Well, we shifters have probably always been around. Mythology about us in found, in great quantities, in every single culture in the world, and from thousands of years ago as well as today. Our folklore isn't quite as common as ghost folklore or witch folklore, but it's still a pretty big branch of folklore. Some of the earliest recorded mythology includes shapeshifters.

However, modern shifters who have banded together to commune with others of like kind and say to the world "There's a whole bunch of us just like this, so we may be eccentric but we aren't crazy" are a much more recent phenomena.

Yeah, there is some evidence that some of the old shapeshifter societies, albeit weakened, still exist in very primitive parts of the world. There is evidence of shamanic were-jaguar societies in South America, the notoriously infamous were-leopard society of Ethopia, and were-tiger societies in India. But modern shifters are a group that sprung up anew, linked, at most, by hereditary lycanthropy to any older organizations.

The "shifter movement", as it is sometimes called, could probably be said to have first started with the Usenet newsgroup alt.horror.werewolves. This newsgroup was first started in, I believe, 1992. Before too long, it attracted lots of spiritual therianthropes, who gradually forced the mere werewolf fans out of the group and took over. This might perhaps be looked upon as a little bit nasty; but as the shifters who did this later expressed, it was a great relief to finally find others of their kind, and alt.horror.werewolves was the only group they had. They NEEDED to be able to have a meeting-grounds for communion with others of their kind. Today, that is still a common shifter sentiment.

The thing that hurts the worst about being a shifter is the wondering if there is something wrong with you for being the way you are; the feeling of being so very different from every other human being; the feeling of being so very misunderstood; the wondering whether you are perhaps the only one of your kind in the whole world. And finding other shifters is.... *amazing*.

No, alt.horror.werewolves was not the only place that modern shifters ever found each other. I know for a fact that there are cases of groups of shifters forming entirely outside (and without any knowledge of the existence of) the online subculture. Some shifters discover each other within the furry movement, as well.

But alt.horror.werewolves, and the myraid groups and packs that sprung from it, comprises the majority of the organized modern shifter movement.

The first meeting of shifters in the flesh was in a "howl" (now common shifter slang meaning a gathering of shifters, werecats don't like the term because it's too wolf-oriented and hold "meows") in 1994. Nowadays, there are several major howls every year, and a larger, but unknown, number of smaller howls, the smaller howls being mostly of local packs in a smaller area, such as a state. The larger howls are generally advertised on alt.horror.werewolves.

Many local packs have sprung up as a result of AHWW. If a bunch of shifters live close enough to visit reasonably often and cheaply (such as in the same state or, better yet, in the same town) and if they don't hate each other, chances are pretty good that they'll form a pack, either formal and highly organized; or more like a loose collection of friends, or anything in between.The most famous of these "town-based packs" was probably "The Urban Moon Pack", which resided in a certain city in Austrailia; it included a number of werewolves, a werecat, and a couple of were-foxes, if I remember right, and it also had it's own irc channel for awhile and posted a lot of reports about what was going on with it online. It had meetings every full moon. It had a very bitter split up some years ago (though in fairness, I must say that some former members of The Urban Moon Pack still insist that they still have fond feelings for other former members, and that the break up was not bitter).

There are other types of packs that have directly or indirectly sprung up from AHWW; there are packs that, unlike packs based on a particular area, are scattered over a very wide area, perhaps even more than one continent, and meet almost entirely online. Generally, they have their own private chat room, irc channel, or secret chat area on some muck or another, and they often largely stay aloof from mainstream AHWW doings. It is hard to say how many of these there are, but I do know that many of them can be quite secretive and "clique-like"; the whole reason that they peeled off is because they feel a need for privacy, or they have ideological differences from the rest of AHWW, or they have some characteristic in common that bonds them together more. The most famous of the these "online-but-separate" packs are probably the Lanhunters, the Forest Pack, and the Three Caps; but I've known for sure of the existence of at least four others, and heard rumors and hints of many, many more.

However, more and more, this type of thing is becoming somewhat normal as the sheer number of shifters there are (and more shifter discover AHWW *every day*) bogs down AHWW and creates tensions and cravings for privacy or cravings for areas for special disscussions. From some years ago, there has been much talk of creating more Usenet shifter groups to bleed off some of the overpopulation (instead of a new Usenet group, secret chat areas and mailing lists have proliferated instead), but, so far as I know, no new Usenet group has been created except for alt.lifestyle.furry which is somewhat of an alternative haven for furry-minded shifters as well as shifter-like furrys.

How many shifters are there in the world? Well, I once created a list of all the shifters I personally knew, even if I didn't know them very well, and pooled it with similar lists of names from two other shifters; the total added up to over three hundred. At pretty much the same time period, another shifter assured me that ten thousand people were subscribed to alt.horror.werewolves (and, of course, many who lurk and read are not even subscribed). However, that was some years ago when the shifter movement was much younger and before the real population explosions happened. Who knows how many there are now? Perhaps someday we shall all descend on a major city and have one of those "raising awareness marches" to raise awareness. Wouldn't the media have a field day with that!?! Can't you see the headlines? "Thousands of so-called Werewolves March in Washington D. C." *Giggle*

Sometimes, when you are a *werewolf*, you just gotta have a little humor about the whole situation. :) Still, I'm serious about that march thing. It'll probably happen someday (but it may be many years).

Now, we come to a question that is in a lot of people's minds; especially normal people who read this handbook and aren't themselves shifters.

Question: "Aren't all these groups, these 'packs', nothing more than werewolf cults?"

This is something that scares a lot of people. People hear that werewolves are forming groups and they get these dark ideas of horrible cults of, I don't know, human sacrifice or something. Or perhaps images of deluded, violent psychos going around and managing to create "werewolf delusions" in ever increasing numbers of people.

Well, I've yet to hear of any real violence connected with any pack of modern shifters (the closest thing I've heard was the other way around, a rumor of a fundamental Christian shooting over the heads of a group of shifters, I guess as some kind of sick, violent threat). And "shifterism" is not some kind of sick delusion we are spreading to the innocent. A great deal of us were born this way, we knew what we were before we ever found others.

Yes, there are some people who weren't born that way who have become shifters because of some of the teaching and training and help available in the shifter community. We often call these people "artificial shifters". But most of them were halfway there to start with, they were strongly "furry" with a lifestyler and/or spiritual bent, or at least strongly empathic towards animals. And these people come to us; not the other way around. Very few shifter groups go fishing among normal people for new members.

In fact, a great number of people who are not shifters are keenly interested in the shifter movement and want to become shifters (mostly RPGers, Fantasy fans, and people in the 15-18 age group); and these people annoy the heck out of shifters. Most shifter groups try to get rid of as many of these people as possible, not recruit them. The whole purpose of shifter groups is to create a haven where we shifters can be together and commune, not to recruit non-shifters.

Shifter groups are a lot less like cults, and a lot more like simple organizations where people of a like mind can get together. Much the same way that an organization for any other group of people; people that have much in common and are different from the rest of the population; are not usually cults.

Still, werewolves do have something to do with the supernatural (unless it is a purely scientific phenomena, as the skeptic werewolves tend to think) and when people think "supernatural", they think "cult".

In some ways, people are right. Now, I still stand by my statements about how shifter groups are NOT cults. However, there are certain relationships between the shifter movement and real cults; and it is best not to skip around in happy denial; pretending that these connections don't exist at all and everything is flowers and rainbows.

Now, there are two different cult problems that crop up from time to time in shifter culture. One problem is that real cults often see shifter groups as potential fishing grounds for new converts. And sometimes they are right. Shifters have a tendency to believe in the paranormal, and to want to gain some control over supernatural forces in the theory that they might be able to attain the "holy grail of shifting", the elusive power of physical shifting. I've known quite a number of disillusioned shifters who were taken in and spat out by cults; and it's not a fate I would wish on my worst enemy.

The second problem that sometimes crops up is that, there are some individuals, who are not part of cults, but who engage in cult-like activities and are immersed in shifter culture. These people cause endless problems for the vast majority of normal shifters.

I'm not going to name any names here, but those already in the know doubtless remember a certain vampiric were-panther that was behind quite a bit of trouble, and a certain French "shapestealer" (as he called himself), and a certain very artistic werecat who's name starts with an "M". Besides the most notorious ones, there are quite a number of more minor characters of this type that are involved or used to be involved with the shifter community. And I personally have my doubts as to whether some of these people are even shifters. In their own way, these people cause more trouble than any flamers ever did.

Now, I want to stress that this kind of cult stuff is relatively rare in shifter culture, and many shifters abhor it's very existence and try to kick these people out of the mainstream groups. However, it does exist, and the more awareness we have about it, the less of a problem it will be.

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