Teen Wolf, Bray Road, Silver Bullets and Werewolf Moms
“If you hear him howling around your kitchen door. Better not let him in. Little old lady got mutilated late last night”
– Warren Zevon, Werewolves of London
Listen for the creature breathing in the darkness, waiting to rip your lungs out. A howl comes from deep in the woods. Something moves, stalking you under the moon light. Your mind plays tricks. The sound of a branch breaking rattles the imagination. Who knows for sure what lurks behind the next tree?
Cursed with blood lust, werewolves with sharp claws and a hunger for human flesh in their stomachs, prowl the night looking for victims. Webster’s 20th Century Dictionary defines them as, “a person changed into a wolf, or one capable of assuming the form of a wolf at will.” The word actually means man wolf. Taken from the Old-Saxon word wer (or man). Their legend has persisted for thousands of years. I would learn that they are still among us.
Things didn’t start out so well. Let’s say that the fur wasn’t flying. Who knew a werewolf would be so hard to find? I spent days waiting on the full moon. True to their reputation werewolves proved difficult to track down. In this the early part of the 21st century sightings are rare. Never mind getting an interview.
I had decided to scrap this story and start work on something else. A deadline loomed. I hadn’t come close to a werewolf unless you count the homeless guy who growled at me on the subway.
Then came a sign from the devil himself. I flipped on the T.V. and there it was, Teen Wolf on cable.
This movie, in which a high schooler turns into a werewolf, asks the audience to suspend some serious disbelief. Forget that no one in town seems to mind that Michael J. Fox is covered with hair and has grown fangs. You are supposed to believe that Francis from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is on the basketball team.
How many kids across America died street surfing on top of vans? Hold on, let’s get back to the story. The fact that this movie was ever made illustrates how ingrained werewolves are in the modern world.
I’d find something if only I could pull myself away from Halo 2 long enough to get back to work.
Throughout his history man has feared the wolf. These pack animals seldom hunt humans. Never the less, their fierce teeth and intelligence strike fear in peasants and nobles alike. Wolves, man eaters, are part of our collective unconscious. Mix in a little black magic or superstition and it’s a short leap to werewolf.
There are some accepted scientific explanations for all of this. Congenital hypertrichosis is a genetic disorder characterized by excessive hair growth over most of the body and face. Lycanthropy is a mental disorder involving fantasies being a wolf.
No one is interested in rational explanations. I set out looking for the real thing.
I’d find web sites that held promising leads but quickly descend into strange fetishes. As the creator of the now abandoned Werewolves in Suburbia told me, “people into the were scene are a group of whack jobs.”
There are men and women out there who like to dress up as Chewbacca and pet each other. I am not one to judge. More power to them. Stranger things (Michael Jackson) go on in this world.
Traditionally werwolves have had much to fear from humans. The general population tends to go a little nuts when faced with the unexplained. It’s not a stretch to imagine your friends and neighbors assembling into a mob with pitch forks and torches to hunt a man wolf.
Following the cinematic cliché they’d grab their hand guns and march into the forest. Someone would scream, “There it is!” and another misunderstood werewolf would die in a hail of silver bullets. God help anyone who hasn’t shaved for a couple of days when the werewolf panic strikes.
Werewolves probably only want what we all want: a shot on American Idol. So if you see one leave it alone.
When I started my search I had visions of meeting up with some haggard remnant of a man. Worn out by nights scouring the countryside he would use his last words to tell me an amazing tale. We’d meet up in a dingy hotel room. (Wait a minute, that’s not what I meant. This is sounding like the Chewbacca thing all over again.) With apologies to Anne Rice, I wanted my Interview with a Werewolf.
Despite their allusive nature werewolves are still spotted. Linda S. Godfrey, author of The Beast of Bray Road, Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf, told me that, “At least four dozen reliable witnesses have seen something resembling a wolfman” in the southern Wisconsin area.
Linda said the creature, well known to the local population, is often reported to be a “wolf or dog-headed creature,larger than a natural wolf, often on two legs, very shaggy, body shaped more like a man’s, usually estimated from five to seven feet tall.”
These recent sightings are part of an ongoing mystery dating from the the 1930’s.
She recounted for me a tale of, “six teenagers who were looting a lakeside cottage in the 70s when this thing materialized just as they were leaving.”
Sounds like a slasher flick. Buxom women, lost in the woods, meet their doom at the hands of some strange and wild creature. Skinny dipping must have been involved.
Most sightings are less romantic. According to Linda, “They seem to be entirely grounded in our reality.” However, the creature has been know to exhibit what you could call super powers. Witnesses have said that it can, “run at a super-fast speed,and is able to hurdle fences or other obstacles with ease.” The creature is able to, “make a 15-20 foot drop from a bridge to a creek bed.”
Maybe Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon trains in the area during the off season.
Careful out there in the dark. The Bray Road Beast is famous for its “challenging” and “intimidating” stare. Almost every witness Linda has talked with reports evil in its eyes.
The beast could be scared of humans. In most cases, “it then makes its escape into a cornfield or woods or whatever is nearby. It is almost never seen out in the open, away from cover.” Like Sean Penn The Beast of Bray Road hates paparazzi.
These tales are important. They are current and are not just stories of darkness from Eastern Europe or of misunderstandings with unshaven French women. Linda explained that her work is ongoing, including another book and that the most recent incident was just this past October on the Wisconsin/Illinois border. Sightings can be reported to her via www.cnb-scene.com.
Returning to heart of my story, I asked Linda why the Bray Road stories endure? She said that, “For one, they resonate with a mythology we are all familiar with, the werewolf. Stories of wolf-men date back to very ancient times, and people can relate to the common human struggle of taming the animal within themselves. For another, a pocket of ongoing, contemporary sightings of something that looks like a werewolf, with so many witnesses, is pretty much unheard of in the world at this time, so people are very curious about it.”
We commiserated about tracking down a person who claims to be a werewolf. She has, “been in contact with one such person. He claims to have a film of himself transforming, but says he hasn’t been able to bring himself to watch it and won’t share it. It seems to cause a great deal of mental anguish; he spends many nights chained up in his own basement.”
Linda talked about the communities of “weres” out there, “Many people do sincerely believe that they change; others called therians believe they are wolven inside and get together in groups to act out their version of wolf societies.”
She told me, “There are more people doing this than one might suspect.” I would find this to be true.
In a last ditch effort I expanded my hunt, posting an interview request on a yahoo message board for werewolves. Some one calling himself Moonshadow quickly responded, “man, u must be crazy, weres would never come out for ur little magazine, so just forget it.”
I didn’t know what to say. His profile said that his hobbies included, “Shifting, Howling, and Tearing His Enemies Apart.” It listed his his occupation as, “KILLING MACHINE.” Proof enough for me that he was the real deal.
Other members of the pack thought I was trying to trick them into coming out into the open. They were convinced that I was a “Hunter.” A Hunter is a person who’s life revolves around tracking down and killing werewolves. That’s another column all by itself.
A man called Timberwolf sent me a nice little piece of hate e-mail.
“Woah, Wait a minute. Your looking for a man eating werewolf? Lemme guess why, oh, money, audience, ratings, your job. This is all about you and your article isn’t it? You want to make a whole group of people look bad, for your benefit and profit! Those kinds of people disgust me!”
Putting aside the huge financial rewards promised to me by the editors of Severe, I decided to back off and leave this group to themselves. Really I was trying to get a good story.
Teen Wolf where are you? Would I have to resort to my Plan B: putting a steak around my neck and heading out into the the woods?
A break in the case! Finally, someone would talk. A werewolf known as Windwalkingwolf agreed to answered a few of my questions.
Right away she explained that werewolves, “would never harm anyone except in self-defense. Wolves are by nature very shy.” To her being a werewolf meant, “accepting who and what you are” and “feeling peace in nature.”
The term therianthrope kept popping up in my research. WindwalkingWolf said that, “A therianthrope, or were, believes that part of their soul is wolf. Most believe we were born this way, although often it takes some sort of traumatic event to be awakened to that side of ourselves. “
She continued, “A real were does not hunt nor eat people. Although we love and are very loyal to a few select individual people. We tend to dislike the human race as a species and spend large amounts of time avoiding them.“ Fortunately for the human race but unfortunately for my article Windwalkingwolf wasn’t a vicious killer.
I asked what life as such a creature could be like. Her answer surprised me. She said, “I work, I play, I send my kids to school in the morning. Except now, I have accepted and embraced the wild in me, and the wild in everyone and everything, and I am no longer embarrassed to howl into the night. Embracing this part of me has given me peace, and I no longer care who thinks I am crazy for
the urges I get.”
She added that, “A were is much more likely to be able to take a step back from the rat race, and has a much stronger desire to get away from it all.” Imagine werewolves and hippies living in peace. It’s a nice thought.
I had found my werewolf and she was a lot like most people. She doesn’t, “experience uncontrolled rage” or “eat people.” She believes in the “joy and freedom” of being a wolf. We are all after those things. How we get there might be little different.
Werewolf myths and images will continue to persist. People grab hold of them and make them part of their lives. As Linda Godfrey had told me, “it’s in our human nature to enjoy hearing scary stories.”
Belief plays the most important part of all of this. Weres believe in the empowerment gained from the spirit of the wolf. Witnesses believe they’ve seen strange beasts in the darkness. Thanks to Teen Wolf I believe that werewolves are very good at basketball. The world is a complicated place.
Remember as Teen Wolf’s coach told him, “…Never get less than 12 hours sleep. Never play cards with a guy with the same first name as a city and never go near a lady with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Everything else is cream cheese.”
Now the sun is coming up or should I say the moon is going down. I can’t type this stuff in the light of day.
This article originally appeared in the late great Severe Magazine.