A Monster we can all be afraid of...

I am not a CSI viewer. Once in awhile I'll tune in to discover what new technology exists to ensnare me in the unlikely event that I should turn my vast knowledge to the service of evil, but as a rule, I don't watch the show.

So it was with some surprise that I learned from a friend that the team lead for the Las Vegas CSI squad shared one of my pet theories: that mythical werewolves and serial killers are linked.

Most folks with an interest in myths and legends understand there is often some truth to any tall tale. The trouble is in discerning which strand is the weave of the legend. When one pulls at the fabric of the werewolf myths, there are plenty of threads to tug.

One thread is the medical condition of lycanthropy, a condition that causes unusual gorwth of body hair so that the afflicted usually ends up employed as Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy at the traveling sideshow. This condition, fortunately, is extremely rare even today amidst our ballooning population. Perhaps some ancient incidents of lycanthropy helped the werewolf myth along, but I have a hard time imagining this is the central truth of the myth. More likely, this is a chicken/egg scenario.

There's also a psychological thread in which the symbolism of the werewolf myth is broken into its constituent parts -- namely the duality of man as beast and spirit. The internal conflict over doing right and wrong. A primitive connection between prehistoric hunters and the predator beasts the competed with for prey. The urge to break free of societal constraints and return to the amoral natural state. Blah, blah, blah...

But at the heart of the werewolf myth is bloody violence, and the revulsion at the unrestrained killer.

For example, Little Red Riding Hood is sometimes considered a werewolf story since the wolf is anthropomorphisized. The central fears of this Brothers Grimm tale are rape, murder and lurking evil hiding behind an ordinary face. If you walk through the True Crime section of your local bookstore, you;ll see these same themes repeated in the books on the shelves: sex, violence, ordinariness. This is particularly true of the serial killer books. In all but perhaps a handful of the cases, somebody utters, "Nobody would've guessed such a normal-looking guy like Ted was capabale of such crimes." It's almost as if Serial Killers have two faces: man and beast.

Isn't that a real werewolf?

In our enlightened age, we can name the various psychological disorders associated with serial killers, but to a less sophisticated people permeated by religious faith, a serial killer must have appeared utterly demonic. Even we are likely to refer to modern serial killers as "monsters."

Something few modern folks understand is that earlier man lived side by side with his terrors. They believed they experienced the occassional ghost, goblin, vampire, or werewolf. So we do have actual records of physical, real encounters with werewolves. One, the celebrated Beast of Gevaudan, I recounted in a much earlier post. But another case lends credibility to my argument.

Peter Stubbe was a German accused of dealing with the devil for a magic belt of wolfskin. With this belt, he would transform into a terrible beast to murder women and children -- partly devouring them and doing other unnatural acts. He was unrepentant and gave excellent detail about his crimes. At least until he was convicted and executed in a suitably horrific fashion.

Fortunately, the psychoses that create serial killers are still rare, but they seem to be more common than the genetic traits that give us lycanthropes. If I had to choose the strand of truth that created the werewolf legend, it would be superstitious humanity's early encounters with deranged minds.