Pennsylvania werewolves

Recently, we've looked at such topics as the ascribing of tragic accidents to god's will, the role of social media in spreading misinformation, and the ongoing controversy over Kim Davis's refusal to follow federal law in Rowan County, Kentucky.  But all of this has made it even more imperative that I take a moment to address a much more serious question that I'm sure is at the forefront of everybody's mind:

What's going on with werewolf sightings in Pennsylvania?

The word "werewolf" brings up different associations for different people, and those mental images are usually dependent on their age.  For people in my generation, the usual thought is of the guy in the camp-horror movie An American Werewolf in London:

The creepy realism of this movie -- all in the days before CGI, allow me to add -- made it one of the most memorable scary films of the 1980s.

Younger people, of course, are more likely to think of a different depiction of a werewolf, exemplified by Taylor Lautner in Twilight.  Lautner's acting shows amazing emotional range, running the gamut from "brooding" all the way to "sullen."  He occasionally even manages "morose."  He also bears mention as the only actor in history who is better at finding bogus reasons for taking his shirt off than William Shatner.

Anyhow, you can see that there is a huge variety of mental images that the word "werewolf" evokes.  So let's compare that to some recent sightings of "bipedal wolves" coming from Clearfield and Cambria Counties, in central Pennsylvania, shall we?

According to a report in Phantoms and Monsters, there have been three encounters in the past month with creatures that fall somewhere between American Werewolf and Twilight, placing them squarely in the range of what most of us would consider a werewolf.  The most recent was the most detailed, a report from a 42-year-old woman "of sober mind" who is "not prone to embellishing."  She was out walking her dogs a couple of weeks ago, she says, when the following happened:

I walked the dogs through the park and then decided I wanted to go around the block on the back side of the park.  There is a main road that runs along side of the front of the park and a dirt road that runs along the back side of the park.  The roads meet at a streetlight. I was on the main road and got within about 25 yards of the streetlight and there was a huge figure, about 7 feet tall I estimate.  It was standing just back from the light and I could see just the legs.  They were hair covered and bent backwards like a dog. I could not make out a face or other details as it was standing back...  The first thought I had was "oh shit, that is a big damn dog" and then it dawned on me what I was seeing.  My next thought was "it is a freaking werewolf"!!!  It was rocking side to side like it was waiting for us to get closer.

Her dogs, interestingly, didn't seem to notice the thing, but she yanked on their leashes and hauled ass back home.

Which turns out to be the last sensible thing she did.  Because the next night, she thought the best possible course of action would be to walk her dogs again...

... on the same path.

I got to within 150 feet of where I saw this thing and my chihuahua started growling and all of his hair was standing up.  He started barking and going in circles looking for what ever it was that he sensed. No reaction at all from the pit.  She is feisty and not afraid to fight intruders so that really surprised me.  About the same time the little dog was freaking out there was a HUGE crash in the woods next to us, maybe 10 yards away of so.  This area is very swampy and there are quite a few large bushes and trees.  This crash sounded like a tree falling, but like it fell instantly.  It was lound [sic], fast and instant.  I ran out of there so damn fast.  I did not see anything this time other than my dog freaking out and the large crash.

She then goes on to describe how when she let her dogs out the next morning, they both ran up to a particular spot on the back yard fence, and were acting "very agitated and almost scared," and were "growling, with their hair standing up."  The werewolf, she surmises, followed her home, and is now lurking out there somewhere near her house.

*cue scary music*

All of which brings to mind the fact that I would be a great person to have on your side if there was a real werewolf in the area.  At the first sign of snarling and howling, I'd piss my pants and then have a stroke, giving the werewolf someone to attack who was already incapacitated, and allowing you to escape.

Because I may be a skeptic, but I'm also a great big wuss.

In any case, that's it, evidence-wise, for the Pennsylvania werewolf.  No hair, no tracks, not even a photograph, only a trio of anecdotes.  So as spooky as they admittedly are, I'm not ready to label this one a verified sighting.

On the other hand, if you live in rural central Pennsylvania, you might want to exercise some caution when you're out walking at night.  Safety is the priority, and we don't want anyone getting mauled to death, which seems to be the usual approach werewolves have toward defenseless humans.  Unless it's Taylor Lautner, who would only stare glumly in your general direction, and then take his shirt off.

Which is preferable, but not by much.

The big bad wolf

Given that most of what I do here at Skeptophilia is to rail against people whose primary form of exercise is jumping to conclusions, it's nice to see that occasionally someone gets it right.

And it is, unfortunately, still only "occasionally" at this point. Popular websites are much more likely to leap from reality right into woo-woo-land over any number of claims, from ghosts to El Chupacabra to demons to Bigfoot to psychics.

Hard evidence?

We don't need no stinkin' hard evidence.

But there's a claim out of Macedonia that has stirred up the cryptozoological world, and the folks over at Phantoms and Monsters (of all people...!) are taking exactly the right approach with it.

First, let's look at the claim.

What apparently happened is that a farmer named Trayche, in the village of Novo Selo Stipsko, was plowing his field, and his plow hit an obstacle that turned out to be a wooden box wrapped in a chain. Hoping it was buried treasure, Trayche cut the chain and opened the box, and found...

... this:

The last word, which comes out (more or less) "vrekolak" if you put it into English phonetics, is apparently a word that means (once again, more or less) "werewolf:"

Sabine Baring-Gould explains the many variations of lycanthrope folklore in "The Book of Werewolves," noting the term "vrekolak" resembles the Greek term "bourkolakas." 

"The Greek werewolf is closely related to the vampire. The lycanthropist falls into a cataleptic trance, during which his soul leaves his body, enters that of a wolf and ravens for blood. On the return of the soul, the body is exhausted and aches as though it had been put through violent exercise. After death lycanthropists become vampires. They are believed to frequent battlefields in wolf or hyena shapes, and to suck the breath from dying soldiers, or to enter houses and steal the infants from their cradles," Baring-Gould writes.

So, of course, we have every incentive for the woo-woos to claim that it's a werewolf skull, case closed.

I was pleasantly surprised, however, when the writer at Phantoms and Monsters didn't go that direction.  He mentions a Bulgarian student, Filip Ganov, who saw the box and the skull and interviewed Trayche, and who at least was able to verify that the skull isn't an out-and-out fake.  The article says:

Trayche would not part with his werewolf skull but he did let Ganov take pictures, which were presented to a wildlife expert in Bulgaria who speculated that it was indeed from a wolf but not necessarily a werewolf. Instead, he surmised the wolf was suffering from Paget's disease, a genetic disorder (also common in humans) that can cause misshapen bones and enlarged skulls. Paget's disease can be caused by canine distemper virus, a common virus in wolves and dogs.

How about that?  A rational explanation!  The writer goes on to say:

The skull definitely looks both canine and human and a little baboonish, which would probably cause some consternation among Bulgarians and Macedonians raised on Eastern European folklore. The chain around the box is a good indication whoever buried it believed it was a creature they did not want roaming around again.

Which is exactly the point.  The fact that the people who buried the skull thought it was a werewolf isn't any kind of proof that it is a werewolf.

And finally, there's a call for further investigation:

So, is Trayche's skull-in-a-box from a werewolf? It's definitely a creature that's out of the norm. Only a DNA test will tell.

Precisely.  That's the thing I've always come back to; it's not like we don't have a way to find out the answers to these questions.  It's called science.  Of course, you have to believe the results once you get them, and accept it when you're wrong, a lesson that certain other cryptozoologists (I'm lookin' at you, Melba Ketchum) have yet to learn.

But it's heartening that at least here, we have someone who's saying, "Yeah, it's probably got a natural explanation.  In fact, we've even got a guess as to what that might be.  But let's find out."

Yes, let's.  And while we're at it, let's encourage other fringe researchers to take the same approach.  Could some of what they claim be true?  Sure.  But it's science that's going to tell us the answer, not adding more to the pile of zero-evidence anecdotes.