Amusing thoughts about werewolves….
While I was writing Witchcraft and Werewolves, I thought about my first werewolf “encounters.”
I was either a preteen or a teenager when I saw The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney on TV when stations featured old movies instead of late night talk shows. Larry Talbot returned to his homeland, Wales, and was attacked by a gypsy who was a werewolf. His fate was to become a werewolf during the full moon.
I found it amusing rather than scary primarily because of the so-faked make-up used to turn Chaney into a werewolf.
The next movie I remember is I Was a Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon as Tony Rivers, an angry young man who’s transformed into a werewolf via a drug and hypnosis by a crazed scientist in the guise of a psychotherapist.
There were others, less memorable, but equally amusing movies. So much for Hollywood and werewolves…..
The idea of a person turning into a werewolf intrigued me, so I read about werewolves. When I wrote Werewolves: Legends, Cases, Theories, I’d already researched trials as well as physical conditions that attributed to their lore.
While I was doing research on paranormal happenings in New Orleans, I discovered something that had me chuckling.
I had never read or seen anything about werewolves being afraid of something, as vampires shrink from the cross and sunlight.
Cajuns are of French ethnicity. They brought their lore with them when they came to the New World, first to Acadia, then to New Orleans.
Along with them came the belief in werewolves. The loup garou was the most feared of the werewolves, lupins or lubins being the other “breed.” And, there was something the loup-garou immensely feared. Frogs! Ranidaphobia much, Loup Garou?
