Terrifying Truth Behind Werewolves! - Mythical Beasts - Documentary

The werewolf, a merciless monster, born when man turned savage beast. They could kill people, rip their throats out. Today, they're the stuff of movies. For our ancestors, they were very real. The beast began running around with this uncontrollable need to kill. What happened to inspire such terrifying stories? This really describes a demonic wolf interested in devouring the flesh of people. Why did so many people think they'd truly seen a werewolf? And all of a sudden, glowing back at you are these two bright eyes. It's going to look pretty supernatural. Now investigators use the latest science and archaeology. Reports at the time saying the bullets were just bouncing off it. To unlock the horrifying reality behind this notorious creature. For centuries, the people of Europe believed in a bloodthirsty monster. The werewolf. This half-man, half-wolf beast could tear its victims apart with its fangs and claws before transforming back into its original human form. Werewolves are kind of the ultimate combination of the human and the monstrous. In ancient times, people would have had such a connection with animals and such an understanding and belief that they were at the same level that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that someone could turn into an animal or vice versa. The werewolf has featured in more than 100 movies. Becoming one of Hollywood's most notorious monsters. But belief in these killer beasts began thousands of years before they hit the silver screen. Stories about werewolves have been around since before things were written down. It's as ancient as it gets. One of the earliest references to this fusion between man and wolf appears in an ancient Greek myth. It tells the story of Lycaon, the tyrannical king of Arcadia. In a plan to challenge Zeus, the king of the gods, Lycaon decides to kill his own son. He serves up the child's flesh at a banquet to test if Zeus is really all-knowing. But Zeus sees through the horrific ruse. He resurrects the slain child and turns Lycaon into a wolf. Punishment for Lycaon is that his outer form is meant to match his inner beastly form. In ancient Greece, the idea that humans could combine with other species may have been the stuff of legend. But in the UK, investigators have uncovered startling evidence. It reveals how right across Europe, people really believed the different beasts could merge together. Archaeologist Myles Russell and his team dig a 2,000-year-old settlement. They've unearthed the bones of 50 animals and 55 humans. But many were arranged in an unexpected way. What we've got here is a cow skull. It's been detached from the body of the cow. The jaw has been wrenched off, and then it's been placed directly on top of this horse jaw. These two are being added together to create this very real physical supernatural being. This combination of two real species into one bizarre beast is disturbingly similar to the hybrid werewolf from the myth. There are signs that these strange hybrids were spliced together moments after they died. There's no evidence of the flesh being removed. The teeth are still intact. This is not something that's been kicking around on the surface for some time. This is something, a freshly butchered skull. It is going into the ground in a fleshed state. Incredibly, Myles finds that human skeletons also appear to be merged with other species. Bones from different animals seem to mirror the form of a young woman. Skull with skull. Torso with torso. Limb with limb. They are dismembering these two animals and reassembling the body parts in a rough anatomical order. And then she's being rolled across so that her head meets with theirs. Stranger still, there is evidence that she didn't die naturally. She was sacrificed. We noticed that across the collarbone, there was a deep nick. So I think what we're seeing here is somebody who's had their throat cut. These marks suggest this ancient tribe believed mixed species creatures could be brought to life. Her blood is pouring out onto the top of this hybrid animal. Her life, her force is shifting into that or the hybrid creature beneath. 2,000 years ago, these people killed one of their own to honour a mutant beast they believed was divine. If they are worshipping a hybrid animal, it is the ultimate sacrifice. It's the ultimate offering to give one of them to this god or goddess. But this idea didn't die out in ancient times. Over 1,000 years later, Vikings wanted to merge themselves with one species in particular. The wolf. Archaeologist Alex Plaskovsky has come to the forests of Sweden to find out why. He believes the answer could lie with a 900-year-old runestone just outside the village of Shelby. We can see here this spectacular figure. It's got the legs of a human, but the upper half is animalistic. It appears to be the upper part of a wolf. Alex thinks this creature could be a fearsome type of Viking known as a wolf warrior. It's hard to be sure. The stones are damaged and some of the artwork is missing. But Alex thinks he's seen this terrifying figure before on ancient Viking armour. We can see here a figure dressed in what is clearly a wolf pelt. And it's holding two weapons, a spear and a sword. It's likely that these are both representations of wolf warriors. It may well be that the figure on the runestone was carrying a weapon as we can see here on this wolf warrior. The inscriptions on the stone prove that this man was once a powerful figure. These individual letters have been cut into the stone and painted. This is the alphabet of the Viking Age. It says that the son placed this stone in memory of his father. The father referred to here is almost certainly this figure in motion, perhaps even moving into battle. This wolf warrior would have been a highly respected or perhaps even feared figure. And this was made very clear by commemorating his memory with this very powerful and striking image. These Vikings were an elite class of warrior famed for their ferocity. The wolf was a powerful animal that warriors would seek to emulate in battle and beyond. Many believed these super soldiers were more than just men. Stories from the Viking Wars suggested they were thought of as shapeshifters. On his conquest of Norway, Viking Lord Harald Fairhair faced armies of thousands. But he took them head on with a group of legendary warriors. They wore no armor, only a wolf skin that gave them supernatural power. In the heat of battle, they were believed to be able to channel a wolf spirit. This made them invincible and able to kill with a single blow. Legend says that with these wolf warriors by his side, Harald conquered Norway. In the past, warriors would take on an animal form to make themselves strong in battle. A Zulu would think of themselves as a buffalo to become like a buffalo. And even though they were shot many times, they just kept coming. But why were the Vikings so in awe of half-wolf, half-man beasts? In ancient Greece, becoming a werewolf was a curse, not a blessing. Comparative anatomist Dr. Joy Reidenberg investigates. This is a wolf skull, and it's actually quite intimidating to look at. It's got lots of sharp pointy teeth. The jaws on the wolf are really powerful, many times that of a dog. You could see that the eyes would be facing straight out towards you, which is something you see in predators that really need to judge depth. So I could see how warriors would look up to the wolf and channel the wolf's energy, strength, superior hunting abilities. If you were a warrior, this would be your icon. For millennia, man has been inspired by the power of the wild wolf in particular. 12,000-year-old French cave paintings show a shaman transforming into a spirit animal with claws and a wolf's tail. 3,000 years ago, Native American shamans punched out their teeth and replaced them with wolf fangs to capture this predator's hunting skill. 1,000 years ago, Roman standard-bearers wore wolf pelts to boost their courage as they marched towards enemy lines. Throughout history, warriors have sought to draw power from the wolf. For many of our early ancestors, the fusion of man and beast was a feat to admire. But in later medieval Europe, these transformations were feared, hated and despised. How did this beast become a notorious villain? Alex Plaskovsky thinks the Hollywood image of the werewolf began in a book written in England in 1847. British novelist G.W.M. Reynolds stunned readers of his novel, by including a graphic transformation scene. Reynolds writes, When night falls, a man has thrown himself upon the ground where he writhes in horrible convulsions. His handsome countenance elongates into one of savage and brute-like shape. Garments he wears become shaggy. His arms and limbs take on another form. And with a frantic howl of misery, the wretch starts wildly away. No longer a man, but a monstrous wolf. We can see in this very vivid transformation the beginnings of a classic Hollywood werewolf. This visceral mutation inspired the horror movies of Hollywood and cemented the werewolf's evil reputation. But where did Reynolds find the idea for this monster? Writers like Reynolds would have been inspired by different kind of publications written hundreds of years earlier that would have been treated as fact. Alex is on the hunt for a werewolf document that shocked the world. His search takes him to Lambeth Palace in London, where a 500-year-old print records a gruesome event. It details the trial of a man named Peter Stump and reveals why our ancestors became terrified of this beast. It's one of the most gruesome accounts of werewolves that we have from Europe. This is not a story. It's a real trial where Stump was accused, tried and executed for crimes committed as a werewolf. In 1589, a string of murders haunted the German town of Bedberg. Thirteen children and two pregnant women were mauled to death. The prime suspect was a local farmer, Peter Stump. On trial, he confessed to being a werewolf guilty of the killings. Punishment was brutal. The executioner strapped Stump to a wheel and tore flesh from his body with red-hot pincers. He broke his limbs, burned his body and stuck his head on a stake as a warning. In the 1500s, werewolves were at the same status as witches and demons. They were some of Europe's most feared villains. The 16th and 17th centuries were a time of great religious fear in Europe, getting a lot of upheaval in the church and alongside that, a sense of religious persecution. Peter Stump was just one of many people accused of transforming into werewolves. Hundreds were convicted, tortured and killed for this supposed crime. Trial records reveal that the werewolf people feared then was very different to the half-man, half-wolf beast of Hollywood films. You can see almost a hybrid in this first image, but this is showing metamorphosis. And then he assumes a complete transformation into a wolf. But he retained his senses, he retained his mind and that is what made him a werewolf. It was less of a fantastic creature and something that could easily be prowling in the woods and in the wildernesses around your towns and villages. If you think about contemporary films like the Underworld series, the werewolf there can stand upright and has human characteristics. But in medieval times, you didn't have this notion of the wolf body and the human body being mixed. It was, you literally become this ferocious, huge, incredibly powerful wolf. But there was one feature in particular that our ancestors thought distinguished these demonic beasts from normal wolves. Their eyes. It specifically states, Peter was transformed into the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf with eyes large and great, which in the night sparkled like brands of fire. This really describes a demonic wolf that would be interested in nothing more than attacking and devouring the flesh of people. Comparative anatomist Dr. Joy Reidenberg investigates why people might have believed they'd seen the evil eyes of a werewolf. At night, if you shine a light at a wolf, you'll see ice shine coming back at you as if the eyes are glowing. All you see are the eyes. And that mystery makes it even more terrifying. Wolves have incredible night vision. Joy dissects the eye of a sheep to reveal how the eyes of some animals appear to light up at night. It's a reflective surface. It's a very blue-green pearlescent color in the very back and the side. And that is reflecting the ambient light that comes into the eye. We don't have that reflective layer. The human eye reflects a little bit, but nowhere near as much as these animals. This rare night vision footage of a wild coyote exposes the effect. Right there, see that? Those are the eyes of the coyote shining. It's that same eye shine from the back of the eye reflecting the light. You imagine you're holding up a lantern back in the Middle Ages where they didn't understand how the eye worked. And all of a sudden, glowing back at you are these two bright eyes. They would think that this animal had supernatural powers. Alex Pleskovsky thinks it was more than just the werewolf's eyes that made it evil. He believes the church played a key role in the beast's transformation. From noble warrior to despised demonic monster. This wall painting behind us is over 800 years old. And it shows you scenes from hell and the souls of the dam being tormented by these giant monstrous demons. Here, we have the most interesting figure because it's the only animal that we see in hell. And it is a wolf. And it is grasping a woman, gnawing away at her hand. For Alex, this scene reveals how Christianity spread the word that the wolf was the most heinous of all creatures. The fact that the painters chose to use the wolf and no other animal tells us that it's the most potent symbol of the demonic that the congregation would have recognized. The church pursued sinners who were thought to be in league with the devil when they became werewolves. But how did people believe this gruesome transformation actually took place? One French trial account from 1521 provides a clue. Pierre Bourgault was a shepherd convicted of attacking people while in wolf form. Bourgault claimed he'd been tending his sheep. Three riders dressed in black appeared. They offered to protect his flock in return for serving the devil. Bourgault claimed he was given a demonic ointment that transformed him into a wolf. And sent him on a killing spree. Bourgault was burned at the stake after he confessed to mauling people to death as a werewolf. A magic ointment is mentioned in several accounts from the werewolf trials. Alex Pleskovsky wants to find out if real substances could be behind these confessions. He examines a book of potions by an author who was condemned by the Catholic church. We have a passage on how to make a man believe he was changed into a bird or beast. So all of the ingredients appear to create a hallucinogenic substance that would alter the state of your mind and convince you that you had transformed into another animal. Potions alone are unlikely to account for why so many people believed they had turned into werewolves. Alex suspects there was another factor also at play. A deadly poison known as ergot that comes as a fang-shaped fungus. German folklore, a substance known as wolf's tooth was said to grow in the rye fields. We know this substance as ergot, a fungus. And this may have been linked to one of the most feared folkloric creatures that haunted the rye fields. The so-called rye wolf. According to legend, the rye wolf is a grain demon that takes the form of a wolf. It lurks in rye fields, waiting for the farmer to harvest the crop. As the rye wolf silently stalks its prey, it prepares to strike. The rye wolf attacks, biting the farmer who is now cursed to transform into a wolf himself. Rye farmers reported how their skin darkened. They became ravenously hungry and experienced violent convulsions. Plant pathologist Anna Gordon wants to find out if werewolf hallucinations could sometimes be the direct result of ergot poisoning. She examines an infected rye plant in a secure laboratory. In place of a grain, what you can see is this black fungal structure. We call that an ergot. And that's the thing that is packed full of these rather dangerous chemicals. If ingested, just two pieces of ergot can have a devastating effect on the human brain. 500 years ago, its dangers were unknown. This fungus would be ground up with the rye grain, poisoning entire batches of bread. Rye was one of the major food sources for people in the Middle Ages. You can imagine the scale of the problem if a whole field was infected with it. It's likely that in a bad harvest year, people would have been forced to eat stocks of grain that contained more ergots, and they might not have known the effect it was going to have on them. A 3D scan of a plant infected with ergot reveals the deadly material inside. The fungus is this blue mass here. These chemicals would be taken into your brain and they would have quite a range of symptoms, and one of which would be causing quite powerful hallucinogenic effects. Hundreds of years ago, people would much more likely have seen a wild wolf for real. Did this influence their hallucinations? If somebody's ingested ergot, then it's likely that they could perceive themselves as being shape-shifting or believing that they're becoming a werewolf. This deadly fungus wasn't restricted to European harvests. 500 years ago, the dangerous effects of ergotism may have fueled supernatural chaos across the globe. In 1692, in Salem Village, Massachusetts, a group of girls fell ill with symptoms of possible ergot poisoning. Powerful hallucinations kicked in, and they became convinced they'd been cursed. The girls accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and as panic spread throughout the community, 200 women were brought to trial. Many were found guilty as charged. Nineteen were hanged, and four died in prison. Ergotism may explain why some people confess to being werewolves when brought to trial. But why did others claim to have seen these people as wolves? A 500-year-old trial account provides clues. Gilles Garnier lived in the forests of eastern France in the late 1500s. He was an outsider who didn't mix with the town folk. With unkempt hair and a large beard, it was this face that witnesses claimed they saw in the woods one night, at the site of a brutal wolf attack on a little girl. On trial, Garnier confessed to killing children while in the form of a wolf. The court found him guilty of shapeshifting the most evil of crimes. Instead of going to prison, Garnier was burned at the stake. As society moves forward, it often leaves wilderness men behind, like the mountain men in American mythology. They look like grizzly bears. They eat in the same environment. They hunt like the grizzly bear. Archaeologist Alex Plaskovsky thinks ancient imagery could prove that outcasts played a key role in the werewolf legend. He's come to Chaldon Church in England to examine a faded mural painted 700 years ago. It shows a group of hunters approaching a man who looks like a wild animal. You can see this weird shaggy figure with half human, half beast appearance, and walking on all fours with thick hair in the manner of a beast, almost like a wolf. This painting depicts the story of a hermit called the Hairy Anchorite. He is an exile, an outcast from human society, living at the fringes of civilization. We know that many hermits lived in the forests of Europe and would have crossed that physical visual line into the beast, into the animal. These people would be viewed with suspicion. They would be feared. That kind of unusual appearance, like the not shaving, having long hair, would make that person a target for being branded as an outsider, branded as somebody that you can't trust, that isn't really human. That beast-like appearance probably contributes to a notion of what the werewolf would have been. Dr. Joy Reidenberg thinks that another physiological factor may have played an even more important role in the werewolf myth. Baffling medical conditions. She investigates hypertrichosis, a disease once known as werewolf syndrome. This is a condition where there's too much hair growth. And if we look carefully at their faces, you can see what looks like fur, even though it's actually hair, rolling down from their cheeks all the way down across their neck and chest. You could see how easily someone could associate someone with hypertrichosis with being a werewolf. In less enlightened times, life would be very difficult for someone with this condition. You're more likely to see them in a circus than you would just walking around on the street every day. In 1868, the famous showman P.T. Barnum had a father and son act, both with hypertrichosis, in his New York circus. The child was a hit with stunned audiences and rose to fame as the dog-faced boy. In medieval Europe, this is a culture that believes in a literally real werewolf. So if someone was found to have hypertrichosis, this is going to reinforce that belief as fact and proof. Abnormal hair growth wasn't the only disorder that could have made the myth seem more real. Scientists have connected a skin disease called porphyria with stories of strange nocturnal behavior in humans. Porphyria is a condition of intense sensitivity to sunlight, so much so that the skin will blister. This condition would make it very painful for someone to be out in bright daylight. So if they wanted to walk around outside, they would do it at night. And remember, there's no street lamps back in medieval times, so the best chance of seeing where you're going is on a full moon. That's very suspicious behavior if you're only walking around on full moons. This could explain why full moons became an intrinsic part of werewolf legends. In Roman mythology, you have a story about a man turning into a wolf. And what's interesting is that in this story, you have the full moon, which is a detail we still get in stories about werewolves. And it says that the moon was shining as if it were noon, really brightening up the night. It's very like the stories we get about werewolves today. Drugs, disease and genetic mutations might explain why people thought they had seen a werewolf. But during the werewolf trials, the defendants were connected with real murders. What was actually behind these deaths? A clue could lie with a series of grisly deaths that shocked France 250 years ago. In 1764, the French province of Gévaudan was the epicenter of a monstrous killing spree. More than 100 people died, their throats ripped out by a mysterious wolf-like beast. The king sent 30,000 soldiers to track down the creature. Some of them claimed they'd shot it, but their bullets had no effect. The hunters butchered hundreds of wolves, but the ghastly killings continued. Myth has it that what finally brought down the beast was a silver bullet fired by local hunter Jean Chastel. The Gévaudan story could be inspired by actual events. Several hundred people are dead and have been attacked by some kind of wolfy creature. Wolf expert Gary Marvin has studied the case of Gévaudan. He wants to find out why people thought the beast was impervious to regular lead bullets. Was this an ordinary everyday wolf or was it actually a super predator? Or something even more sinister? Gary thinks a clue lies with the weaponry of the time. At England's Royal Armouries, he meets Jonathan Ferguson, keeper of artillery and firearms. They test a musket, similar to those used at Gévaudan, to investigate why huntsmen claimed their shots were useless against the monster. Is there anything about this weapon which would be ineffective in this context? It'd be an expert shot, especially against a moving target compared to a modern firearm, and you've got every chance of missing with this just because it's inherently inaccurate. Jonathan fires a 19mm lead shot at a target designed to simulate the beast. The gel mould mimics its flesh, complete with replica bones set inside. We've managed to hit the target, but only just. It's a flesh wound, the bone's not been struck, so the thing is still running, but it's not going to stop the beast. 18th century muskets were powerful, but wildly inaccurate. Even the bullets that did hit the beast have only grazed its skin. Although hunters were apparently hitting the creature, it would seem to be impervious to bullets and limp off into the woods to attack again. So people began to think that there's something supernatural, sinister about this creature. The idea of a silver bullet being the solution to bringing down the beast is highly improbable. Silver is a lighter metal and would have been even less effective. Historians think it was added to the legend almost 200 years later because of silver's magical reputation. Silver had these kind of characteristics of religious purity, that by introducing this element into the body of the evil werewolf, it would neutralise the evil inside the werewolf. Gary thinks the difficulty in lining up a kill shot was the real reason why people considered this beast invincible. Real wolves remain the prime suspect for these deaths, not a supernatural predator. People began to think that this must be the work of one individual monstrous creature, the beast of Gevaudan, whereas it is more likely that there were similar attacks on different people by different wolves. Detailed records of the attacks were kept at the time. They could be the key to cracking this case. Gary plots their locations on a map. He spots two kills on the same day, more than 80 kilometres apart. No ordinary wolf would walk that far to make another kill later in the day. This is not what you would expect from an individual wolf. Gary examines footage of wolves attacking a caribou to see how packs of these animals could have been behind the many deaths. One juvenile bolts, but away from the herd. It's got no protection now. And then the second wolf chases, they both meet in the pincer movement, brought down a young vulnerable creature, the same way as young vulnerable people were taken down in Gevaudan. There is the strong possibility that these were actual real wolves coming in and perpetrating the killing. But if more than one wolf was to blame, why did the attack stop when Jean Chastel killed his beast? In the campaign against the beast of Gevaudan, hundreds, perhaps thousands of wolves are killed by soldiers and peasants throughout the region. Finally, Jean Chastel kills a large wolf. And whatever it was he killed, the attacks stopped. The people are willing to believe that this is it. He has killed the beast. But perhaps the killing stopped because the wolves were basically exterminated from the area. The terror triggered by hundreds of real wolf attacks played a key role in our ancestors' fear of supernatural werewolves. The wolf embodied, you know, kind of the worst and the most, the scariest of nature. Certainly in Europe, for centuries, the wolves lived in packs on the edges of towns. And that is your classic story of the danger of nature crowding around human civilization. But what lay behind this surge in wolf attacks on humans? Archaeologist Alex Pliskovsky has come to the former Viking forests of Sweden to find out. I'm pretty sure it's over here. Not easy to see. The forest is pretty dense. This is one of hundreds of stone pits built to trap and kill wolves in the later Middle Ages. This is probably the only physical evidence that's left of the intensive wolf hunting that happened in Europe where thousands of wolves would have been killed in mass hunts and in intensive trapping. At more than three meters deep and five meters wide, this is one of the largest wolf pits ever found. The base would have almost certainly have had wooden stakes or spikes embedded into it so that the wolf would fall in and impale itself. It is testimony to the intensity and the hatred felt for the wolf at that time. Alex thinks the pits were built as part of a turf war between man and wolf. The population of Europe from the beginning of the trials over a period of about 200, 250 years would have shot up, essentially doubling and putting immense pressure on the wolf. And because people were encroaching on the wolf's habitat, this brought them increasingly into contact with the wolf. Hunting parties killed off their natural prey, forcing the wild wolves of Europe to look for food in new places. Wolves changed their hunting patterns and started going after livestock and ultimately after people. In response to thousands of reported wolf attacks, the most intense animal hunts in history began. Authorities offered large sums for killing wolves and thousands of hunters answered the call. They copied hunting tactics from wolves, encircling their prey, cutting off its escape. Some concealed their traps and baited them with food. Wolves that couldn't resist temptation met a grisly end. It took just two centuries for hunters to decimate the European wolf population. As the wild wolves disappeared, so too did the sightings and the attacks blamed on werewolves. Interestingly, around the same time as the wolf is being hunted to extinction in Europe, the werewolf trials come to an end. To have credible and sustainable werewolf trials, you need wolves in the landscape. You need to see them attacking or you need to see their victims. But there is also something else that changed at this time, and that is people's beliefs. And with increasing understanding of shape-changing as a mental illness rather than magic, people simply began to believe that werewolves were not real. In 1720, the last werewolf trial took place. After hundreds of years, the hysteria had finally come to an end. A long time ago, when people were hunters, primarily they revered the wolf and its ability to be able to see things in the forest. But once humans grow, wolves become an adversary, a problem, and eventually a monster. But the death of the medieval werewolf didn't spell the end for the monster itself. The creature was rediscovered and put back in the spotlight during the Gothic horror revival of the 19th century. In the 20th century, the werewolf joined cinema's hall of horrors alongside Dracula, Frankenstein, and the mummy. The werewolf still very much survives today in popular culture. If you look at comic books on TV, on movie screens, we see werewolves everywhere. And I think that's partly because it still represents this fascination we have lurking inside each of us. We have this kind of bestiality, we have this kind of violent nature that we can't necessarily control. That inner beast can maybe break out at some point. The werewolf has gone from hero to villain, revered in the eyes of warriors. It was transformed into a demonic monster by the Christian church. For centuries, it terrified millions. Today, this horrifying mythical beast lives on in our nightmares. And on our screams.