Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

were taken seriously and treated with a
harshness that was severe even for the time.
Such a mental illness could be triggered by
many different situations, including famine,
plague, war, economic disaster, or substance
abuse. In at least one case investigated in
1975, this condition was the result of
persistent drug abuse.
(3) Weird behavior can be induced by eating
rye or other grains infected with the ergot
fungus (Claviceps purpurea or C. paspali ). In
the Middle Ages, infected rye was often sent
to the mill accidentally. Entire towns would
eat bread made from the flour and suffer
intoxication from a hallucinogenic alkaloid in
the fungus. These psychotic episodes were
known as ignis sacer (holy fire) or St.
Anthony’s fire because St. Anthony was the
patron saint of a religious order founded to
care for ergotism victims. It has been
suspected that the Greek cult of Eleusis was
based on ingestion of ergot to attain
enlightenment. Physical effects of ergotism
include frothing at the mouth, uncontrollable
rage, constriction of the vocal cords causing
barking or howling, a burning sensation in
the skin, and a feeling of tremendous
excitement. Shape-shifting hallucinations
during an ergotism outbreak could easily have
contributed to the Werewolf mythos.
(4) Leon Illis has suggested that the
condition of congenital porphyria could be
the origin of some Werewolf beliefs.
Porphyria involves a failure of the bone
marrow to form properly. Its symptoms
include an aversion to sunlight, tissue
destruction of the face and fingers, skin
lesions, and a reddish-brown pigmentation
on the teeth. Sometimes, excessive facial
hair and deranged behavior are displayed.
However, porphyria patients do not appear
or behave particularly wolflike.
(5) Humans infected by rabies could
account for some cases, though this disease
and its symptoms were well known in the
Middle Ages.
(6) Cults or tribes that dressed in wolf- or
bearskins did so in order to take on the
boldness, cunning, and ferocity of a wild
animal. There is some evidence that a
Greco-Roman cult of lycanthropy existed in
Britain by the first century A.D. German
and Scandinavian followers of Odin called
berserkers would consume alcohol and
commit violent acts.
(7) Accounts of feral children (HOMO
FERUS), allegedly raised in the woods by
wolves or other wild animals, have
undoubtedly added to the legend. The
infants Romulus and Remus, the legendary
founders of Rome, were said to have been
nursed by a female wolf in a cave on the
Palatine Hill until they were discovered by a
shepherd.
(8) A literary and cinematic myth representing
the fear of reverting to the bestial.
Sources: Herodotus, The Histories, ed. John
Marincola (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp.
248–249 (IV. 105); Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.
196–261; Pliny, Natural History, VIII. 34;
Pausanias, Description of Greece, VIII. 2. 1–3;
Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves:
Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition
(London: Smith, Elder, 1865); Montague
Summers, The Werewolf (London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner, 1933); Robert Eisler, Man
into Wolf (London: Routledge and Paul, 1951);
Mrs. Delburt Gregg, “Werewolf?” Fate 13
(March 1960): 60–61; Leon A. Illis, “On
Porphyria and the Aetiology of Werwolves,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 57
(1964): 23–26; F. G. Surawicz and R. Banta,
“Lycanthropy Revisited,” Canadian Psychiatric
Association Journal 20 (November 1975):
537–542; R. Gordon Wasson, Carl A. P. Ruck,
and Albert Hofmann, The Road to Eleusis (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978);
Charlotte Otten, ed., A Lycanthropy Reader:
Werewolves in Western Culture (Syracuse, N.Y.:
Syracuse University Press, 1986); M. Bénézech,
J. de Witte, J. J. Etchepare, and M. Bourgeois,
“A propos d’une observation de lycanthropie
avec violences mortelles,” Annales Medico-
Psychologiques 147 (1989): 464–470; Adam
Douglas, The Beast Within (London:
Chapmans, 1992); D. L. Ashliman, Werewolf
Legends from Germany, http://www.pitt.edu/
~dash/werewolf.html.
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