Chapter One (werewolves)

A werewolf is also known as a lycanthrope (" wolf-man"), is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction.

Werewolves are shape-shifting creatures with unusual speed, strength, reflexes, and senses. They can be like other supernatural creatures, a werewolf is known for having extraordinary abilities.

They have super senses of sight, smell, and hearing. Furthermore, werewolves are very fast and have speedy healing abilities. A werewolf can share its thoughts with other werewolves.

Wolves have 42 teeth, they have four toes with claws in an oval shape, they mate for life. A litter of wolves is usually 4 to 6 pups. The pups are born deaf and blind with bright blue eyes, a pack of wolves can range from 2 to over 30 wolves but it depends. Wolves can run at 36 to 38 MPH.

However, a werewolf cannot be killed by silver crosses or holy water like vampires but they are killed with silver bullets. When they die, they turn back to their human forms, a werewolf's main weakness is their vulnerability to silver or any substance containing silver, as they can be killed with a silver knife or bullet. Contact with silver will hurt them, an injection of silver nitrate was able to kill one.

To become a werewolf, it is necessary to be bitten by a werewolf in its wolfish form at the time of the full moon. When the werewolf's saliva mingles with the victim's blood, then contamination will occur.

Werewolves have enhanced senses like vampires, albeit less developed, they can hear things humans cannot, such as the Gilbert Device, however, they were not shown to have the hearing capabilities of vampires. They also have heightened taste senses.

The werewolves don't live forever but they don't age for some time until they can stop fasing into wolves, but they live in the woods, far away from the human world. They are hiding not all human knowledge of their existence, they believe humans as weak creatures.

werewolf in European folklore, a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, people, or corpses but returns to human form by the day.

One of the earliest known werewolf legends comes from a greek mythology. According to the legend, a man named Lycaon angered Zeus, the lord of the Gods, when he served Zeus a meal made from human flesh. As punishment, the enlarged Zeus turned Lycaon into a wolf and that was how werewolves came into existence.

werewolves are scared of transgressing the border between human and animals, werewolves illustrate a fear of the devil and his followers undermining human, particularly christian, society. Accounts of the humans turning into wolves are found as early as the ancient Norwegian Volsunga Saga or Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore, existing in many variants, which are related by a common development of a Christian interpretation of underlying European folklore developed during the medieval period. From the early modern period, werewolf beliefs also spread to the New World with colonialism.

Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in witches, in the course of the late middle ages and the early modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland ( especially the Valais and Vaud) in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century.

It's unclear exactly when and where the werewolf legend originated. Some scholars believed the werewolf made its debut in the epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known western prose when Gilgamesh jilted a potential lover because she turned her previous mate into a wolf.

Werewolf made another early appearance in Greek mythology with the legend of Lycaon. When he angered the God Zeus, he turned Lycaon and his sons into wolves as punishment.

Werewolves also emerged in early Nordic folklore. The saga of the Volsungs tells the story of a father and son who discovered wolf pelts that have the power to turn people into a wolf for ten days. The father-son duo donned the pelts, transformed into wolves, and went on a killing rampage in the forest. Their rampage ended when the father attacked his son, causing a lethal wound, the son only survived because a kind raven gave the father a leaf with healing powers.

Some legends maintain werewolves shape-shifted at will due to a curse. Others state they transformed with the help of an enchanted sash or a cloak made of wolf pelt. Still, others claim people became wolves after being scratched or bit by a werewolf.

In many werewolf stories, a person turns into a wolf when there's a full moon - and the theory may not be far-fetched. According to a study conducted at Australia's Calvary Mater Newcastle hospital, a full moon brings out the "beast" in many humans. The study found that of the 91 violent, acute behavior incidents at the hospital between August 2008 and July 2009, 23 percent happened during a full moon.

Werewolves can be seen as representing the duality of human beings as both animal and spiritual beings. The animal nature is generally repressed, controlled by the human rational mind and social norms, but may be released when the moon transforms, concomitantly transforming the person. This darker side of human nature is uncontrollably aggressive and without morality, is, unfortunately, a reality. The transformation that we hope for, however, comes with the light of a new "moon", the light of true love, which will reveal the true goodness of human beings.

They look like regular people during the day. But when the moon is full, they turn into a hairy- and- scary- monster! And when the full moon disappears they turn back into a person.

It's hard to pin down the world's first reference to werewolves. One of the oldest known written works on the planet, "The Epic of Gilgamesh," is a likely candidate. In it, Gilgamesh refuses to become the lover of the goddess Ishtar because of her cruel treatment of her previous suitors. Ishtar turned one man, a shepherd, into a wolf, making him the enemy of his friends, his sheep and even his own dogs.

Ishtar isn't the only ancient god to change a mortal into a wolf. In Ovid's "The Metamorphoses," a traveler visits the home of King Lycaon of Acadia. Lycaon suspects that the visitor is immortal, so he devises a test. He serves human meat to his guest, who unfortunately turns out to be the god Jupiter. Jupiter immediately recognizes the meat's origin, and he transforms Lycaon into a wolf. Lycaon's name and the word lycanthropy both come from the same root -- the Greek word lykos, meaning wolf.

Both of these works are ancient, and they suggest that the idea of men turning into wolves has been around for about as long as human civilization has. On top of being old, the idea is widespread. For the most part, if wolves live or have lived in a particular region, that region's folk tales include werewolves. In regions where there are no wolves, stories describe people turning into other carnivorous animals. Stories from parts of Africa describe people turning into hyenas or crocodiles. In Chinese folk tales, people become tigers, and in Japanese stories, they become foxes. Some Russian stories describe people who turn into bears.

In all of these stories, shape-shifters tend to inspire fear. That fear comes from three basic sources:

The animal that the person becomes is a large, powerful carnivore -- it's frightening even without supernatural intervention.

In undergoing the transformation, the person becomes something he fears, and he has no way of escaping himself.

If lycanthropy is transmitted by a bite, a victim faces the threat of ongoing, perpetually terrifying transformations should he survive the encounter.

Being bitten isn't the only way to become a werewolf, though.