by the use of hallucinogenic drugs. This was all well and good in explaining why people might think that they were werewolves, but was a poor explanation as to where the real werewolves came from.
Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) and the aforementioned Reginald Scott both wrote lengthy discussions of lycanthropy as a non-demonic form of madness or disease, but it was the writings of Johann Weyer that were the real turning point in ending the witch trials. Weyer, regarded by many as the father of modern psychiatry, argued that most so-called witches (and werewolves) were the result of psychological and medical conditions rather than sorcery. He probably would have been tried as a witch himself had he not had friends in high places such as the King of France. Weyer protested that people would "confess many things ... which are just fables, trifles, lies, which are not and never were, nor could be according to the nature of things" under torture.
Sigmund Freud considered Weyer's writings among the 10 most significant ever published and greatly influenced his own lycanthropic "wolf man" paper of 1914. To this day, studies of lycanthropy appear in psychiatric journals, often as a specific manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia. Jungian psychology emphasized the totemic strength brought about with animal identification, as described earlier with primitive cultures.
The truth is that change probably only occured in the subject's mind. People who testified that they had turned themselves into wolves often used a salve that they rubbed on their bodies to make the transformation. This salve, rather than having the capability to change the physical shape of the person, was a hallucinogenic (often containing the plants belladonna or nightshade) This tricked the subject's mind into thinking he'd been changed while he actually lay in a coma or ran on a drug-induced killing spree. In 1598, when authorities found Jacques Roulet crouched over the body of a mutilated and dead teenager, he testified that he'd rubbed his body with an ointment which changed him and he'd done the crime as a werewolf.
Some werewolf hallucinations may have been accidentally inflicted. The diet of medieval peasants often included bread infected with the Ergot fungus. Chemicals in the fungus are similar to LysergicAcid Diethylamide (LSD) which is a powerful hallucinogenic and psychoactive drug. People who ingest food contaminated with Ergot report having horrible visions that include being attacked by, or turning into, vicious animals.
Mental illness may also account for some people who reported changing into werewolves. One famous case from 1589 involved a man named Stubbe Peeter. Peeter was convicted of a series of murders and cannibalism. He claimed he'd made a pact with Satan and was given a girdle that turned him into a wolf. Peeter was probably what we would consider a mentally-ill serial killer today, but in the days before modern psychology his story of transformation and satanic power might have been very believable. The psychological condition of believing you are a werewolf is known as lycanthropy.
It is possible that other medical conditions also aided the werewolf legend. Individuals that suffer from the genetic disorder known as hypertrichosis or other similar diseases may grow hair all over their bodies, especially on the upper torso and face. Someone not knowing about this condition might easily mistake such an affected individual for a werewolf.
Fear of werewolves was very real in the middle ages. Records show that in France alone between the years of 1520 and 1630 over 30,000 people were suspected of being werewolves. Like in the more familiar witch trials, many people found themselves accused of being werewolves, then investigated and even tortured into confession.
A Psychological look
MARK OF THE BEAST ON CULTURE
“It’s perfect just the way it is. The Universal monster tradition has so robbed people of the very notion of werewolves’ existence that they disregard the notion that we may very well exist.”
Werewolves in fiction can have many different characteristics. While many stories describe lycanthropy as a disease or curse, and werewolves as killers, others treat werewolves as a fantasy race.
Werewolf fiction is dominated by portrayals of men cursed to become wolves or wolfmen during the full moon. The process of transmogrification is portrayed in many films and works of literature to be painful. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction regardless of the moral character of the person when human. The form a werewolf takes is not always an ordinary wolf, but is often anthropomorphic or may be otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Many modern werewolves are also supposedly immune to damage caused by ordinary weapons, being vulnerable only to silver objects (usually a bullet or blade). Current-day werewolf fiction almost exclusively involve lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like a disease by the bite of another werewolf.
Werewolves have been used in many movies, short stories, and novels, with varying degrees of success. The first feature film to use an anthropomorphic werewolf was WEREWOLF OF LONDON in 1935, not to be confused with the 1981 film of a similar title, establishing the canon that the werewolf always kills what he loves most. The main werewolf of this film was a dapper London scientist who retained some of his style and most of his human features after his transformation. The genre was also popularized by the classic UNIVERSAL STUDIOS movie THE WOLF MAN (1941), starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the werewolf Larry Talbot. This movie contained the now-famous rhyme: "Even a man who is pure in heart / And says his prayers at night / May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms / And the autumn moon is bright." This movie is often credited with originating several aspects of the legend which differ from traditional folklore (including invulnerability to non-silver weapons, contagiousness, and association with the moon).
Werewolves: A cultural look
Werewolf Legends from Germany
DON’T GO TO BRAY ROAD ALONE
“Great, rule number one of hunting- don’t go to the werewolf capitol of the United States alone.”
The state of Wisconsin is oddly no stranger to werewolf sightings and encounters. Although it seems impossible that a mythical creature like a werewolf could stalk the nation’s Heartland, a number of bizarre encounters in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s leaves us pondering this very idea. There had already been encounters with what some believed were werewolves in Wisconsin in 1936, 1964 and 1972 respectively, but there had been nothing like the reports that came out of the area near Delavan, starting in 1989. Some thought it a deformed animal; others a werewolf. It chased cars and children and haunted the nightmares of a community. The appearance of a wolf-like creature, which quickly became a werewolf in the minds of many, electrified the inhabitants of Elkhorn in late 1991. Soon this potent story spread across the world, and reporters flocked to Elkhorn.
Weird Wisconsin: Bray Road
The Bray Road Beast
Werewolves in Wisconsin
Are there werewolves in Wisconsin?
Weird US: The Beast of Bray Road
VAN HELSING
“You seriously think you can kill me. Van Helsing tried. He failed. I doubt you could do any better…”
Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character in the novel Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker. He is a Dutch doctor, of advanced age and a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc., etc.", but is best known as a vampire hunter. As a character, Van Helsing has been adapted and changed around in various ways. In some adaptations, such as the more recent film VAN HELSING, Helsing is presented as a monster hunter.
KILLER IN THE BACK SEAT
The urban legend of the killer in the back seat has been around since 1967. It’s possible that the legend was spawned from a true crime event from 1964. Research shows that one true case of "The Killer in the Backseat" did occur in 1964 in New York City, when an escaped murderer hid in the backseat of a car. The car, ironically, belonged to a police detective who shot the man. The legend tells of a unknowing female driver that is viscously attacked and murdered by a killer sitting in the backseat of her car. As in all "murdering madmen" legends, the intended victim is female, and both the evil fiend and the rescuer are male. Both male figures are seen as powerful: the fiend for his evilness and mad intent, the rescuer for his coolness in knowing what to do and his ease in dispatching the fiend.
THE SANDMAN
“You, me and the Sandman sounds like a threesome.”
Traditionally the Sandman is a character in many children's stories, invoked to help (or lull) children to sleep. He is said to sprinkle sand or dust on or into the eyes of the child at night to bring on dreams and sleep. The grit or 'sleep' in ones eyes upon waking is supposed to be the result of the Sandman's work the previous evening.
E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote an inverse depiction of the lovable character in a story called Der Sandmann, which showed how sinister such a character could be made. According to the protagonist's nurse, he threw sand in the eyes of children who wouldn't sleep, with the result of those eyes falling out and being collected by the Sandman, who then takes the eyes to his iron nest on the moon, and uses them to feed his children. The protagonist of the story grows to associate this nightmarish creature with the genuinely sinister figure of his father's associate Coppelius.
THE LIZARD MAN
The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp, or 'The Lizard Man Of Lee County', is a humanoid creature rumored to inhabit the swampy areas of Lee County, South Carolina.
It was first reported by 17 year old Christopher Davis on June 29, 1988, around the hours of 2 AM. He was driving home from work, taking a road that borders Scape Ore Swamp, when his tire blew out, forcing him to stop. While Davis was changing the tire, he claimed to have heard a loud thump from a field across the road. He would later say to Associated Press news services:
“I looked back and saw something running across the field towards me. It was about 25 yards away and I saw red eyes glowing. I ran into the car and as I locked it, the thing grabbed the door handle. I could see him from the neck down - the three big fingers, long black nails and green rough skin. It was strong and angry. I looked in my mirror and saw a blur of green running. I could see his toes and then he jumped on the roof of my car. I thought I heard a grunt and then I could see his fingers through the front windshield, where they curled around on the roof. I sped up and swerved to shake the creature off.”
Davis would later give a clearer physical description of the creature as being around seven feet tall with the same details as above.
Davis arrived home in a panicked state, waking up his parents. Trying to figure out what had happened, his father went out to look at the car. There were scratches around the door handle and the side-view mirror had been twisted badly. On the top of the car was a series of deep scratches and grooves.
This report sparked off a rush of Lizard Man reports that lasted all summer and encompassed not just Scape Ore Swamp and Bishopville, South Carolina where the original report was made, but the whole of Lee County. At the height of the Lizard Man scare, police were receiving so many calls about the Lizard Man that people with more immediate problems could not get through, and a separate Lizard Man Hotline had to be established.
THE FULL MOON: FOLLOW THE MARK OF THE BEAST
Werewolves: The myths and the truths
Werewolves
Cursed
Werewolves: Crime Library
Dances with werewolves
Various werewolf links
source:
http://www.supernatural.tv/index.html
http://www.supernatural.tv/reviews/legends/fullmoon.htm
http://www.supernatural.tv/reviews/legends/index.htm