Werewolf: Fable or Fact?

The Werewolf: a powerful creature of the night, spoken of for centuries, perhaps even longer, in obscure myths and folk legends from sleepy little villages and hamlets found all over the European countrysides. Terrifying entities, you can rest assured in the fact that these legendary beasts ONLY exist in legends, don't they? I mean, if you've never even heard of them, they can't be real, right?

WRONG.

The simple fact of the matter is that Werewolves ABSOLUTELY EXIST. You may not have heard of these menacing creatures, but you've probably also never heard of colugos, serows, or hoatzins either, and they're all as real as you or me. The reason they've flown under the radar for so long?

THEY.

ARE.

SMART!!!

They've kept their doings and their goings on secret for much of human history, acting outside of expectations and taking advantage of fear and chaos in a community to act without being detected. And if you thought it would be east to know what's going on when you see giant wolf men running around, think again! As long as the sun has set for the night, a Werewolf can change between their human form and their monstrous wolf form as they please; you'd never know who they are or what the hell even is going on until it's too late.

At least, you couldn't tell until now. In the days of yore, you would have to fly to Europe and bribe village leaders or stewards of religion to gain access to their sacred texts on the matter; the only other way to get this knowledge would be to have ancestors who passed it down over the generations. But thanks to the modern marvel that is the Internet, people with awoken minds such as myself can add whatever we've managed to learn as our humble entries to this digital Library of Alexandria. Read on, dear netizen, and you too will be able to identify and, if it ever comes down to it, kill a Werewolf.

One of the first signs of a Werewolf, unsurprisingly, has to do with hair. Some local legends claimed that a Werewolf's fur was hidden under their skin when in human form and that a laceration would reveal it; this is patently false, but one semi-accurate way to tell a Werewolf by hair is to look at a person's eyebrows. If they have bushy ol' brows that are so thick that they meet over the bridge of their nose; this is not always accurate, but I've heard from a lot of people that say they identified a Werewolf this way. Another sign has to do with their hands; even while in human form, a Werewolf has a finger on each hand that is longer than all the others, including the middle finger. I've heard that it's usually either the index finger or ring finger, but I personally hypothesize that it could also be the pinkie, or even the thumb! While I believe, based on my contacts, that this sign is more certain than the eyebrow thing, I've heard that some Werewolves are so committed to secrecy that they'll amputate fingers that are too long. You'd think that might make missing fingers an even more obvious sign of a Werewolf, but the last time I tried that it turned out to be an actual disabled person so I would avoid relying on that. There's one final sign I've been told about, but this is really more for when you find yourself in a situation of having killed a person you're PREEEETTY sure is a Werewolf but want to be SUUUUPER sure: the skull of a Werewolf has a marking like a five-pointed star on it, almost like it was carved into the bone. Again, that one is a LAST RESORT!

Once you're sure you've got a Werewolf, the best course of action is to put 'em down. Don't expect that to be too easy, though; if it were so easy to deal with one, they wouldn't be such an enduring issue. By far the easiest way to kill one is with some kind of deadly weapon made of pure silver. Myths after the invention of the firearm referred to bullets specifically, but I have it on good authority from multiple sources that swords, knives, spears, heck, even hammers and maces made of silver are just as effective. If you don't have the money to throw toward silver weapons, an alternative is to cultivate wolfsbane. The plant is stupidly toxic to a Werewolf's body, so getting them to ingest it can kill within seconds. That said, wolfsbane doesn't exactly grow on trees, or at least I think it doesn't, and you may not have the greenest of thumbs. If you cannot rely on either of these options, there is still one recourse, though it can be risky. A regular, non-pure-silver bullet of any caliber can kill a Werewolf in human or monster mode, but only if that bullet is fired so it hits them right between the eyes.

Now, I know this is a lot of info I'm throwing at ya, but it might help to put it into context. I don't have any personal encounters with Werewolves to tell you about, but, fortunately, I have talked to many people who've experienced or heard about experiences with Werewolves, and I think my cousin's ex-boyfriend's barber's account more than speaks for itself, so we'll start with that.

Click HERE to read about Jake's Werewolf encounter!