Legend of the Werewolf

It’s one of humanity’s oldest nightmares: at the full moon, werewolves that once were men hunt human prey and then feast on their flesh. Stories of this terrifying transformation persist to this day. Do real facts lie behind the enduring stories of werewolves? Thank you to our experts who contributed to this episode: Andrew Patrick Nelson, Lynne McNeill, Troy Taylor, Ryan Golembeske, Kinitria D. Brooks, Erica Berry, and Brian A. Sharpless. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow History’s Greatest Mysteries to never miss an episode! History’s Greatest Mysteries is a History Channel Original Podcast, brought to you by Rewind Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Rewind Studios Originals, Hidden History and Government That Doesn’t Suck, wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios https://www.instagram.com/rewindstudiosTikTok: @RewindStudios https://www.tiktok.com/@rewindstudios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  And now, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Today, a legendary monster that transforms from man to beast whenever there's a full moon.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  The werewolf isn't just a movie monster. It's one of humanity's oldest nightmares.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Is this all in our head? Or is this something that is truly happening to the public?

• 0:28Speaker 03

  In one town in France, over 100 people killed. Young children decapitated and disemboweled.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  In her dying breath, she says she was attacked by something wolf-like, but not a wolf.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Now, we explore the top theories surrounding the werewolf.

• 0:47Speaker 04

  That's just not the behavior of an ordinary wolf. A wolf would not have been decapitating people.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  By dawning the animal's skin, you become the animal. You gain access to its fury.

• 1:01Speaker 05

  Could a condition that makes you froth at the mouth, has you hallucinate and attack other humans, get you branded a werewolf? Certainly won't help.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Do real facts lie behind the enduring stories of werewolves? And why is the idea of this creature still so powerful today? Welcome to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast brought to you by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. Today, the legend of the werewolf.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  The werewolf is one of our oldest and most gruesome monster stories. At the full moon, a person transforms into a bloodthirsty beast, stalking its victims, then ripping them apart with razor-sharp teeth and claws.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  The next morning, the individual awakens, and they've returned to their true human self, with no memory of what transpired the night before.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  The werewolf exists in an interesting place culturally. Nobody goes out hunting for werewolves the way people go ghost hunting. But it's an incredibly familiar type of folk character, and we see it often in films, in books, in comic books, usually in sort of a real, over-the-top kind of way.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  But this legend remains deeply ingrained in cultures across the globe. The question is, why?

• 2:32Speaker 04

  The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest form of literature that exists, and it includes a werewolf story. When the goddess Ishtar transforms a former lover into a wolf, and then allows him to be torn apart by his own sheepdogs.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Hundreds of years later, we get another legend, this one from ancient Greece. This is the story of King Lycaon, a Greek king who tries to challenge the authority of Zeus. He does so by trying to trick the king of the gods into eating a stew that contains human flesh.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  So Zeus sees this, because he is all-powerful, and he goes, "If you're going to act like a beast, then I'm going to turn you into a beast." And then, in front of all of his guests, he begins to radically transform into a wolf.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  These early stories are just that, stories. It's possible that, like all myths, there may be some basis, in fact, but we don't have any of that evidence. For evidence of actual werewolves, we need to go a little bit forward in time, to medieval France.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  In 1764, Jevaudan is a quiet, remote province in southern France. 380 miles south of Paris, it's not a place known for generating much news.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Overall, a very quiet, very peaceful place to live, until 1764, when suddenly some really frightening stuff starts happening. So the first incident that takes place is in the summer. A teenage shepherd is out with her flock of grazing cattle when a monstrous wolf bursts out of the brush at her.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Now, her bulls actually protect her. They charge this animal, they fend it off, and she goes back into town with reports of this enormous creature.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  What she describes is unlike any natural phenomenon. She describes a wolf-like creature but the size of a cow, with a red coat of fur and fangs and fiery red eyes. And then, she utters a phrase that stokes fears among the locals.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  "Like a wolf, yet not a wolf."

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Just weeks later, we have another attack on another young girl. With her dying breath, she describes the creature that attacked her. Wolf-like, but different, with huge fangs, more teeth than a regular wolf would have, and walking on its hind legs, like a man.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  And then they find a young shepherd boy who's dead in the hills, and now, people are starting to think, "There's something going on here. We have a bigger problem than just wolves."

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Even though the attacks are largely taking place in daylight, locals believe they're being perpetrated by a lougarou, a werewolf. They begin to call it the Beast of Jevaudan, and the killings are just getting started.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  What follows are attacks on more victims, individuals out tending to their flocks. Many of them are children, and many of them are discovered not only dead, but mutilated, partially eaten.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  The Beast of Jevaudan will go on to be the most compelling werewolf case ever. What it does is it points to the most obvious explanation for werewolves.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Which is theory number one: they were actual wolves.

• 5:58Speaker 06

  At this time, there were hundreds of thousands of wolves in continental Europe. And remember, they are raising livestock, which attracts wolves. So they are living in close proximity to these very dangerous animals.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  According to some estimates, between the 1300s and the 1700s, wolves in France kill as many as 10,000 people. Many historians look at this and say, "Okay, we've got a huge population of wolves. These wolves are often in conflict with people and their livestock." That's the explanation. This isn't a supernatural beast, it is a natural menace.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  But the Beast of Jevaudan story seems to go far beyond the typical conflicts between wolf and man at the time.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  As the killings continued, the authorities were obviously very concerned, so they put a bounty out. On October 8th of 1764, a group of hunters were out and managed to corner the wolf. They opened fire, they hit it, it went down, but then the beast just simply got up and ran away.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  A few months later, a 10-year-old is attacked by the beast, but his friends surround him and beat it back with their sticks, and the 10-year-old boy survives.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  The stories keep coming. A young woman is crossing the River Dèche when she's attacked by a monster. She says that she impales the creature with a spear, and yet it still runs away.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  This is obviously getting to be a much bigger deal. So the king's own huntsman joins the fight. He actually shoots it and drops it, and it is an abnormally large wolf for the time. So the news goes out from Boston to Brussels, "We killed the beast."

• 7:45Speaker 04

  But the celebration turns out to be a little premature because the murders continue. In fact, they're even more vicious than they were before.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  People are being eaten, ripped apart, torn limb from limb, decapitated. There's no question that it's still out there, and it's still killing people.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  30 more people are killed in attacks. Soon, the death toll nears 100.

• 8:11Speaker 06

  This is just absolute terror that's hard to describe. Maybe this isn't an average mortal beast. In fact, it might be supernatural. We might need to be using some supernatural tactics to take this wolf down.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Undeterred, a French nobleman forms yet another hunting party to go after the beast, and joining that party is a man named Jean Chastel. This party, like parties before, locate the beast. Now, Chastel loads his pistol, says a prayer, aims, and fires, hitting the monster. The monster stays down, dead.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Over the years, a legend has grown. It's said that that one bullet killed the monster, and it's believed to have been a silver bullet.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  There's no actual evidence that he used a silver bullet, but this is the beginning of that motif, that if you're going to take out a supernatural creature, the way to do it is with a solid silver bullet.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  So in 1767, they do an autopsy on the decomposing body. What they find is that, yes, it was just a really large wolf with very unusual markings, and that when they got into the stomach, they actually found human remains.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  So was the Beast of Jevaudan simply a large wolf? If so, how does that explain the stunning death toll and details provided by the eyewitnesses?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  How do we square that with so many of the observations about it being the size of a horse, about it walking on its two hind legs, about bodies being found decapitated?

• 9:49Speaker 03

  Because of this, some theories that maybe this wasn't a typical wolf have come to light. So some people have suggested this could be a dire wolf. That's an extinct species, supposedly, extinct for about 10,000 years, but much larger than a normal wolf.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  In the end, the people of Jevaudan, living in the 18th century as they were, continued to believe that it was a supernatural creature. To them, it made a lot more sense that they couldn't kill this thing because it was something malevolent, something evil.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  The story of the Beast of Jevaudan is so widespread and terrifying that from the 18th century onward, the French public believes all wolves must be eliminated.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  By the 1800s, the government has put a bounty out on wolf's heads. And as a result of this, by 1930, they're almost all but extinct in the region. But the curiosity about werewolves continues.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  And the French are hardly the only culture with a legend like this. During the first millennium, Nordic folklore describes a father and son who discover magic wolf pelts that allow them to become wolves for 10 days. They roam through the woods on a killing rampage until the father attacks the son, leaving him with a mortal wound.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  In Scandinavia in the first millennium, there is a documented real phenomenon taking place that makes the werewolf transition maybe not seem so implausible. A good starting point is in the Viking culture.

• 11:28Speaker 07

  So in Scandinavia in the 9th century, you have this Viking warrior culture, and particularly, a group of warriors that worshiped the god Odin, and they were often meant to protect royalty. They're known as berserkers.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  The berserkers were sort of an unusual bunch. Before battle, they would strip themselves completely naked, dye their bodies with a black dye, and then would sort of psych themselves up into a state of ferocity. But there was one subculture of berserker warriors who did dress themselves as wolves.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  One of the secrets to their fighting ability was this insane rage that would take over their body. A madness would come over them. They were described as fighting almost in a trance-like state, often described as either being naked or as wearing bear skins, or sometimes wolf skins.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  The donning of the animal skin, the bear skin, which is where we get the word berserk from, is not simply an armor. It's actually a mindset. You're becoming like the animal that by embodying it, you avail yourself of its power, of its fury.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  We see stories of these fighters training in the woods, but it's possible that one of their best weapons is actually the use of hallucinogenic substances.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Which is theory number two: werewolves were Vikings on drugs. Some scholars now theorize that the berserkers' drug-induced transformation from men into monsters could be the basis of the werewolf legend as we now know it.

• 13:20Speaker 07

  It's thought that potentially the berserkers were ingesting Amanita muscaria, which is the mushroom that's sort of the Alice in Wonderland mushroom. When ingested, there's psychoactive properties that would cause a person to enter a feeling of just kind of invincibility and ferocity.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  After that feeling of being invincible and bloodthirsty would wear off, that mushroom then acts as a sedative. They wouldn't even remember what they had done on the battlefield.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  A later ruler of Norway, King Olaf Heroldsen, is said to use berserkers in one of the most famous battles in the country's history at Stiklestad in 1030. But the berserkers' days are numbered because such animalistic behavior runs counter to the growing faith of Christianity. In fact, Olaf himself will be canonized as Saint Olaf for his campaign to spread the religion.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  As Christianity became a more major religion in Norway, the sort of pagan feel of the berserkers is something that fell out of favor. And if they fell out of favor with the rise of Christianity, it was the Church that brought back an emphasis on the possibility of werewolves in the 16th century.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  In the 1500s, the Catholic Church in Europe embroiled in political power struggles and under threat from a new Protestant movement is on a campaign to maintain its supremacy.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  As part of this effort to really maintain control over what people understand to be the morally correct way to live, we can see a lot of fear mongering.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  200 years before the famous Salem witch trials, we had a similar type of trial happening in Europe. These were werewolf trials. Oftentimes, individuals were accused of horrific acts, often killing and eating children. And so these individuals would be put on trial by the Church. And, under extreme duress, indeed, under torture, they would often confess to being just that: werewolves.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  So here's theory number three: werewolves were the product of Church propaganda.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  At this point in the 1500s across Europe, the Catholic Church really is the dominant moral authority, telling people what's right, how to live correctly, really setting the moral tone.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  The Church exerts its influence by claiming that it offers you protection from demonic influences here on Earth. The most serious threat the Church set were werewolves.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  So in Germany in 1589, the werewolf executions are in full tilt. And they come across a gentleman named Peter Stump. They put him on a rack, and they slowly remove all of his flesh. Then they behead him, and they actually burn him on a funeral pyre.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  It was a warning not only to any werewolves, but it was also the warning to the people that only the Church had the power to protect them.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  But there may be another factor that puts unwitting people in the crosshairs of the werewolf-hunting Church.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Some historians have observed that many of the greatest incidents of werewolf activity happened in lowland areas. They tend to be wet, damp, moist. And they note that those conditions give rise to a certain fungus that, when consumed, can have odd effects.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  This fungus, known as ergot, grows on grains and contains chemical compounds that are not only poisonous, but also psychoactive. When grains infected with ergot are consumed, some of the symptoms include rapid heart rate, blurred vision, kind of a state of agitation, all of which could be seen as part of the werewolf transformation.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  When grains infected with ergot are consumed, some of the symptoms include rapid heart rate, blurred vision, kind of a state of agitation, all of which could be seen as part of the werewolf transformation.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  To make matters even more compelling is, once the poisoning effects wear off, you'll have little memory of the things that you did while you were poisoned.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  It's not hard to imagine that if, in your village, something terrible happens, especially to a small child, that you wouldn't begin looking about for someone to blame. The person behaving irrationally, uncontrollably, who's spasming, seemingly undergoing some kind of demonic transformation, that's an obvious person to blame.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  There are conflicting views on just how many Europeans are persecuted in the heyday of werewolf trials. One source from 1611 claims the number is 30,000 in France alone. Some historians today argue the total number in Europe is much less, perhaps several hundred.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  What we might be seeing here is really sort of a cyclical effect where these sort of afflictions may really have increased the idea that there are people becoming werewolves.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  But maybe it wasn't drugs or the Church. Maybe the idea of werewolves came from real crimes. Winter 1573. It's a cold night in rural France, and laborers are headed to a tavern for an evening meal. The entire party is on edge, for good reason.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  In the bushes, under the light of a full moon, they hear some rustling sounds. They at first think, might be an animal. They hear sort of a growling sound coming from it.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  But as they get closer, they realize that what they're seeing is a person.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  His name is Gilles Gagnier. He is a recluse who lives outside of town. And they also realize that's not a dead animal that he's eating. It's the body of a small child. When they confront Gagnier, they find his blood all over his face. It's dripping from his chin. And he admits that he's a wolf and that he's been killing and eating children for some time now, as many as 14 in the last few months. He honestly believes he's a werewolf.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  It's cases like Gagnier that lead many historians to believe that the explanation for werewolf stories is not the supernatural, not curses or a full moon, but something entirely natural. It's to be found in deranged, but very human predators.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  That's theory number four: werewolves were really serial killers.

• 20:12Speaker 06

  Further questioning leads to some answers as to why Gagnier would commit such a heinous act. And he says the devil made him do it. And the devil helped him by giving him an ointment that turned him into a wolf.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  Back in those days, Gagnier was believed to be a supernatural creature. But today, we would call him a serial killer who engaged in cannibalism, someone like Albert Fish or Jeffrey Dahmer, who would eat their victims. We don't think of them as werewolves. We think of them as a serial killer.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  What we have is arguably a climate of fear. One person makes a claim, and then others get on board. And suddenly, the story takes on a life of its own. And the boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to blur. Now, the truth is, we'll never know for sure in this particular case because Gagnier is found guilty of being a werewolf and is burned on a pyre.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  In Bedburg, Germany, 16 years after Gagnier's trial, Peter Stump is also accused of being a werewolf.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Stump was being interrogated by the authorities. He made a full confession. He said that he was transformed into a wolf using a belt that had been made from a wolf's skin.

• 21:40Speaker 07

  Peter Stump confesses to killing 14 children as well as two pregnant women with their babies.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  One key difference here is that when he transforms into being a human, he retains the knowledge of what he's done. Just as with Gagnier, his confession leads to execution. He's tortured, he's burned, and then the news of it is reported far and wide.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  The church creates a broadsheet announcing that it has captured and executed the Werewolf of Bedburg. That broadsheet is widely circulated, reprinted hundreds of times, making Stump's case the most famous werewolf trial.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  And so these sorts of stories really got a lot of spread in culture, letting people know exactly what a werewolf does and what will happen to someone who is one.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  It's entirely possible that Gagnier and Stump did commit the crimes they were accused of, even though their confessions were extracted under torture. And what's interesting is that in those confessions, they claim that they did commit the crimes, but as werewolves. So it's not just a confession to a crime. It's a confession to a supernatural crime.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  Could accused serial killers like Gagnier and Stump actually believe they were werewolves? A rare psychological condition recognized in the late 19th century might provide an answer.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  There is a condition called clinical lycanthropy. This comes to us from the Greek, "lykos," meaning wolf, and "anthropos," meaning human. In this case, individuals do claim to believe that they transform into wolves. They describe a physical transformation: teeth turning into fangs, nails turning into claws, hair growing, the body contorting into a wolf-like state.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  If we're looking for a documented phenomenon that could really tie all the pieces together of the werewolf belief, serial killers with diagnosed clinical lycanthropy really hits the nail on the head.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  It's very hard to know how prevalent this is. If you're just looking at the scientific literature, a colleague and I only found 25 cases of people who believed they turned into wolves. I'm guessing it's more frequent than the scientific literature would suggest.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  We have a 2020 case of a young boy in France who believed himself to be a werewolf. He would refuse to go to school during the full moon. There were reports of him biting or scratching his classmates.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Doctors feared it had something to do with the internet, that he had been delving deep into online chat rooms and things where people were talking about another world of living as a werewolf. But even without the internet, people have been suffering from this condition for centuries.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  So could being a werewolf really be traced to a medical diagnosis? By the mid-19th century, as the wolf population plummets, there's less fear of encountering a werewolf in a dark forest. But in 1855, a chilling story from France reignites the terror and the legend.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  In 1855, an article comes out in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle about a couple in rural France. And it's really disturbing. This couple was getting married, and before the wedding, the groom started acting really strange. The night after the nuptials, they hear this horrible screaming coming from the bedchamber of the bride and groom.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Their family rushed to the room. And upon opening the door, they see the husband standing above the wife, blood dripping down his mouth. He's consuming her. He's eaten part of her chest. But just as the villagers get to the man, he too dies.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Suspicion only grows when authorities learn that the man had been recently bitten by some sort of vicious canine.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Back then, people would not have the knowledge to understand what was happening to this gentleman. But now, we understand that there is something which can affect humans and animals. That could have very well been what he was suffering from.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Bringing us to theory number five: that werewolves were rabies victims.

• 26:06Speaker 04

  Now, rabies has been around since the beginning of recorded time. As far as we know, the first mention of it was in a Babylonian text from 2300 BCE. So it's something that has been part of world history, but not always understood.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Rabies can affect animals and humans. And in animals, they become more aggressive. They lose their fear of the things normally they're cautious about.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  In humans, more severe cases of rabies are known as furious rabies. We see things like seizures, hallucinations, strange vocalizations, and even things like foaming at the mouth.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  And because people came down with these conditions after they were bitten by some rabid animal, like a wolf, they would just assume that it was a curse being passed on from a werewolf.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  With Louis Pasteur's development of the rabies vaccine in 1885, the number of post-bite fatalities in humans drops significantly. Rabies may have played a pretty significant role in the development of the werewolf legend, but there are other conditions as well that could have played a role in suggesting the same sort of wolf-like behaviors.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  There's a famous story that we all know, which is Tarzan, about Lord Greystoke. Him and his parents marooned off the coast of Africa. The parents die, and he's left to fend for himself. He's raised by the apes, and he begins to run around on all fours and speak like them, act like them, exhibit all their behaviors.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Tarzan, the character, is obviously fictional, but the concept of actual feral children, children raised in the wilderness by animals, has been around for centuries. And these certainly could have played a role in the stories about people behaving like or even transforming into wolves. Leading to theory number six: werewolves were just feral humans.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  These feral children don't exhibit violent tendencies. But even though they're not aggressive, their mysterious origins, their wild-like tendencies really fuels the idea that this is maybe a perfect template for where we get the modern werewolf.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Northwest India, 1867. Now, a hunting party is out in the jungle when they come upon a cave guarded by a single wolf. But as they look closer, they realize that this wolf is not a wolf at all.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  It's a boy.

• 28:45Speaker 04

  When an actual wolf then emerged from the cave and approached the hunters, they killed it and believed they were rescuing this boy, not understanding that he had been raised by those wolves.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  The hunters deliver him to a group of missionaries. Now, the missionaries name him Dina Sanichar. They try to teach him to speak. They're never able to do so. So what we have here is a real-life jungle book, a real-life Mowgli man cub.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  The story of Dina Sanichar is not an isolated one. There have been around 100 documented cases just like it.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  There were other cases of feral children being raised by animals, different kinds of animals: leopards, lions, goats. But most of them seem to revolve around dogs and wolves because they are such social animals.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  What we see in these stories, there's not that violence, there's not that aggression. But we see at a really basic level the general belief that a human-animal hybrid is possible.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Coming up: is it possible that the idea of werewolves comes from a rare glitch in our genetic code?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  In 1884, Phineas Taylor Barnum travels the world with his circus. He calls it "P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth." Among his sideshow performers is a young boy with a very startling appearance.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  His entire face, except for his eyes and ears, were covered with a fine silky hair. And whenever he would perform, he would bark and growl like a dog. Now, this was just his stage act. He was actually a brilliant young man who spoke five different languages. But he made his money by pretending to be half-man and half-animal.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Jojo's real name was Fedor Yevdachev. And he suffered from a condition we know of these days as hypertrichosis, which is basically excessive hair. It can cover just the face, or it can consume your entire body.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Some experts believe that this condition, documented rarely but consistently since the 1500s, could play a role in the ongoing belief in werewolves.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  That's theory number seven: werewolves were the product of genetic mutations.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  Fedor was born in Russia. His father had the same condition. His father had performed in sideshows as a wild man. After his father passed away, Fedor went on to perform alone, which is how he met P.T. Barnum, who offered him a handsome contract to come to America as Jojo the Dog-Faced Boy.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yevdachev is a popular attraction for Barnum for nearly 20 years. Even though Yevdachev grows incredibly homesick, Barnum won't let him out of his contract.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Barnum's shows draw in hundreds of thousands of visitors per year. And likely for many of them, this is the first time they've ever seen a person with hypertrichosis. The condition didn't even have that name at the time. And the posters, the advertisement for the show, really encouraged people to believe that this was an animal-human hybrid.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Jojo is part of a long history of hypertrichosis sufferers being cast as wild-animal-human hybrids, including werewolves.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  In the late 1500s, there was an Italian naturalist named Ulysses Aldrovandi. And he documented this entire family who lived in Bologna, who were covered in a thick black hair over their entire bodies.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Aldrovandi's book was titled "The History of Monsters." And the name that it gives to this condition is werewolf syndrome. Even though now, we have the name "hypertrichosis," the name "werewolf syndrome" also sticks.

• 32:49Speaker 07

  In the last 300 years, there are only 50 documented cases of hypertrichosis. But in many ways, its rarity may have made it more alarming and all the more sort of shocking for people who witnessed it.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  While not nearly as common as rabies, or as well-publicized as feral children, hypertrichosis may have played a key role in the development of the werewolf myth.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  That may be why one of the oldest variations of the werewolf legend involves a creature that doesn't transform back into a human, but remains half-human and half-beast.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Through the centuries, a handful of famous cases reinforce the idea of werewolf syndrome.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  In 1840, some Mexican herdsman discover a young mother hiding a daughter in a cave. The daughter is striking in her appearance, because she's covered with hair, including what looks like a long beard growing from her face.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  The mother explained that she was hiding the little girl, whose name was Julia Pastrana, because villagers believed that she was the new Ali, who was a shape-shifting werewolf. As the story goes, the young mother died soon after, and Julia ended up in an orphanage, where she became a subject of both ridicule and fear.

• 34:11Speaker 06

  But she has such a sweet disposition, she has such a beautiful singing voice. She is eventually adopted by the governor of the state of Sinaloa in Mexico. And she works as a live-in maid.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  While she's working as a maid in this governor's house, she begins to sing opera. And as her talents grow, she gets recognized. She meets an American entrepreneur. He encourages her to travel to the U.S. And by 1854, she makes her debut on Broadway.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Despite Pastrana's gentle demeanor and sophisticated performances, she's still viewed as some kind of monster.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  One newspaper article refers to her as "it." And even doctors who examine her will say that she is only half-human. And these are doctors, let alone the general public, who sees her as this human-animal hybrid.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Her career continues, and she actually has success, traveling around the world and performing. And in 1860, in Moscow, she gives birth to a baby boy. Unfortunately, her child only survives for 35 hours. And after he passes away, so does she.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  So for Julia, instead of having a dignified burial, they put her in a box and display her at these events. And it isn't until years later, in 2013, where she is finally given a burial.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  The condition that Jojo and Julia suffered from gave them an animal-like appearance, but both of them were known for being very pleasant, peaceful people. So they weren't anything like the werewolf legend. But the fact that people saw that there could be what they thought was a human-animal hybrid, it kept the story of the werewolves alive.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Around the time of Julia Pastrana's death, thousands of miles away in the American West, another alleged form of werewolf is set to stalk the desert brush. And this beast is not so peaceful.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  In the 1860s, a conflict began in the American Southwest between the Navajo and Ute nations. The Ute had allied themselves with the American military against the Navajo. And the Navajo were angry about this, and decided to have their revenge.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  As retaliation, the Navajo are said to unleash a terrifying curse upon the Ute people in their ancestral homeland, what is now present-day Utah. And that curse comes in the form of a monster: the skinwalker.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  According to Native American lore, skinwalkers were a type of witch that could transform into an animal, specifically a wolf. And they did so using magic and the pelt of the animal they wanted to transform into. The Navajo called them "ye nol lushi," which roughly translates to "he who walks on all fours."

• 37:16Speaker 01

  In wolf form, the skinwalkers are super-strong, very fast, almost impossible to kill. Folklore has it that the only thing that can kill them is a bullet or a knife that's been dipped in white ash. It's said that the only way to become a skinwalker is to kill a member of your own family.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  When you put all of these qualities together, the transformation into animals, people becoming like wolves, some people believe that this is a clear connection to the longstanding historical belief in werewolves.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Giving us theory number eight: skinwalkers.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  By the late 19th century, many Utes have come to believe that the skinwalkers are powerful dark magic. And so many abandoned the Ute Basin and refused to go back there. Over time, that land is parceled and sold. In the 1990s, a couple acquire a 512-acre parcel of land.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Almost immediately, they begin having strangeness happen around the house, which gets worse until they start to notice wolves on the land that are three times larger than any wolves that they've ever seen or they can find in tax.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  According to the legend, these are skinwalkers. And some say that these are skinwalkers specifically sent by the Navajo to clear out this land.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  Skinwalker sightings aren't limited to the supposed cursed territory in Utah. One Native American family in Arizona reports terrifying forces on their land.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  As the family tells the story, they're seeing what looks sort of like these long shadows that are circling around their house.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  The family hears noise coming from the son's bedroom. They open the door and see the son being attacked by some kind of creature, which they describe as walking on two legs but with eyes that burn like fire.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  In this family's belief tradition, they describe this as a skinwalker. But with the details provided, this could easily be the story of a werewolf.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  When European settlers brought their werewolf legends to the Americas, they could have heard Native American stories of the skinwalkers. After all, both are tales of shape-shifting, malevolent beings. That's why some experts believe that the skinwalker may have been a significant influence on popular werewolf mythology.

• 39:43Speaker 07

  So it's easy on one level to imagine how werewolf legends would take root in a pastime before large technology, education, research about viruses. But you also have werewolf stories that are contemporary. In Wisconsin, there's this sort of America's Beast of Javadin is known as the Beast of Bray Road.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  This is a hybrid of a dog-man who's seen consistently in the wilderness, often at dusk, often doing exactly what we hear of werewolves and skinwalkers do: menacing people, approaching their houses, looking in the windows, threatening their well-being.

• 40:24Speaker 07

  This becomes sort of a part of the community identity. The local brewery has a beer named after the beast. It's on T-shirts.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  At least for the Beast of Bray Road, the one thing it hasn't done is kill anyone. At least not yet.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  How do we explain the endurance of the werewolf myth? In the werewolf, we find something truly terrifying, because the werewolf tells us that the true monster is not out there, but is in here, inside any one of us.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  The legend of werewolves has endured for centuries by way of folklore, fear, and perhaps misunderstanding. Whether this creature is a product of our imagination or something much darker, the werewolf symbolizes the fine line between civilized society and our most primal instincts. Thanks so much for listening to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast brought to you by Rewind Studios. Join us next time for a deep dive into another mystery and all the theories behind it.