A widespread misperception is that people stopped claiming to be werewolves at the end of the Middle Ages. Not only did it not stop, but there is an entire subculture of people in existence today who claim to be werewolves (or weretigers, or werefoxes, or even stranger things).
"Claim to be werewolves" is a statement that needs to be qualified, however. Most of these claims seem to involve a different variety of werewolf than the kind that probably pops into your mind when you think "werewolf". In fact, very few of these people claim to transform in a physical way, though most of them do claim to have characteristics that wouldn't seem out of place in the average werewolf novel, such as extra-keen senses and a mystical affinity with the wilderness.
This subculture is called "The Spiritual Therianthropy Subculture" (spiritual instead of physical to keep the emphasis away from physical transformation). It is such a broad and vast topic that a great deal of The Werewolf Codex has concentrated on just this subculture. Virtually everything in the answers section has to do with the spiritual therianthropy subculture, and so do most of the articles in the articles section.
The spritual therianthropy subculture didn't really get going until the Internet made it much easier for spiritual therianthropes to find each other. Then the lone indivuals and tiny groups of spiritual therianthropes (who had always thought they were the only ones in the world who felt this way) began gathing at the newsgroup alt.horror.werewolves. This was what was going on in the early 1990's. During this time, alt.horror.werewolves was a kind of support group for spiritual therianthropes. There was an attitude of optimism, and it was a gathering place for sober adults to come and talk about feelings and experiences which they had always thought were taboo. It was a time of great acceptance, learning, and an unusual level of maturity. The terminology and slang of the spiritual therianthropy subculture began to develop for the first time, and people began to classify and study all the reports.
As time went on, things changed. The attitude of exploration and reason began to shift to one of dogma on one hand and cynicism on the other hand. A number of "loup-gurus" emerged for the first time and each one promoted their own conclusions and dogma. A few cults developed, though most fizzled out (and the spiritual therianthropy subculture has remained surprisingly free of cults to this day, though there are a few around). Also, some scandals surfaced and scarred the attitude of innocent exploration forever.
About the mid 1990's, the explosion of the Internet began placing pressures on this subculture. All sorts of people, especially curious onlookers, role-players, and teens, began flooding into the newsgroup. The "Meowers" discovered the newgroup and began harrassing it with spam, infantile pornographic babbling, and many personal attacks. More loup-gurus arrived on the scene and the rivalry between them became weirder. By this time, however, most of the people who weren't brand new had become wiser. Branch groups (both on and off the Internet) began spinning off in all directions, some to decay and fade away, others to become almost cultish, and yet others to recapture the attitude of the original alt.horror.werewolves. All of these branches tended to erect some sort of barrier between themselves and alt.horror.werewolves to keep the bad things in the newsgroup from spreading. It worked: the healthier of these branches are alive and well to this day.
At about the same time, another phenomena began. The phenomena of "lone wolves". Many people chose to continue pursuing the spiritual therianthropy lifestyle, but severed most or all of their ties to the spiritual therianthropy subculture. A lone wolf might be someone who still has one or more friends who are involved with the subculture, or they might be someone who crosses paths with the subculture occasionally while still going their separate way. More and more often, lone wolves are people who are involved in the furry subculture(a separate and much older subculture). Perhaps because of this flood of people leaving the spiritual therianthropy subculture for the furry subculture, the two subcultures became closer, and conflicts occurred because the furries were not comfortable with spiritual therianthropes. As a result of this conflict, a branch of the furry subculture called "furry lifestylers" started to become much more prominent around this time, started its own newsgroup, and began provoking much discussion and debate at furry conventions. Many of the lone wolves are involved in the furry lifestyle.
Today, most spiritual therianthropes agree that alt.horror.werewolves is almost defunct. It served its original purpose of sparking things in the first place and bringing people with the same sorts of feelings together. Now, it limps along under the weight of many immature teens, ridicule and harrassment from the meowers, lots of argument and cynicism, and many other problems. It has not been totally abandoned, and is still a major place where new people go to make contacts and slowly grope around until they happen on one of the healthy branches of the spiritual therianthropy subculture.
.Here are some links with more information about alt.horror.werewolves and people who think they are werewolves:
Aren't People who think they
are Werewolves just drug/alcohol influenced hallucinators?
Aren't People who think they
are Werewolves just Insane? And Probably dangerous?
Aren't People who think they are Werewolves just New Age Freaks?
Aren't People who think they are Werewolves members of Some Cult?
How Did the Shifter Movement Start?
What is the Difference Between a Shifter and a Furry?
What do All These Other Terms Mean?
Shifts and Shapeshifting: Varieties of Animal Transformation
Articles, by Shifters, for Shifters
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