Well, the chances are pretty good that most of what you think about werewolves and shapeshifters is not true. For one thing, the average person's ideas come mostly from fiction and movies (which are made-up, so we *know* they are a really good source of information, right?) and secondarily from ideas developed by the Catholic Church during the middle ages (and we *know* what a reliable source of information the Catholic Church was during that time.. exocommunicating Gallileo for discovering the moons of Jupiter yeah, the Catholic Church was really right on target during the middle ages, wasn't it?).

Couldn't resist a little sarcasm there.

Anyway.....

-The whole silver bullet thing is mostly a piece of crap. In fact in most legends the werewolf was unusually vulnerable in their transformed state; they got injured or killed all the time. There are just a few legends where the were-animal was immune to any but silver bullets.

- The full moon thing; has elements of truth in it but isn't anywhere near as important as most movies and novels would have you believe. In legend, physical transformations happen at all sorts of times, usually at night, full moon as often as new moon, and at many other times. Yet, in popular thought, the werewolf and the full moon are inextricably linked.

-The idea that shapechangers become superhuman; eight foot tall; super-muscular; or anything else like that instead of ordinary animals is a load of crap. In the legends, shapeshifters almost always looked exactly like real animals when transformed, occasionally they were tailless or had odd looking eyes, and they often looked similar to their human form in some superficial way (such as a red-haired person turning into a red-furred wolf, a fat person becoming a fat wolf, etc.) but nothing like the things they usually portray in werewolf novels.

-The idea that werewolves lust after human flesh is a load of crap. Yes, some werewolves in the legends killed people, but if you look at the folklore, they usually had a reason. The idea, primarily from movies, that a werewolf runs around eating humans right and left for no reason at all was primarily a hollywood gimmick to make a scarier monster. Even the Christian crap from the middle ages claimed that killer werewolves killed people because they were satan-worshippers and they "scored points" or something with the devil by killing people; not that werewolves suffered from an uncontrollable desire to kill people. Hollywood was certainly the prime source for this "killer bloodlust" crap

-The idea that anyone bitten by a werewolf will become a werewolf is crap. As far as I can tell, this comes entirely from the movies and was most likely borrowed from vampire folklore. I've run across dozens and dozens of ways outlined in folkore for someone to become a werewolf or shapeshifter; but never found folklore about werewolfism being contagious through bites.

Return to the Werewolf and Shapeshifter Codex