REMASTERED — Episode 3: The Beast Within

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Ask anyone in the mental health profession about full moons and you'll get a surprising answer.

They'll respond with something that sounds incredibly like folklore and myth.

The full moon has the power to bring out the crazy in many people.

We've believed this for a long time.

We refer to unstable people as lunatics, a word that finds its roots in the Latin word of the same name.

It's built from the root word luna, which means moon, and for centuries has operated under the conviction that changes in the lunar cycle can cause people to lose touch with reality.

Just ask the parents of a young child, and they'll probably tell you tales of wild behavior and out-of-the-ordinary disobedience at certain times of the month.

If science tells us that the moon's pull on the ocean creates tides that rise and fall in severity, then perhaps our planet's first satellite also tugs on the water inside our bodies, changing our behavior.

At least, that's the idea.

As modern people, when we talk about the full moon, we tend to joke about this insane, extraordinary behavior.

But maybe we joke to avoid the deeper truth, an idea that we are both frightened and embarrassed that we even entertain.

For most of us, you see, the full moon conjures up an image that is altogether unnatural and unbelievable.

That large, glowing, perfect circle in the night sky makes us think of just one thing:

werewolves.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Science has tried to explain our obsession with the werewolf many times over the years.

One theory is a disease known as hypertrichosis, sometimes known as wolfitis.

It is a condition of excessive unusual body hair growth, oftentimes covering the person's entire face.

Think Michael J.

Fox in Teen Wolf.

Psychologists actually have an official diagnosis in the DSM-4 known as clinical lycanthropy.

It's defined as a delusional syndrome where the person believes that they are transforming into an animal, but the changes only take place in their mind, of course.

But delusions have to start somewhere.

Patients who believe that they are Napoleon Bonaparte have some previous knowledge of who he was.

I think it's fair to assume that those who suffer from clinical lycanthropy have heard of werewolves before.

It's actually pretty easy to bump into the myth thanks to modern popular culture.

Werewolves have been featured in, or at least appeared in, close to 100 Hollywood films since 1913.

One of the earliest mentions of something resembling the modern werewolf can actually be found in the 2,000-year-old writings of the Roman poet Virgil.

In his Eclogue 9, written in 40 BCE, he described a man named Moeris who could transform himself into a wolf using herbs and poisons.

About 50 years later, Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical novel called, appropriately, Satyricon, which honestly sounds like the equivalent of Stephen King writing a horror novel called Phridicon.

In it, he tells the tale of a man named Nicaros.

In the story, Nicaros was traveling with a friend when that friend suddenly took off his clothes, urinated in a circle, and transformed into a wolf before running off toward a large field of sheep.

The next day, Nicaros is told by the sheep owner that one of the shepherds stabbed a wolf in the neck with a pitchfork.

Later that day, Nicaros noticed his friend had a similar wound in his neck.

In the Greek myth of the god Zeus and an Arcadian king named Lycaon, Zeus took on the form of a human traveler.

At one point in his journey, he visited Arcadia, and during his time in that country, he visited their royal court.

The king of that land, Lycaon, somehow recognized Zeus for who he truly was and tried, in true Greek form of course, to kill him by serving him a meal of human flesh.

But Zeus was a smart guy after all, and he caught Lycaon in the act, throwing the mythological equivalent of a temper tantrum.

He destroyed the palace, killed all 50 of the king's sons with lightning bolts, and then cursed King Lycaon himself.

The punishment?

Lycaon would be doomed to spend the rest of his life as a wolf, presumably because wolves were known for attacking and eating humans.

Most scholars believe that this is the legend that gives birth to the term lycanthropy, lycos being the Greek word for wolf and anthropos, the word for man.

Werewolves aren't just a Greco-Roman thing though.

In the 13th century, the Norse recorded their mythological origins in something called the Volsunga Saga.

Despite their culture being separated from the Greeks by thousands of miles and many centuries, there are tales of werewolves present there as well.

One of the stories in the Volsunga saga involves a father and son pair, Sigmund and Sinfjotli.

During their travels, the two men came upon a hut in the woods where they found two enchanted wolf skins.

These skins had the power to change the wearer into a wolf, giving them all the characteristics that the beast was known for ⁇ power, speed, and cunning.

The catch, according to the saga, was that once put on, the wolf pelt could only be taken off every 10 days.

Undeterred, the father and son Duo each put on one of the wolf skins and transformed into the beasts.

They decided to split up and go hunting in their new forms, but they made an arrangement that if either of them encountered a party of men over a certain size, and most translations say that number was seven, then they were supposed to howl for the other to come join them in the hunt.

Sigmund's son, however, broke his promise, killing off a hunting party of 11 men on his own.

When Sigmund discovered this, he fatally injured his son.

Thankfully, the Norse god Odin intervened and healed the son, and both men took off the pelts and then burned them.

You see, from the very beginning, werewolves were a supernatural thing.

A curse, a change in the very nature of humanity.

They were ruled by cycles of time, and feared by those around them.

Things get interesting, though, when we go to Germany.

In 1582, the country of Germany was being pulled apart by a war between Catholics and Protestants, and one of the towns that played host to both sides was the small town of Bedburg.

Keep in mind that there were also still outbreaks of the Black Death, so this was an age of conflict and violence.

People understood loss, they had become numb to it, and it would take something incredibly extraordinary to surprise them.

First, there were the cattle mutilations.

Farmers from the area surrounding Bedburg would find dead cattle in their fields.

It started off infrequent, but grew to a daily occurrence, something that went on for many weeks.

Cows that had been sent out to pasture were found torn apart.

It was as if a wild animal had attacked them.

Naturally, the farmers assumed it was wolves, but it didn't stop there.

Children began to go missing after that.

Young women vanished from the main roads around Bedberg.

In some cases, their bodies were never found, but those that were had been mauled by something horribly violent.

Finding your cattle disemboweled is one thing, but when it's your daughter or your wife, it can cause panic and and fear.

The community spiraled into hysteria.

Now, when we think of historical European paranoia, we often think of witchcraft.

The 15th and 16th centuries were filled with witch hunts, burnings, hangings, and an overwhelming hysteria that even spread across the Atlantic to the British colonies, where it destroyed more lives.

The witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts is the most famous example.

But at the same time, Europe was also on fire with fears of werewolves.

Some historians think that in France alone, alone, some 30,000 people were accused of being werewolves, and some were even executed for it, either by hanging or being burned alive at the stake.

The fear of werewolves was real.

For the town of Bedburg, it was very real.

One report from this event tells of two men and a woman who were traveling just outside the city walls.

They heard a voice call out to them for help from the trees beside the road, and one of the men stepped into the trees to give assistance.

When the man did not return, the second man entered the woods to find him, and he also did not return.

The woman caught on and attempted to run, but something exited the woods and attacked her.

The bodies of the men were later found, mangled and torn apart, but the woman's never was.

Later, villagers found several limbs in the fields near Bedberg, limbs from the people who were missing.

It was clear something horrible was hunting them.

Another report tells of a group of children playing in a field near the cattle.

As they played, something ran into the field and grabbed a small girl by the neck before trying to tear her throat out.

Thankfully, the high collar of her dress saved her life, and she managed to scream.

But these cows didn't like screaming, apparently, and they began to stampede.

Frightened by the cattle, the attacker let the girl go free and ran for the forest.

And this was the last straw for the people of Bedberg.

They took the hunt to the beast.

According to a pamphlet from 1589, the men of the town hunted for the creature for days.

Accompanied by dogs and armed for killing, these brave men ventured into the forest and finally found it.

Interestingly, though, they claimed that they had spotted a wolf, not a man, and quickly chased it down.

In the end, it was their dogs that cornered the beast.

Dogs are fast, and they beat the men to their prey.

When the hunters did finally arrive, though, they found the creature cornered.

According to the pamphlet, the wolf transformed into a man right before their eyes.

While the wolf had been just another beast, the man was someone they recognized.

It was a wealthy, well-respected farmer from town named Peter Stoob, sometimes recorded as Peter Stump.

Stoob confessed to it all, and his story seemed to confirm their darkest fears.

He told them that he had made a pact with the devil at the age of 12.

Their deal?

In exchange for his soul, the devil would give him a plethora of worldly pleasures, but like most stories, a greedy heart is difficult to satisfy.

Stoob admitted to being a wicked fiend with the desire for wrong and destruction, and that he was inclined to blood and cruelty.

To sate that thirst, the devil gave him a magical belt of wolfskin.

Putting it on, he claimed, would transform him into the monstrous shape of a a wolf.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

He told the men who captured him that he had taken off that belt in the forest, and some were sent back to retrieve it, but it was never found.

Still, superstition and fear drove them to torture and interrogate the man, who confessed to decades of horrible, unspeakable crimes.

Well known and respected around town, Stoob told his captors that he often would walk through Bedberg and wave to the families and friends of those he had killed.

It delighted him that none of them suspected he was the killer.

Sometimes he would use those walks to pick out future victims, planning how he would get them outside the city walls where he could ravish and cruelly murder them.

Stube admitted to going on killing sprees simply because he took pleasure in the bloodshed.

He would kill lambs and goats and eat their raw flesh.

He even claimed to have eaten unborn children, ripped straight from their mother's wounds.

The human mind is always solving problems, even when we are asleep and unaware of it.

The world is full of things that don't always sit right with us, and in our attempt to deal with life, we rationalize.

In more superstitious times, it was easy to lean on old fears and legends.

The tuberculosis outbreaks of the 1800s led people to truly believe that the dead were sucking the life out of people.

The stories that gave birth to the vampire mythology also provided people with a way to process TB and its horrible symptoms.

Perhaps the story of the werewolves shows us the same phenomenon, but in reverse.

Rather than creating stories that help explain the mysteries of death, perhaps we created the story of the werewolf to help justify the horrors of life and human nature.

The tale of Peter Stobe sounds terrible, but when you hold it up to modern-day serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer or Richard Trenton Chase, it's par for the course.

The difference between them and Stoob is simply 400 years of modernization.

With the advent of electrical lights pushing away the darkness and global exploration exposing much of the world's fears as just myth, it has become more and more difficult to blame our flaws on monsters.

The beast, it turns out, has been inside of us the whole time.

And Peter Stube?

The people of Bedberg executed him for his crimes.

On October 31st of 1589, Halloween, mind you, he was given what was thought to be a fair and just punishment.

He was strapped, spread eagle and naked, to a large wooden wheel, and then his skin was peeled off with red-hot pinchers.

Then they broke his arms and legs with the blunt end of an axe before finally turning the blade over and chopping off his head.

His body was burned at the stake in front of the entire town, and then his torture wheel was mounted on a tall pole, topped with a statue of a wolf.

On top of that, they placed his severed head.

Justice?

Or just one more example of the cruelty of mankind?

Perhaps in the end, we're all really monsters, aren't we?

I hope this trip through history has opened your eyes to just how old and widespread the legends about werewolves truly are.

More than just a trope of Hollywood films, these tales of monstrous transformations have been lurking in the shadows of human culture for centuries.

And the werewolf of Bedburg isn't alone on the stage of medieval killers.

In fact, nearby France had its own fair share of shape-shifting creatures, and there's one in particular I want to tell you about.

Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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It's amazing what people will say under pressure.

For Pierre, it was more than amazing.

It was downright terrifying.

Pierre Burgot was a shepherd who worked in the area around Poligny in eastern France at the turn of the 16th century.

Friends and neighbors called him Grospierre, suggesting that he was probably a tall, muscular man.

But when he stood before a jury in December of 1521, he told them a story that was much larger than him, one that brought the supernatural to life.

According to Pierre, he was working hard in the pasture outside of town one day in 1502, when a great storm began to blow in.

All the signs pointed to a rough experience, thunder, forceful winds, and the beginnings of a hailstorm, so he began to frantically gather his sheep so he could lead them back home.

But that's when three riders approached.

Pierre admitted to the court that he was afraid.

How could he not?

The men were all dressed in black, with billowing black cloaks, and the horses they sat upon were just as black, as black as the sky on a moonless night.

So despite being a large man used to handling livestock out in the wilderness, he cowered at their approach.

Why are you afraid?

One of the riders called out to him, stopping his horse in front of Pierre.

The shepherd looked around at the dark weather and the equally dark riders, and then answered the question.

The storm, he said.

My sheep are scattered and I'm afraid wild beasts are going to kill them off.

The dark figure nodded.

I see.

Well, what if I told you I could keep all of your livestock safe, that not one single sheep would go missing, and all you had to do was pledge yourself to my service.

Acknowledge me as your lord and master, and this shall be so.

We don't know how long Pierre considered the offer.

His testimony from 1521 doesn't give us a lot of the nuances like that, but after some deliberation he agreed.

Right there, with the hail pounding the earth and the wind howling through the field, Pierre Burgot knelt before the Dark Rider and pledged himself in service.

But he did more.

He renounced his God, the Virgin Mary, and the entire company of heaven.

He renounced his baptism and christening, and then pledged to never serve at Holy Mass or let holy water touch his skin.

And with that, the dark rider extended a hand, removed his black glove, and told Pierre to kiss it.

The flesh of the rider's hand, according to Pierre, was just as black as his clothing.

It was cold and withered, like the hand of a rotten corpse.

But he did as he was told and kissed it anyway.

And with that, the riders left.

Years went by.

Pierre's life really didn't change much.

We know that he continued to be a shepherd, but there's no mention in the record of whether or not he ever lost one of his sheep.

But then, many years later, he received a summons from his dark master to attend a warlock Sabbath gathering in the woods outside of town, and to keep himself company, he brought along a friend named Michael Verdon.

There, during the dark celebration, the two men were instructed to strip naked and rub a strange salve on their skin, which caused their bodies to become hairy and wolf-like.

And then, having fully transformed, they ran off into the woods, hunting through the night.

And after that, this new life as a werewolf became the center of Pierre's existence.

For years, he and Michael hunted across the countryside.

But it wasn't always livestock that served as prey for their hunger.

Pierre confessed to tearing a seven-year-old boy to pieces and later killing a woman working in the fields.

There seemed to be an endless list of victims, children, adults, and yes, even sheep, the very creatures Pierre had devoted his life to protecting.

But their reign of terror over the town would eventually come to an end.

It's said that one night in 1521, Pierre's friend Michael made a mistake.

While attacking someone at the side of the road, he let his guard down and a traveler discovered them, wounding him as he ate his victim.

Michael and Pierre fled, but this brave traveler followed them, eventually arriving at a small house.

Upon entering, he didn't find what he had expected.

There was no beast inside, only a man with a bloody side and his wife tending to the wound.

After a brief trial, a trial in which Pierre confessed this entire story to the jury, the men accused of being werewolves were taken outside and executed.

After their death, etchings of their likenesses were made and hung inside the town church, as a warning to others about the price of witchcraft.

Pierre Burgot was not the first accused werewolf in Europe.

and he certainly wouldn't be the last.

But his story serves as a perfect example of just how deep our imagination can go, and how destructive and deadly one singular emotion can be.

Fear.

This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy.

My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.

You can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com.

And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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