Legend of the Werewolf

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And now, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind. Today, a legendary monster that transforms from man to beast whenever there's a full moon.

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The werewolf isn't just a movie monster. It's one of humanity's oldest nightmares.

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Is this all in our head, or is this something that is truly happening to the public?

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In one town in France, over 100 people killed, young children decapitated and disemboweled.

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In her dying breaths, she says she was attacked by something wolf-like, but not a wolf.

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Now, we explore the top theory surrounding the werewolf.

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That's just not the behavior of an ordinary wolf. A wolf would not have been decapitating people.

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By donning the animal's skin, you become the animal. You gain access to its fury.

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Could a condition that makes you froth at the mouth, has you hallucinate and attack other humans, get you branded a werewolf? It certainly won't help.

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Do real facts lie behind the enduring stories of werewolves, and why is the idea of this creature still so powerful today?

Welcome to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast brought to you by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. Today, the legend of the werewolf.

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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.

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The next morning, the individual awakens and they've returned to their true human self, with no memory of what transpired the night before.

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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, in comic books, usually in a real over-the-top way.

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But this legend remains deeply ingrained in cultures across the globe. The question is, why?

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The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest form of literature that exists, and it includes a werewolf story. When the goddess Ishtar transforms a former lover into a wolf, and then allows him to be torn apart by his own sheepdogs.

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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.

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So Zeus sees this because he is all-powerful, and he goes, if you're going to act like a beast, then I'm going to turn you into a beast. And then in front of all of his guests, he begins to radically transform into a wolf.

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These early stories are just that, stories. 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 to Medieval France.

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In 1764, Gévaudan is a quiet, remote province in southern France, 380 miles south of Paris. It's not a place known for generating much news.

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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 teenaged 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.

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What she describes is unlike any natural phenomena. She describes a wolf-like creature with the size of a calf, with a red coat of fur and fangs and fiery red eyes. Then she utters a phrase that stokes fears among the locals.

Like a wolf, yet not a wolf.

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.