I read this article by Nick Redfern at Mysterious Universe today and it got me all flustered with, almost gratitude, that someone who actually is someone within the world of cryptozoology would finally write what I’ve been saying for so long, like here.
The problem with werewolves is the lore. The fact that they have existed in legends and fairy tales, as a movie monster for so long that people for countless generations have been told that it’s just make believe. The non-existence of the werewolf has become a fact. What other cryptid has been subjected to such bias over such a long time? The Bigfoot is fairly new, even though tales of giant ape-like creatures have been told all over the world hardly any children are exposed to them in movies or fairy tales and then told that they are not real by their well-meaning parents. Hardly any children have nightmares about Nessie and need to be told that she’s not real.
But werewolves, they have existed in lore for so long and for inexplicable reasons people have interpreted that as them only being a figment of people’s imagination.
It seems to me that the reason people want to deny the werewolf is because of the extremely profound terror it instills in us. The thought of werewolves actually existing is too horrifying to bear so therefore it must just be a fairy tale creature.
But the fact that they have existed in lore for so long, doesn’t that say something? At the very least it says that the thought of a human combined with the predatory and long feared wolf is about the most unnerving creature the human mind can imagine. It mustn’t be real!
But what if it is? Will denying it make it go away? Wouldn’t we be better off trying to learn what we can about it?
What if the mythical part involving shape-shifting is taken out of the equation? Could you imagine something that looks like a werewolf, howls like a werewolf and rips to shreds like a werewolf if it wasn’t a human being transformed? If it was either a type of wolf able to walk upright or a creature from some unknown realm where wolves perhaps was the race to develop like apes did in our world? What if it is alien in nature? Or demonic? How about a yet undiscovered wolf species that spends most of its time in subterranean areas, like in caves and old mines?
I have banged my forehead bloody against the wall of people’s certainty that werewolves are just myth. It enrages me beyond words, not that people don’t believe, but that they will ridicule anyone who won’t agree with their biases, their opinions that they feel it necessary to have even though they have no actual information to base them on.
People see these things. They have seen these things for thousands of years. Am I then the idiot for wanting to learn what they are in fact seeing instead of just dismissing them flat out?
Please read some books on this subject before you try to tell me I’m an idiot. Read one of Linda Godfrey’s books, please! People are not imagining this and it is happening today. This can’t be swept under the rug forever. People like me are smirked at by both regular folks as well as cryptozoologists for being interested in werewolves. There is no place for us it seems, and no place for werewolves in the real world. Yet they are here and so are those of us who take an interest in them.
All I ask for is a humble openness. Humility. Does anyone remember that word? It means the opposite of arrogance. It means to study before you form an opinion. It means don’t judge what you don’t know. It means don’t be so full of yourself that you are too proud to learn new things.
The study of Bigfoot has almost become respectable. Lake monster enthusiasts come from all walks of life nowadays. Ghosts are all the rage.
Someone has to stick up for the most terrifying one of all, the werewolf…