The big good wolf

I'm currently reading James Burke and Robert Ornstein's book The Axemaker's Gift: Technology's Capture of Our Minds and Culture, about the rise of our technological society from the (on the whole) superstitious and non-scientific cultural milieu of the past, and one thing has struck me over and over.  Prior to the more rational, evidence-based view of the world that came out of the Enlightenment, people must have been continuously terrified.

I mean, think about it.  Epidemics happen, seemingly coming out of nowhere.  The cause is unknown, the treatments ineffective at best.  Some people survive, others die.  There are storms, lightning strikes, earthquakes, blizzards, volcanoes; the latter, such as the 1783 eruption of Laki and the 1815 eruption of Tambora, had global consequences, harming people who had no idea that a volcano erupted hundreds or thousands of miles away.  Here in the modern world, we have scientific explanations for at least the proximal causes of these events, even if (as I discussed in yesterday's post) the ultimate causes still leave people searching for answers.

But prior to modern science, they didn't even have proximal causes.  It's no wonder they fell back on demons and witches and evil spirits.  Put yourself in the place of someone who has no knowledge of microbiology during an outbreak of the bubonic plague.  Unsurprising they tried to find some explanation, even if to our modern sensibilities the explanations they landed on seem crazy.  I may not agree with C. S. Lewis's theology, but I have to admit he had a point in Mere Christianity:

Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death...  But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things.  If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did?  There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact.  It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there.  You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.

To return to James Burke, in his mind-blowing series The Day the Universe Changed, he makes the point forcefully that we like to congratulate ourselves on how much more advanced our minds are now as compared to our ancestors, when in reality it's our model for understanding the universe that has changed.  Our minds themselves really haven't changed much.  We're still trapped in a conceptual framework, just like the people in the past were; it's just a different one.

Which brings us to the strange case of Theiss of Kaltenbrun.

In 1692, an octogenarian was brought into a court in the town of Jürgensberg, then ruled by Sweden, now Zaube, Latvia.  He was accused of robbing a church, but along the way, it came out that Theiss was "widely known in the area" for being a werewolf.

A German woodcut of a werewolf (1722) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Asked about this, Theiss kind of shrugged and said, "Yeah, I am.  So what?"  Well, "so what" turned out to be the wrong thing to say, because back then, werewolves (along with witches and demons and so on) were considered to be the minions of hell, and as such, merited the death penalty.  Questioned about this, he said that he'd been a werewolf for a while, but had given it up ten years earlier.

I find this kind of odd.  I'd always thought that once a werewolf, always a werewolf, at least until you meet up with a silver bullet.  But apparently Theiss decided to retire, and was getting along fine until the whole church robbery incident brought him back to the center of attention.

The judges were initially inclined to dismiss him as insane, but then it came out that he'd been involved in an altercation with a farmer from Lemburg (now Mālpils, Latvia).  Theiss said the farmer was a Satan-worshiping witch, and one night when the farmer was off doing Bad Stuff, Theiss had (in wolf form) followed the farmer down to hell.  The farmer attacked Theiss with a broomstick (of course), breaking Theiss's nose.

A local verified that Theiss had, indeed, had his nose broken, and that was considered sufficient evidence for believing the rest of his story.

So the judges inquired further, and some of the testimony is downright hilarious.  Theiss and the other members of his pack, Theiss told them, liked to roam around local farms and kill and devour any farm animals they found.  They always roasted it first, though.  When one of the judges asked how a wolf could roast meat, Theiss told them they returned to human form while cooking, and that "they always added salt to their meat, but never had any bread to go with it."

Which, to judge by the scientific documentary An American Werewolf In London, is pretty genteel behavior, as compared to your average werewolf.

Here's where the case took an interesting turn, because Theiss admitted freely he was a werewolf, but said that he and his friends used their powers to fight evil.  There was an entrance to hell in a swamp near Lemburg, he said, and the whole pack would enter hell and do battle with the demons and with any human witches they came across.  They were, Theiss said, "God's Hounds."  They'd more than once found food and livestock that the actual evil witches had carted off to hell in order to cause famine, and they'd brought it back and distributed it to the God-fearing farmers in the area.

And sure enough, the people in the area all corroborated that Theiss was known as a healer and a generous friend.

This put the judges in a serious quandary.  They couldn't exactly condone his behavior; getting naked, turning into a wolf, and eating other people's livestock (roasted, and with salt) weren't exactly on the List of Approved Christian Pastimes as set forth by the church fathers.  But still... could there be a good, God-recommended use for magical powers?

I'm reminded of the scene in Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet where Pastor Mortmain is all set to hang Zylle Llawcae, whom he's declared to be a witch, and the Good Guys recite a spell that causes lightning to strike the gallows.  Zylle's husband, Ritchie, shouts, "Do you think all power is of the devil?  What we have just seen is the wrath of God!"  And amazingly enough, given how these things usually went, everyone realizes that Pastor Mortmain is really the Bad Guy here.

Even more astonishingly, that's kind of how the case of Theiss of Kaltenbrun went.  Well, almost.  The judges were desperate to find something to convict him of, because they were afraid that if they didn't, they'd have everybody and his brother running around being werewolves.  There was the matter of the church robbery, too, but what concerned them even more was the magical stuff.  Ultimately they found a guy who was willing to swear that he'd heard Theiss use a magical charm that went, "Sun and Moon go over the sea, fetch back the soul that the devil had taken to hell and give the cattle back life and health which was taken from them."  And although that was not an evil charm, per se, it didn't mention God, so it wasn't a prayer, and therefore was heretical.  So for that and the robbery, they ruled that Theiss should be flogged and then exiled from the town.

Which, considering what could have happened, was a pretty lenient sentence.

What's interesting about this case is not just that it's based on a belief we now consider silly superstition, but that you can see the judges edging, ever so slowly, toward, "But who is it hurting?"  Ironically, Theiss's trial was the same year as the Salem Witch Trials, which had a far more tragic outcome; but already you can see signs that the dogmatism of that time period was gradually eroding.  These kinds of attitudes are very resistant to change -- today's Christian evangelicals haven't moved all that far from their Puritan predecessors, honestly -- but that the judges in Jürgensberg even hesitated when they heard Theiss say "Sure, I'm a werewolf" is significant.

Social and cultural shifts don't happen overnight, and they always trigger a backlash -- which, sadly, is what we're living through right now.  But progress is real.  We can wish it to move a little faster while still acknowledging that things are better now than they were when I was a kid back in 1970, and far far better than when my grandparents were kids in 1910.  Our understanding of the natural world has helped, and just the fact of approaching the world through the lens of science and evidence means that we no longer have to fear what we don't understand.  There's no need for evil spirits and demons and werewolves anymore; we've outgrown them.

Onward and upward.

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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.