Werewolves

The dead of might as people sleep. That's when the spirits creep. As the belt holes three, dark things take power. We like to call it the supernatural hour.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is another time, another day, and another episode of Supernatural Hour. And we're here recording and I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who's actually paying any attention to recording. We're talking about past lines, back off! This is an ongoing battle.

It's a hot topic. Not the hot topic, but... Uh oh. Are we going on a trip to London because that is like the quintessential I'm going on a vacation to London?

Like Montage or his land. In every movie. Uh, where are we? Where are we?

Um, you know, that's actually our topic for tonight. And I'm just going to apologize in advance because I caught a coldie-cola go. Um, I'm at the tail end of it, but I have the coughs. So if I cough on it...

What does sound so quiet? Or if I sound a little different, that's why. He's going through the change. We didn't even sound check.

He just like started... I didn't. I didn't. I said yes he did.

No, I was wrong. It's not where Will's London. It's the London is calling. Where can where Will's not?

I correct myself. Anyway, I am your host, Castle. Uh, with us tonight is our other host, Tim, aka Beaker. What's happened?

He's the host with the most. Why does it sound so quiet? And our other host, Mike, a big stack, Pumba, the third. Esquire.

Do you turn me down? No, you're not turned down. I sound quiet. Uh, you don't look quiet.

You're sure it's not quiet. It's bright and... Yeah. Anyway, so tonight let's get started with some business.

Tim, Tim, sing the business song. It's business. It's business time. Alright, first up, if you are looking for Advanced Paranormal Supernatural Hour merchandise, it is available at advancedpairnormal.com under merchandise.

We have awesome things such as Supernatural Hour T-shirts, Supernatural Hour Mugs. We also have Travel Mugs. There are notebooks, there's a tapestry which someone has bought, so thank you. A tapestry for Hellsag.

Who doesn't want a tapestry? It's beautiful. There's also a Tobe bag. You can buy a Tobe bag with our logo on it.

I'm going to admit right now, I don't know what a Tobe bag is. You don't know what a Tobe bag is? That's fine. That's ok.

But if you want a Tobe bag with the Supremenatural logo on it, advancedpairnormal.com, what do you toot your things in? I don't know. You've never been to Dell's soul. Every time you leave there, you go to a toot.

We've got like a dozen of them. Castle don't toot. Boop doop doop. Alright.

Go on, advancedpairnormal.com and buy our stuff. We'd greatly appreciate it. We take all that money that you give us and we turn it around and try to buy better venues for us to investigate. Isn't that really true?

Tindest drinks. The profits. Yeah. That's okay.

They just can't get left. Wait, there's profits? I know. and then your profits there.

There's only one. I think we've made upwards of like $10 on Supernatural, our merchandise. So I'm just kidding, I'm giving them a hard time. If you want, maybe I should post a picture of that tapestry.

Sure. I'm on a. Let's just keep adding it to the list of things we're gonna post on Facebook and never do. Oh, I'll actually do it.

You know, we'll get it done. Like, 2021, we'll have like 50 pictures. Yeah, I need to really get on this. I actually had a couple people email me this last week and go, where's the stones of the week?

Why aren't they on the Facebook page? Why aren't they on the website? So I promise you I am working on that and I will have them up as soon as I can. You know, I'm very picky about maybe I need to have photography or take the pictures.

You know, I can maybe do that for you. I'm gonna take a picture of Tim's stones. Yes. So next up.

It's the interweb happens. So as of this recording, it will be Wednesday the 25th. And you were listening to this when it comes out. Two days from today is our advanced paranormal services investigation at the Bensinger smell.

We will be doing a presentation followed by an investigation. If you want to do the presentation only, we have lower the prices to that done to $15. And if you want to do the presentation and the investigation that is $35. Now, if you do buy the ticket for the presentation and decide you want to stick around from the investigation, we'll let you go ahead and pay the extra $20 and you can stick around and investigate with this.

Now real quick, that presentation, we've done this before and it's actually been a really popular thing we do. I don't know what you call it. It's a thing. The thing we do.

But what it is is we actually talk a little bit about some of the things we've talked about here in the show. We talk about what spirits are. But unlike the podcast, we show photographs that we've actually taken from different investigations. Are you saying we can't or don't show photos on the podcast?

Not usually. We're gonna do a photo show the next time around. It'll be really easy to record because it'll be a whole lot of silence. Hey, Tim, look at this photo.

Ooh, now look at this one. Wow, I really like how that photo. That photo just pops. I think when my wife keeps showing my daughter videos on Facebook, I'm like, I want to see.

We paused the TV. But anyway, we're gonna be showing ghost photos from investigations we've done. We've got some video that we've captured. We'll be doing some EVPs.

The presentation is actually, we've done a couple of them. They've been really fun. I'll probably be doing some more. But I know some people have talked about being a little freaked out at the prospect of going on a ghost hunt.

You know, they're not sure if that's something they want to do. But that's fine. I'm gonna suggest the thing that you're looking for. You guys see the cool stuff about that.

I'm actually going to go out and experience the ghost hunt part. I might also alleviate some of those fears. Do you might go, oh, this isn't quite so bad. That's true.

So. Unless you're my group. I'll make it scary. Tim, we'll make it bad.

So we hope to see you guys there. Again, you can get those tickets at events, purnowal.com. That is September 27th, which is Friday, two days from now. You're hearing this on Wednesday?

Yes. So the presentation is set to start at seven o'clock. We'll probably do the investigation right around nine o'clock. The presentation shouldn't take too long.

We usually like to open up for a Q&A session. We'll kind of start the investigation based on how long that goes. But for those of you like, if you're worried about making an on time to the presentation, if you can't make an on time that's fine, we'll still have someone there to let you in and you can come and investigate anyways. Our normal ticket price for this menu is $35.

So it's almost like if you're buying our $35 ticket price, you're getting the presentation for free. Yeah. So we hope to see everybody there. It should be a good time should be had by all.

We do have some stuff coming up in October, too. Do you want to talk about that, Tim or do you want to wait? Yes. Friday, October 25th and Saturday, October 27th.

We will be back at Ben's and Gris Mill. So that's three times in two months. It's a good venue. So it's a great venue.

It's always a ton of activity. Usually something always going on. Everyone has some sort of experience when they're there. There's ghosts.

The Friday one, as of right now, will be a gallery reading done by Kate and Mattinson. And then our Saturday one will be another presentation and investigation. I believe we've decided on doing a presentation on cursed objects or demonic entities or something like that. We'll have that hammer down before we get.

It's going to be different than the 101. So the reason why we're doing that is because we don't want people to come and just see the same presentation every time they come and see one of our presentations. Yeah, why do you guys look at options? And these presentations, you'll probably see these repeated over the year.

I mean, we'll probably have another paranormal 101 down the road. We'll probably have another demonic entities or another cursed object presentation. Or maybe even something completely different, just to kind of mix it up and give you guys some different options. But we hope to see you guys there.

Those events should be going up on events paranormal here within the week as well. So look forward to that. And we hope to see your smiling faces. We probably ought to do some shout outs unless you want to cover Tim.

Businesses closed. All right, business is closed. A couple shout outs. I'd like to give a shout out to Maverick Frank.

Rounded him a couple weeks ago. It's nice to run into a listener. Rounded to Frank at the Maverick on 146. Give another shout out to one of our listeners, Amber.

Had a chance to talk to her the other day. So Maverick Frank and Amber. What's up? Hey, shout out to you.

How do I give? Yes. I just don't remember other names at the moment. I wasn't thinking about other names.

Well, I know lots of people's names. I want to give a shout out. It's not a person. But I want to give a shout out to your t-shirt.

I want to give a shout out to Shout to my coke. Actually, Peaches and I recently went to a cool store that we found in Sandy City here in Utah. It's one of my new favorite stores. It is the Root Beer Store.

It's on about 93, 25 South State Street. It's right across the street from Jordan Commons. Did they sell Root Beer? They sell over 100 different kinds of sodas than the majority of them is Root Beer.

They do have like Sasperilla, Creme Suddas, Ginger Ls, Diet Root Beer. Oh, hey. And then they have specialty drinks like Hot Sauce, Soda, and Bacon Soda. I do know that if there's a certain lady that listens to this from life on the rocks, they do sell the Cock-a-Bool, which is a ginger beer.

I know another place you can get the Cock-a-Bool. I know several. But they sell several different types of sodas. Now they have over 100 items.

When you're not getting paid to Sandy this, we just told the girl at the cash register that day, you know, we think it's cool. We'll talk about it on the show. They've only been open for about. By the time this comes out, two weeks.

So. I'll be interested to see you. I want to plug my favorite drink place now. I'll come over there and try the Diet Root Beer, because I got a little secret.

Castle loves the Diet Pepsi. But my second go-to is the Diet Root Beer. We keep this for you drinker. He's popping a Diet A&W as we speak.

I finished the Diet AW. So there's no other one right behind. According to the business card, apparently you can rent cakes of root beer. You can also buy kits that you can take home to make your own beer.

It's kind of cool. It's a neat little novelty store. I think I need to find out if it's possible to get Diet Root Beer poisoning. Since this is a paranormal podcast, my Auntie Witherspier is there at that store.

There were no ghosts there at all in the store. And there you have folks that's just there. Apparently there was ghosts at the Maverick gas station. I was just at because all the customer in the store guy finishes ringing me up and he says, you have a good, or it wasn't you.

It wasn't you. He just told me you have a good night. He's like, you guys have a good night. Yeah, I started looking around.

I'm like, I'm the only one here. Yeah, those three ghosts from Disneyland, Hichina and Ryan. Yeah, that would be rude. He's a guy's kind of big.

Hey, you guys have a good night. You guys have a good night. You call me fat? It's a fat joke.

Right? Hi, William. So let's. Yeah, it's the root beer store.

Totally not paranormal related, but it's pretty cool. Go check it out. So Rubber store, Maverick Frank, Amber, Mike's unnamed drink store. And my favorite drink store is called Hay soda.

It's a little small one. You know, like Swig and so delicious and Fizz. It's just over here. And yeah, there's lots of those.

But this one was just a small one over here. It's in Midvale. And they do so delicious, but it's so delicious. I was actually going to wait for my to call out to give a shout out to the people's names you can't remember.

Hey, you guy. Hey, everybody else that I talked to about the podcast, which I talk about a lot, where my merchandise, which I got at, advanceprinable.com, ordered it. But yeah, we talk about it. And a lot of people say, yeah, I'm going to check it out.

I just didn't write down everybody. I talked to about it. Well, we decided that tonight we were going to talk Wendigo and werewolves. Hoards of Wendigo.

Werewolves. And I actually watched Dr. Mittering the guy actually said werewolf frequently to the documentary. He wrote a book on werewolves.

And he, yeah, when we talk about werewolves. Mike, let's lead off with Wendigo. Do you want to go that direction? So Wendigos are a, it's a Native American tribe thing.

So a lot of the tribes I have a hard time with. But I'll go up the Cree, the Swampy Cree, the Eastern Cree, the West Main Swampy Cree, and the Ojibwe, the Nascapi, and the Inu. So those are all the ones, the main ones. And then the Algonquins are the ones to.

The Algonquins also, don't forget the Cherokee and, I can't remember the last one. Go ahead. They were not listed amongst the tribes. But they are tried to believe in the Wendigo.

I would wager going through all this most all of Native American tribes believed in Wendigo. So Wendigos are often described as giants. There are many times larger than human beings. A characteristic absent from myths that, so that's in some of those, than the Algonquins cultures.

They don't quite sound like their giants. But whenever Wendigo ate another person, they would grow in proportion to the meal that had just eaten. So it would never be full. Therefore Wendigos are portrayed as simultaneously gluttonous and extremely thin.

Kind of the embodiment of gluttony. But just kind of describe what they are, kind of where they got their origins. It's believed that the Tejos of Wendigo was a lost hunter. And during a brutally cold winter, this man's intense hunger drove him to cannibalism.

After feasting on another human's flesh, he transformed into a crazed man beast, just like Castle, roaming the forest in search of more people to eat. Since the Wendigo is said to be a cold weather creature, most sightings have been reported in Canada, as well as the colder northern states, such as Minnesota. And around the turn of the 20th century, the Algonquins tribes blamed many unsolved disappearances of people to Wendigo attacks. So what do they look like?

They don't look like Castle. So I've heard that their commonly described as looking like they're made out of snow or ice or stone. And if I remember right, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Mike, so you're thinking Game of Thrones. No, I actually see that.

I was going to say, actually, they actually kind of are. Go ahead. Wendigo means spirit that consumes flesh is kind of what that translates into. So I mean, it literally is a spirit that consumes flesh.

But yeah, the Algonquins in particular believe that they look like they're made out of ice or stone with kind of like teeth and would consume people. Well, here's the description. There's a gentleman by the name of Basil H. Johnston, who is a native author and ethnographer.

I'm not sure what that word is, but sounds cool. But anyway, he described what they look like. He says, the Wendigo was a gaunt to the point of a maceation. Its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones, with its bones pushing out over its skin.

Its complexion is of ash gray and of death. Its eyes pushed back deep into the sockets. The Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were totered and bloody, unclean and suffering from the separations of the flesh.

The Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition of death and corruption. Another ethnohistorian said that the Wendigo was large, had sharp claws, massifies like an owl. However, some other people say that it was more like a skeleton figure just with ash toned skin. No matter which diversion sounds most plausible, it's obviously a creature you don't want to run into out on a hike.

Just usually just a creature that's obsessed with hunting and eating people satisfying those cannibalistic urges. But because they're feeding so much and hunting so much, they never really get satiated, they're never full. And that's why they're always so skinny because they're just can't get enough. I kind of wish I had that problem because I'm hungry, ate food and I get chubby.

Well, see, the Wendigo actually hunts different than normal animals or predators. Right. An encounter. The Wendigo actually says he has a trait where he has the ability to mimic human voices.

He uses this to lure people and draw them away from their civilization. And Tim actually was able to find the exact translation for what Wendigo means. Do you want to cover that real quick? Well, it's a rough translation.

It says it's the evil spirit that devours mankind. So I was kind of close, very close. Anything else you want to come around when it goes? Oh, I know it's been said that like Wendigo is like a spirit.

Some Wendigo is like a person, like in the transform. So yeah, that's about it. You know, and we were going to do more on Wendigo, but to be honest with you, there's not a whole lot out there. I mean, there is, but not enough.

I think we could really do a compelling hour-long show. With Wendigo that once the man or once the person has become a Wendigo, they stay the Wendigo. There's no coming back unlike what we're about to talk about. Where was it?

Right. So let's talk more. You want to do one another time then? Do you want more?

Yeah. OK, go on. OK. Sorry, I didn't want to cut you guys off.

We go off apparently. Sorry. We thought you were not? I was scrolling through to get past the stuff that you'd already talked about.

So anyway. You must have more than I do. So at the beginning of the 20th century, there's an 87-year-old Cree man by the name of Jack Fiddler who was tried for the murder of a Cree woman. And whilst he pleaded guilty to the crime, he defended himself by saying that the woman was on the verge of transforming into a Wendigo as she was being possessed by the evil spirit.

Because it is said that they can also possess a person. They get in their mind and then they can start to possess them and then end up taking over their body and devouring them that way somehow. But therefore, she said she had to be killed before she murdered other members of the tribe in addition to this woman Fiddler claimed to have slain at least 13 other Wendigo ag during his lifetime. So like a hard Wendigo?

Like a hard Wendigo? That could be a hard one. Is this the guy that applied to be on the team? Maybe.

I don't know. So according to this, it says there's a version of the Wendigo that claims it has the power to curse humans by possessing them, like you were saying. And it says once they infiltrated their minds, he'll actually turn them into Wendigo as well, instilling them upon the same lust for human flesh that he has. So he's basically able to mind control them and be like, OK, Wendigo, go.

So walking to a room? You. Wendigo, paw to the virgins. The most popular version of the story, though, Wendigo is transformed whenever human being resorted to cannibalism.

Even if it was done in order to survive, when a person consumes the flesh of another human being, he or she is believed to be overcome by evil spirits and transformed into a Wendigo. He talked about Swift Runner. Did you talk about Swift Runner? That one is scrolling down here.

You know what's interesting? Let's talk about that for just a second. In most cultures, consuming human flesh is like a huge taboo. And we've talked about type three spirits that they come into play when people do things that are grossly immoral, so to speak.

Oh, so like this next person, Swift Runner? Probably. Go for it. I've got to go for it.

So Swift Runner was a Native American man who murdered and ate his entire family during the winter of 1879. According to Animal Planet, Swift Runner claimed to be possessed by a Wendigo spirit at the time of the murders. I guess he was still convicted for killing his family. Well, and so when you look at the Wendigo from a possessed by an evil spirit and cannibalism possibly opening the door for that, it actually seems like that could be a legitimate potential thing.

Not just something that's more fantastical like a vampire or a werewolf, which we're going to talk about here in a minute. The more I'm hearing about this, the more I say, OK, and I'm using my air quotations, a natural phenomena or a supernatural or paranormal phenomena that's been turned into fantastical creatures, I'll speak. Well, supposedly when they do this, by eating that human flesh, it gives a person's certain abilities, gives them strength, speed, immortality. If you eat enough of it over years, you become this less than human thing, and you're always sent.

That's according to Sam and Dean Winchester in the episode of Urban2Go. All right. I'm glad to see you guys deep into the scientific research. Those guys are authorities and my idols.

Let me know if I'm just getting too far ahead of you here, but it says whether or not you believe the way it works in the woods at night or not, it's not just another boogeyman story. This story is not another story meant to scare people for no reason. It has historical significance for many indigenous communities. The legend of the Wendigo has long been associated with real life problems, like insatiable greed, selfishness, and violence.

It's also linked to many cultural taboos against the negative actions and behaviors. Which is more clean and so metaphorical. So yeah, I mean, I don't need Americans to have lessons and stories and all that. So basically the word Wendigo can also function as a symbol for gluttony and the image of excess.

As John Basil Johnston has written, the idea of turning a Wendigo is a very real possibility. When the world refers to self-destruction, rather than literally becoming a monster in the forest. Interesting. So then according to this, you get a person and become a Wendigo and then you can't stop.

Brandi Kraszruv So unless you have more to go on the, do you have one on there Tim you wanted to go with? Oh, there's this article's huge. I think it's probably to say what I was looking at. I'm actually not as much as you did because I just touched on Wendigo's and kind of went and head first into the werewolf stuff.

So I mean the reason why we're talking about Wendigo is because it's the Native American. It's kind of like werewolves. I mean our main topic today was going to be werewolves anyways, but we wanted to touch a little bit on Wendigo because they are very similar in some of their features. But there are some differences as well.

And like I said, one of them is being that once you turn into a Wendigo, that's what you've done. You are when they go there's no turning back into a human. Unlike, like I said werewolves really have the ability to shape it back and forth. Now with the werewolves, do we want to talk first about the Hollywood werewolf or do we want to talk about the anthropological version of werewolves?

Well, let's start with history. It's not with history, it's the memory of the history. Okay. Because I've got more of the history stuff.

So we have more of the holidays. And I'm going to touch on this and feel free to flesh this out a little bit. But the legend of werewolves have been around for a very long time. The Greeks had myths about werewolves, the Romans did.

In fact, there was actually a story that was popular in the Romans about a guy named Lycan. Like Lycan. And according to the story, he actually met the God Jupiter. And Lycan like to consume human flesh.

And he didn't leave the Jupiter as a God. And so he attempted to serve Jupiter a dish, which had human flesh in it. Jupiter being a God was kind of pissed with Lycan and cursed him to only be able to consume human flesh. And so you kind of come up with that name Lycanthropy if you're here with reference to werewolf that comes from that story of Lycan and Jupiter.

Well, and this is here in my notes, werewolves. They're also known as Lycanthropes. Like Lycanthropes are Lycanthropes I know. They have Kenny's favorite movie with Kate Beckinsale Underworld.

They're all considered Lycans. Yeah, they're called all of them. They're called werewolves. They call them Lycans.

Right. And so that's actually from an actual Roman mythology. It comes from an ancient Roman poet, Ovid. In his work called Metamorphosis, it's written in 180.

So there's another Roman satress named Petronus. Where are Petronius? Sorry, Petronus is Harry Potter. It was among the first to chronicle in the during connection between werewolves and full moon.

He wrote a story about a man who, one night on a full moon, went to visit his mistress. He asked a soldier friend to accompany him. And along the way, his friend stopped, stripped off all his clothes, and transformed into a wolf, and ran off into the darkness. And there's a belief that the full moon creates lunacy or madness in people.

And if you ever work in an ER, you'll know that this is true. Born in the enforcement. Yeah, we're long. You see it too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's something about a full moon, and all the crazies come out. Now with this thing, I'm going to touch on this real quick.

And this is a sidebar, if you will. Full moon, lunar. If you heard the term lunacy or lunatic, that's referring to the moon. That's cool.

That's cool. So before any of all of that stuff that we just talked about, the first recorded, well, the first recorded. We're going to come back to this Roman story. We can come back to that.

We totally skipped a whole bunch of stuff before that. The first recorded example of a man turning into a wolf is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was around 2,100 BC. It says, however, the werewolf is we know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome and poetic and philosophical texts. So even before Greece and all that, what spawned in the current day, the humanity of Tamanic current day were wolves.

That's the, again, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was 2,100 BC. The stories of the transform beasts were usually mythological. Although some have basis in local histories, religion and cults in 425 BC Greek historian Herodis described the neuroi. Were we getting there yet?

No, go ahead. I actually skipped on those guys before. OK. So he described the neuroi, which was a nomadic tribe of magical men who changed into wool shapes for several days of the year.

And then basically they would change back a couple days later. This was before the whole moon thing, before any of this came in. So they used wolf skins for warmth when they were outside. Do you think wolf skins for warmth is not a threat of possibility in harsh climates like that?

But yeah, that's basically what he said before even lichen, that there was men that would turn into, or maybe after. I don't know. Well, what's interesting with that, and I'm going to jump forward again in history with talking with the wolf skins, is there's a lot of cultures including the Vikings. The Vikings would actually wear.

I wanted to tell this thing. Go ahead. They would tell it right. Oh, no.

They pressures on. The Vikings would wear bear skins. And it was believed that if they were these bear skins, they had this belief that they kind of became the bear. And so they became these ferocious warriors with the attributes of a bear when they were these bear skins.

And they're called Barzark, which is actually a predecessor name to the term berserker. If you ever heard the term berserker, that's considered a warrior who just goes crazy and just goes nuts on a battlefield. Look, I'm sorry, barzark, that the Vikings worth the bear skin. And what's interesting is that when I was younger, I was in a seminary class.

And one of the teachers in the class had kind of said, you know, you behave the way you dress. If you dress nice clothes, you're going to behave like a gentleman. If you dress like a punk, you're going to become a punk. I'm in him.

And in high school, I used to dress a little crazy. And I used to work on that boots and trench coat. And I was kind of like a I dressed like a school shooter when I was in high school. But halfway through, I decided that that's not who I wanted to be.

And I started dressing different. And I noticed that when I dressed different, I behaved different. And so it kind of goes along with these Vikings wearing bear skins. In their mind, they're becoming bears.

Yeah, there are going to be these berserkers. These amazing warriors. And so it kind of plays into that. Even in the business world now, they tell you dress for the job you want.

So if you want to be the boss, if you want to be a werewolf, don't wear a t-shirt and flip-flop store. That's why they don't let me come to work with Batman, though. Yeah, that was one of the things I really liked the story about the berserkers. Because yeah, there's nothing human about it anymore.

And when they go into battle, they're just, and it's all a psychological thing. That's the fun thing with it. That whole mind over matter. But I thought that was really cool.

Well, and with the original werewolves, there were a lot of different theories on how this happened. A lot of it was that you put on a magic pelt, and also you transformed into a werewolf, or you grabbed a magic salve on your skin, and you turned into werewolf. And what's crazy is there was actually a kind of a salve that they used back in those days that consisted of belladonna, which is also nightshade. It's toxic, and it'll kill you.

Had some other stuff. Did you have that in your notes anywhere, Mike? Negative. Anyway, it had a lot of herbs.

And basically what we would consider is these this day-made drugs. And so you rub this salve on your skin, and you basically kind of go on like an LSD trip. If you take drugs, you're going to think you're a werewolf. And that was the thing is people either are a werewolf or they behave like they're a werewolf, because they're rubbing the stuff on their skin.

And so that was kind of part of the legend, too. The other thing is these peasants in these days used to eat a lot of rye bread. And I know we talked about the Salem Witch stuff several episodes ago. And one of the thoughts.

Oh, so here we go. Yeah, I was going to say a couple episodes ago. And one of the beliefs was that they'd eaten some rye infected with the ergot fungus, and that caused people to have some hallucinations, which kicked off the whole witch hunting. Well, there's a belief that these peasants in medieval Europe were also eating a lot of rye that could have the ergot fungus in it.

And we're basically having an acid truck either A, believe they're werewolves, or B, believe they're seeing werewolves. And so there's quite the in France particularly. There's quite the werewolf sighting problem, if you will, having werewolf problems. I want to say something like 33,000 people were tried as a werewolf in France.

Well, what's interesting is you hear about Spanish Inquisition. And this is kind of when the Protestant Church started to kind of crop up. And so the Catholic bishops started having these religious tribunals. And kind of like the witch hunts, they were having werewolf hunts as well.

And so they would find all these reasons to basically interrogate people. And if you have a hot pincer up, someone's rear end, they'll look in brandy space. They'll confess to anything. Yeah.

And we're going to show this red hot fireplace poker pure backside or you werewolf. Yes, I am a werewolf. Please don't stick them backside. And then they just burned you at the stake because you're a werewolf.

And so they had a lot of people who were actually confessing to being werewolves. And most of them were peasants as well. The werewolf hysteria in the Middle Ages grew off of the witchcraft hysteria. From 1,300 to 1,700, thousands of people were brought to trial and charges of witchcraft.

And the accusations of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and sexual license came primarily from peasants. And the accused were primarily peasants as well. Right? You never talked about that right when she got here.

Well, and what's interesting with that is so this is the Middle Ages. And so you've got a pretty tough lifestyle to begin with. I mean, you're just doing everything you can to make ends meet. And even when you're doing well, you're getting taxed to the high heaven.

And so life is just rough. And so when things go crappy, if my life is hard and I look at my extraordinary mic, and my guy's doing OK, well, it must be because he's made a pact with a devil. And he's a werewolf. And so I'm going to go tell people the mics werewolf.

And then we're all going to go lynch mic because he's doing better than us. It was kind of a mentality. And the funny thing, too, is they used to believe that one of the signs of werewolves is that having a unibrow was a sign of a werewolf. And obviously, if you're a werewolf, you're going to grow hair on your palms, which actually is a like problem.

That's why I heard that was something that came from something else. But because you grew hair on your palms, well, of course, we're going to shape their palms. So if your hands were rough and you had a unibrow, that meant you were probably a werewolf because you're shaving the hair off. Or even just overly hairy men, which is actually just a sign of testosterone, which means you guys are more manly than they are.

But if you're thinking about it, you're a medieval European peasant. You don't take care of yourself. You got a unibrow. And you're out there rubbing with a whole all day long.

You're going to have rough hands. Grubbing with hoes. Not that kind of grubbing, not that kind of hoe. But you're out there working with your hands.

You're going to have rough hands. And so basically, their evidence of werewolfism was pretty, what's what I'm looking for, not feeble, but a little ridiculous. Yeah. Basically, I could.

You could pretty much name anybody as a werewolf. Or as a werewolf. Or as a witch. And the thing is, it was all of the burden of proof fell on me to prove that I'm not a werewolf.

Or I'm not a witch rather than prove that I did something that was like an only convention of confession. And we get a confession by taking this hot fireplace poker and sticking with some of that. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous.

Yeah, Brandy, for those who can't hear Brandy saying it was conspiracy for population control. And it could have been. But I honestly think a lot of it was just a lot of weird superstition and hysteria. Well, we see that now.

You see that? I mean, not to get into political stuff. It is how easy is it be labeled as a racist? You have to do it exist.

And I could just say, Jim is racist. And Jim is racist. That's right back to the pair. Anyway, talk about where we'll see.

We ran away. I know. I'm not going to let you run in that direction. It's easy to accuse someone of being a werewolf.

I like your knowledge. So now there was one trial during this period where there was a kid, and I can't remember his name. I don't know if you have it there for any mic. But he's basically simple, Jack.

I mean, he was a kid who was not the sharpest tool in the shed by today's standards. He'd be considered mentally disabled. But he actually had attacked a few people and they brought him into court. And he got him to confess into open court that he, like to eat young children.

And he didn't like to eat old people because they were tough as leather. You know, in the jury got a laugh out of that. And basically I'm just going to confess that he's a werewolf that he met with a dark being who gave him these werewolf powers. And he put on the werewolf high and turned into werewolf.

And they were actually going to burn this kid at the stake, this kind of simple Jack kid. And at a prosecutor at the time, actually, not a prosecutor at the time, actually went and argued that this kid was clearly not a werewolf. He was just a little special. And they actually ended up not burning him at the stake.

And instead, he was remembering that he was a little bit like he was remanded to live the rest of his life in a monastery. And he ended up dying in his 20s. He was only 14 at the time when he got convicted. But I do have several people, actually, cases of people who were I've got a couple as well.

But one of the things that just before I scroll past it, I forget to come back. I do want to come back. Can I tell the Roman story? Yes.

Before I forget because I know someone out is going, I'm just more concerned about walking through the woods with your buddy and also he takes his pants off. That just concerns me. So well, he should have been going to his mistress's house anyway. So anyway, so they're walking through the woods.

The guy takes off, his friend takes off. He goes and runs off into the woods. He changes into a wolf and runs off into the woods. The guy gets to his mistress's house and he hears that one of the lady's servants fought off and attacked that night from a wolf and wounded it with a sword in the neck.

The next day the man found his soldier friend back at the barracks dying from a sword wound to his neck. And it's believed that if you incur an injury as a wolf, as a werewolf, that you will still have those same injuries when you transform back into your human form. There's several different, and before we go to the trials, there's lots of different animals as well. Do you mind if I touch on a story real quick, Regent and the Lord kind of freaked out and they went up to his wife's room and she was bandaging her stump where her hand was missing and so they determined that she was a werewolf and then ended up burning her at the stake because that's what you do with werewolves.

Or you build a bridge out of her. Or that. She's not a witch, she's a werewolf. I stand corrected.

And so there's a lot of stories and I'd be curious to know the real facts behind that story because I'm hard time thinking of doing this attack by wolf, kind of her hand and it was the Lord's wife's life, I'd be curious to know what facts were behind that. He was probably stoned and attacked her. He had that there, just made a home safely. He had the ride with the ergot.

So there's a lot of recorded instances of that kind of stuff. So go ahead with the other were animals. So just some of the wolves, the idea of changing from a human to an animal is not unique to the ancient of an area of an ancient Roman. As we talked about in Lapland they had where reindeer and in South America they were where opossums and where jaguars in Japan had where wild cats.

Usually it was the animal that was the predominant predator of the area and so throughout Europe it was mostly wolves. Dented and dragons were where bears. Which is something interesting if you think about stories about wolves being predators, you look at the story of red, red, right? There's a wolf that is looking to eat little red, red, red, and dresses up as grandma and obviously it's not just your standard wolf.

I mean that talks. He speaks. Where's clothes? You know, where wolf is?

Other types of werewolves are the existing in the world. Where foxes? Where are tigers? Where are snakes?

Where are bears? And where are bears? Sorry, where are bears? Where are bears?

Where are bears? They're the where are bears? Yeah. For where are bears standing you're probably going to die.

So I did say one thing that was interesting. I thought about wolves and then we'll go into some of the different things. It says most of Europe the wolf was most feared. It was a gentleman named Manu Yous Summers who was a 19th century authority on occultism and the supernatural and he described what the wolf meant to medieval Europeans.

And so this is why they're all looking at these people all where wolves. They said the distinctive features of the wolf are unbridled cruelty, beastial ferocity, and ravining hunger. He is something of a demon from hell. He is the symbol of night and winter of stress and storm, the dark and mysterious harbinger of death.

Something that I kind of struck with that too. So this interesting is night and winter and I was starting a game of thrones. The Starks and Winterfell, everything was a wolf. Well I was saying wolves were game of thrones fans.

But wolves are much bigger deal than bears were. In fact, and I'm going to jump way forward in history but we can jump back after. Adolf Hitler had a weird fascination with wolves. You know, you have the submarine wolf packs which actually use wolf tactics.

Just wolves were a big deal in Europe, even again up into the age of Adolf Hitler. I think they've since killed all the wolves in Europe. But yeah, so they wiped out most places. Well, like you said, it's the most kind of the most dangerous predator in the area is what the where animal was around the world in Europe as a wolf.

Well, and a lot of cultures have been kind of back going to the Wendigo. A lot of cultures believe back in the day that you could transform from a person into something else. It was a very common notion. That one documentary was basically saying the idea of shape shifting has been around since men have been able to draw hieroglyphics and cavemen dragons and all that.

Isn't that kind of what skin walkers do as well? Well, it's interesting you say that because going back to skin, that was one of the names that in the research I had that a lot of people that skin walkers went to go were one of the same. So yeah, I'm going to say if you think about it, skin walkers were in theory supposed to be able to transform into whatever spirit animal they believed in. We will be doing an episode on skin walkers and skin walkers eventually.

But in my notes here, skin walker, and it says in parentheses arguably werewolves could be classified as magic users. A skin walker is a human who using the occult arts can put on a wolf skin and transforming to generally normal wolf. Possibly the same physical attributes as one of the wolf skin is made of no special powers toughness, et cetera, just intelligent wolf with a normal wolf sensibilities, which is slightly different than a werewolf because a skin walker is just turning into a wolf where a werewolf is just like this human wolf hybrid. Yeah, human wolf hybrid.

It's mostly wolf. Like it's not like the werewolves you see in TV and movies nowadays. They actually had it's more like what you see in the world. The long snouts, the actual face of a wolf.

It's not the flat face like human laws. Yeah. So, Rucker Howard in Lady Hawk was not a werewolf. He's just a be more of a skid longer.

Like him, like him, throat. He changed into a wolf at night and then a daytime he was a wolf. If it's kind of like the shaggy dog thing where he just turns into a wolf, that would be more like a skin walker. Okay.

Because the skin walker like it turns into just a wolf or essentially we'll get more into it on our skin walker episode, but like they could be wearing like the beak of an eagle or whatever. They could turn into an eagle. Usually they weren't the palter of the animal that they turned into. Like a spirit animal type thing?

Kind of. Yeah. I'll be honest. Skin walkers kind of creep me out.

Like a werewolf. It's what werewolf generally isn't all wolf. That's like a skin walker was turned into all wolf. Wherewolf is literally means man wolf.

So they're half man half wolf, kind of like a sun card. Like it's got it. That's where the difference lies. Now kind of in the 1800s and if I'm jumping ahead of you guys here, you go ahead and interrupt me.

Oh, I've got stories from 1500s. Let's go back to the 1500s. You want to talk about the French guys? I'll go German guy.

Do you want to do? Go French. Okay. I'll do that.

I've got a couple of French guys and the German guy. So you got Peter Stump? I got Peter. Okay.

Go for Peter. All right. So in 1859 in Germany, farmer Peter Stump is executed after his neighbors caught him in his werewolf form. Stump confesses to rape, murder and cannibalism.

The neighbors also killed his daughter and his mistress for having sex with him. So it doesn't mention incest, but if his daughter's having sex with him. Under interrogation he also confesses to murdering his son and snacking on his brain. So under interrogation, like I said, with those old methods, it's not just like making you sit and watch Barney over and over and over and over.