Original subtitles

[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."