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The Loup-Garou

(The Loup-Garou - A Werewolf - Shape-shifters of wolf and human form)

A werewolf is one of the oldest legends you can sink your teeth into. For hundreds of years the werewolf has been frightening and enchanting readers by candlelight and recently, viewers on the silver screen.

The word werewolf comes from various languages. In almost every language, werewolf has their own particular meanings.

Loup-Garou, the werewolf, is known but less widespread in French Canadian folklore than in Europe. The Loup-Garou is not always a wolf or dog, but may also take the form of a calf or small ox, a pig, a cat or even an owl. The spell could last for as long as 101 days, taking hold of the victim every evening, which was forced to wander the countryside in animal form. The spell might be broken if someone recognized the individual while transformed and could draw blood from the animal; neither person could speak of this incident, for fear of worse reprisals.

The legend was often used to scare children into behaving. "Make yo' bed or da loup garou is gonna get ya'!" What makes these creatures so dangerous is the fact that while in their wolf form, they are completely aware and as intelligent as they are in their human form. With their enhanced abilities and senses, it makes them difficult to destroy. Along with these abilities, they differ from the werewolf because it isn't just the moon that can change them. These creatures can change at their own will, as well as by the command of a full moon. These are magnificent creatures ... but beware of the Loup Garou.

Werewolves are often attributed super-human strength and senses, far beyond those of both wolves and men. Though it is endowed with all the beastly implements like stout-jaws and offensive paws that a natural wolf is most likely to use during a conflict with its enemy or prey, it has been classically known to kill the others with a dagger or a knife though bite marks are also found on the (generally) dead victim. The werewolf is generally held as a European character, although its lore spread through the world in later times. Shape-shifters, similar to werewolves, are common in tales from all over the world, most notably amongst the Native Americans, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves.

Werewolves are a frequent subject of modern fictional books, although fictional werewolves have been attributed traits distinct from those of original folklore, most notably vulnerability to silver bullets. Werewolves continue to endure in modern culture and fiction, with books, films and television shows cementing the werewolf's stance as a dominant figure in horror.

Many European countries and cultures influenced by them have stories of werewolves, including: Albania, Armenia, Croatia/Bosnia, France, Greece, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Bulgaria-Turkey, Czech Republic/Slovakia, Serbia/Montenegro, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Iceland, Galicia, Portugal/Brazil, Lithuania, Latvia, Andorra/Catalonia, Hungary, Estonia, Finland, Italy.

In rare occasions, people believe that they can become, in reality, werewolves. Clinical lycanthropy is defined as a rare psychiatric syndrome that a person can or has transformed into an animal or that he or she is an animal. Its name is connected to the mythical condition of lycanthropy, a supernatural affliction in which people are said to physically shape shift into wolves. The terms zoanthropy and therianthropy are also sometimes used for the delusion that one has turned into an animal in general and not specifically a wolf.

In folklore or in reality the werewolf is definitely an old, if not ancient part of mankind and a recent submission in Things That Go Bump In a Canadian Night.