How The Full Moon Really Can Turn You Into A Werewolf
If you thought werewolves were nothing more than terrifying mythical monsters with a spinechilling howl, be prepared to think again.
A study suggests that a full moon really can bring out the beast in us, turning us into biting, spitting and scratching animals.
While we may not actually transform into the bloodthirsty creatures of fables and movies such as An American Werewolf In London, research suggests we do display worrying symptoms.
A study conducted in Australia found that in the year to July, 91 emergency patients with violent, acute disturbances comparable to werewolves were admitted to one hospital north of Sydney.
And a quarter of these occurred on the night of a full moon, double the number for other lunar phases, according to Leonie Calver, a clinical research nurse in toxicology.
'Some of these patients attacked the staff like animals, biting, spitting and scratching,' she said.
The patients had to be sedated and physically restrained to protect themselves.
Miss Calver's study, reported in the Medical Journal of Australia, said: 'One might compare them with the werewolves of the past, who are said to have also appeared during the full moon.'
Werewolf mythology, she pointed out, included reports of people rubbing 'magic ointment' on to their skin or inhaling vapours to induce the transformation from man to beast.
The main ingredients of the ointment, said Miss Calver, were belladonna and nightshade --substances that could produce delirium, hallucinations and delusions of metamorphosis.
However the 'modern day werewolf' used a different 'potion' - more than 60 per cent of the patients reviewed in her study were under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
'Our findings support the premise that individuals with violent and acute behavioural disturbances are more likely to present to the emergency department during full moon,' she said.
Hollywood's portrayal of the occult.
Jacques Vallee is a computer scientist, partner in a venture capital firm, and author of more than 20 books, including Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers, The Invisible College, and The Network Revolution. In our age of rational science the occult has never been more in demand: Angels and demons are popular, the Da Vinci code and lost symbols fascinate audiences worldwide and Hollywood is eager to turn out more movies with a paranormal theme. So why is it that so many of these stories seem flat, and fail to reach the level of insight into hidden structures of the world true esoteric adventures are supposed to promise?
Perhaps the answer has to do with the failure of gifted directors to come to grips with the enormity of the unknown issues of human destiny, or to pose the fundamental questions their esoteric subject would demand. We go away charmed by artistic visions, dazzled by the pageantry of cardinals in red capes and titillated by women in black garters but the Illuminati only scare us because of the blood they spill, not the existential issues they should transcend. They behave like any other gang of thugs, even if they utter their rough curses in Latin rather than street slang, cockney or modern Italian.
The circumstances that made this point clear to me arose when I watched again two movies within a few days, namely Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate.
The Polanski movie, in contrast, is dangerous and captivating from the very first frame. It combines a profound understanding of hermeticism with the breathless beauty of a quest for infinity. It completes it with the exquisite aesthetics of an adept who knows what should be exposed and what should remain hidden. Polanski has recognized the power and genuineness of his cause, his story, his landscapes, while Kubrick only exemplifies the well-trained academic intellectual who scrutinizes the magical from the outside and just doesn't get it, flashing the conventional symbols before us like so many obligatory props. Occultism is not science-fiction. The splendid photography doesn't fill the emotional gap.
It was striking to me that both movies took the protagonists to very similar situations and to the same places - the region of Pontoise in fact, so charged for me in magical memories. Should we suspect that the scripts circulated from desk to desk in Hollywood, as is so often the case, and that both stories emerged from a bit of plagiarism? Let's not go that far: perhaps it was simply a case of lucky occult coincidence.
Occult Rock
Posted by Greg at 11:20, 07 Dec 2009This article is excerpted from Darklore Volume 2, which is available for sale from Amazon US and Amazon UK. The Darklore anthology series features the best writing and research on paranormal, Fortean and hidden history topics, by the most respected names in the field: Robert Bauval, Nick Redfern, Loren Coleman, Jon Downes and Daniel Pinchbeck, to name just a few. Darklore's aim is to support quality researchers, so it makes sense to support Darklore.
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Occult Rock
by Greg Taylor
Few guitarists have been as influential as the legendary Delta Bluesman, Robert Johnson. His recordings have inspired fellow blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, song-writing genius Bob Dylan, formative rock gods The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton (who labelled Johnson “the most important Blues musician who ever lived”) - who in turn have influenced subsequent generations of musicians.
However, rumours swirled about Johnson’s involvement with the occult even before his premature death – aged just 27 – in 1938. His seemingly instantaneous mastery of the Blues gave rise to legends that he had made a deal with the Devil, who had given Johnson his skills in return for his everlasting soul. Tales circulated of the young black musician from Mississippi who had taken his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery’s plantation at midnight, and met there with a large man who took the guitar and tuned it, and gave Johnson mastery of the instrument in a Faustian bargain. Within a year of this fabled meeting, Johnson was recognised as one of the greatest Delta Blues musicians…but within two more years, he had met his end – and, we suppose, delivered on his side of the contract.
Johnson’s song titles provide a vivid reflection of his occult ties. “Hellhound on my Trail”, “Me and the Devil Blues”, and the narrative of “Crossroad Blues” (“Went down to the crossroads, bent down on my knees”) all add colour to the myths surrounding this seminal musician. But as Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh point out in their book The Elixir and the Stone, these allusions to the occult world are a fundamental part of the Blues, not least due to its origins in the music of Voodoo:
The people abducted from their villages on the African coast and forcibly transported across the Atlantic were bereft of everything, except, in some cases, members of their family; and they were generally separated from these soon after arrival in the New
World. Of their former lives, most slaves retained nothing save
their religious faith. This faith was largely animistic, revolving
around the shamanistic invocation of a multitude of nature deities
not unlike those of pre-Christian pagan Europe. Drums, dance, rhythmic incantation and sometimes drugs would be employed to induce a state of trance, or ‘possession’ by spiritual entities…Blues music is suffused with with voodoo imagery and allusions…
Such images and allusions constitute a lexicon of their own – the
kind of ‘coded’ lexicon devised by any oppressed or persecuted
people to communicate freely without incurring the wrath of those
who wield power over them. Thus, for example, blues music will allude frequently, in a sexually raunchy but otherwise ostensibly
innocent context, to the ‘mojo’, a talismanic voodoo fetish. There
are also references to ‘John the Conqueror’, a plant talisman used
by the ‘root doctor’, a voodoo priest or shaman who became known
as the ‘hoochie-coochie man’…
The Robert Johnson ‘crossroads’ legend is now firmly entrenched in the public consciousness, in the wake of its exposition in the Coen Brothers’ lauded film O Brother Where Art Thou?, and the paranormal-flavoured television show Supernatural. But the myth did not originate with Johnson – folklorist Harry Middleton Hart recorded many tales in the 1930s of banjo players, violinists, and card sharps selling their souls at the crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist, and the theme first appeared in Blues music with Clara Smith’s 1924 track “Done Sold My Soul To The Devil (And My Heart’s Done Turned To Stone)”. In fact, the same legend was attached to Bluesman Tommy Johnson (no relation) around a decade previous to Robert Johnson’s success. Again, this mythos has its roots in rites of Voodoo, as Baigent and Leigh describe:
One of the most significantly resonant and portentously evocative of voodoo images is that of the crossroads. In voodoo, the crossroads symbolizes the gate which affords access to the invisible world, the world of gods and spirits. This gate must be approached with the appropriate prayers and requests for supernatural aid. In consequence, all voodoo rituals and ceremonies commence with a salutation to the god who guards the crossroads; and to pass the crossroads is to enter into voodoo initiation.
From Voodoo Blues to Occult Rock
The influence of voodoo on the Blues carried over into a later type of music, often seen – like the Blues – as an outlet of rebellion against the powers that be: Rock and Roll. From the first moment that Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips shocked (and titillated) 1950s America, the ‘new music’ was denounced by puritanicals as an agent of the Devil. No wonder either, with Presley borrowing so much from earlier ‘Black’ music. In the words of Baigent and Leigh, “if black music is the father of rock, voodoo is its grandfather.” Or, as David Bowie succinctly put it, “Rock has always been the Devil’s music.”
A similar influence permeated the work of one of the great rock acts of all time, The Rolling Stones. Coming together largely as a result of their love of American Blues music, the Stones often provoked controversy with their occult references and ties. In December 1967, shortly after the release of The Beatles’ iconic Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (interestingly, featuring a picture of ‘The Great Beast’ Aleister Crowley on the montage cover), The Rolling Stones released the album Their Satanic Majesties Request, which made the Top 5 on both the US and UK music charts. Comparable success greeted their following album, Beggars Banquet (1968), with the opening track “Sympathy for the Devil”. Arrests for drug possession, the controversial death of member Brian Jones, and their involvement in the Altamont Free Festival – where the Hells Angels gang murdered a fan – meant that by the beginning of 1970, the band was seen by many as the closest thing to Satan in music.
This opinion was bolstered via the Stones’ association during that period with occult film-maker – and Luciferian satanist – Kenneth Anger. And Anger provides another link between the occult and rock music, via his (turbulent) association with Jimmy Page, guitarist for Led Zeppelin.
Stairway to...Hell?
There can be no doubting Jimmy Page’s interest in the occult. In the early 1970s, he became involved in publishing and selling occult books, with his ownership of ‘The Equinox Booksellers and Publishers’, and had a particular fascination with the work of the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. Indeed, the Great Beast’s magical allure proved so strong that Page was even moved to purchase Crowley’s former home in Scotland (at Loch Ness, no less), Boleskine House.
The band’s amazing fourth album (“Stairway to Heaven”, “Black Dog”, “Going to California”, etc!) – untitled, but usually named simply as Led Zeppelin IV – is sometimes also called ZoSo, after the strange sigil found on the album jacket; one of a group of four symbols, each said to represent a member of the band, with ‘ZoSo’ being Jimmy Page’s. The original symbol can be found in the 1557 alchemical grimoire Ars Magica Arteficii, and is based on the Zodiac – although the greater meaning of the sigil remains obscure. A further occult reference in the album art is the inside illustration of the Tarot figure ‘The Hermit’. Additionally, various pressings of other Led Zeppelin releases were inscribed with Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic motto, “Do What Thou Wilt”.
Page’s association with Kenneth Anger came about when he was commissioned to write the soundtrack music for Anger’s film Lucifer Rising. However, the relationship turned acrimonious, with Anger later complaining that the legendary guitarist took three years to produce the soundtrack, and that the finished product was five minutes short of the 28 minute length of the movie. He also belittled Page’s occult knowledge, labelling him a “dabbler”. Page, for his part, rejected Anger’s charges.
Jimmy Page’s interest in Crowley and the occult appears to have influenced another rock music legend from the 1970s: The Thin White Duke, Ziggy Stardust himself, the ageless David Bowie. According to one researcher, Bowie’s initial interest was an attempt to ‘out-occult’ the Led Zeppelin maestro. Peter Koenig has documented numerous apects of David Bowie’s magical history on his website:
When I asked Angie Bowie why her ex was involved in magick, she remembered that he heard that Led Zeppelin were involved in the occult, and so he wanted to be even cooler and scare Jimmy Page. David Bowie decided to retaliate with his magick, and allegedly said to his wife that he would do so with what he knew of Tibetan magic (“the dark side of Buddhism” as he called it); everything to do with Aleister Crowley was “small shit.”
Did Bowie really think that the magick of Aleister Crowley was “small shit”? It would seem so, going by this 1997 interview in New Musical Express (NME) in which he dismissed ‘The Great Beast’ in favour of other occultists:
I always thought Crowley was a charlatan. But there was a guy called Edward Waite who was terribly important to me at the time. And another called Dion Fortune who wrote a book called Psychic Self Defence. You had to run around the room getting bits of string and old crayons and draw funny things on the wall, and I took it all most seriously, ha ha ha! I drew gateways into different dimensions, and I’m quite sure that, for myself, I really walked into other worlds. I drew things on walls and just walked through them, and saw what was on the other side!
However, just two years earlier, Bowie had said: “My overriding interest was in Cabbala and Crowleyism. That whole dark and rather fearsome never-world of the wrong side of the brain.” In the chameleon-like career of David Bowie, it sometimes becomes difficult to separate the truth from the fiction…
There is no doubting though that The Thin White Duke was consumed by occult ideas during the ‘70s. He was said to have been interested in scrying with crystal balls, and experimented in contacting the Spirit World via an Ouija Board. He later warned a journalist against ever using one: “Don’t… It can mess you up, especially if you’re taking drugs.” Koenig documents further gossip surrounding Bowie’s alleged descent into occult madness:
Rumor has it that Bowie kept his hair and fingernail clippings in the fridge of Michael Lippman’s home where he was living then, so they could not fall into the hands of those he thought wished to put spells on him. Bowie constructed an altar in the living room and he graced the walls with various magick symbols which he handpainted. Candles burned around the clock, he regularly performed banishing rituals, and he protected his friends by drawing sigils on their hands.
The seventeen-year-old Cameron Crowe allegedly found a stirred-up Bowie burning black candles against an aborted magical ritual during the LA period. Eventually Crowe published several narratives in Rolling Stone and Playboy of Bowie drawing black magick symbols, seeing disembodied beings, thinking he was the Messiah, keeping bottles of his urine in the fridge…
Occult themes can also be found in Bowie’s music: his 1971 song “Quicksand” begins with the lines “I’m closer to the Golden Dawn, Immersed in Crowley’s uniform, of imagery”. On Station to Station (1976) he references the Kabbalah in the title track with the line “one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth”, talks of “flashing no colour” (part of the Eastern occult Tattva system), and also makes a sly tip of the hat to Aleister Crowley’s book of pornographic poems White Stains in the very last line of the song. The album’s art (at least on the CD version) also includes a picture of Bowie sketching the Kabbalistic Tree of Life on the floor.
Ritual Tool
Another band to use the Tree of Life on their album packaging in more recent years is the acclaimed American progressive rock/metal band (who can categorise them?) Tool, on their limited edition CD/DVD box set Salival (“a map of consciousness projected over the body of a Macrocosmic being”). And it is with Tool that we possibly reach the apotheosis of ‘occult rock’. In contrast to the gratuitous use of magickal words and imagery by rock bands in the 1980s – co-opted almost always purely for marketing reasons – Tool employs various branches of esoteric thought as direct aids (or is that 'tools'?) in their creative process. What’s more, they do so with a level of thought and contemplation which seems light years ahead of their peers. In the words of Blair MacKenzie Blake, a close personal friend of the band, Tool have been known to…
…employ genuine occult principles in their artistic output, in both recordings, art design, and with their live performances. However, rather than embracing certain occult clichés to shock the general populace, or to establish a dark mystique, this more esoteric arcana is rendered useful for personal and artistic purposes in an attempt to gain unconventional perspectives on the multiverse.
In the song “Lateralus” (from the 2001 album of the same name), singer Maynard James Keenan weaves his transcendent lyrics (featuring alchemical symbolism) within a rhythmic structure based on the Fibonacci Sequence, an evolving elucidation of the ‘Golden Ratio’ in which each succeeding number of the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers (so the sequence runs: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on). Keenan’s staccato delivery breaks the syllables of his lyrics into a cycling pattern up and down the Fibonacci Sequence:
Tool drummer Danny Carey – like Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page – is known to be an avid collector of rare occult publications, including first edition works by celebrated occultists such as Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Frater Achad, Kenneth Grant, and Andrew D. Chumbley (several of which can be seen in the stereoscopic portrait of Carey in the unique packaging of their 2006 album 10,000 Days, along with “some ritual objects that serve as unique tools for experiencing visionary realms and contacting that which lies outside the terrestrial vehicle”).
During the recording process, Tool are also known to employ magickal banishing and purification rites (variations on the well-known Greater Ritual of the Pentagram and Hexagram) to eliminate any ‘residue’ left behind by previous artists, as well as to “render the circle absolutely impregnable” with regards to future tracking. Also, according to Blair MacKenzie Blake…
Occult paraphernalia such as talismanic boards, parasemiotic symbols, and pantacles (not to be confused with pentacles) are also utilized in both recording sessions and during live performances, with these highly charged magical ‘machines’ often ensigiled with specific desires. Some may be of a protective nature, while others are devised to (hopefully) ensure a successful outcome. In the case of the pantacle mentioned above, this could be seen as a microcosm of the Operator or “the great storehouse from which the magician draws” to use Aleister Crowley’s definition.
Drummer Danny Carey often surrounds himself with sacred geometry and occult diagrams based on magical correspondences. At one time a large, modified representation of Dr John Dee’s Enochian Sigillum Dei Aemeth was suspended behind his drum kit during live performances, but other talismanic boards and even the drumheads contain examples of perfect geometric shapes including pentagrams, tesseracts (hyper cube), unicursal hexagrams, heptagrams, enneagrams and interpenetrating variations of each. In an attempt to ‘charge’ the drumkit, itself, a Knight’s Templar artifact brought back from the South of France was melted down along with numerous recycled Paiste cymbals that comprise his Jeff Ocheltree/Paiste bronze Custom Craft kit. Additionally, each bass drum weighs a ‘Thelemic’ 93 pounds, although this could be purely coincidental.
This overt occult symbolism has, on occasion, led to some interesting times while touring. In some of the southeastern states of the United States – the heartland of Christian Fundamentalism – local road crews have been known to refuse to touch or unload the Ryan McClimmit-designed talismanic boards, with some walking away while invoking the name of Jesus.
Carey also contributed the final track on Lateralus, “Faaip de Oiad”, which is titled in the ‘Enochian Language’ allegedly received (from Angelic entities no less!) by the famed medieval occultist Dr John Dee (or more correctly, through his scryer Edward Kelley) via a series of magical operations. The title translates to “The Voice of God”, and the instrumental track includes a sample of a ‘defective’ machine, said to be “attuned to a particular ‘wavelength’ of occult significance having to do with the concept of idiotheosis.”
Occult themes are also integrated into the band’s artwork, from album covers and packaging, to tour posters, stage props, video stage projections and music videos. One example is the artwork found on the disc of the import release of Aenima (1996), which contains a sigil from plate #34 of The Goetia (Being the Lessor Key of Solomon), a seminal medieval grimoire. Blair Blake mentions this classic occult text while hinting at more occult secrets possibly concealed within the album packaging:
According to the author, the thirty-fourth Spirit is “Furfur”, who, when compelled by the Operator (i.e. Conjured up within a Triangle), once taking the form of an angel, gives TRUE answers both of things secret and Divine (if commanded). Some of these “secret and divine” things are actually revealed in the insert that came with CD, although there is no evidence that this has ever been discovered by any of the band’s fans.
Meanwhile, the artwork for the album Lateralus is provided by famed visionary artist Alex Grey, and features sacred geometry as well as detailed illustrations of the “subtle physiology”, which are associated with “psychosexual energies and mystical essences generated and secreted for the purpose of activating sigils, charging talismanic objects, and other carefully-guarded occult possibilities.” The Flaming Eye motif “concerns the unique magical properties of the pineal-pituitary hypothalamic complex”, and there are also cryptic allusions (particularly in the transformation sequence of the music video for “Parabola”) to “the release of endogenous tryptamines, that which some modern adepts suspect may be the neurochemical basis of magical operations” (see the article “DMT and Magick” in Darklore Volume 2 for more on this). Furthermore, according to Blair Blake the video…
…also includes a ritual involving a heptagram familiar in certain esoteric doctrines, along with the “blue apple” symbology of a higher gnosis. In addition, there are hints of “The Mauve Zone”, a conceptual abyss or heightened dimension of consciousness experienced by numerous occultists, artists, and visionaries in the past, and that which might be responsible for the more surreal aspects of their literary and artistic output.
However, perhaps we should take Blake’s mention of the “surreal aspects” of Tool’s creations – not to mention Keenan’s lyrics to “Lateralus” (“Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind”) – as fair warning that our analysis of the occult aspects found in rock music is only worth so much. There is a vast amount of related material we could cover: from the influence of the occult upon Norwegian Black Metal, to Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson’s interest in Aleister Crowley, which has recently resulted in a feature film. Or perhaps even The Mars Volta’s use of an Ouija Board in the creation of their 2008 album The Bedlam in Goliath (considering the mayhem that allegedly resulted, perhaps they should have listened to David Bowie’s advice…). But, ultimately, rock music is about transcending the intellect, and just losing yourself in a maelstrom of sound and feeling. So enough intellectual analysis of the occult aspects of rock for now: go put on your favourite album and crank it up while raising the mano cornuta to the heavens, and perhaps “we’ll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one’s been.”
Hospital study shows full moons werewolf effect
'The Werewolf's Guide to Life'
For the Werewolf Who Has Everything
A study in an Australian hospital has identified a spike in out-of-control "werewolf" patients when a full moon is out.
There were 91 emergency patients rated as having violent and acute behavioural disturbance at the Calvary Mater Newcastle hospital from August 2008 to July 2009.
Leonie Calver, a clinical research nurse in toxicology, said almost a quarter of the cases (23 per cent) occurred on a night of full moon and this was double the number for other lunar phases.
The patients all had to be sedated and physically restrained to protect themselves and others.
"Some of these patients attacked the staff like animals - biting, spitting and scratching," Ms Calver said.
"One might compare them with the werewolves of the past, who are said to have also appeared during the full moon."
Ms Calver said werewolf mythology included reports of people rubbing "magic ointment" onto their skin or inhaling vapours to induce the shirt-rending transformation from man to beast.
The main ingredients were belladonna and nightshade, she said, both substances that could produce delirium, hallucinations and delusion of bodily metamorphosis.
Ms Calver said it appeared the "modern-day werewolf" preferred alcohol or illicit drugs, as more than 60 per cent of the patients reviewed in the study were under the influence.
"We don't know if its more fun to use drugs and alcohol under a full moon or if their behavioural disturbance is directly influenced by the moon," she said.
"Our findings support the premise that individuals with violent and acute behavioural disturbance are more likely to present to the emergency department during...full moon."
The research is published in the pre-Christmas edition of the Medical Journal of Australia.
AAP
Newport Beach Werewolf? What’s Going On Here?
A while back I wrote about the “Dogman of Southern California“. An account of a few guys who had ran into some creature they could not explain.
Werewolves are mythical creatures, yet so many reports are seen each year about werewolf sightings that it makes no sense. Like Bigfoot, these reports come from all over the US.
Unlike Bigfoot, these reports have less credibility; given what we know about science.
Stephen Wagner from paranormal.about.com shares a story that was submitted to him from a person who witnessed what he claims was a pack of werewolves in Newport Beach California. Not too far from Redlands, CA. The site of the previous “dogman” story.
Another southern California werewolf report?
I better stop drinking the water around here……
Newport Beach Hwy 133By Stephen Wagner, About.com Guide
My sighting took place around 11:30 p.m. on November 4, 2009. I work for the local 73 toll road in Newport Beach, California, and lately we’ve had some construction on the surrounding roads for the past few months. I am a third-shift manager (2 p.m.-11 p.m.), and every night driving home I take the exact same route at pretty much the same time every night.
On this night, I was coming off the exit for the 133 road connector, and I’ll never forget what I saw. While stopped at the stop light, I saw a group of three large, four-legged creatures dash out from the trees along the road. I started second guessing myself and tried to convince myself I was seeing things. I made the left turn at the light, and while the speed limit was still 40 mph at this part, I looked up and almost peed my pants. Those three beasts were running upright! The wolves, which seems to be the most logical guess, were about 6.5 feet tall and looked like they easily weighed 250-275 pounds each. They had snouts and mouths that almost could be expressive (being able to smile/frown) and the fur was dark, although there wasn’t enough light to tell if it was dark brown or black.
My car being a 6-cylinder, it could get going if need be. I was going 45 mph and the giant wolves were keeping up with ease. I then literally put the pedal to the metal and sped up to 70. I was sweating profusely and having a panic attack. As I sped up to 70, the wolves stopped following me, considering I was about to enter a high-traffic part of the road. The wolf in front seemed to stop on a dime and watch me drive off.
I did not hear any howls before or after the sighting. I proceeded to head home ASAP. I told my girlfriend what I saw and she deemed my “imagination was running wild.” I also told my coworkers the next day following the sighting, but nobody believes me to this day. I know I’m not crazy and I know what I saw. I still have been taking the same route home every night and have not run into anything since that night of the sighting. Who knows what they actually were, but all I know is I do not want to run into them again.
“Dogman of Southern California“.
“Dogman of Southern California“.
Schedelsche Weltchronik -Man with a dog head.
With the Gable film and the Gable film 2 being a big story this year, rise in werewolf/Dogmen stories on the net are sure sign that this phenomenon is not going away anytime soon.
If you have not heard of the “Wisconsin Werewolf” stories, you should start by reading the interview we did with Linda Godfrey. She has been investigating claims of a large wolf like or werewolf life creature roaming the state of Wisconsin. As silly as that sounds, Linda has interviewed hundreds of witnesses that come from various backgrounds. All providing similar details of what they have seen.
Most likely, what they are seeing is a large/mutated wolf. Or pack of them. Nevertheless, there are people who claim that this canine looking creature is bipedal and looks humanoid. More can be read in Linda’s book “Hunting the American Werewolf“.
Cabinet of Wonders posted a story that was submitted to them from 2 guys out in Redlands, CA. They claim to have witnessed something canine/human like.
My mother lives in Redlands. A small under-developed city that resembles “Wine country”. Houses, malls and orange orchards make up the landscape of Redlands. Located about 60-80 miles east of L.A.
Read the account:
This is the true story of a canid creature my friend of mine and I believe we discovered/rediscovered.
It started I suppose last winter. Being in a particularly dry area of Southern California, It was to my great surprise when a friend of mine and I discovered a sizable lake just over a small ridge on a well traveled road in our area. We began exploration of the area, aided by Google Earth, which revealed a large number of lakes in the same vicinity. The lakes, as I was to later discover, were part of the valley’s flood control system, and hold water for much of the year.
During one of our explorations, we found something out of place. It was February, I believe, and after the rainy season, the grass had grown pretty tall on a ridge overlooking the first lake we found.
On this ridge we found a trail of very large foot prints. These prints were approaching two feet in length, with a very long stride (longer than that of my friend, who is 6’6”). We followed these prints for a good quarter mile before they disappeared into the chaparral.
From then on, we dubbed the creature “Lake Ape” and made many subsequent searches, to no avail (besides the discovery of several more lakes).
…
He decided to drive down the new side road alone one night (What made him do it, I don’t know. That road is terrifying at night.). He was nearing the first of the terraced hills when a figure crossed the road in front of him. He described it as a tall, dark, humanoid. It then climbed a 5-6 foot berm on the side of the road and disappeared in the direction of the hill.
We returned to the area the next day, and I reenacted the scene. From this, he determined that the creature must have been much taller than even he was to have looked taller than the berm from the distance that he saw it. I have to admit, I didn’t believe him at first, and thought that he was just making it up.
…
The following took place in the space of about two minutes:
While looking up at the trees, I noticed something much closer to us, standing in the field on the other side of the berm.
My thought process was actually quite comical. I first dismissed it as a bush, then kept looking up at the trees. I glanced at it again then thought it was a man- a very tall man. Then I looked at it longer and realized it was covered in brown hair. And, rather than the Sasquatch-like-creature I would have expected, it had a dog-like head (most comparable to a German shepherd).
I asked my friend, “Are you seeing this?”
And he said, “You mean that figure over there?”
There was a moment of silence in which the creature walked off to the left, to an area where the berm was too high to see over, and disappeared.
I believe we both shouted “OH SH**!” and sped off haha.
From then on, Lake Ape became “Dog Man.”
Both of our accounts of the creature matched up.
We agreed that it was:
-7-8 feet tall
-Was covered in brown fur
-Had a wide chest and muscular physique (body more akin to a man than Sasquatch’s is reported to be)
-Had a canine-like head, closely resembling a German Shepherd or other wolf-like dog, with large pointed ears
Full source: Cabinet of Wonders
Location:
BIGFOOT SIGHTING IN NORTH CENTRAL MN
Original Video - More videos at TinyPic
GRAND FORKS, ND - A Minnesota hunter and his son's are not sure what to make of the strange image that turned up on a game trail camera set up on their hunting land in the remote woods near Remer, MN, this fall.
Some experts believe the large, furry creature is "Bigfoot." Tim Kedrowski say he was reluctant to go public with the image but turned it over to the Northern Minnesota Bigfoot research team. They're convinced it is bigfoot.
The photo was taken at night, and Kedrowski says they considered it could have been from a bear or a bow hunter in a fuzzy suit.
But the arm and hand couldn’t be a bear’s, or its upright gait. And there is no evidence in the photo of a bow or flashlight a hunter might have been using to track a wounded deer.
Photo courtesy of Tim Kedrowski.
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Source: Don Haney, KFGO News Center
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UH OH, BIGFOOT ROAMING SOUTH OF ATLANTA
Reports of the sightings of large primates, usually referred to as “Bigfoot,” are not uncommon across the United States. But they are uncommon in Fayette County. At least until this past summer.
A story posted on the Georgia Mysteries website on Dec. 5 changed all that with its report of a north Fayette County woman who said she encountered a large hairy creature on Lee’s Mill Road in mid-July.
The Citizen was unable to contact the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO), its investigator or the Georgia Mysteries website contributor to obtain additional information on the incident described on the website.
The unnamed woman who reported the July 17 incident, according to the Georgia Mysteries story, was rounding a curve on Lee’s Mill Road as she drove home from work on a clear night at approximately 11 p.m.
The woman described the creature in her headlights as being approximately 6 feet to 7 feet in height, hairy with a medium build and with a loping gait.
“As I rounded a curve I saw something walking across the road in front of me. It was tall, not slim but not thick and covered in grayish-brownish hair. It never turned to look at me and just loped across the road and off in the dark. I was traveling about 40 mph and slowed quite a bit to ensure it would make it across without me hitting it,” the website report said.
The creature did not turn towards the vehicle at all, just continued across the road to the other tree line, according to the unverified report. The sighting lasted 10-15 seconds. At the closest point the woman said she was approximately 10 feet from the creature, according to the report.
A follow-up report was done by BFRO investigator Mary Snyder. In her statement Snyder said the witness had been sincere in her report of the incident.
“I could hear in her voice that she was still very upset about the encounter,” Snyder said.
The woman is reported to have said that subsequent to the event she learned that sightings had occurred a few years ago in Coweta County. There were several sightings of the “Happy Valley Horror” in 2005 in the Happy Valley Circle area of north Coweta, as reported in the local media.
The story of the Fayette County Bigfoot sighting can be found on the Georgia Mysteries website here.
London's Prince of Darkness - The Highgate Vampire
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The Highgate Cemetery is an old Victorian-style cemetery located on the North London hill site spread over 37 acres. It is rumored to have been the source of inspiration for the famous scene of the cemetery in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. Dusty vaults, ivy-strewn pathways, desecrated coffins and shadowy goings-on. However, the noteriety of Highgate Cemetery reached a gothic climax during the 1960s and early ‘70s when it was alleged that a tall, dark, red-eyed phantom prowled the catacombs of this neglected burial ground.
In December 1969, David Farrant, decided to spend the night there, according to his account written in 1991. In a letter printed in a London newspaper, he wrote that when passing the cemetery on 24 December 1969 he had glimpsed "a grey figure", which he considered to be supernatural, and asked if others had seen anything similar. Several people replied, describing a variety of ghosts said to haunt the cemetery or Swains Lane besides.
As a result, even the most bizarre reports were considered credible and London papers jumped on the bandwagon.
Sean Manchester, self-proclaimed vampire hunter and then 'President of The British Occult Society', relates in his autobiographical 'The Highgate Vampire' that the whole affair started when a pair of female teenage students from La Sainte Union Convent saw what they described as graves opening and bodies rising in the north gate section in the Western Cemetery, on Swains Lane. The phantom was later linked to dead foxes discovered in the cemetery, and reportedly drank the blood of several local women. Trespassers were supposedly left clutching their throats after attacks by an unseen assailant.
Manchester was reported to say that he believed 'a King Vampire of the Undead', a medieval nobleman who had practiced black magic in medieval Wallachia, had been brought to England in a coffin in the early eighteenth century, by followers who bought a house for him in the West End and later leased the home of Sir William Ashurst (Lord Mayor of London in 1694) on the site that later became Highgate Cemetery.
Manchester claimed that modern Satanists had roused him and the right thing to do would be to stake the vampire's body, and then behead and burn it, but regrettably this would nowadays be illegal.
It is surprising that the 'Highgate Vampire' does not rival London’s other mysterious figures, namely 'Jack The Ripper' and 'Spring-Heeled Jack' in popularity. The hysteria surrounding the phenomenon has all but vanished since the 1970s, when thousands would flock to the cemetery for nightly vigils in search of the undead.
After the hysteria in the 1970s, the cemetery is now 'guarded’ by the 'Friends Of Highgate Cemetery' who allow access only by guided tour.
Whatever the truth is behind Highgate's monstrous abomination, many believe something did and still may lurk in that shadowy place and locals fear that perhaps the darkness may return one day.
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Sources:
http://vampires.monstrous.com/
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum
http://www.holygrail-church.fsnet.co.uk/
http://www.davidfarrant.org/
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