A werewolf, or lycanthrope, is a person who can turn into a wolf, or into a hybrid of wolf and human, either by choice or because of a curse. The idea is ancient, appearing in Greek and Roman writers, medieval law codes and romances, and the courtrooms of early modern Europe, where people were tried and executed as werewolves alongside the witch trials. Much of what people now “know” about werewolves, such as the full moon and transmission by a bite, comes from twentieth-century fiction and film rather than folklore. The werewolf is not a cryptid in the usual sense, but it has deeply shaped modern reports of wolf-like creatures such as the Dogman and the Beast of Bray Road.[1]
| Names | Old English werwulf, “man-wolf”; Greek lykanthropos, “wolf-human”; French loup-garou |
|---|---|
| Earliest sources | Herodotus, Ovid, Pliny the Elder, Petronius (1st century AD) |
| Medieval works | Marie de France, Bisclavret (c. 1200); Gerald of Wales; Gervase of Tilbury |
| Werewolf trials | 15th–18th centuries, especially France, Switzerland and German-speaking lands |
| Famous cases | Gilles Garnier (1573), Peter Stumpp (1589), Thiess of Livonia (1692) |
| Modern additions | Full moon, silver, transmission by bite, largely from 20th-century fiction and film |
| Medical theories | Rabies, porphyria, hypertrichosis and clinical lycanthropy, all debated |
Where the word comes from
The English word werewolf comes from Old English wer(e)wulf, “man-wolf,” from wer (man, as in “wergild”) and wulf. Related forms exist across the Germanic languages, and Slavic languages have words meaning “wolf-haired,” such as Czech vlkodlak, from which the Greek vrykolakas, a vampire-like revenant, was borrowed. French has loup-garou. The learned word lycanthropy comes from Greek lykanthropía, “wolf-man.”[1]
Werewolves in the ancient world
Stories of men turning into wolves go back to classical antiquity, and scholars have traced them further still, to possible initiation rites of young warrior bands in early Indo-European societies.[1]
- Herodotus reported that the Neuri, a people beyond Scythia, were said to turn into wolves for a few days each year, though he did not believe it.[1]
- King Lycaon of Arcadia was turned into a wolf by Zeus, in Ovid’s version for serving the god human flesh. Pausanias wrote that men at the sacrifices of Zeus Lycaeus in Arcadia were sometimes turned into wolves, returning to human form after nine years if they abstained from human flesh; an Arcadian named Damarchus was said to have done so and later won at Olympia.[1]
- Petronius, in the Satyricon (about AD 60), tells of a soldier who strips by the roadside, urinates around his clothes and turns into a wolf, one of the first true werewolf stories in Western literature.[1]
- Augustine recorded the widespread belief that witches’ spells could turn men into wolves, and early Christian teaching held that only God could truly transform a body.[1]
The medieval werewolf
In medieval Europe, werewolves appeared in law, theology and literature. The ecclesiastical laws of Cnut the Great urged priests to ensure that the “werewolf” did not devour too many of the flock, apparently as a figure for the devil. Gerald of Wales described the werewolves of Ossory in Ireland, and Gervase of Tilbury, writing around 1200, claimed that in England men had often been seen to turn into wolves at the change of the moon. In the Norse world, the úlfheðnar, warriors clad in wolfskins, were associated with the god Odin.[1]
Medieval romance also produced sympathetic werewolves. In Marie de France’s Bisclavret (about 1200), a nobleman who must become a wolf every week is betrayed by his wife, who steals the clothes he needs to return to human form. As a wolf he wins the king’s friendship with his gentle behavior, and only attacks when his treacherous wife appears, revealing the truth.[1]
The werewolf trials
From the fifteenth century, belief in werewolves became entangled with the European witch hunts. Werewolf accusations appeared in some of the earliest witch trials, in the Valais and Vaud regions of what is now Switzerland, and spread through Europe in the sixteenth century, peaking in the seventeenth. They were never more than a small fraction of witchcraft cases, but they included some notorious examples.[1]
- Gilles Garnier was convicted of being a werewolf at Dole, France, in 1573.[1]
- Peter Stumpp, the “Werewolf of Bedburg,” was executed in 1589 in Germany as a werewolf, accused of murder and cannibalism. His case caused a surge of interest in werewolves and persecution of suspects in French- and German-speaking Europe.[1]
- Thiess of Livonia, an 80-year-old man, testified in 1692 that he and other werewolves were the “Hounds of God,” who descended into hell to fight witches and recover the grain they stole. He was sentenced to ten lashes.[1]
Some trials involved real murders, and the Victorian writer Sabine Baring-Gould suggested that werewolf legends were partly a way of making sense of serial killers. By the mid-seventeenth century, educated opinion had begun to see lycanthropy as a delusion or a “disorder of the brain,” although trials continued in parts of the Alps into the eighteenth century, and in Spain a murderer named Manuel Blanco Romasanta claimed in 1853 that he was a lobishome, a werewolf.[1]
Folk beliefs
Traditional werewolf beliefs varied widely. A person might change by putting on a wolfskin belt or rubbing on a magic salve, by a curse, by a pact with the devil, or by sleeping outdoors under a full moon on certain nights. In wolf form, a werewolf usually looked like an ordinary wolf, though perhaps larger, with no tail and human eyes. In human form, telltale signs included eyebrows meeting over the nose and curved fingernails; in Russia, bristles under the tongue. Cures included wolfsbane, exorcism, calling the werewolf three times by its Christian name, or simply scolding it.[1]
Wolves were the most feared predators in Europe, and regions without wolves have their own were-creatures: werehyenas in parts of Africa, weretigers in India, and werejaguars in South America.[1]
Wolves, monsters and the Beast of Gévaudan
Real wolf attacks were an occasional part of European life into the twentieth century, and they fed werewolf fears. The most famous case is the Beast of Gévaudan, which killed dozens of people in south-central France between 1764 and 1767; one study counted 113 deaths. By then it was no longer seen as a werewolf, but its identity, whether a large wolf, a wolf-dog hybrid or an escaped exotic animal, is still debated.[1][2]
Medical theories
Modern writers have suggested several medical explanations for werewolf beliefs, none of which is generally accepted as the origin.[1]
- Porphyria. In 1963, the physician Lee Illis suggested that the light sensitivity, reddish teeth and psychosis of congenital porphyria might lie behind werewolf accusations. Critics note that werewolves were usually described as ordinary-looking wolves, not disfigured humans.[1]
- Hypertrichosis. This rare inherited condition causes excessive hair growth, but it is too rare to explain widespread belief.[1]
- Rabies. Its aggressive symptoms and transmission by bite resemble modern werewolf stories, but the idea of catching lycanthropy from a bite is itself largely modern.[1]
- Clinical lycanthropy. A rare psychiatric syndrome in which a person believes they are turning, or have turned, into an animal. It is real, but it explains individual cases, not the folklore as a whole.[1][3]
Hollywood and the modern werewolf
The modern werewolf was shaped above all by film. Universal’s Werewolf of London (1935) and especially The Wolf Man (1941), written by Curt Siodmak and starring Lon Chaney Jr., gave us the tragic man-beast cursed by a werewolf’s bite and killed with a silver-headed cane. The full moon as the trigger for transformation, transmission by a bite or scratch, and the special power of silver became fixed in popular culture through such films, rather than through traditional folklore.[1][4]
Werewolves and cryptids
In recent decades, people have reported upright, wolf-headed creatures in North America, such as Michigan’s Dogman and Wisconsin’s Beast of Bray Road. These reports draw heavily on the cinematic werewolf, though witnesses rarely claim to have seen a human transform. Misidentified dogs, wolves, coyotes and bears standing upright, combined with a powerful cultural image, are the likeliest explanation. The werewolf is also sometimes confused with the wendigo of Algonquian tradition, which is an entirely different being.
Our assessment
The werewolf is one of humanity’s oldest and most adaptable monsters, but not an undiscovered animal. Its long history reflects real fears of wolves, real violence and the tragic persecution of people accused of being werewolves. Much of the modern werewolf, including the full moon, the bite and the silver bullet, was invented in the twentieth century. Its strongest legacy today is its influence on how people interpret mysterious wolf-like animals in the dark.
References
- “Werewolf,” Wikipedia, citing Herodotus, Ovid, Pausanias, Petronius, Gervase of Tilbury, Marie de France, S. Baring-Gould, L. Illis (1963), and others.
- “Beast of Gévaudan,” Wikipedia.
- “Clinical lycanthropy,” Wikipedia.
- “The Wolf Man (1941 film),” Wikipedia.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from documented sources, replacing an earlier general description. The illustration above is an artistic impression.