From today's lycanthropic creatures found in pop culture such as Dracula, Twilight and An American Werewolf in London to the earliest mentions in folklore of the shape-shifting legend, Werewolf Stories: Shape-Shifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts is an eye-opening tour through the ages of all things werewolf. Along the way, readers land at the doorstep of creatures like serial killer Fritz Haarmann, tiger people and their thirst for human blood, Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, shapeshifters of all kinds and sizes, and even a spell to repel werewolves. This fascinating tome provides 140,000 years of blood-pounding evidence of strange and obsessional behavior. It tells of stories of becoming a werewolf and the intricacies of slaying the beast. A true homage to the creature, it includes full moon of topics such as …
- Fenrir, the wolf child of the giantess Angrboda and the god Loki, from the Old Norse myth of Ragnarok
- Notorious serial killers, including Peter Stumpp and Michael Lupo, who thought themselves to be—and modeled their crimes on—werewolves
- Coyote people, tricksters, and were-animals of Navajo legend
- The Basque butchers of Louisiana and the loup-garou
- Diana, the goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, and her pack of hunting dogs, who once ruled all the dark forests of Europe
- Leopard creature-men and the deadly cult whose members expressed their were-leopard lust for human blood and flesh that has been in existence in West Africa for several hundred years
- The “werewolf of the Dordogne,” Francis Leroy, and his uncontrollable bloodlust during the full moon
- The secret terrorist group Organization Werewolf, established in 1923, and its possible allegiance to Adolf Hitler
- Ghouls from Arabic folklore, the demonic Djinns that hover near burial grounds and sustain themselves on human flesh stolen from graves
- Tasmania’s thylacine and sightings of the “probably extinct” creature and its remarkable—and frightening—jaw capacity
- Alaska’s Kushtaka and other stories of the Bigfoot man-beast
- Puerto Rico’s chupacabra and its powerful goat-like legs, three-clawed feet, and penchant for sucking blood
- The Doñas de Fuera of Sicily, small fairies who looked human, aside from their paw-like feet, and were cruel and dangerous when crossed
- Enkidu, perhaps our earliest written record of a man-beast that appears on a Babylonian fragment circa 2000 BCE and tells the story of King Gilgamesh and his werewolf-like friend in The Epic of Gilgamesh
- And many more stories and histories of werewolves, night-stalkers, lycanthropes, and man-beasts
Noted cryptozoologists and paranormal researchers Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger share personal stories and encounters with werewolves in Werewolf Stories. They take a deep dive into the legends, the history, the pop-culture take on the man-beast. It's a wild and weird road-trip into the mystery-filled domain of the disturbingly real world of shape-shifters and werewolves!
