[dramatic music]
[screen whooshes] [wolf howling]
- [Laurence] Tonight,
a legendary monster that transforms from man to beast
whenever there's a full moon.
- [Andrew] The Werewolf isn't just a movie monster,
it's one of humanity's oldest nightmares.
- [Ryan] Is this all in our head?
Or is this something that is truly
happening to the public?
- [Lynne] In one town in France,
over 100 people killed.
Young children decapitated and disemboweled.
- [Ryan] In her dying breaths she says she was attacked
by something wolf-like, but not a wolf.
- Now, we explore the top theory surrounding the werewolf.
- [Troy] That's just not the behavior of an ordinary wolf.
A wolf would not have been decapitating people.
- [Andrew] By donning the animal's skin
you become the animal,
you gain access to its fury.
- [Brian] Could a condition that makes you froth at the mouth
has you hallucinate and
attack other humans,
get you branded a werewolf?
Certainly won't help.
- [Laurence] Do real facts lie behind
the enduring stories of werewolves?
And why is the idea of this creature
still so powerful today?
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] The werewolf is one of our oldest
and most gruesome monster stories.
At the Full Moon,
a person transforms into a bloodthirsty beast,
stalking its victims,
then ripping them apart with razor-sharp teeth and claws.
- The next morning,
the individual awakens and they've returned
to their true human self
with no memory of what transpired the night before.
- The werewolf exists in an interesting place culturally.
Nobody goes out hunting for werewolves
the way people go ghost hunting,
but it's an incredibly familiar type of folk character
and we see it often in films,
in books, and comic books,
usually in sort of a real over the top kind of way.
- [Laurence] But this legend remains deeply ingrained
in cultures across the globe.
The question is why?
- [Troy] The epic of Gilgamesh
is the oldest form of literature that exists,
and it includes a werewolf story.
When the goddess, Ishtar, [graphics beep]
transforms a former lover into a wolf
and then allows him to be torn apart by his own sheep dogs.
- [Andrew] Hundreds of years later, we get another legend,
this one from ancient Greece.
This is the story of King Lycaon,
a Greek king who tries to challenge the authority of Zeus.
He does so by trying to trick the king of the Gods
into eating a stew that contains human flesh.
- [Ryan] So Zeus sees this because he is all powerful and
he goes, "If you're gonna act like a beast,
then I'm gonna turn you into a beast."
And then in front of all of his guests,
he begins to radically transform
[suspenseful music] into a wolf.
- [Andrew] These early stories are just that-stories.
Now it's possible that like all myths,
there may be some basis, in fact,
but we don't have any of that evidence.
For evidence of actual werewolves,
we need to go a little bit forward in time.
The Medieval France.
- [Laurence] In 1764, Gevaudan is a quiet,
remote province in southern France.
380 miles south of Paris,
it's not a place known for generating much news.
- [Lynne] Overall, a very quiet, very peaceful place to live.
Until 1764, when suddenly some
really frightening stuff starts happening.
So the first incident that takes place is in the summer.
A teenage shepherd is out with her flock of grazing cattle,
when a monstrous wolf
bursts out of the brush at her.
Now, her bulls actually protect her.
They charge this animal, they fend it off,
and she goes back into town with reports
of this enormous creature.
- [Andrew] What she describes is unlike any natural phenomenon.
She describes a wolf-like creature,
but the size of a calf with a red coat of fur,
and fangs and fiery red eyes.
And then, she utters a phrase
that stokes fears among the locals.
Like a wolf, yet not a wolf. [suspenseful music]
Just weeks later, we have another attack
on another young girl with her dying breath,
she describes the creature that attacked her.
Wolf-like but different.
With huge fangs, more teeth than a regular wolf would have,
and walking on its hind legs like a man.
- [Ryan] And then they find a young shepherd boy
who's dead in the hills.
And now people are starting to think,
"There's something going on here.
We have a bigger problem than just wolves."
- [Laurence] Even though the attacks
are largely taking place in daylight,
locals believe they're being perpetrated
by a loup-garou, a werewolf.
They begin to call it the Beast of Gevaudan.
And the killings are just getting started.
- [Andrew] What follows are attacks on more victims.
Individuals out tending to their flocks.
Many of them are children
and many of them are discovered not only dead,
but mutilated, partially eaten.
- [Ryan] The Beast of Gevaudan will go on
to be the most compelling werewolf case ever.
What it does is it points
to the most obvious explanation for werewolves
[screen whooshes] [graphic beeps]
- [Kinitra] At this time, there were hundreds of thousands of
wolves in continental Europe.
And remember, they are raising livestock
which attracts wolves.
So they are living in close proximity
to these very dangerous animals.
[wolf howling]
- [Andrew] According to some estimates
between the 1300s and the 1700s,
wolves in France kill as many as 10,000 people.
Many historians look at this and say,
"Okay, we've got a huge population of wolves.
These wolves are often in conflict
with people and their livestock."
That's the explanation.
This isn't a supernatural beast.
It is a natural menace.
- [Laurence] But the Beast of Gevaudan story
seems to go far beyond the typical conflicts
between wolf and man at the time.
- [Troy] As the killings continued,
the authorities were obviously very concerned,
so they put a bounty out.
On October 8th 1764, a group of hunters were out
and managed to corner the wolf.
They opened fire, they hit it. [gunshot booms]
It went down.
But then the beast just simply got up and ran away.
- [Kinitra] A few months later,
a 10-year-old is attacked by the beast,
but his friends surround him
and beat it back with their sticks.
And the 10-year-old boy survives.
- [Andrew] The stories keep coming.
The young woman is crossing the river Desges
when she's attacked by a monster.
She says that she impales the creature with a spear,
and yet it still runs away.
- [Ryan] This is obviously getting to be a
much bigger deal.
So the king's own huntsman joins the fight.
He actually shoots it and drops it,
and it is a abnormally large wolf for the time.
So the news goes out from Boston to Brussels.
We killed the beast.
- [Troy] But the celebration turns out to be a little
premature because the murders continue.
In fact, they're even more vicious than they were before.
[suspenseful music] [wolf howling]
People are being eaten,
ripped apart, torn limb from limb,
decapitated.
There's no question that it's still out there
and it's still killing people.
- [Laurence] 30 more people are killed in attacks.
Soon the death toll nears a hundred.
- [Erica] It's just absolute terror that's hard to describe.
Maybe this isn't an average mortal beast.
In fact, it might be supernatural.
You might need to be using some supernatural tactics
to take this wolf down.
- [Andrew] Undeterred a French nobleman
forms yet another hunting party to go after the beast
and joining that party is a man named Jean Chastel.
This party like parties before locate the beast.
Now, Chastel loads his pistol,
says a prayer,
aims and fires. [gunshot booms]
Hitting the monster.
The monster stays down, dead. [dramatic music]
- [Troy] Over the years, a legend has grown.
It said that that one bullet killed the monster
and it's believed to have been a silver bullet.
- [Lynne] There's no actual evidence that he used a silver
bullet, but this is the beginning of that motif,
that if you're going to take out a supernatural creature,
the way to do it is with a solid silver bullet.
- [Ryan] So in 1767, they do an autopsy on the decomposing body.
What they find is that yes,
it was just a really large wolf with very unusual markings
and that when they got into the stomach,
they actually found human remains.
- [Laurence] So was the Beast of Gevaudan
simply a large wolf?
If so, how does that explain the stunning death toll
and details provided by the eyewitnesses?
- [Andrew] How do we square that with so many of the observations
about it being the size of a horse,
about it walking on its two hind legs,
about bodies being found decapitated.
[wolf howling] - [Lynne] Because of this,
some theories that maybe this wasn't a typical wolf,
have come to light,
so some people have suggested this could be a dire wolf
that's an extinct species,
supposedly extinct for about 10,000 years,
but much larger than a normal wolf.
- [Troy] In the end, the people of Gevaudan
living in the 18th century as they were continued to believe
that it was a supernatural creature.
To them, it made a lot more sense
that they couldn't kill this thing
because it was something malevolent, something evil.
- [Laurence] The story of the Beast of Gevaudan
is so widespread and terrifying
that from the 18th century onward,
the French public believes all wolves must be eliminated.
[dramatic music] - [Ryan] By the 1800s,
the government has put a bounty out on wolf's heads,
and as a result of this, by 1930,
they're almost all but extinct in the region.
But the curiosity about werewolves continues.
- During the first millennium,
Nordic folklore describes a father and son
who discover magic wolf pelts
that allow them to become wolves for 10 days.
They roam through the woods on a killing rampage
until the father attacks the son
leaving him with a mortal wound.
- [Lynne] In Scandinavia in the first millennium,
there is a documented real phenomenon taking place
that makes the werewolf transition
maybe not seem so implausible.
A good starting point is in the Viking culture.
[dramatic music] [screen whooshes]
- [Erica] So in Scandinavia in the 9th century,
you have this viking warrior culture
and particularly a group of warriors
that worship the God Odin
and they were often meant to protect royalty.
They're known as Berserkers.
- [Troy] The Berserkers were sort of an unusual bunch.
Before battle, they would strip themselves completely naked,
dye their bodies with a black dye,
and then would sort of psyched themselves up
into a state of ferocity.
But there was one subculture of Berserker warriors
who did dress themselves as wolves.
- [Lynne] One of the secrets to their fighting ability
was this insane rage that would take over their body.
A madness would come over them.
They were described as fighting almost
in a trance-like state,
often described as either being naked,
or as wearing bear skins, or sometimes wolf skins.
- [Andrew] The donning of the animal skin, the bear skin,
which is where we get the word Berserk from,
is not simply an armor.
It's actually a mindset.
You're becoming like the animal that by embodying it,
you avail yourself of its power, of its fury.
- [Lynne] We see stories of these fighters training in the
woods, but it's possible that one of their best weapons
is actually the use of hallucinogenic substances.
[dramatic music] [graphic beeps]
- [Laurence] Some scholars now theorize
that the berserkers' drug- induced transformation
from men into monsters could be the basis
of the werewolf legend as we now know it.
- [Erica] It's thought that potentially the berserkers
were ingesting Amanita muscaria,
which is the mushroom that's sort of
the "Alice in Wonderland" mushroom.
[dramatic music] When ingested,
there's psychoactive properties that would cause a person
to enter a feeling of just kind of invincibility
and ferocity.
- [Troy] After that feeling of being invincible
and bloodthirsty would wear off,
that mushroom then acts as a sedative.
They wouldn't even remember
what they had done on the battlefield.
- [Laurence] A later ruler of Norway,
King Olaf Haraldsson is said to use berserkers
in one of the most famous battles in the country's history
at Stiklestad in 1030.
But the Berserkers days are numbered
because such animalistic behavior
runs counter to the growing faith of Christianity.
In fact, Olaf himself will be canonized
as Saint Olaf for his campaign to spread the religion.
- [Lynne] As Christianity became a more major religion in Norway,
the sort of Hagan feel of the berserkers
is something that fell out of favor.
And if they fell out of favor with the rise of Christianity,
it was the church that brought back an emphasis
on the possibility of werewolves in the 16th century.
- [Laurence] In the 1500s, the Catholic church in Europe
embroiled in political power struggles
and under threat from a new Protestant movement
is on a campaign to maintain its supremacy.
- [Lynne] As part of this effort to really maintain control
over what people understand
to be the morally correct way to live,
we can see a lot of fear mongering.
- [Andrew] 200 years before the famous Salem Witch trials,
we had a similar type of trial happening in Europe.
These were werewolf trials. [suspenseful music]
Oftentimes individuals were accused of horrific acts,
often killing and eating children,
and so these individuals would be put on trial by the church
and under extreme duress, indeed under torture,
they would often confess to being just that - werewolves.
[screen whooshes] [graphic beeps]
- [Lynne] At this point in the 1500s across Europe,
the Catholic church really is the dominant moral authority.
Telling people what's right, how to live correctly,
really setting the moral tone.
- [Andrew] The church exerts its influence
by claiming that it offers you protection
from demonic influences here on earth,
the most serious threat the church said, were werewolves.
[graphics beeping]
- So in Germany in 1589,
the werewolf executions are in full tilt
and they come across a gentleman named Peter Stumpp.
They put him on a rack
and they slowly remove all of his flesh.
Then they behead him
and they actually burn him on a funeral pyre.
- [Troy] It was a warning not only to any werewolves,
but it was also the warning to the people
that only the church had the power to protect them.
- [Laurence] But there may be another factor
that puts unwitting people in the crosshairs
of the werewolf hunting church.
- [Andrew] Some historians have observed
that many of the greatest incidents of werewolf activity
happened in lowland areas.
They tend to be wet, damp, moist,
and they note that those conditions give rise
to a certain fungus that when consumed
can have odd effects.
- [Laurence] This fungus known as ergot
grows on grains and contains chemical compounds
that are not only poisonous, but also psychoactive.
- [Andrew] When grains infected with ergot are consumed,
some of the symptoms include rapid heart rate,
blurred vision, kind of a state of agitation,
all of which could be seen
as part of the werewolf transformation.
- [Troy] To make matters even more compelling
is once the poisoning effects wear off,
you'll have little memory of the things that you did
while you were poisoned.
- [Andrew] It's not hard to imagine
that if in your village something terrible happens,
especially to a small child
that you wouldn't begin looking about for someone to blame.
The person behaving irrationally, uncontrollably,
who's spasming, seemingly undergoing some kind of
demonic transformation,
that's an obvious person to blame.
- [Laurence] There are conflicting views
on just how many Europeans are persecuted
in the heyday of werewolf trials.
One source from 1611 claims
the number is 30,000 in France alone.
Some historians today argue,
the total number in Europe is much less,
perhaps several hundred.
- [Lynne] What we might be seeing here
is really sort of a cyclical effect
where these sort of afflictions
may really have increased the idea
that there are people becoming werewolves.
- [Laurence] Winter 1573,
it's a cold night in rural France
and laborers are headed to a tavern for an evening meal.
The entire party is on edge for good reason.
- [Lynne] In the bushes, under the light of a full moon,
they hear some rustling sounds.
They at first think might be an animal.
They hear sort of a growling sound coming from it.
[animal growling] But as they get closer,
they realize that what they're seeing is a person.
- [Troy] His name is Gilles Garnier.
He is a recluse who lives outside of town,
and they also realize that's not a dead animal
that he's eating.
It's the body of a small child.
[dramatic music]
When they confront Garnier,
they find his blood all over his face,
it's dripping from his chin,
and he admits that he's a wolf
and that he's been killing and eating children
for some time now,
as many as 14 in the last few months.
He honestly believes he's a werewolf.
- [Andrew] It's cases like Garnier that lead many
historians to believe that the explanation for werewolf stories
is not the supernatural, not curses or the full moon,
but something entirely natural.
It's to be found in deranged but very human predators.
[screen whooshes] [suspenseful music]
- [Kinitra] Further questioning leads to some answers
as to why Garnier would commit such a heinous act,
and he says the devil made him do it.
And the devil helped him by giving him an ointment
that turned him into a wolf. [dramatic music]
- [Troy] Back in those days,
Garnier was believed to be a supernatural creature,
but today, we would call him a serial killer
who engaged in cannibalism,
someone like Albert Fish or Jeffrey Dahmer
who would eat their victims.
We don't think of them as werewolves.
We think of them as a serial killer.
- [Andrew] What we have is arguably a climate of fear.
One person makes a claim and then others get on board,
and suddenly the story takes on a life of its own
and the boundaries between fantasy
and reality begin to blur.
Now the the truth is, we'll never know for sure
in this particular case
because Garnier is found guilty of being a werewolf.
And is burned on a pyre.
- [Laurence] In Bedburg, Germany 16 years
after Garnier's trial,
Peter Stumpp is also accused of being a werewolf.
- [Troy] Stumpp was being interrogated by the authorities.
He made a full confession.
He said that he was transformed into a wolf
using a belt that had been made from a wolf's skin.
- [Erica] Peter Stumpp confesses to killing 14 children
as well as two pregnant women with their babies.
- [Lynne] One key difference here
is that when he transforms into being a human,
he retains the knowledge of what he's done.
Just as with Garnier, his confession leads to execution.
He's tortured, he's burned,
and then the news of it is reported far and wide.
- [Andrew] The church creates a broad sheet,
announcing that it has captured and executed,
the werewolf of Bedburg.
That broad sheet is widely circulated.
It's reprinted hundreds of times
making Stumpp's case the most famous werewolf trial.
- [Lynne] And so these sorts of stories really got
a lot of spread in culture,
letting people know exactly what a werewolf does
and what will happen to someone who is one.
- [Andrew] It's entirely possible that Garnier and Stumpp
did commit the crimes they were accused of
even though their confessions were extracted under torture.
And what's interesting is that in those confessions,
they claim that they did commit the crimes, but as werewolves.
So it's not just a confession to a crime,
it's a confession to a supernatural crime.
- [Laurence] Could accused serial killers
like Garnier and Stumpp
actually believe they were werewolves?
A rare psychological condition
recognized in the late 19th century might provide an answer.
- [Andrew] There is a condition called clinical Lycanthropy.
This comes to us from the Greek, lykos, meaning wolf.
And anthropos, meaning human.
In this case, individuals do claim to believe
that they transform into wolfs.
They describe a physical transformation.
Teeth turning into fangs,
the nails turning into claws, hair growing,
the body contorting into a wolf-like state.
- [Lynne] If we're looking for a documented phenomenon
that could really tie all the pieces together
of the werewolf belief, serial killers,
with diagnosed clinical Lycanthropy,
really hits the nail on the head.
- [Brian] It's very hard to know how prevalent this is
if you're just looking at the scientific literature,
a colleague and I only found 25 cases
of people who believe they turned into wolves.
I'm guessing it's more frequent
than the scientific literature would suggest.
- [Andrew] We have a 2020 case of a young boy in France
who believed himself to be a werewolf.
He would refuse to go to school during the full moon.
There were reports of him biting
or scratching his classmates.
- [Troy] Doctors feared
it had something to do with the internet.
That he had been delving deep into online chat rooms
and things where people were talking about
another world of living as a werewolf.
But even without the internet,
people have been suffering from this condition
for centuries. [suspenseful music]
- By the mid 19th century,
as the wolf population plummets,
there's less fear of encountering a werewolf
in a dark forest.
But in 1855,
a chilling story from France reignites the terror
and the legend.
[graphic beeps] - In 1855,
a article comes out in the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle"
about a couple in rural France, and it's really disturbing.
This couple was getting married and before the wedding
the groom started acting really strange.
The night after the nuptials,
they hear this horrible screaming
coming from the bed chamber of the bride and groom.
[person screams]
- [Andrew] Their family rushed to the room,
and upon opening the door,
they see the husband standing above the wife,
blood dripping down his mouth.
He's consuming her.
He's eaten part of her chest.
But just as the villagers get to the man, he too dies.
- [Laurence] Suspicion only grows when authorities learn
that the man had been recently bitten
by some sort of vicious canine.
- [Ryan] Back then, people would not have the knowledge
to understand what was happening to this gentleman.
But now, we understand that there is something
which can affect humans and animals
that could have very well been what he was suffering from.
[screen whooshes] [graphic beeps]
- [Troy] Now rabies has been around
since the beginning of recorded time.
As far as we know the first mention of it
was in a Babylonian text from 2300 BCE.
So it's something that has been part of world history
but not always understood.
- [Ryan] Rabies can affect animals and humans.
And in animals, they become more aggressive,
they lose their fear of the things
normally they're cautious about.
- [Lynne] In humans, more severe cases of rabies
are known as furious rabies.
We see things like seizures, hallucinations,
strange vocalizations,
and even things like foaming at the mouth.
- [Troy] And because people came down with these conditions
after they were bitten by some rabid animal like a wolf,
they would just assume that it was a curse being passed on
from a werewolf.
- [Laurence] With Louis Pasteur's development
of the rabies vaccine in 1885,
the number of post bite fatalities in humans
drops significantly.
- [Lynne] Rabies may have played a pretty significant role
in the development of the werewolf legend,
but there are other conditions as well
that could have played a role in suggesting
the same sort of wolf-like behaviors.
- [Ryan] There's a famous story that we all know,
which is "Tarzan" about Lord Gracestoke.
Him and his parents marooned off the coast of Africa,
the parents die and he's left to fend for himself.
He's raised by the apes
and he begins to run around on all fours
and speak like them, act like them,
exhibit all their behaviors.
- [Lynne] Tarzan, the character is obviously fictional,
but the concept of actual feral children,
children raised in the wilderness by animals
has been around for centuries,
and these certainly could have played a role
in the stories about people behaving like
or even transforming into wolves.
[screen whooshes] [dramatic music]
- [Ryan] These feral children don't exhibit violent
tendencies, but even though they're not aggressive,
their mysterious origins, they're wild - like tendencies
really fuels the idea that this is maybe a perfect template
for where we get the modern werewolf.
- [Andrew] Northwest India, 1867,
a hunting party is out in the jungle
when they come upon a cave guarded by a single wolf,
but as they look closer,
they realize that this wolf is not a wolf at all.
It's a boy. [suspenseful music]
- [Troy] When an actual wolf then emerged from the cave
and approached the hunters, they killed it.
And believed they were rescuing this boy,
not understanding that he had been raised by those wolves.
- [Andrew] The hunters deliver him to a group of missionaries.
You know, the missionaries name him Dina Sanichar.
They try to teach him to speak. They're never able to do so.
So what we have here is a real-life "Jungle Book."
A real-life Mogley, man-cub.
- [Laurence] The story of Dina Sanichar
is not an isolated one.
There have been around a hundred documented cases
just like it.
- [Troy] There were other cases of feral children
being raised by animals, different kinds of animals,
leopards, lions,
goats, but most of them seem to revolve around
dogs and wolves because they are such social animals.
- [Lynne] What we see in these stories,
there's not that violence,
there's not that aggression,
but we see at a really basic level,
the general belief that a human animal hybrid is possible.
[suspenseful music] - [Laurence] In 1884,
Phineas Taylor Barnum travels the world with his circus.
He calls it "PT Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth."
Among his sideshow performers is a young boy
with a very startling appearance.
- [Troy] His entire face, except for his eyes and ears,
were covered with a fine, silky hair,
and whenever he would perform,
he would bark and growl like a dog.
Now, this was just his stage act.
He was actually a brilliant young man
who spoke five different languages,
but he made his money
by pretending to be half man and half animal.
- [Ryan] Jo-Jo's real name was Fedor Jeftichew,
and he suffered from a condition we know of these days
as Hypertrichosis, which is basically excessive hair.
It can cover just the face
or it can consume your entire body.
- [Lynne] Some experts believe that this condition
documented rarely but consistently since the 1500s,
could play a role in the ongoing belief in werewolves.
[suspenseful music] [graphic beeps]
- [Troy] Fedor was born in Russia.
His father had the same condition,
his father had performed in sideshows as a wild man.
After his father passed away,
Fedor went on to perform alone which is how he met PT Barnum,
who offered him a handsome contract to come to America
as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy.
- [Andrew] Jeftichew is a popular attraction for Barnum
for nearly 20 years.
Even though Jeftichew grows incredibly homesick,
Barnum won't let him out of his contract.
- [Lynne] Barnum's shows draw in hundreds of thousands
of visitors per year,
and likely for many of them,
this is the first time they've ever seen
a person with Hypertrichosis.
The condition didn't even have that name at the time.
And the posters, the advertisement for the show,
really encouraged people to believe
that this was an animal-human hybrid.
- [Laurence] Jo-Jo is part of a long history
of Hypertrichosis sufferers
being cast as wild animal human hybrids,
including werewolves.
- [Troy] In the late 1500s,
there was an Italian naturalist named Ulisse Aldrovandi
and he documented this entire family who lived in Bologna,
who were covered in a thick black hair
over their entire bodies.
- [Lynne] Aldrovandi's book was titled "The History of
Monsters," and the name that it gives to this condition
is werewolf syndrome.
Even though now we have the name Hypertrichosis,
the name Werewolf syndrome also sticks.
- [Erica] In the last 300 years,
there are only 50 documented cases of Hypertrichosis,
but in many ways, it's rarity may have made it
more alarming and all the more sort of shocking
for people who witnessed it.
- [Laurence] While not nearly as common as rabies
or as well publicized as feral children,
Hypertrichosis may have played a key role
in the development of the werewolf myth.
- [Troy] That may be why one of the oldest
variations of the werewolf legend
involves a creature that doesn't transform
back into a human,
but remains half human and half beast.
- [Laurence] Through the centuries,
a handful of famous cases
reinforced the idea of werewolf syndrome.
[screen whooshes] [graphic beeps]
- [Andrew] In 1840, some Mexican herdsman
discover a young mother hiding a daughter in a cave.
The daughter is striking in her appearance.
She's covered with hair,
including what looks like a long beard
growing from her face.
- [Troy] The mother explained that she was hiding the little
girl whose name was Julia Pastrana
because villagers believed that she was the new Ali
who was a shape-shifting werewolf.
As the story goes, the young mother died soon after,
and Julia ended up in an orphanage
where she became a subject of both ridicule and fear.
- [Kinitra] But she has such a sweet disposition.
She has such a beautiful singing voice.
She is eventually adopted by the governor
of the state of Sinaloa in Mexico,
and she works as a live-in maid.
- [Lynne] While she's working as a maid in this governor's house,
she begins to sing opera,
and as her talents grow, she gets recognized.
She meets an American entrepreneur,
he encourages her to travel to the US,
and by 1854, she makes her debut on Broadway.
- [Laurence] Despite Pastrana's gentle demeanor
and sophisticated performances,
she's still viewed as some kind of monster.
- [Troy] One newspaper article refers to her as "it,"
and even doctors who examine her
will say that she is only half human,
and these are doctors, let alone the general public
who sees her as this human animal hybrid.
- [Lynne] Her career continues and she actually has success
traveling around the world and performing,
and in 1860 in Moscow,
she gives birth to a baby boy.
Unfortunately, her child only survives for 35 hours,
and after he passes away, so does she.
- [Ryan] So for Julia, instead of having a dignified burial,
they put her in a box and display her at these events.
And it isn't until years later in 2013
where she is finally given a burial.
- [Troy] The condition that Jo-Jo and Julius suffered from
gave them an animal-like appearance,
but both of them were known for being very pleasant,
peaceful people,
so they weren't anything like the werewolf legend,
but the fact that people saw
that there could be what they thought
was a human animal hybrid,
it kept the story of the werewolves alive.
- [Laurence] Around the time of Julia Pastrana's death
thousands of miles away in the American west,
another alleged form of werewolf
is set to stalk the desert brush,
and this beast is not so peaceful.
- [Troy] In the 1860s, a conflict began in the American
southwest between the Navajo and Ute nations.
The Ute had allied themselves
with the American military against the Navajo,
and the Navajo were angry about this
and decided to have their revenge.
[person vocalizing] - [Andrew] As retaliation,
the Navajo are said to unleash a terrifying curse
upon the Ute people in their ancestral homeland,
what is now present day Utah,
and that curse comes in the form of a monster,
the skinwalker. [suspenseful music]
- [Troy] According to Native American lore,
skinwalkers were a type of witch
that could transform into an animal, specifically a wolf.
And they did so using magic
and the pelt of the animal they wanted to transform into.
The Navajo called them Yee Naaldlooshii,
which roughly translates to He who walks on all fours.
- [Andrew] In wolf form, skin walkers are super strong, very
fast, almost impossible to kill.
Folklore has it that the only thing that can kill them
is a bullet or a knife that's been dipped in white ash.
It's said that the only way to become a skinwalker
is to kill a member of your own family.
- [Lynne] When you put all of these qualities together,
the transformation into animals,
people becoming like wolves,
some people believe that this is a clear connection
to the longstanding historical belief in werewolves.
- [Andrew] By the late 19th century, many Utes have come to
believe that the skinwalkers are powerful, dark, magic,
and so many abandoned the Uinta Basin
and refuse to go back there.
Over time, that land is parceled and sold.
In the 1990s, a couple acquire a 512 acre parcel of land.
- [Ryan] Almost immediately, they begin having strangeness
happening around the house,
which gets worse until they start to notice
wolves on the land
that are three times larger than any wolves
that they've ever seen or they can find in text.
- [Lynne] According to the legend,
these are skinwalkers.
And some say that these are skinwalkers specifically sent
by the Navajo to clear out this land.
- [Laurence] Skin walker sightings aren't limited
to the supposed cursed territory in Utah.
One Native American family in Arizona reports
terrifying forces on their land.
- [Lynne] As the family tells the story,
they're seeing what looks sort of like these
long shadows that are circling around their house.
- [Andrew] The family hears noise coming from the
son's bedroom.
They open the door and see the son being attacked
by some kind of creature,
which they describe as walking on two legs,
but with eyes that burn like fire.
- [Lynne] In this family's belief tradition,
they describe this as a skinwalker,
but with the details provided,
this could easily be the story of a werewolf.
- [Laurence] When European settlers
brought their werewolf legends to the Americas,
they could have heard Native American stories
of the skinwalkers.
After all, both are tales of shape-shifting,
malevolent beings.
That's why some experts believe
that the skinwalker may have been a significant influence
on popular werewolf mythology.
- So it's easy on one level to imagine how werewolf legends
would take root in a pastime before
large technology education research about viruses,
but you also have werewolf stories that are contemporary.
In Wisconsin, there's this sort of
America's Beast of Gvauden
is known as The Beast of Bray Road.
- [Lynne] This is a hybrid of a dog, man who's seen consistently
in the wilderness, often at dusk,
often doing exactly what we hear
of werewolves and skinwalkers do,
menacing people, approaching their houses,
looking in the windows, threatening their well-being.
- [Erica] This becomes sort of a part of the community identity.
The local brewery has a beer named after the beast,
it's on T-shirts.
- [Lynne] At least for the beast of Bray Road
the one thing it hasn't done, is kill anyone,
at least not yet. [wolf howling]
- [Andrew] How do we explain the endurance of the werewolf myth?
In the werewolf, we find something truly terrifying
because the werewolf tells us that
the true monster is not out there,
but is in here inside any one of us.
[suspenseful music] [werewolf howling]
- The legend of werewolves has endured for centuries
by way of folklore, fear, and perhaps misunderstanding.
Whether this creature is a product of our imagination
or something much darker,
the werewolf symbolizes the fine line
between civilized society and our most primal instincts.
I'm Laurence Fishburne,
thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."