The Monster Book. Nick Redfern

a so-called wolf pit, where it would perish from hunger. However, a werewolf could not be brought down with a rifle bullet, nor would it ever fall into a wolf pit.”

      “A person who possessed such a strap could not get rid of it, however much he wanted to. Anyone who accepted a wolf strap also had entered into brotherhood with the devil.…”

      Asmus and Knoop put this question to their readers: “What is the use of running around as a werewolf?” It was, indeed, a good question. The pair answered it, themselves:

      “This was not done for no good reason. When the pantries and meat containers were empty, one would only have to fasten on the wolf strap, run off as a wolf, seek out a fat sheep that was wandering off toward the edge of the woods, creep towards it, seize it, and drag it into the woods. In the evening one could bring it home without anyone noticing. Or the werewolf would know when a peasant was going through the woods with a lot of money. He would ambush him, rob him, then run off across the field with the booty.”

      In earlier times, the pair expanded, and after the horses had been unhitched from a wagon or a plow, “they would be driven out to a community pasture where they would be watched until morning by two herdsmen. Even colts were put out for the night. People took turns watching after them.” There was a very good reason for that: the fear the horses would become the victims of the deadly werewolves in their very midst.

      WOLF STONE BEAST-WOMAN

      In a century long past and in a valley in the Fichtel Mountains, Bavaria, Germany, said Alexander Schöppner, a shepherd was tending his flock in a green meadow in 1874. Several times, it happened that after driving his herd home he discovered that one of the animals was missing. On each and every occasion, the search for the animals ended in complete failure. They were, said Schöppner, “lost and they remained lost.”

      On one occasion, however, the shepherd spied a huge wolf-like animal stealthily exiting the woods and attacking, and quickly killing, a small lamb. The shepherd gave chase but was not quite quick enough. The wolf-thing was near-instantaneously gone, as was the unfortunate lamb. Schöppner noted that the shepherd was not going to give up quite that easily, however, and he formulated a plan:

      “The next time he took an expert marksman with him. The wolf approached, but the marksman’s bullets bounced off him. Then it occurred to the hunter to load his weapon with the dried pith from an elder bush. The next day he got off a shot, and the robber ran howling into the woods. The next morning the shepherd met an old neighbor woman with whom he was not on the best of terms. Noticing that she was limping, he asked her: ‘Neighbor, what is wrong with your leg? It does not want to go along with you.’”

      The old woman, eying the shepherd with suspicion, replied: “What business is it of yours?” She didn’t wait for an answer and quickly went on her way. The shepherd, said Schöppner, took careful note of her reply. Chiefly because the old woman “had long been suspected of practicing evil magic. People claimed to have seen her on the Heuberg in Swabia, the Köterberg, and also on the Hui near Halberstadt. He reported her. She was arrested, interrogated, and flogged with rod of alder wood, with which others suspected of magic, but who had denied the charges, had been punished. She was then locked up in chains. But suddenly the woman disappeared from the prison, and no one knew where she had gone.”

      That was not the end of the story, however. Sometime later, Schöppner recorded, the shepherd encountered the wolf again, yet again on the fringes of the forestland and late at night. On this occasion it was not the shepherd’s animals that the beast had come for. No. It was the shepherd himself that the monster had in its deadly, predatory sights. A violent battle between the two erupted, during which the shepherd “gathered all of his strength together against the teeth and claws of the ferocious beast.”

      Despite the shepherd’s determination to slay the beast, it quickly became clear that he was overwhelmed when it came to the matter of sheer, brute force and strength. The shepherd would have died had it not been for a hunter who quickly happened upon the scene and who “fired a shot at the wolf, and then struck it down with his knife. The instant that blood began to flow from the wolf’s side, the old woman from the village appeared in the field before them, writhing and twisting terribly. They finished killing her and buried her twenty feet beneath the earth.”

      Schöppner concluded his account as follows: “At the place where they buried the woman they erected a large stone cross, which they named the ‘Wolf Stone’ in memory of these events. It was never peaceful and orderly in the vicinity of the stone.”

      The conflict between man and wolf goes back centuries. Bad enough to have to defend one’s flock of sheep from wolves, but worse still if it is not really a wolf.…

      WORLD WAR II MONSTER HOUND

      From a woman who—as a young girl—had a traumatic encounter with an infernal, supernatural hound at the height of World War II, we have the following:

      “At the time, because of the war, my mother and I usually stayed with an elderly gentleman, who had kindly taken us in as ‘refugees’ from London. We only went back to the capital when the bombing ceased. The cottage where we lived is still in existence, in Bredon, Worcestershire. My encounter took place one late afternoon in summer, when I had been sent to bed, but was far from sleepy.

      “I was sitting at the end of the big brass bedstead, playing with the ornamental knobs, and looking out of the window, when I was aware of a scratching noise, and an enormous black dog had walked from the direction of the fireplace to my left. It passed round the end of the bed, towards the door. As the dog passed between me and the window, it swung its head round to stare at me—it had very large eyes, which glowed from inside as if lit up, and as it looked at me I was quite terrified, and very much aware of the creature’s breath, which was warm and as strong as a gust of wind.

      “The animal must have been very tall, as I was sitting on the old-fashioned bedstead, which was quite high, and our eyes were level. Funnily enough, by the time it reached the door, it had vanished. I assure you that I was wide awake at the time, and sat on for quite some long while wondering about what I had seen, and to be truthful, too scared to get into our bed, under the clothes and go to sleep. I clearly remember my mother and our host, sitting in the garden in the late sun, talking and hearing the ringing of the bell on the weekly fried-fish van from Birmingham, as it went through the village! I am sure I was not dreaming, and have never forgotten the experience, remembering to the last detail how I felt, what the dog looked like.”

      WULVER

      In her 1932 book, Shetland Traditional Lore, the noted folklorist Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby wrote: “The Wulver was a creature like a man with a wolf’s head. He had short brown hair all over him. His home was a cave dug out of the side of a steep knowe, half-way up a hill. He didn’t molest folk if folk didn’t molest him. He was fond of fishing, and had a small rock in the deep water which is known to this day as the ‘Wulver’s Stane.’ There he would sit fishing sillaks and piltaks for hour after hour. He was reported to have frequently left a few fish on the window-sill of some poor body.”

      Unlike the traditional werewolf, the Wulver was not a shape-shifter. Its semi-human, semi-wolf appearance was natural and unchanging. One of the most fascinating,