Showing posts with label Werewolves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Werewolves. Show all posts

Anne Rice, Author and Screenwriter of ‘Interview With the Vampire,’ Dies at 80

Her nearly 40 novels published over a half-century sold some 135 million copies, placing her among the most popular fantasy writers of all time.

By Lisa de los Reyes for The Hollywood Reporter, December 12, 2021

Anne Rice at her home in Palm Springs, California, in 2010. She wrote like a time traveller, layering her novels with astonishingly evocative period detail. 

The Rougarou - Cajun Werewolf Lore

Don't go too deep into the dark woods or wetlands in Cajun country at night. You might find yourself face-to-face with a tall, terrifying, blood-thirsty creature called the rougarou. He stalks through the sugar cane fields looking for prey, tearing his victims apart, drinking their blood, and then turning them into unworldly beasts as well. Even if you don't believe that he's real, you may want to take precautions to stay out of his way.

The Wild Evolution of Vampires, From Bram Stoker to Dracula Untold

As we’ve discussed here before, the tropes that define fantasy and horror literature are fluid, which is exactly why they persist. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, witches, ghosts—for several centuries, these archetypes have figured prominently in genre fiction, in no small part because they’ve adapted to suit the specific needs (and fears) of society at any given time.

The vampire in particular has had quite a colorful tenure. Vampiric creatures and spirits date at least as far back as Mesopotamia and Ancient Greece, but the vampire as we know it emerged in the early 1700s, when natives and foreigners alike began recording the folklore and superstitions of the Balkans, that cluster of eastern European countries that would become home to the most famous vampire of all time: Count Dracula.

Vampires and Biochemistry

Perhaps you are a fan of Twilight the movie or the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, or True Blood the television drama series created and produced by Alan Ball, based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris. Vampires with their frightening appearance and unusual powers and weaknesses can cause one to pause and question how this is possible. Can this mythicalogical being brought to life in Dracula, the 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula, have any basis in reality? Is there any connection to what we know about biological systems that could explain vampirism? I doubt that you would be surprised if I said yes, since this is a biochemistry course website.


Scientific Reasons to Believe in Vampires, Werewolves & Zombies

Let's take a look at some of the real-world events and phenomena that may have inspired the creation of vampires, werewolves and zombies.

Therian Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can Therians physically shift?

No. I have yet to meet a person that can actually shift physically and has proof of it. Please refer to the following sections: "Making Sense of it All" and "P-Shifting: The Mulder and Scully Debate". (located on the website)


Do Werewolves Really Exist?

Do werewolves really exist? Very good question, but first we must define just what a werewolf is.

We all know about the werewolf myths, stories about people who turn into evil wolf-like monsters under the light of the full moon to eat the flesh of humans, and who only can be defeated by silver. Okay, now you can forget everything that Hollywood has taught you.


The Lexicon of the Werewolf

    Order I: What is the word lycan mean? Order II: What is otherkin? Order III: What does a lycan entail? Order IV: What are Totem Spirits Order V: What are the four types of shifting Order VI: The Awakening of Lycans Order VII: Manifestation of Lycans Order VIII: How do Zoans communicate with the host Order IX: Furries Vs Weres Order X: A little bit of Demonology

Foreword:
I shall refer to the subjects with in this text as "Lycanthropes, Lycans, Werewolves" But I also mean to say Otherkin at the same time, this saves on length of this text. Thank you for understanding this.


Therianthropy

A belief of werewolves has been in every culture since the earliest reported history. A lot of falsehoods have come about through the years about Werewolves .They have often been an object of fear and superstition and seen as savage untamed beasts. Here in this report we will discuss Werewolves in history and a more modern approach to the subject.


Beast of Gevaudan - Werewolf or a Huge Wolf Like Beast?

In June 1764, in the Gevaudan region of southeastern France, a young woman was tending cows and saw a horrid beast lumbering towards her. It was the size of a donkey, but it resembled a wolf. Her dogs ran away in terror, but the cattle chased the beast away with their horns.

This was the first sighting of what became known as the Beast of Gevaudanan. The woman was fortunate. Others were not so lucky. Men, women and children were killed, their bodies, savaged and mangled by the beast. The first victim, in July, 1764, was a young girl whose heart was ripped out. The slaughter resumed later that summer. Soon, the beast was attacking groups of men. It showed no fear. The people believed it was loup-garou, werewolf.


Werewolves: Legends, Cases, Theories

The wereanimal belief or legend is universal. In the European and American cultures, the predominant theme is that the werecreature is a wolf. In other cultures, there are were- panthers, werejaguars and werebears. Some societies believed that the person shape shifted and appeared to be the animal while others believed the person became the animal.

During the Middle Ages, people in Europe believed in werewolves. Some believed the creature was a wolf whose body was possessed by a demon. Others believed the devil put the person in a trance and transported the soul into a wolf’s body. Another theory was that a demon got into a wolf’s body and charmed the person into believing that he or she committed savage acts that were revealed in dreams. Another theory believed that the person actually changed into a wolf and that the devil substituted a human form in the werewolf’s place.


Vampyres: Legend, Cases and Theories

In 1730, the Count of Cabreras, an Imperial officer who investigated vampires, sent a documented a case to a professor at Freiburg University in Brisgau which involved similarities of vampyre incidents in Hungary.


Werewolf and Vampire!

FRIGHTENING!

If you haven’t been clawed, drained, ripped, bitten or sucked yet, don’t go off guard. I interviewed vampire buffs, visited graveyards, consulted skeptics, and searched the literature.

The truth that I dug up is as frightening as the fiction. Savage attacks by putrid vampires and howling werewolves still occur.


The Morbach Monster

Have you ever heard of the Morbach Monster?

I first learned of the legend while I was stationed at Hahn Airforce Base, Germany. Morbach was a munitions site just outside of the village of Wittlich.


Werewolves in fiction

Werewolves in fiction can have many different characteristics. While many stories describe lycanthropy as a disease or curse, and werewolves as killers, others treat werewolves as a fantasy race.


Werewolves

I'm a sucker for werewolves. Probably the result of seeing An American Werewolf in London when I was nine, as well as the usual assortment of late-afternoon werewolf movies on TV when I was young. As was the case with almost any of my youthful obsessions, I searched for every book on the subject, and I quickly came to a conclusion: Werewolf literature, as a whole, sucks. Sturgeon's Law underestimates just how bad werewolf stories can be. Frankly, you'd be lucky to find one good lycanthropy story or novel in every three hundred.


The Legend of the Werewolf

Are they myth, magic or a medical condition?

Werewolves, beings that looked human and could turn themselves into wolves when ever they wanted to, apart from on a full moon, when they could not stop themselves, and they transformed whether they wanted to or not. Some of them were said to turn into a creature that was half wolf, half man, while other were said to turn into wolf completely.


Werewolves - A Medical Perspective

The werewolf has played an important part in universal folklore since pre-Christian times. A werewolf is classically defined as "a person that shape shifts into a wolf without losing the capacity to think as a human." Science has attempted to explain the rationale behind the myth by highlighting a number of diseases that have over the centuries contributed to the werewolf legend:


Coffin Medicine

New research explodes the bloody myths of vampirism

Scary tales about vampires and werewolves continue to be a lucrative Hollywood staple. The evil bloodsuckers who slept in caskets, hid from sunlight, and feared crosses and garlic, have experienced a movie renaissance with the recent sawtooth cinema of Blade and John Carpenter's Vampires, while the premise of hairy, lupine creatures baying at a full moon resulted in the Christmas 1997 release of An American Werewolf in Paris.


Porphyria and Lycanthropy

The disease porphyria may have led to accusations of lycanthropy or vampirism.


Rabies and Lycanthropy

A rabid canine, according to clinical observations, becomes "increasingly irritable, restless, and nervous.... It shows exaggerated response to sudden stimuli of sight and sound. Excitability, photophobia, and hyperesthesia may become apparent...the animal may begin to move and roam, and wander aimlessly, all the time becoming more irritable and vicious; at this stage the animal is now very dangerous because of its tendency to bite anything that it encounters, be it man, animal, or inanimate objects. If the animal is confined it will bite at chains or bars of the cage or kennel, breaking its teeth, and inflicting severe trauma on its oral tissues.


Vamps for a New Millennium: The State of the Field in June 2004

As of May 2004, Spike and Angel have left our television screens. Fortunately, we can still encounter numerous vampire heroes and heroines in print and pixels. The late-twentieth-century trend of three-dimensional, often attractive and ethical vampires in fiction continues (although the backlash toward evil, bloodthirsty monsters fit only to be destroyed also lingers, especially in the movies). Interestingly, even when a vampire is portrayed as evil, he or she usually has a more complex, nuanced personality than comparable characters before 1970. The figure of the sympathetic vampire has altered the imaginative landscape so that readers and viewers apparently no longer want to accept a purely monstrous villain with no inner life.


Women in the Vampire World

There are essentially three roles of women in the vampire world. Women may be victims or vampires themselves. The third level of attachment to the vampire world (VW) is an outside attachment, and that belongs to the women who are mere observers, such as anyone who reads a vampire book and is drawn to it. Though harder to analyze, a woman's attraction to vampire movies or literature speaks something for the appeal of the vampire in this culture, which this essay series is all about.


The Compulsion of Real/Reel Serial Killers and Vampires: Toward a Gothic Criminology

ABSTRACT

The most gripping and recurrent visualizations of the "monstrous" in the media and film lay bare the tensions that underlie the contemporary construction of the "monstrous," which ranges in the twilit realm where divisions separating fact, fiction, and myth are porous—a gothic mode. There appear to be two monstrous figures in contemporary popular culture whose constructions blur into each other, and who most powerfully evoke not only our deepest fears and taboos, but also our most repressed fantasies and desires: the serial killer and the vampire.


A Freudian interpretation of the vampire myth

by Laura Collopy

The vampire is a monster that has both thrilled and terrified people for hundreds of years, from sophisticated Parisian theatre-goers to quaking Eastern European peasants. Elements of the vampire legend are found in North and South America, Europe, and Asia are older than Christianity. Although the modus operandi and physical appearance may differ from culture to culture, one thing remains constant: The vampire is an animated corpse, un-dead and kicking through the intervention of Satan and the warm blood of his living victims.

Few folkloric creations have survived for so long in such diverse cultural and geographic situations, and therefore, there must be something common to human nature to create such universality and endurance. A Freudian interpretation of the myth can uncover such a bond.


The Vampire and Holy Symbols

Did you know?

In the late 1400s, Pope Innocent VIII released a treatise recognizing the phenomena of incubi and succubi, male and female nocturnal demons. In the mid-1700s, Christian Monks wrote about various beliefs in the Undead that had developed in Western Europe, with hopes of dispelling the stories as superstition. These books of accumulated tales were available to the population at large, and the Undead within - previously known by any number of terms - were systematically named 'vampire'. As a result, the term vampire, vampyr, vampyre, wampire or wampirus - and all it's other translations - has become a household name (probably not the Monks' initial intention ...).


An Interview With S.P. Somtow

S.P. SOMTOW: OPENING ALL THE DOORS

Somtow Sucharitkul, who writes as S.P. Somtow, is coming to terms - both personal and literary - with his remarkable multicultural background and a lifetime of traveling.


Lore of the Vampire

The vampire has held its place in superstition as long as any other creature. The vampire of today is, for the most part, quite different from the one of ancient times. In researching the vampire lore, I attempted to find out just how different they are. I wondered what people thought of them now compared to yesteryear.


Creatures of the Night

There is no known culture on this planet that has not at one time or another cowered in fear because of the savage attacks of a nocturnal predator known as a therianthrope, a human-animal hybrid such as a werewolf, "werebear," "werelion," or a "were-something." Such creatures were painted by Stone Age artists more than 10,000 years ago and represent some of the world's oldest cave art—and they probably precipitated some of the world's first nightmares.


The Werewolf Syndrome: Compulsive Bestial Slaughterers

Attack

In 1995, a young woman in Douglas County, Washington, was unable to get her mother or fourteen-year-old sister, Amanda, to answer the phone. That was unusual, so she went to check on them. The front door was locked, so she went around to a sliding rear door that was always unlocked. Inside the home, she found their bodies. One was in a bedroom and one in the family room, both smeared in a great deal of blood. She ran to a neighbor, who called for help. The responding police officers observed that the victims of this grotesque double homicide had been sexually mutilated in a variety of ways by someone who seemed more animal than human.


Werewolf Syndrome (aka Congenital Generalized Hypertrichosis)

Werewolf Syndrome, or, Congenital Generalized Hypertichosis is an extremely rare genetic disorder, causing hair follicles to work overtime!


The Book of Were-Wolves

Synopsis: Sabine Baring-Gould was a parson in the Church of England, an archaeologist, historian and a prolific author. He is best known for writing the hymn 'Onward Christian Soldiers'. This book is also one of the most cited references about werewolves. Published in 1865, this book starts off with a straightforward academic review of the literature of shape-shifting; however, starting with Chapter XI, the narrative takes a strange turn into sensationalistic 'true crime' case-studies of cannibals, grave desecrators, and blood fetishists, which have a tenuous connection with lycanthropy.


The She-Wolf

There was an enchanted mill, so that no one could stay there, because a she-wolf always haunted it. A soldier went once into the mill to sleep. He made a fire in the parlor, went up into the garret above, bored a hole with an auger in the floor, and peeped down into the parlor.


The Werewolf of Bettembourg

A long time ago, an old and crippled soldier came from the direction of Luxembourg City. He lay down to rest at a cross standing on a hill just outside the town of Bettembourg.


The Werewolf of Paris

INTRODUCTION

Where shall I begin my tale?

This one has neither beginning nor end, but only a perpetual unfolding, a multi-petaled blossom of strange botany.