Poltergeist

  Poltergeists are paranormal physical phenomenon traditionally attributed to the presence of ghosts. Poltergeist activities have been reported in many countries, and chronicled by occult writers such as A. R. G. Owen and Colin Wilson. The Epworth Poltergeist case is one of the best-documented cases of poltergeist activity.

Etymology

From German poltern, meaning to rumble or make noise, and Geist, meaning "ghost", "spirit", or "embodiment" denotes a spirit or ghost that manifests itself by moving and influencing objects.

History/Beliefs

  Poltergeist activity has occurred globally since ancient times and was blamed on the Devil, demons, witches, and ghosts of the dead. The development and increase of psychical research during the late 19th and early 20th centuries helped confirm the conviction that poltergeist activity was genuine. Among the early investigators were two founders of the Society for Psychical Research, Sir William Barrett and Fredric W. H. Meyers. Meyers believed in the genuineness of poltergeist activity and that it was distinguishable from ghost hauntings.

  In the 1930s the psychologist and parapsychologist Nandor Fodor advanced the theory that some poltergeist disturbances were caused not by spirits but by human agents suffering from intense repressed anger, hostility, and sexual tension. Fodor successfully demonstrated his theory in several cases, including the most famous "Thormton Heath Poltergeist" in England, which he investigated in 1938. The case involved a woman whose repressions caused a poltergeist outbreak and apparently a vampire attack. The Spiritualists severely criticized Fodor, but he won a libel suit against a Spiritualist newspaper.

  William Roll, project director of the Psychical Research Foundation in Durham, North Carolina, further explored this psychological dysfunction theory. Starting in the 1960s, Roll studied 116 written reports of poltergeist cases spanning over four centuries in more one hundred countries. Roll identified patterns that he labeled "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" (RSPK), which are inexplicable, spontaneous physical effects. Generally, he discovered, the most common agent was a child or teenager whose unwitting PK was a way of expressing hostility without the fear of punishment. In this case, those subjects are mainly in puberty and girls rather than boys. The individual was not aware of being the cause of such disturbances, but was, at the same time, secretly or openly please that they occurred.

Description

  Initially meaning “noisy ghosts”, the term in its modern definition is now associated with physical paranormal activity inside homes such as mysterious noisy disturbances or moving, misplacing of objects. Included in the most common types of poltergeist activities are the rains of stones and other small objects; moving or throwing of objects, including large pieces of furniture; voices, loud noises and shrieks; odors which sources cannot be found (i.e. pipe tobacco when no one smokes).

  Poltergeists are known to have caused interference in telephones and electronic equipment, and turning lights and appliances on and off. The poltergeist might even become a full bodied or partial bodied apparition. Some poltergeists are said to pinch, bite, hit, and sexually attack the living.

Behavior

  Generally poltergeist activity starts and stops abruptly. The duration of it may extend over several hours to several months; however, some cases have been reported to last over several years. The activity almost always occurs at night when someone is presence. Typically this is the "agent," an individual who seems to serve as a focus or magnet for the activity. The agent is usually female and under the age of twenty.

Differences Between Poltergeist Activity and Hauntings

• Hauntings are spirits of deceased human beings appearing frequently in certain places. Poltergeists may not be spirits at all. Some theories are that poltergeists are mass forms of energy that a living person is unknowingly controlling. In some cases extreme poltergeists activity has been linked to demons. Hauntings are usually related to a specific place or tragic way of death.

• The differences between Poltergeist activity and a Haunting can be hard to distinguish. In the early stages of a poltergeist is may be impossible. Haunts and poltergeists do share basic aspects, (apparitions, strange noises, odors, moving or disappearing objects, etc.).

• There are also some points that make them very different: Poltergeists however, are usually linked directly to a specific person or object. Hauntings are appearances of ghost(s) in areas known to the deceased before their deaths. Poltergeists can be triggered by a living person's trauma in any area, at any time. Haunting activities are continuous over time, concentrated in the same area..

• Poltergeists build up over time to a climax, then start over. They can travel anywhere. Haunting are not violent. Most poltergeists nearing the climax of their energy can become dangerous to the living. Inflicting both mental and physical terror in extreme cases. If you happen to meet with one of this kind, deal with it with the utmost care.

Features

  In the late 1970s parapsychologists Alan Gauld and A. D. Cornell did a computer analysis of those cases collected since 1800 to that time. They identified sixty-three general characteristics, which include the following: 64 percent involved the movement of small objects; 58 percent were most active at night; 48 percent featured raps; 36 percent involved movement of large objects; 24 percent lasted longer than one year; 16 percent featured communication between the poltergeist and agent; 12 percent involved the opening and shutting of doors and windows. The Gauld-Cornell analysis found only 9 percent of the cases attributed to demons, 7 percent to witches, and 2 percent to spirits of the dead.

Story of the Rosenheim Poltergeist

  The events took place in a city called Rosenheim in southern Bavaria, more specifically in office of lawyer Sigmund Adam. Starting in 1967 strange phenomena began in the office - the lights would turn themselves off and on again, the phones were ringing without anybody apparently calling (a silent caller), photocopiers spilled their copier fluid, and desk drawers would open without being touched. The Deutsche Post installed instruments that recorded numerous phone calls that were never made. Within five weeks the instruments recorded roughly 600 calls to the speaking clock (number 0119 in Germany) even though all the phones in the office were disabled and only Adam himself had the key required to enable them. In one 15 minute period the speaking clock had been called 46 times. In October 1967 all light bulbs went out with a huge bang.

  The police, the electric company and others were trying to find an explanation for all this for weeks until they gave up with no useful explanation. A team of scientists, including the renowned parapsychologist Hans Bender and two Max Planck Institute physicists began investigating the case. After installing cameras and voice recorders they were able to discover that the infestations only happened when 19-year old Annemarie Schneider (a recently employed secretary) was present. Bender was able to document on video how the lights immediately started to flicker once she entered the office. It was claimed that a lamp shade would swing violently when Ms Schneider walked beneath it. After questioning Ms Schneider, they found out that she had just had a serious personal relationship-trauma. It had been noted that Ms Schneider also suffered from non-specific neuroses. Once the secretary was sent on vacation the poltergeist activity stopped. Annemarie Schneider was dismissed from the company when the infestations began anew after she had returned from her vacation. There are no records of any further infestations after that.

  The Rosenheim Poltergeist is very contested to this very day. While some claim that this is essential proof for the existence of paranormal activity critics contest that notion and claim it was a set-up and faked or attention seeking from the vulnerable young Ms Schneider. On the claims of fakery we can observe that many of the events that appear unexplainable are far from paranormal. For instance, the incident of all the lights blowing may suffer from some degree of exaggeration and is hardly unusual. Lights can and do fail, often in large numbers if there is any surge in the electricity supply, or a difficult to spot short circuit. Desk drawers often appear to roll out on their own, especially when the desk is sat on imperfect flooring. Photocopiers are hardly unknown to be unreliable, one of many examples of possible confirmation bias in this case. Also, we only have Adam's word that he held the only key to the phone system. Even if Adam believed that to be true, a trouble maker in the office (potentially the centre of the disturbances, Ms Schneider) may have made a surreptitious copy. We also cannot rule out systemic faults with the phone system or the local exchange, despite investigations conducted at the time in an attempt to do so. Unfortunately, none of the available video evidence shows anything which cannot be explained through bad wiring or mischievous pranksters.

Theories and analysis

Mischievous spirits

  A pamphlet printed in London in 1698 by Mr. Ricard Chamberlain provides an account of a poltergeist-type haunting that had occurred some years before. Two copies of the pamphlet exist in the British Museum called: "Lithobolia, or stone throwing Devil. Being an Exact and True account (by way of Journal) of the various actions of infernal Spirits or (Devils Incarnate) Witches or both: and the great Disturbance and Amazement they gave to George Walton's family at a place called Great Island in the province of New Hampshire in New England, chiefly in throwing about (by an Invisible hand) Stones, Bricks, and Brick-Bats of all sizes, with several other things, as Hammers, Mauls, Iron-Crows, Spits, and other Utensils, as came into their Hellish minds, and this for space of a quarter of a year...."

Elementals

  Poltergeists might simply exist, like the "elementals" described by occultists. Practitioners of astral projection have reported the existence of unfriendly astral life forms, which Robert Bruce called "negs" (whom we might also identify with elementals). If they exist, these may well have the ability to affect the physical world.

Physical forces

  Some scientists and skeptics propose that all poltergeist activity that they can't trace to fraud has a physical explanation such as static electricity, electromagnetic fields, ultra-, and infrasound and/or ionized air. In some cases, such as the Rosenheim poltergeist case, the physicist F. Karger from the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik and G. Zicha from the Technical University of Munich found none of these effects present and psi proponents claim that no evidence of fraud was ever found, even after a sustained investigation from the police force and CID, though criminologist Herbert Schäfer quotes an unnamed detective watching the agent pushing a lamp when she thought nobody was looking. However, whether this is true or not, police officers did sign statements that they had witnessed the phenomena.

  John Hutchinson has claimed that he has created poltergeist effects in his laboratory. Also worth noting is that scientist David Turner proposes that poltergeists and ball lightning may be linked phenomena. Parapsychologists William G. Roll and Dean Radin, physicist Hal Puthoff and head of electrical engineering at Duke University who specializes in electromagnetic field phenomena, claim that poltergeist phenomena [the movement of objects at least] could be caused by anomalies in the zero-point field, [3] this is outlined in the above article and in Roll's book Unleashed and mention is made of it in a chapter of Dean Radin's book Entangled Minds. The basic theory is that poltergeist movements are repulsive versions of the casimir effect that can put pressures on objects. Thus, anomalies in this field could conceivably move objects. This theory has also been mentioned in the current book on paranormal phenomena Science by Marie D. Jones.

Agent-driven

  Poltergeist activity tends to occur around a single person called an agent or a focus. Foci are often, but not limited to, pubescent children. Almost seventy years of research by the Rhine Research Center in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, has led to the hypothesis among parapsychologists that the "poltergeist effect" is a form of psychokinesis generated by a living human mind (that of the agent). According to researchers at the Rhine Center, the "poltergeist effect" is the outward manifestation of psychological trauma.
Other psychologists have also investigated agents finding that those in poor mental and physical health are vulnerable to stress. Patient having unresolved emotional tensions have been associated with houses where poltergeist activity occurred. When studying the personalities of agents psychologists found anxiety reactions, conversion hysteria, phobias, mania, obsessions, dissociative reactions, and schizophrenia. In some cases therapy eliminated the poltergeist activity.
  However, the psychological dysfunction theory has been disputed by other researchers, including Gauld and Cornell who said the psychological tests employed were invalid. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson proposed that spirits of the dead may account for more poltergeist activity than realized. In his study of a number of cases attributed to agents and to spirits of the dead, Stevenson noted significance differences. The phenomena in living agent cases was without purpose and often violent, while cases involving spirits of the dead featured intelligent communication, purposeful movement of objects, and little violence.
  Poltergeist activity is often found in correlation with psychic adolescent children who are finding their journey into adulthood difficult or fearing the responsibilities expected of them. The more sensitive the child, the more adverse is the spirit's reaction to the fear being transferred, often leading to objects being moved or hurled across the room or ectoplasm being ejected by the spirit. The spirit rejecting or de-toxing itself of the fear it's been presented with causes such activity.

Self-delusion and hoaxes

  Skeptics think that the phenomena are hoaxes perpetrated by the agent. Indeed, some poltergeist agents have been caught by investigators in the act of throwing objects. Skeptics maintain that parapsychologists are especially easy to fool when they think that many occurrences are real and discount the hoax hypothesis from the outset. Even after witnessing first hand an agent throwing objects, psi-believing parapsychologists rationalize the fact away by assuming that the agents are only cheating when caught cheating, and when you do not catch them, the phenomenon is genuine. One reason given is that the agents often fake phenomena when the investigation coincides with a period of time where there appears to be little or no 'genuine' phenomena occurring.

(A poltergeist phenomenon
 witnessed by Father Tinel in 1850 in Cideville, France)

Famous poltergeist infestations

  Although poltergeist stories date back to the first century, most evidence to support the existence of poltergeists is anecdotal. Indeed, many of the stories below have several versions and/or inconsistencies; however there are a few that do not, for example, the Miami poltergeist has event records signed by all witnesses as to the way things happened. These witnesses include police officers, a skeptical magician, and workers at the warehouse.

• An "evil spirit" threw stones and made the walls shake in a small farmhouse. This was the first recorded poltergeist case. (858)
• Drummer of Tedworth (1661).
• The "Wizard", Livingston, West Virginia (1797).
• The Bell Witch (1817).
• The Haunting of The Fox sisters (1848) - arguably one of the most famous, because it started the Spiritualism movement.
• Hopfgarten near Weimar (1921).
• Eleonore Zugun - The Romanian 'Poltergeist Girl' (1926).
• The Borley Rectory phenomena (1929).
• The Rosenheim Poltergeist (1967).
• The Black Monk of Pontefract
• The Enfield Poltergeist (1977).
• The Miami Poltergeist, a poltergeist witnessed by police and a skeptical magician who did not believe it was a ghost, but admitted he witnessed phenomena he could not explain. Many others witnessed phenomena including reporters, parapsychologists, and workers at the warehouse.
• The Mackenzie Poltergeist (fairly recent) - Famed for haunting Greyfriars church yard, Edinburgh, UK.
• The Canneto di Caronia fires poltergeist (fairly recent (2004-2005)) - Famed for defying all attempts at a scientific explanation, Sicily, Italy.
• The Entity Case allegedly involved a single mother of three named Carla Moran who was being repeatedly raped by an invisible entity and its two helpers over the course of several years.
• The case of Tina Resch, widely reported in the media in 1984.
• A recent case in Barnsley near Sheffield in England, where poltergeist effects were witnessed by the police force.
• In Denver, Colorado there have been several reports of unknown forces positioning toys, furniture, and objects in patterns and strange positions.
• The Thornton Road poltergeist of Birmingham (1981).

Art/Fiction

• Both the name and concept of the poltergeist became famous to modern audiences in the Poltergeist movies and the subsequent TV series Poltergeist: The Legacy. The first Poltergeist movie actually gave an excellent depiction (during the first half of the film) of a "typical" poltergeist infestation, right down to the depiction of the focus as a prepubescent girl.

• A parody on the word Poltergiest, and moreover the movie titles of the Poltergiest series, were Poultrygiest and Poultrygiest Too. The names of two levels in Earthworm Jim 3D

• Poltergeist is Monster in My Pocket #117. It resembles the long-limbed, yellow creature outside the hall door glimpsed briefly in the 1982 film.

• Poltergeists are the subject of some episodes of The X-Files.

• Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas encounters many poltergeists in his adventures. Most notably, the ghost of a killer, Odd, was tracking and a nameless ghost with a buzz cut who wrecks the Panamint Casino when Datura verbally abuses and belittles the ghost of an Indian waitress.

• There is a poltergeist named Peeves in the Harry Potter books. Peeves, however, does not conform to the classic definition of a poltergeist. The fact that he manifests visually would seem to indicate that he is something similar to a ghost, though J.K. Rowling has stated that a poltergeist is not the ghost of any person who has ever lived. Perhaps she intended Peeves to be more of a literal translation of the word poltergeist, because Peeves is quite noisy and mischievous. However, it is also possible that Harry and other students can perceive Peeves because they are wizards, and that he would be still invisible to Muggles. It is also interesting to note that Peeves appears in colour, where the other ghosts at the school appear as white, misty figures.

• The Terry Pratchett Discworld novel A Hat Full of Sky features an "ondageist" named Oswald. This is the opposite of a poltergeist: a spirit obsessed with cleaning and tidying.

• In the board game Atmosfear, a playable character is Hellin the poltergeist.

• Some Castlevania games feature a few poltergeist phenomena. For example, certain furniture may suddenly spring to life and attack (some of the furniture are named Ouija Table). Another case is the enemy Alastor, where a giant sword floats around in the air, wielded by an occasionally visible, invulnerable spirit. In some disputed game canon, it is said that a yet-unseen character called the Poltergeist King takes charge of the Belmont family weapons between quests.

• The popular Ju-on series of horror films in Japan and the Americanized version The Grudge, feature poltergeist elements including the replaying of the tragedy and the violent nature of the ghosts.

• The comic Fetus-X includes a fork-throwing poltergeist cheerleader and attempts to bring her back from the dead.

• The Touhou Project danmaku game Perfect Cherry Blossom features three poltergeist, the Prismriver Sisters, who play on musical instruments without even touching them.

• In 2006 the TV show Family Guy had an episode named Petergeist, where Peter's house becomes the center for a poltergeist.

• A The Far Side strip describes Poultrygeists, poltergeist-like activity in chickens. Similarly, a Dilbert strip features Upholsterygeists, furniture possessing spirits that can only be expelled with work-out tapes (exercists).

References

• 1. Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (1991). Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mystical & Unexplained. New York: Gramercy Books. ISBN 0-517-16278-4. Page 456: (entry for Poltergeist) "...typically an agent, an individual who seems to act as a focus or magnet for the activity. The agent is a factor in most cases, both those that seem paranormal or that may be caused by human PK."
• 2. Turner thinks ball lightning might cause the spooky movement of objects blamed on "poltergeists".' in [1]
• 3. Roll, W. Poltergeists, Electromagnetism and Consciousness PDF at [http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/articles/pdf/17.1_roll.pdf,
• 4. Jones, Marie D. PSIence: How New Discoveries in Quantum Physics and New Science May Explain the Existence of Paranormal Phenomena (New Page Books, 2006)

5. Fairley, John; Welfare, Simon (1984). Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0002166798. Pages 28-31

WEREWOLF/LYNCANTHROPE

  A werewolf (Or Lycanthrope) in folklore and mythology is a person who shapeshifts into a wolf, either purposely, by using magic, or after being placed under a curse. The medieval chronicler Gervase of Tilbury associated the transformation with the appearance of the full moon, but this concept was rarely associated with the werewolf until the idea was picked up by modern fiction writers. Most modern references agree that a werewolf can be killed if shot by a silver bullet, although this is more a reflection of fiction's influence than an authentic feature of the folk legends. Werewolves are sometimes held to become vampires after death.

History of the werewolf

  Many European countries and cultures have stories of werewolves, including France (loup-garou), Greece (lycanthropos), Spain (hombre lobo), Bulgaria (varkolak, vulkodlak), Czech Republic (vlkodlak), Serbia (vukodlak), Russia (oboroten' , vurdalak), Ukraine (vovkulak(a),vovkun,pereverten' ), Croatia (vukodlak),Poland(wilkołak), Romania (vârcolac), Scotland(werewolf, wulver), England (werwolf), Ireland (faoladh or conriocht), Germany (Werwolf), Denmark/Sweden (Varulv), Galicia, Portugal (lobisón, lobisomem), Lithuania (vilkolakis and vilkatlakis), Latvia (vilkatis and vilkacis), Estonia (libahunt), Finland (ihmissusi), Argentina(lobizón, hombre lobo) and Italy (lupo mannaro) . In northern Europe, there are also tales about people changing into bears.

• In France they actually had an encounter with were-wolves, or the Beast of Gevaudan in 1764. It got its first name from attacking a Shepard in the small town of Gevaudan. Because of all the sightings of the wolf there where werewolf trials held in order to wipe out the wolfs while they where still human. The king issued his best hunters to go out and kill it in 1764. But it kept coming back until 1767 when one hunter shot it with a silver bullet. After that France didn't have any more werewolf problems.
• In Norse mythology, the legends of berserkers may be a source of the werewolf myths.Berserks were vicious fighters, dressed in bear or wolf hides due to their preference to quick movement rather than tough armour; they were immune to pain and killed viciously in battle, like a wild animal. The berserkrs specifically associated with wolves were known as ulfheðnar (wolf-shirts).
• In Latvian mythology, the Vilkacis was a person changed into a wolf-like monster, though the Vilkacis was occasionally beneficial.

  A closely related set of myths are the skinwalkers. These myths probably have a common base in Proto-Indo-European society, where the class of young, unwed warriors were apparently associated with wolves.

• Shapeshifters similar to werewolves are common in myths from all over the world, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves.
• In Greek mythology the story of Lycaon supplies one of the earliest examples of a werewolf legend. According to one form of it Lycaon was transformed into a wolf as a result of eating human flesh; one of those who were present at periodical sacrifice on Mount Lycaon was said to suffer a similar fate.
• The Roman Pliny the Elder, quoting Euanthes, says that a man of Anthus' family was selected by lot and brought to a lake in Arcadia, where he hung his clothing on an ash tree and swam across. This resulted in his being transformed into a wolf, and he wandered in this shape nine years. Then, if he had attacked no human being, he was at liberty to swim back and resume his former shape. Probably the two stories are identical, though we hear nothing of participation in the Lycaean sacrifice by the descendant of Antaeus. Herodotus in his Histories tells that the Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of Scythia were annually transformed for a few days, and Virgil is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves. In the novel Satyricon, written about year 60 by Gaius Petronius, one of the characters recites a story about a man who turns into a wolf during a full moon.
• There are women, so the Armenian belief runs, who in consequence of deadly sins are condemned to pass seven years in the form of a wolf. A spirit comes to such a woman and brings her a wolf's skin. He orders her to put it on, and no sooner has she done this than the most frightful wolfish cravings make their appearance and soon get the upper hand. Her better nature conquered, she makes a meal of her own children, one by one, then of her relatives' children according to the degree of relationship, and finally the children of strangers begin to fall as prey to her. She wanders forth only at night, and doors and locks spring open at her approach. When morning draws near she returns to human form and removes her wolf skin. In these cases the transformation was involuntary or virtually so. But side by side with this belief in involuntary metamorphosis, we find the belief that human beings can change themselves into animals at will and then resume their own form.
• In the Volsungasaga of Norse mythology, the hero Sigmund and his son Sinfjötli spent some time wearing cursed wolf-skins, which transformed them into wolves.
• Belief in werewolves was so widespread that the Church made several attempts to eradicate it, including Canon episcopi (c.900) which required penance for admitting to the belief.
• France in particular seems to have been infested with werewolves during the 16th century, and the consequent trials were very numerous. In some of the cases those of the Gandillon family in the Jura, the tailor of Chalons and Roulet in Angers, all occurring in the year 1598; there was clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism, but none of association with wolves; in other cases, as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in 1573, there was clear evidence against some wolf, but none against the accused. Yet while this lycanthropy fever, both of suspectors and of suspected, was at its height, it was decided in the case of Jean Grenier at Bordeaux in 1603 that lycanthropy was nothing more than an insane delusion. From this time the loup-garou gradually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic, and fell back into his pre-Christian position of being simply a man-wolf-fiend. The lubins or lupins of France were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive loup-garous.
• In Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, according to the bishops Olaus Magnus and Majolus, the werwolves were in the 16th century far more destructive than true and natural wolves, and their heterodoxy appears from the Catholic bishops' assertion that they formed an accursed college of those desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law.
• In England, however, where at the beginning of the 17th century the punishment of witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by James I of England, the wolf had been so long extinct that that pious monarch was himself to regard warwoolfes as victims of delusion induced by a natural superabundance of melancholic. Only small creatures such as the cat, the hare and the weasel remained for the malignant sorcerer to transform himself into, but he was firmly believed to avail himself of these agencies.

  Many of the werewolves in European tradition were most innocent and God-fearing persons, who suffered through the witchcraft of others, or simply from an unhappy fate, and who as wolves behaved in a truly touching fashion, fawning upon and protecting their benefactors. In Marie de France's poem Bisclaveret (c. 1200), the nobleman Bisclavret, for reasons not described in the lai, had to transform into a wolf every week. When his treacherous wife stole his clothing, needed to restore his human form, he escaped the king's wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy, and accompanied the king thereafter. His behavior at court was so gentle and harmless than when his wife's new husband appeared at court and the king met Bisclavret's ex-wife near their home, his attacks on them were taken as revenge, and the truth was revealed. Others of this sort were Alphouns, the hero of William and the Werewolf (a.k.a. The Romance of William of Palerne, translated from French - Guillaume de Palerne - into English about 1350), and the numerous princes and princesses, knights and ladies, who appear temporarily in beast form in the German fairy tales, or Märchen. See Snow White and Rose Red, where the tame bear is really a bewitched prince, and The Golden Bird where the talking fox is also a man.

  Indeed, the power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but also to Christian saints. Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra (All angels, good and bad have the power of transmutating our bodies) was the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Patrick transformed Vereticus, a king in Wales, into a wolf; and St. Natalis cursed an illustrious Irish family with the result that each member of it was doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is still more direct, while in Russia, again, men are supposed to become werewolves through incurring the wrath of the devil.
  Some werewolf lore is based on documented events. The Beast of Gévaudan was a creature that reportedly terrorized the general area of the French former provinc] of Gévaudan, in today's Lozère département, in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France, in the general timeframe of 1764 to 1767. It was often described as a giant wolf and was said to attack livestock and humans indiscriminately.

Becoming a werewolf

  Historical legends describe a wide variety of methods for becoming a werewolf. One of the simplest was the removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolf skin, probably a substitute for the assumption of an entire animal skin which also is frequently described

• In other cases the body is rubbed with a magic salve
• To drink water out of the footprint of the animal in question or to drink from certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing metamorphosis.
• Olaus Magnus says that the Livonian werewolves were initiated by draining a cup of specially prepared beer and repeating a set formula.
• Ralston in his Songs of the Russian People gives the form of incantation still familiar in Russia. It is also said that the seventh son of the seventh son will become werewolf. Another is to be directly bitten by a werewolf, where the saliva enters the blood stream.
• In Galician, Portuguese and Brazilian folklore, it is the seventh of the sons (but sometimes the seventh child, a boy, after a line of six daughters) who becomes a werewolf. This belief was so extended in Northern Argentina (where it is called the lobizón), that seventh sons were abandoned, ceded in adoption or killed. A law from 1920 decreed that the President of Argentina is the godfather of every seventh son. Thus, the State gives him a gold medal in his baptism and a scholarship until his 21st year. This ended the abandonments, but it is still traditional that the President godfathers seventh sons.
• Various methods also existed for removing the beast-shape. The simplest was the act of the enchanter (operating either on himself or on a victim), and another was the removal of the animal belt or skin. To kneel in one spot for a hundred years, to be reproached with being a werewolf, to be saluted with the sign of the cross, or addressed thrice by baptismal name, to be struck three blows on the forehead with a knife, or to have at least three drops of blood drawn have also been mentioned as possible cures. Many European folk tales include throwing an iron object over or at the werewolf, to make it reveal its human form.
• In other cases the transformation was supposed to be accomplished by Satanic agency voluntarily submitted to, and that for the most loathsome ends, in particular for the gratification of a craving for human flesh. The werwolves, writes Richard Verstegan (Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1628), are certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certayne inchaunted girdle, does not onely unto the view of others seeme as wolves, but to their owne thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they weare the said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in wourrying and killing, and most of humane creatures.Such were the views about lycanthropy current throughout the continent of Europe when Verstegan wrote. The ointments and salves in question may have contained hallucinogenic agents.
• Becoming a werewolf simply by being bitten by another werewolf as a form of contagion is common in modern fiction, but rare in legend, in which werewolf attacks seldom left the victim alive to transform. This method is probably one of the worst and probably not true becuase it is pretty hard to believe.
• Not all the time does a person "become" a werewolf. The trait of a werewolf is probably a dominate trait and if it's there, then it's going to be spread throughout the family. The only way this can be plausable is if one or both of the parents have the trait in them. They could have this from family history, an unknown or known curse, or any other method of getting a werewolf gene, trait, curse...anything that cause man to change into beast.

Abilities of the Werewolf

  The werewolf is the perfect predator, a savage hybrid of human intelligence and animal cunning. The werewolf is extremely powerful, capable of easily ripping a man apart. The werewolf has incredible hunting and killing capabilities, possessing supernatural levels of strength, speed, agility, and endurance.

The werewolf has supernatural regenerative capabilities, allowing the creature to recover from even the most grievous wounds within minutes (although whether the werewolf is capable of regrowing a severed limb is unknown). Silver inhibits the healing process, but the werewolf will eventually recover. The claws and teeth are designed for shredding flesh and snapping bones. The creatures has enhanced senses of sight, smell, and hearing. It can see extremely well in the dark, and can track its prey for miles by scent alone. The werewolf is able to hear the beating heart of its prey. Basically, when a werewolf attacks, there is almost no chance of survival.
  The werewolf cannot be harmed by conventional weapons, as ordinary firearms and blades seem to do little more than annoy the beast. Only a silver bullet or blade can kill a werewolf.

Sightings

  The most recent werewolf report from western Europe.

Garibaldi del Trucco was the first one to encounter the ‘beast man’ while returning home late one evening from one of his interminable poker games. The moon was full. As he walked down the Corso degli Scalzi, only the splashing of the many aged and scarred fountains interrupted the profound stillness. In order to chase away apprehensive thoughts that dogged his solitary shadow, he whistled a loud cheerful aria. As he reached the crest of the Vicolo della Lumaca [Alley of the Snail], near the fountain of the Pilotta, he saw what seemed to be a man, with eyes flaming like two firebrands and ‘fingernails’ that would be the envy of any cat. ‘Jesu! What is he? I must escape… but what if he follows and catches up with me just as I reach my door? Aiee, no, per carità! Better to crouch here in the shadows…’ The monster had not moved a centimetre; only his features and claws grew nastier. Garibaldi invoked all the holy spirits in purgatory. As the minutes dragged on, the creature started an animal grunting which grew to piercing howls. He clawed at and crawled over the low wall surrounding the fountain. From his torn hands drops of dark red splashed into the turbid water. ‘Good fellow, just let me pass’, Garibaldi nearly croaked out but the words strangled in his throat. He thought of screaming aloud the name of his wife, but his house was located at the bottom of the Avenue of the Dead, the farthest corner of Castelfuoco where only spiders and snails ventured out. ‘If I survive’, he promised himself ‘I will change houses. I will give up poker…’ Meanwhile, the werewolf was flinging himself around convulsively in the water, satisfying some mysterious animal drive to bathe himself. Garibaldi thought the time had come to flee. But to reach the shelter of the Vicolo della Lumaca ten meters away he would have to pass in front of the creature. Another eternity went by. The purple shadows began to give way to a pale light. At this point the werewolf’s baying died to almost imperceptible moans, and rapidly his ‘monster’ semblance changed to a human one. A last shuddering dip into the fountain, a last hoarse roar and he was liberated from his nightmare. The werewolf passed quietly by Garibaldi del Trucco, who was having difficulty staving off a violent attack of nervous diarrhoea. The latter dove into the Vicolo and a few seconds later flung himself onto his sleeping wife who grumbled at this unwonted aggression. Some of the idle young bucks, the vitelloni [idle young men], saw in the situation a unique kind of adventure. ‘Tonight those of you with strong livers will come with me to catch the werewolf’, their leader announced. As the same swollen moon glanced over the rooftops, the small band stationed itself silently under an arch near the Fountain of the Pilotta. Everyone held his breath in anticipation and fear. Then the werewolf vaulted into the tiny piazza and began to undress slowly, as if in a trance. Under the white brilliance of the moon his bare figure was even more terrifying. With two shrill howls the unfortunate creature began sloshing water over himself, and at this moment the spectators rushed whooping toward him. The werewolf responded with an even more terrible shriek, leaped from the water, and fell to the cobblestones as if mortally wounded. For an instant the vitelloni remained riveted. No one believed his own eyes. The werewolf was no more than a timid day labourer of Castelfuoco who lived for his work in the fields and the sacred evening mass. But on nights of the full moon, he came forth questing for water with wolflike sounds and strength.

  In the late 1990s, a string of man-eating wolf attacks were reported in Uttar Pradesh, India. Frightened people claimed, among other things, that the wolves were werewolves.

Theories of origin

  A recent theory has been proposed to explain werewolf episodes in Europe in the 18th and 19th century Ergot, which causes a form of foodborne illness, is a fungus that grows in place of rye grains in wet growing seasons after very cold winters. Ergot poisoning usually affects whole towns or at least poor areas of towns and results in hallucinations, mass hysteria and paranoia, as well as convulsions and sometimes death. (LSD can be derived from ergot.) Ergot poisoning has been proposed as both a cause of an individual believing that he or she is a werewolf and of a whole town believing that they had seen a werewolf. However, this theory is controversial and unsatisfactory. Witchcraft hysteria and legends of animal transformations, as well as hysteria and superstition in general, have existed across the world for all of recorded history. Even if ergot poisoning is found to be an accurate explanation in some cases, it cannot be applied to all instances. An over-reliance on any one theory denies the diversity and complexity of such occurrences.
  Some modern researchers have tried to use conditions such as rabies, hypertrichosis(excessive hair growth over the entire body) or porphyria (an enzyme disorder with symptoms including hallucinations and paranoia) as an explanation for werewolf beliefs, although the symptoms of those ailments do not match up well with the folklore or the evidence of the episodes of hysteria either. There is also a clinical condition called Lupus (SLE), where the afflicted person may have an altered facial appearance reminiscent of a wolf, which may be relevant.
  There is also a rare mental disorder called clinical lycanthropy, in which an affected person has a delusional belief that he or she is transforming into another animal, although not always a wolf or werewolf.
Others believe werewolf legends arose as a part of shamanism and totem animals in primitive and nature-based cultures. The term Therianthropy has been adopted to describe a spiritual concept in which the individual believes he or she has the spirit or soul, in whole or in part, of a non-human animal. Clinical lycanthropy is a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusional belief that the affected person is, or has, transformed into an animal. It is named after the mythical condition of lycanthropy, a supernatural affliction in which people are said to physically shapeshift into werewolves. The word zoanthropy is also sometimes used for the delusion that one has turned into an animal in general and not specifically a wolf.

Symptoms

  Affected individuals report a delusional belief that they have transformed, or are in the process of transforming into another animal. It has been linked with the altered states of mind that accompany psychosis (the reality-bending mental state that typically involves delusions and hallucinations) with the transformation only seeming to happen in the mind and behaviour of the affected person. A study Keck PE, Pope HG, Hudson JI, McElroy SL, Kulick AR. (1988) Lycanthropy: alive and well in the twentieth century. Psychological Medicine, 18(1), 113-20. on lycanthropy from the McLean Hospital reported on a series of cases and proposed some diagnostic criteria by which lycanthropy could be recognised:

• A patient reports in a moment of clarity or looking back he sometimes feels as an animal or has felt like one.
• A patient behaves in a manner that resembles animal behaviour, for example crying, grumbling or creeping.

  According to these criteria, either a delusional belief in current or past transformation, or behaviour that suggests a person thinks of themselves as transformed, is considered evidence of clinical lycanthropy. The authors go on to note that although the condition seems to be an expression of psychosis there is no specific diagnosis of mental illness or neurological illness associated with its behavioural consequences.
It also seems that lycanthropy is not specific to an experience of human-to-wolf transformation; a wide variety of creatures have been reported as part of the shape-shifting experience. A reviewGarlipp P, Godecke-Koch T, Dietrich DE, Haltenhof H. (2004) Lycanthropy - psychopathological and psychodynamical aspects. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 109 (1), 19-22. of the medical literature from early 2004 lists over thirty published cases of lycanthropy, only the minority of which have wolf or dog themes. Canines are certainly not uncommon, although the experience of being transformed into cats, horses, birds and tigers has been reported on more than one occasion, with frogs, and even bees, being reported in some instances. A 1989 case studyDening TR, West A. (1989) Multiple serial lycanthropy. A case report. Psychopathology, 22 (6), 344-7. described how one individual reported a serial transformation, experiencing a change from human, to dog, to horse, and then finally cat, before returning to the reality of human existence after treatment. There are also reports of people who experienced transformation into an animal only listed as 'unspecified.'

Proposed mechanisms

  Clinical lycanthropy is a rare condition and is largely considered to be an idiosyncratic expression of a psychotic-episode caused by another condition such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression.
However, there are suggestions that certain neurological and cultural influences may lead to the expression of the human-animal transformation theme that defines the condition.

Neurological factors

  One important factor may be differences or changes in parts of the human brain known to be involved in representing body shape. A neuroimaging studyMoselhy HF. (1999) Lycanthropy: new evidence of its origin. Psychopathology, 32 (4), 173-6. of two people diagnosed with clinical lycanthropy showed that these areas display unusual activation, suggesting that when people report their bodies are changing shape, they may be genuinely perceiving those feelings. Body image distortions are not unknown in mental and neurological illness, so this may help explain at least part of the process. One further puzzle is why an affected person doesn't simply report that their body "feels like it is changing in odd ways", rather than presenting with a delusional belief that they are changing into a specific animal. There is much evidence that psychosis is more than just odd perceptual experiences so perhaps lycanthropy is the result of these unusual bodily experiences being understood by an already confused mind, perhaps filtered through the lens of cultural traditions and ideas.

Cultural contributions

  Cultural influences are thought to strongly influence the content of psychosis and psychosis-like experiences and we have a large cultural resource when it comes to human-to-animal transformation, as many societies have included this concept into myths, stories, or rituals. There have also been cases of feral children seemingly raised by animals after losing their parents. Psychiatrist Lucien Malson collected more than fifty alleged cases in his landmark book Wolf Children and the Problem of Human Nature. More cases have been reported since its publication in 1964, suggesting that some beliefs about lycanthropy might stem from observations of unusual maternal relationships between humans and animals.
  There is room to argue that the supernatural lycanthropy myths could originate from people relating their experiences of what could be now classified as psychosis. In reality the interaction between human experience and culture is difficult (perhaps impossible) to separate, and lycanthropy is no different. While mainstream psychiatry assumes that someone who believes themselves to be an animal is mentally ill, someone who deliberately tries to accomplish the same with psychoactive potions and ritual is considered a shaman in many societies around the world.
  In earlier times the state of the patient was commonly explained as due to possession. Marcellus of Sida reported that in Greece the patients frequented the tombs at night, and that they were recognizable by their yellow complexion, hollow eyes and dry tongue. The Garrows of India are said to tear their hair when they are seized with the complaint, which is put down to the use of a drug applied to the forehead; this recalls the stories of the witch's salve in Europe. In Abyssinia the patient is usually a woman; two forms are distinguished, caused by the hyena and the leopard respectively. A kind of trance ushers in the fit; the fingers are clenched, the eyes glazed and the nostrils distended; the patient, when she comes to herself, laughs hideousliy and runs on all fours. The exorcist is a blacksmith; as a rule, he applies onion or garlic to her nose and proceeds to question the evil spirit.
  Clinical lycanthropy has been sometimes associated with latah behaviour, described by the Malay people. However, modern latah is rarely associated with the sort of animal-transformation experiences and beliefs that are characteristic of the mainstream psychiatric definition of lycanthropy.

Werewolves in modern fiction

  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). This negative reaction to silver is sometimes so strong that the mere touch of the metal on a werewolf's skin will cause burns. Current-day werewolf fiction almost exclusively involves lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like a disease by the bite of another werewolf. More recently, the portrayal of werewolves has taken an even more sympathetic turn in some circles. With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen by some authors as a representation of humanity allied more closely with nature.

• Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think (1948) presents an excellent example of the disembodied or psychic projection werewolf.
• Terry Pratchett brings the sympathetic and monstrous werewolf traditions together in his Discworld series, notably The Fifth Elephant and Thud!. Both novels provide some focus on Constable/Sergeant Angua and her family.
• J. K. Rowling has added her voice to the tradition as well with Remus Lupin and Fenrir Greyback in the Harry Potter series (books 2-6 and Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them).
• Kelley Armstrong started her Women of the Otherwold series with a female werewolf. She combined the elements of both the "disease" and hereditary condition. In the Otherworld series, one could become a werewolf by bite. The werewolf "gene", though, is only passed along to the male offspring. Books narrated by the werewolf Elena (so far) are Bitten, Stolen, and Broken. No longer available for download, but soon available in book-form, are the novellas that are also werewolf narrated: Savage, Ascention, Beginnings and a couple short stories in the Otherworld Tales 2005.
• In Len Wiseman's films Underworld and Underworld. Evolution the werewolves are portrayed as the archenemies of the vampire clan as well as the former slaves of the vampires. People could become werewolves by bite, though only a few would survive it. The second film also reveals, that the nowadays werewolves were evoluted from their primieval form which portrayed them as wild beasts and mercilessly killers. The films speculate the first werewolf and vampire were brothers, who were seperated, when Victor, one of the vampire lords, captured the werewolf and gave the order to lock him up in a dungeon.
• USA TV series Teenage Werewolf portrays a highschool student who becomes a werewolf and uses his powers to accomplish a lot of good things as well apart from some silly mischief.

  References

• Baring-Gould, Sabine, The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition. London: Smith, Elder, 1865.
• Bynum, Caroline Walker. Metamorphosis and Identity. New York: Zone Books, 2005.
• Douglas, Adam. The Beast Within: A History of the Werewolf. London: Chapmans, 1992.
• Otten, Charlotte. ed. A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture. New York: Dorset Press, 1989.
• Prieur, Claude. Dialogue de la Lycanthropie: Ou transformation d'hommes en loups, vulgairement dits loups-garous, et si telle se peut faire. Louvain: J. Maes & P. Zangre, 1596.
• Summers, Montague (Rev.). The Werewolf London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1933.
  • reprinted as The Werewolf in Lore and Legend. New York: Dover, 2003.
• Wolfeshusius, Johannes Fridericus. De Lycanthropia: An vere illi, ut fama est, luporum & aliarum bestiarum formis induantur. Problema philosophicum pro sententia Joan. Bodini ... adversus dissentaneas aliquorum opiniones noviter assertum... Leipzig: Typis Abrahami Lambergi, 1591. (In Latin; microfilm held by the United States National Library of Medicine
• Joshua, Gee Encyclopedia Horrifica

(Episode 17 of Season 2 "Heart" of the T.V Series "Supernatural" While investigating the mysterious death of a lawyer who appears to have been mauled to death by an animal, Sam and Dean realize that they may be tracking a werewolf.)

WENDIGO/WINDIGO

  The Wendigo (also Windigo, Wiindigoo, and numerous other variants, since the word appears in many different Native American languages and dialects) is a spirit in Anishinaabe mythology. It has also become a stock horror character much like the vampire or werewolf.

Etymology

  The word “Wendigo” (pronounced wehn-dee-go) comes from the Native American Algonquian language, meaning “evil spirit that devours mankind.” Other names include Windigo, Witiko, Weedigo, Weeghtako, Weeghteko, Weendigo, Wee-Tee-Go, Weetigo, Wehndigo, Wehtigo, Wendago, Wenigo, Wentigo, Wentiko, Wetigo, Whit-Te-Co, Whittico, Wiendigo, Wihtigo, Wiitiko, Windago, Windiga (possibly a female version), Windagoe, Windagoo, Windego, Wi’ndigo, Windikouk, Wintego, Wintigo, Wi’ntsigo, Wintsigo, Wi’tigo, Wittako, Wittikka, and Wihtikow (seeing any similarities here?). Tribal names for the creature include Atcen, Atschen, Cheno, Djenu, Ithaqua, Kokodje, Kokotsche, Outiko, and Vindiko.

History

  Exactly how and when the first Wendigo came to be is lost to history and legend. But ever since that time, the Wendigo has haunted the Great Lakes woodland and the cold forests of Canada for hundreds of years. Among all creatures in Native American legend, the Wendigo is the most feared and powerful. The Wendigo was once a man that broke a tribal taboo and ate human flesh. A malignant spirit possesses the cannibal, and the Wendigo is born.

  How does one become the Wendigo? There are numerous ways among the Native American people, but the most common method is for a man to willingly engage in cannibalism. Hunters, campers, and hikers (not necessarily Native Americans) most often travel with a companion, someone with whom they are good friends and are able to trust. Although a rarity, when these people become hopelessly lost and eventually run out of supplies, they inevitably turn on each other. Morality has no part of nature’s law. In the end, only the strongest live and kills the other. The victor then feasts on the flesh of the corpse. This heinous, blasphemous act is all that is needed to summon a malevolent spirit of the forest.
  The spirit forcibly possesses the cannibal’s body, forcing the human soul out. The moment the cannibal is touched by supernatural forces, he is overcome by extreme nausea and pain. He starts vomiting uncontrollably, for hours at a time. Eventually, the cannibal loses enormous quantities of blood, and inevitably dies. However, the body undergoes a terrifying transformation. The body grows in strength and height, growing a thick coat of white fur. The human’s strength and weight increases greatly, gaining supernatural powers in the process. The head takes on the features of a predatory beast, including the growth of prominent fangs and sharp teeth. The fingernails and toenails grow into sharpened talons, completing the transformation. The cannibal is then resurrected by the evil spirit, no longer a man, but a bloodlusting beast known as the Wendigo.
  Although cannibalism is the most common and potent method, one can become the Wendigo through other means as well. Another common means is when a tribe is faced with a dire threat, a brave warrior prays to an evil spirit of the forest. The spirit agrees, possessing the warrior and transforming him into the Wendigo. This new form possesses more than enough power to deal with the threat, and after eliminating it, the warrior-turned-monster flees into the forest, never to be seen again.
  The Wendigo’s spirit has been known to jump from body to body as its own body wears out, and possessing an individual causes them to become the beast. Dreaming of the Wendigo is another method, probably caused by possession during the night. Like other supernatural beings, the Wendigo is able to infect humans by biting them, causing the victim to become another Wendigo. A sorcerer’s curse will bring the transformation on as well.
  However, there are depraved individuals who are willing to become monsters. They start by fasting for days at a time, and then journey into the forest. There, they offer their flesh to the Wendigo. Instead of devouring them, the Wendigo may decide to adopt the human as one of its own children. Over time, they become hairy, start to grow claws and fangs, develop a craving for raw human flesh, gain supernatural abilities, and become a Wendigo themselves (although these individuals are weaker than the monster that adopted them).
The Native Americans once feared (and still do) the Wendigo so much that small groups of brave, armed men once actively hunted the beast in the past. One, a Cree Indian by the name of Jack Fiddler, had claimed to have killed fourteen Wendigoes during his lifetime. He and his son, Joseph, were tried for the murder of a Wendigo-possessed woman on October 7, 1907. Both men pleaded guilty for the crime, explaining that the unfortunate woman had been possessed by the Wendigo’s spirit. On the verge of completing the transformation, the Fiddlers killed her with silver bullets, which they said had to be done before she turned on the tribe. As one can imagine, the judge and the jury were probably more than a little skeptical of the idea of the alleged “possession” of the woman.
  In the end, the Wendigo is notoriously difficult to destroy, nearly impossible to escape, and will sooner or later devour its chosen victim. Its howl echoes throughout the surrounding area for miles, turning the blood of those who hear the Wendigo’s cry into ice. Not a monster that one could encounter and hope to survive.

The Wendigo in Native American mythology

  In the mythology of the Algonquian-speaking tribes of :Category:Category:North American mythology|Native Americans, the Wendigo is a malevolent legendary creature|supernatural creature. It is usually described as a giant with a heart of ice; sometimes it is thought to be entirely made of ice. Its body is skeleton|skeletal and deformed, with missing lips and toes. According to Native American mythology, it can be killed by shattering its heart of ice.
  The first accounts of the Wendigo myth by explorers and missionaries date back to the 17th century. They describe it rather generically as a werewolf, devil, or cannibal. The Wendigo was usually presumed to have once been human. Different origins of the Wendigo are described in variations of the myth. A hunter may become the Wendigo when encountering it in the forest at night, or when becoming possessed by its spirit in a dream. When the cannibalistic element of the myth is stressed, it is assumed that anyone who eats corpses in a famine becomes a Wendigo as a result. The only way to destroy a Wendigo is to melt its heart of ice. In recent times, it has been identified with sasquatch or bigfoot by cryptozoologists, but there is little evidence in the indigenous folklore for it being a similar creature.
  Perhaps this myth was used as a deterrent and cautionary tale among northern tribes whose winters were long and bitter and whose hunting parties often were trapped in storms with no recourse but to consume members of their own party. It could be indicative of starvation that the Wendigo is said to consume moss and other unpalatable food when human flesh is unavailable. Its physical deformities are suggestive of starvation and frostbite, so the Wendigo may be a myth based on a personification of the hardships of winter and the taboo of cannibalism.
  Actual Wendigo murder trials took place in Canada around the beginning of the 20th century. The anthropologist Morton Teicher has described the alleged clinical condition of believing oneself to be a Wendigo, which he calls Windigo Psychosis (note the spelling in this context: Windigo, rather than Wendigo).
  In some stories a Wendigo will follow a lone wanderer for a long time. When the prey becomes suspicious and turns around the Wendigo always manages to get out of sight by hiding behind a tree. After a while the followed person starts to become hysterical and runs until he makes an error. The Wendigo then strikes. If someone actually survives a Wendigo attack they get the Wendigo-fever: after a night of nightmares and pain in their legs, Wendigo-fevered people strip themselves naked and run into the forest screaming.
The most comprehensive resource on the Wendigo is John Robert Colombo's anthology. It contains stories and poems on the Wendigo, many inspired by Blackwood's.

Description/Morphology

  The Wendigo is a terrifying beast. But because they are so swift, it is extremely difficult to get a good look at the monster. Most are tall, have long limbs, and are extremely thin (because they are always hungry). Most have no hair at all, but those that dwell in extremely cold climates can sometimes be found with snow-white, gore-stained fur or matted, bloody hair. Its maw is filled with sharp yellowed fangs, and its hands and feet end in razorlike talons. The Wendigo’s twisted lips are flecked with blood, and their long tongues are a disgusting dark blue. Its eyes are one of its most frightening aspects, which range in color from glowing red to bright yellow.

  The lore on this beast is enormously diverse, all of which emphasize its size. The Wendigo is so big that the human mind is unable to fully comprehend it, and the beast’s sheer size is enough to make the human heart stop. The Wendigo is a hideous, abhorrent beast. Its gigantic maw is filled with needlelike teeth, made all the more disturbing by its lack of lips (some say that the creature’s hunger is so great that it devoured its own lips!)
  Although vaguely human in appearance, it is nonetheless what most would call terribly deformed. Its enormous eyes are yellow and protuberant like an owl’s (although some say that the eyes are pushed deep into the sockets, and all that one can see is the terrible yellow glow). They are far larger than human eyes, and are said to roll about in blood. It has massive, pawlike hands that end in talons that are a foot long, while the beast’s feet are said to be three foot in length and have but a single toe, tipped with a daggerlike nail. These the Wendigo uses to slash and tear at its victims. Some legends say that the Wendigo may be missing toes, due perhaps to frostbite.

Behavior

  The Wendigo is a purely anthropophagous beast, hungering for human flesh. It will go to any lengths to procure this food, no matter the risk or possibility of injury. The Wendigo craves human flesh and is constantly starving for it (indicated by the beast’s lean, wiry frame). The Wendigo is known to have its preferences: the sweet fat of children, the soft skin of women, the course muscles of men (especially warriors and hunters), or the brittle bones of the elderly. In preparation for long winters (when few travelers are out and about), the Wendigo will stash away large pots filled to the rim with human remains in the highest tree branches. On rare occasions, it will take humans alive and hide them away in its lair, allowing the beast to feed whenever it wants. The Wendigo is more intelligent than many humans, and thus understands the value of storing and saving its food. However, it will only resort to this when food is scarce and it becomes desperate.

  Since the Wendigo constantly hungers for human flesh, it wreaks destruction in its pursuit of its chosen prey. It crashes through the forests, all the while uprooting trees, causing game animals to stampede, and causing whirlwinds. The monster is often thought to be the cause of ice storms, tornadoes, and violent winds. All of these weather-related phenomena are believed to signal the Wendigo’s presence.

  When the Wendigo hunts, it stalks the victim for long periods. The chosen victim only has a dreadful feeling of being followed. However, the Wendigo has a sadistic streak. It prefers to terrify its victims before moving in for the kill. When it has had enough of stalking the victim, it lets out a growl or a shriek, which resonates through the forest and terrifies the beast’s prey. They panic, firing weapons haphazardly into the brush as the dense forest closes in on them. Eventually, the intended victim succumbs to insanity, running wildly into the forest with abandon. In such a state, they are easy prey for the Wendigo. The Wendigo has been known to enter cabins and other dwelling, unlocking them from the outside and slaughtering the inhabitants, then proceeding to convert the cabin into its own lair. The Wendigo tends to hibernate for long periods, ranging in length from a few months to years at a time. Once they awaken, they go into a feeding frenzy, and after having eaten enough humans, it retreats to its lair and falls back into hibernation once again.

  The Wendigo inhabits the forests of the Great Lakes and Canada. The dreaded Wendigo King lives near the Windigo River in Quebec. Kenora, Ontario is thought to be the “Wendigo Capital of the World” because so many sightings and incidents have taken place there, and it attracted Wendigoes originally because it used to be tribal grounds, with many Native American settlements scattered throughout the area. Most caves, gullies, and canyons in central Canada will provide shelter for the Wendigo.

  A Wendigo is rumored to live in the Cave of the Wendigo, near Mameigwass Lake in northern Ontario. Any other area named after the Wendigo, such as Windigo River and Windigo Lake in Ontario, is bound to be inhabited by this monster as well. The Wendigo’s territory is vast, stretching from the Canadian Rockies and the Arctic Circle in the north, to the Great Lakes regions and the Dakotas. It reigns supreme across the whole of Canada.

Powers/Weaknesses

  The Wendigo is a supernatural entity of enormous power, the embodiment of insatiable hunger, gluttony, unbridled evil, and the savage predator. Befitting its bestial nature, the Wendigo possesses supernatural strength, speed, endurance, and senses. The beast is able to rip a human apart with little effort, and the Wendigo moves so quickly that it cannot be seen by the human eye. Any wounds that are inflicted on the Wendigo’s body are healed very quickly, although wounds caused by silver tend to heal very slowly. It is invulnerable to most conventional weapons, excluding arms incorporating pure silver. The Wendigo thrives in even the harshest climates, immune to extremes of cold.

  The Wendigo’s senses of sight, smell, and hearing are greatly enhanced, comparable to those of many predatory animals. The Wendigo can see clearly in total darkness, and it may have some kind of infrared vision, enabling it to see its prey by detecting its bodily heat emanations. Once the Wendigo has its prey’s scent, it is able to follow it swiftly and precisely, no matter how far away the victim may be. It’s hearing is so keen that it can hear the pounding of its fear-filled victim’s heart, which causes the beast’s own heart to pound with joy and anticipation.

  Besides sheer strength and animalistic ferocity, the Wendigo is armed with formidable array of weaponry: its dreaded claws and fangs. The beast’s claws have been described as icicles, reflecting its utter dominion over its freezing territory. These talons are designed for ripping through flesh with the slightest touch, and one swipe from the Wendigo’s powerful claws can disembowel or decapitate a human. The beast’s mouth is filled with long, needle-sharp fangs, made for slicing through flesh and sinew, as well as for breaking bones. The Wendigo’s fangs can easily puncture a human skull. Far from being a stupid beast, the Wendigo has a man’s intelligence and cunning, as well as the predatory instincts of an animal. It is mystically attuned to every single tree, bush, rock, hill, or cave within its territory (which can be considerably vast). The Wendigo uses this advantage to stalk its victims for hours on end, never being seen or heard unless the monster chooses to reveal itself by means of a growl or a shriek. There is no way to hide from the Wendigo, and it will not stop hunting until the victim’s broken, mutilated body lies at its clawed feet.

  The Wendigo excels in stealth, and it is said that the Wendigo moves on the wind and breezes in utter silence. It can fill the air with an eerie, haunting siren by forcing the air through its blood-flecked lips. The Wendigo is able to mimic human voices, which are most often cries for help. The beast’s roar is utterly terrifying, and the fear it inspires cuts to the bone. When the freezing winds rise, it is said that the Wendigo’s howls can be distinguished from the moan of the wind, letting people nearby know that a monster lurks in their midst. For its prey, these warnings occur far too late to make any appreciable difference. Among the Wendigo’s host of supernatural abilities, the Wendigo Fever is perhaps the most feared. It is a terrible curse, overtaking the mind and body of the unfortunate victim. The first symptom of the curse is a strange scent, detectable only to the intended victim. After absorbing this disturbing odor, the victim experiences a long night of weeping and horrifying nightmares. Upon awakening, the victim experiences a burning pain in the legs and feet, which becomes so intense that the victim runs into the forest, shrieking like a maniac, and discarding clothing and shoes all the while. Most of the curse’s victims never return, although those who do return are irrevocably insane from their experiences of the curse and the Wendigo itself. It is thought that most of the curse’s victims are devoured by the Wendigo.

  The Wendigo, although a dire threat to mankind, shares a close kinship with the forest’s wildlife, mainly predatory animals (such as the wolf, bear, raven, or eagle). The beast willingly shares its kills with these companions, and these animals have been known to travel with the Wendigo. As the Wendigo grows older, its powers over nature increase exponentially. The beast becomes a shaman, extremely adept in the dark arts. With this power, the Wendigo can manipulate the weather, creating storms of terrifying strength, and the beast can summon the midnight darkness hours before sunset. The Wendigo may summon dangerous beasts from the deepest, darkest reaches of the forest and command them to attack its enemies, traverse enormous distances in the blink of an eye, and heal any wounds instantaneously (although injuries inflicted by silver may take longer to heal).

  Despite the beast’s immeasurable amount of power, there are ways to protect oneself from the Wendigo. If one is hunting this creature, a fire must be kept burning at all times. This will deter the Wendigo from attacking, but only for so long. If burned, the wounds will quickly heal and will only make the beast angry.

Any means of mystical protection should be employed (amulets, protective spells, fetishes, and charms), as these things hold power over the Wendigo. Headphones or earplugs must be used to block out the beast’s maddening shrieks. However, one’s surest defense and greatest chance of survival during the Wendigo’s attack is a firearm loaded with silver bullets, and a silvered blade (such as a sword or a knife). The Wendigo cannot be hurt or killed by conventional methods or weapons, including blades or firearms. However, silver is lethal to the Wendigo. Silver bullets or a pure silver blade (or silvered steel) can cause the Wendigo great pain and can even kill the beast.

  In order to permanently destroy the Wendigo, one must first find the beast. The Great Lakes region and the forests of Canada are prime Wendigo territory. Beware, for the hunter may soon become the hunted. After finding and incapacitating the beast (no easy task, be assured), a silver stake must be driven through the Wendigo’s heart of ice, therefore shattering it. The shards of the Wendigo’s heart must be securely locked in a silver box and buried in consecrated ground (such as a churchyard or a cemetery).

  The Wendigo’s body must then be dismembered with a silver-plated axe, and each piece of the body must be salted and burned to ashes (which must then be scattered to the four winds), or each piece must be hidden in some remote, inaccessible location (i.e. the bottom of a lake, a chasm, the sea floor, or a well). Failure to follow these procedures exactly will inevitably result in the Wendigo’s resurrection, followed by its bloody vengeance. It will hunt down its killer, relishing and anticipating the taste of the hunter’s blood in every single moment. Rest assured, the death that follows will be both slow and painful. The Wendigo will take great pleasure in every single bit of agony it inflicts on its killer before finishing the job and devouring the remains. Beware, as according to some legends, the Wendigo is indestructible.

Windigo Psychosis

  Windigo Psychosis is the medical term given to those people presumed "windigo" (cannibalistic). The term applies to the Algonquin Ojibway, as well as Cree (Witigo). It is hard to pin down any real biological causes, as hunger seems to be the only one. Rather it is more likely that windigo psychosis was a cultural disease. The most commonly known cure for windigo psychosis is bear fat or bear grease.

The Wendigo in literature

• Algernon Blackwood's 1910 Horror fiction|horror story The Wendigo introduced the legend to horror fiction. Blackwood's story eschews the aspect of cannibalism in favour of a more subtle psychological horror; a central theme is that whoever sees the Wendigo becomes the Wendigo (or at least something rather like it). The reader never sees the Wendigo, though we witness the progressive dehumanization of a character who has seen it. Blackwood based his story, he claims, on an actual incident of Wendigo panic in a lonely valley while he lived in Canada. He worked many details of the Native American legend into the story. Blackwood's Wendigo:
  • stalks hunters in the forest
  • can be heard crashing through the trees
  • leaves distinctive tracks
  • has a terrifying voice
  • is associated with insanity
  • eats moss.

However, Blackwood's Wendigo is not a former human, but a primordial pre-human spirit, in keeping with Blackwood's private nature mysticism.

• The Canadian poet George Bowering wrote a poem 'Windigo'. In it, he describes the Wendigo in some detail:

His huge round eyes

bulge out of his head, lidless eyes

rolling in red blood of pain,

always rolling, blood sockets

behind them.

• Ogden Nash wrote a humourous poem about the Wendigo, where the appearance of the Wendigo is characterized with the lines:

Its eyes are ice and indigo!

Its blood is rank and yellowish!

Its voice is hoarse and bellowish!

Its tentacles are slithery,

And scummy,

Slimy,

Leathery!

Its lips are hungry blubbery,

And smacky,

sucky,

rubbery!

As Canadian author Margaret Atwood points out, Nash's description is only partly true to the legend, since the Wendigo does not have blubbery lips, much less tentacles.

• Windigo Psychosis features prominently in Thomas Pynchon's short story "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" [1]

• In the Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries, the Wendigo is another title for Ithaqua the Windwalker, one of the Great Old One|Great Old Ones who seems to be restricted to those parts of the earth that are predominantly cold, favouring Alaska and North America. This is derived, via August Derleth, from Blackwood.

• In Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary, the eponymous graveyard marks the path to another, older burial ground, which in centuries past had been cursed by the Wendigo. Any corpse buried there would be re-animated within the day, but as a cannibal. At one point in the novel the protagonist believes that the Wendigo has passed in front of him in the woods; but it is a foggy night, and he is fortunately unable to see it. The Wendigo is also presumably the form that the God of the Lost takes in Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.

• The 1944 mystery novel Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot features a windigo as a possible explanation for a murderer who appears to be able to fly.

• In Alan Moore's story "Allan and the Sundered Veil", which accompanied the graphic novel League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Allan Quatermain's body turns into a Wendigo during an astral travel induced by a drug called Taduki.

• In Michael Crichton's The 13th Warrior (originally titled Eaters of the Dead), the Wendigo myth is linked to the Grendel character from Beowulf. Crichton even implies an etymological evolution from 'Grendel' to 'Wendigo.'

• In the juvenile-oriented Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark by Alvin Schwartz ScaryStories|Alvin Schwartz, the Wendigo was described as "attract[ing] victims by calling to them in an irresistible way, then bears them away at great speed, finally sweeps them into the sky, then drops them, leaving them with frozen stumps where their feet once were, As they are carried off, they characteristically scream, '...My fiery feet, my burning feet of fire!'" This quote as well as the other details are taken straight from Blackwood's story.

• Another children's book of scary short stories, Giant, Short, & Shivery, has a short story about a Wendigo. In it, a group of sailors arrive on an island and are met by a native orphaned boy, who warns them of "the thing that's watchin' - watchin' from the trees." Eventually, the Wendigo comes and takes away the cruel captain by grabbing him through the door of their cabin with a giant hand made of snow with ice for fingernails.

• In Alan Sullivans' s short story 'The Essence of a Man', a Wendigo preys upon the mind and will of the protagonist Tom Moore, a Native American. Tom is able to overcome the power of the Wendigo, when another (unnamed) spirit calls out to him.

• In Linda Hogan's Solar Storms, a main character's estranged mother is possessed by the windigo. The characters are Native Americans so the depiction is powerful. When the main character was a child her mother tried to eat part of her face because of the windigo. The mother doesn't overcome the spirit.

  The Wendigo in film and television

  • Due to the prevalence of Native American themes and beliefs in Twin Peaks, some fans have speculated that the main villain Bob (Twin Peaks)|BOB is actually the Wendigo.
  • A creature called Wendigo also appears in episode twelve of the supernatural dramedy television series Charmed under the guise of FBI agent Ashley Fallon, who later attacks Piper Halliwell, which causes the main character to transform into a Wendigo herself. Charmed's Wendigo mixes elements of the original Wendigo myths (e.g. the heart of ice, the causing of fever on the victim and the cannibalistic origin) and werewolves of modern fiction (e.g. transformation in connection with the full moon, aggressivity, losing morality and becoming the creature by means of being scratched). The creature itself was given a look that is a cross between a werewolf and a sasquatch. The defeat of the Wendigo is a quite literal use of the melting of the heart of ice—the creature is killed with a flare gun. After the defeat, Wendigo Piper returned to normal, but ended up naked (the transformation ripped off her clothes) and freezing.
  • Despite the title, the movie Wendigo (film) does not bear much resemblance to the legend, since the Wendigo in this movie was part man, part deer.
    • The movie Ravenous is arguably closer; the term windigo is mentioned by a Native American scout. In that film, a crazed cannibal preys on the staff of a military outpost in the Sierra Nevadas.
  • The werewolf curse in the Ginger Snaps movies originates from the Wendigo.
  • The new WB series Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural has the lead characters encountering a Wendigo in episode 2. Its first airdate was September 20th, 2005. Wendigo behaviours in this episode include cannibalism, a frightening roar, and extreme speed and strength. However, this version also has the ability to mimic other peoples' voices and climb trees. It is also a dark green color and highly flammable. Centuries earlier, this Wendigo had been an Ancient Pueblo Peoples|Anasazi who was on a hunting expedition. The members of the hunting party were starving. One man ate his fellow tribesmen and gained special powers, becoming a Wendigo.
  • In the second season of the Scifi series The Invisible Man, a creature called a Wendigo is encountered in the episode Legends. It was very much like a sasquatch, and Gigantopithecus blackii was referred to as well. The creature was able to make itself turn invisible at will and was a precursor to the government's creation of an invisible man.

    Other culture

    • In the MMORPG The Five Pillars, Wendigoes are units summoned by forest-affiliated mages. They have little in common with the traditional Wendigo, as these are benevolent forest spirits. They serve mostly as damage-absorbers, as they have high health and resistance, but low attack power.
    • In the role-playing game Shadowrun, the Wendigo is an ork infected by the HMHVV (Human Meta Human Vampiric Virus). He feeds on human flesh and looks like a white Sasquatch.
    • In the role-playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the Wendigo (World of Darkness)|Wendigo are a tribe of Garou (werewolves) with almost exclusively Amerindian kinfolk. They claim Canada and the northern United States as their homeland, and are locked in the almost hopeless struggle against the encroachment of Wiktionary:Wasichu|Wasichu society and its effects. This same tribe follows the spirit of "The Great Wendigo", a mighty spirit of the winter and the wind who takes the form of a great white wolf and aids his people in their times of need. The spirit is known to be a cannibal spirit, and many garou of the wendigo tribe are likewise reputed by outsiders to have a temptation to eat human (or garou) flesh.
    • In the role-playing game Deadlands Wendigo is one of the main bestiary features and its origins and looks are much like those from Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American legends- It is very powerful creature looking a bit like Yeti. It is rumored that Wendigos are humans that were lost in the mountains during a blizzard, forced to cannibalize their comrades to stay alive, and because of that terrible sin they are turned into beasts.
    • Wendigos are also featured as monsters in various computer and video games. In the first-person shooter heXen, Wendigos live in arctic environments and they can shoot ice shards from their wrists. The computer role-playing game Diablo II features the Wendigo as a large and weak yeti-like creature, commonly found in grasslands and deserts. In the Warcraft Universe (as seen in Warcraft III and World of Warcraft), a Wendigo is a large and powerful Yeti-like creature found in snowy areas such as Northrend and Northern Lorderon. In Final Fantasy VIII, a Wendigo is a random encounter enemy located just outside of Deling City. Wendigos also appear in Final Fantasy X. They make another appearance in Final Fantasy XI as a skeleton-type creature. Wendigo is also a boss battle in "The Legend of Dragoon".
    • In Marvel Comics, the Wendigo (comics)|Wendigo is created by a curse that may have derived from the Arctic Gods or "Elder Gods". Anyone who eats human flesh while in the Canadian woods becomes a Wendigo. This Wendigo is a huge, apelike being of white fur, without human intelligence. Its strength is great enough to battle Marvel heroes like The Incredible Hulk or Wolverine (comics)|Wolverine. The curse can be transferred from one person to another by a shaman who knows the appropriate spell; the former victim of the curse will not remember what he or she did as a Wendigo.
      • In another reality of Marvel Comics, Earth X, there is a creature that has struck fear into the mutant populace. This variation of Wendigo is not like the rest, typically characterized by only one Wendigo present, but rather forms an army of Wendigo, due to the curse afflicting Multiple Man
    • A Wendigo creature appears in N°8 of Italian western-horror comic book Magico Vento, spelled Windigo.

      References

      • Colombo, J.R. ed. Wendigo. Western Producer Prairie Books, Saskatoon: 1982.
      • Teicher, M. Windigo Psychosis: A study of Relationship between Belief and Behaviour among the Indians of Northestarn Canada. American Ethnological Society: 1960.
      • Blackman, W. Haden. The Field Guide to North American Monsters: Everything You Need To Know About Encountering Over 100 Terrifying Creatures In The Wild. New York: Three Rivers Press. Copyright ©1998 by W. Haden Blackman.
      • Columbo, John R. Windigo: An Anthology of Fact and Fantastic Fiction. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Modern Press. Copyright ©1982 John Robert Columbo.
      • Halpin, Marjorie M. Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence. Canada: ©1980 the University of British Columbia.
      • Irvine, Alex. The Supernatural™ Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright TM & ©2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
      • Gilmore, David D. Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Copyright ©2003 University of Pennsylvania Press.

(Episode 2 Season 1 "Wendigo" of T.V Series "Supernatural")