Therianthropy History Timeline

[Cryptkeeper]

Therianthropy History Timeline

TIMELINE OF WEREWOLVES AND HOMINID CRYPTOZOOLOGY     
   last updated: 06 JUL 2005    
   My conventions:    
   History, myth, and legends of lycanthropes and shapeshifters take precedence, followed by cryptozoology reports, "werewolf" murderers and cannibals, and finally fiction.    
   All dates prior to 500 CE are considered approximate.    
      
   Bold indicates a particularly significant event in the origins of the werewolf, as well as names of important werewolf-related organizations    
   Titles of published works are listed in CAPS.  Movies and tv programs are in "Quotations".    
   An entry in Italics is based on fiction. [Source is sited in Brackets]    
      
4,500,000 BCE    Earth is struck by an asteroid.  Much debris from both bodies is expelled by the collision, and forms the satellight called simply "The Moon".    
      
140,000 BCE    Common bond established between human and wolves, via evolution.  According to totemic shamanism from nearly all traditions on Earth, mankind's ancestors were animals, most often wolves who chose to walk upright and eventually became human, though keeping a spiritual connection with wolves, coyotes, etc.    
      
132,000 BCE    Wolves and men live in harmony.  This continues until agriculture and livestock put wolves and humans at cross purposes.    
      
100,000 BCE    Neanderthal Man emerges in Europe.  According to Inuit legend, European ethnic whites are descendants from the Adlet, the offspring of an Inuit woman and a red dog.  Five other Adlet remained in the Icelandic region, becoming horrible flesh-eating monsters.    
      
75,000 BCE    Evidence exists of bear and wolf cults as early religions.    
      
48,000 BCE    Oldest known written record, lunar notations on bone, made in Europe.    
      
35,000 BCE    Neanderthal Man disappears from face of Earth.    
      
25,000 BCE    Franco-Cantabrian cave paintings suggest animal mysticism with bipedal animals as demigods.  One of the most famous Paleolithic carvings, known as "The Sorcerer," comes from the cave of Trois Frères near Ariège in the French Pyrénées. The body is that of some large animal. The hind legs are human below the knees. The tail is wolf-like. The front legs or arms terminate in human-like hands. The birdlike face is surmounted with deer antlers. The image is thought to represent a shaman in flux between the human and animal states.    
      
20,000 BCE    Asians cross the Bering Strait into the Americas: first humans

[Cryptkeeper]

10,000 BCE     Domestication of dog.     
      
6000 BCE    Catal Huyuk cave paintings show hunters wearing animal skins so they can mimic predators.    
      
3000 BCE    Creation of the Sphinx in Egypt, depicting a lion with the face of a woman.    
      
2600 BCE    Possible era for the Epic of Gilgamesh (the Sumerian king of Uruk) to occur.  Gilgamesh's rival (and later ally) Enkidu was a man-beast (and is the 1st man-beast in literature) created from clay by the goddess Aruru.  Enkidu is eventually killed by an illness sent to him by the goddess Ishtar (who was also responsible for transforming a shepherd into a wolf).    
      
2000 BCE    Epic of Gilgamesh recorded in Near East.    
      
1550 BCE    King Lycaon of Arcadia serves human flesh to the sky god Zeus and is transformed into a wolf for his crimes (originating the term 'Lycanthrope').  Zeus also shows his displeasure by causing the Deucalanian flood which ends Greek Age of Bronze (and ushers in the Greek Golden Age), as recorded by Pausanias the Geographer and Apollodorus the mythographer. [For variations on this myth, please see the Wikipedia entry on Lycaon]    
      
1228 BCE    Possible date for Odysseus' 12-year ODYSSEY to begin, which includes undead who drink blood, mermaid-like sirens, and Circe the witch who likes to transform men into animals.    
      
1000 BCE    Stories of Greek heroes and gods transforming themselves and/or others into animals become popular.    
      
850 BCE    Possible date for Homer's ODYSSEY to be recorded.    
      
753 BCE    Romulus & Remus, brothers suckled by a she-wolf (Lupa Romana) as infants, found the City of Rome.    
      
700 BCE    Three tribes of lycanthropes are known to roam near Rome.  One of them is the Luceres (Lucumones), possibly founded by Lokros, the son of Zeus and the she-wolf Maira.    
      
540 BCE    King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon suffers a mental affliction causing him to live as an animal for nearly four years, as related in Daniel 4:15-33.    
      
500 BCE    Scythians (a nomadic Eurasian people) live in fear of the Neuri (Slavs), whom they believe are werewolves.    
      
400 BCE    Damarchus, an Arcadian werewolf, wins boxing gold-medals at Olympics.    
      
75 BCE    Roman poet Virgil's 8TH ECLOGUE.

[Cryptkeeper]

39 BCE     Roman poet Virgil's ALPHESIBOEUS describes Moeris, a werewolf who teaches him necromancy (1st voluntary werewolf transformation in literature).     
      
28 CE    Jesus of Nazareth performs exorcisms on two werewolf-ghouls living in a cemetery outside Gadarenes, by the sea of Galilee.    
      
55 CE    Roman satyrist Gaius Petronius, the "Arbiter of Elegance", composes THE SATYRICON (1st full-fledged werewolf story).    
   Simon Magus the magician makes a bid for the role of Christian Messiah by demonstrating, among other things, the ability to assume various animal and human forms    
      
150 CE    Apuleius, METAMORPHOSIS composed, detailing his travels to Thessaly and the magical creatures he encountered, before being himself transformed into an ass.    
      
175 CE    Pausanias visits Arcadia and witnesses Lykaian werewolf rites.    
      
311 CE    Most accurate dating for the martyrdon of St. Christopher suggests he died in early November, 311 A.D.  Despite later depictions of St. Christopher as a soldier or giant, he was originally described as being a Cynocephali (dog-headed race of cannibals) named Reprobus who converted to Christianity and was granted a human visage for his faith.  Because the honorific name Christopher means "Bearer of Christ", he is often depicted as a giant carrying a child. Many texts claim the designation as a Cynocephali (dog-head) is intended to indicate a heathen race on the outskirts of civilization, or a fearful visage.  Christopher was a widely popular saint, and was especially revered by mariners, ferrymen, and travellers. His feast day was July 25th, except in Greece, where it was celebrated on March 9th.     
   (In recent times, the Roman Catholic Church has determined that Christopher's actions were not great enough to warrent sainthood.)  [Special thanks to Sean Curtin for bringing this to my attention.  For more info regarding the Cynocephali and St. Christopher, please visit The Greatest Werewolf Secret page by Sharon]    
      
400 CE    In the British Isles, the Druids' mystique included a reputation for taking animal forms. Celtic lore also included the fáelad, those families who numbered lycanthropy among their legacies. There is also the tale, told in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion, of how the magician Gwydion turned Blodeuwedd into an owl.    
      
410 CE    St Augustine relates in THE CITY OF GOD the tale of sorceresses in the Alps who feed people a special cheese to transform them into beasts of burden.    
      
435 CE    St Patrick arrives in Ireland and discovers in his flock are many families of werewolves.  At one point he changes the Welsh king Vereticus into a wolf.    
      
600    St Albeus is said to have been suckled by wolves in Ireland.    
      
617    Wolves said to have attacked heretical monks.    
      
650    Paulus Aegineta describes "melancholic lycanthropia" as a morbid mental disorder, in which the melancholic lycanthropes come to believe they are werewolves.    
      
725 c.    Approximate date for the authorship of BEOWULF.

[Cryptkeeper]

731     Were-animals haunting the countryside are described in ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND by Venerable Bede.     
      
774    Wolf-like monsters terrorize the area of Mesopotamia known today as Iraq, as well as Arzanene (Assyria) and the country of Maipherk as per Denys of Tell-Mahre's THE CHRONICLES.    
      
840    Agobard, the Archbishop of Lyons, writes LIBER CONTRA INSULAM, which discusses manbeast demon of the mountains.    
      
872    Berserkers (bearshirts) and Ulfheonar (wolfskins) first mentioned in print in HARALDSKVAEOI (YNGLINGA SAGA 6).    
      
900    HRAFNISMĀL mentions "wolf-coats" among the Norwegian army.    
      
906    Belief in witchcraft and lycanthropy is condemned as being the influence of Satan by Abbot Regino of Prum in THE CANON EPISCOPI to stop the worship of the goddess Diana.    
      
930    Pope Leon hears of German sorceresses who transform their guests into animals.    
      
1000    Deacon Burchard's CORRECTOR states that only God can transform one thing into another; the word 'werewolf' becomes synonymous with 'outlaw'.    
   Irish Legend of Cuchulain appears in writing.    
      
1020    First use of the word "werewulf" recorded in English.    
      
1022    First documented burning of a heretic takes place in Orleans.    
      
1101    Death of Prince Vseslav of Polock, a Ukrainian werewolf.    
      
1165    BISCLAVRET (meaning "Lay of a werewolf") composed by Marie de France.    
      
1182    Irish werewolves who transform during the Yuletide feast are discovered by Welsh historian Giraldus Cambrensis.  The werewolves were reportedly natives of Ossory, whose people had been cursed by St. Natalis for their wickedness.  [1185, recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis] (see details of this story in The Werewolves of Ossory from Banshees, Beasts and Brides from the Sea by Bob Curran, published by Appletree Press)    
      
1195    WILLIAM THE WEREWOLF composed by Guilliaume de Palerne.    
      
1205    A strange monster is killed by lightning at Maidstone in Kent in June, and giant demons appear during a thunderstorms on 29 July, as Abbot Ralph of Essex' THE CHRONICLES (1210) describes.    
      
1208    Pope Innocent III sends Crusade against fellow Christians the Albigensians to crush the Cathar sect in southern France.    
      
1214    Men transform into wolves during the full moon in Auvergne, as reported by Gervaise of Tilbury to Emperor Otto IV.    
      
1220    Shapeshifting, flying, and pacts with the Devil are the subjects of DIALOGUE OF MIRACLES by Caesarius of Heisterbach.    
1220    A sorceress transforms an English soldier into a beast of burden on the Island of Cyprus, according to the Bishop of Tyre.    
      
1224    Konrad, the 1st Papal Inquisitor in Germany, condemns witches to the stake.

[Cryptkeeper]

1233     Pope Gregory IX urges bishops to rid Europe of shape-shifting witches, initiates the Inquisition.  Witches are identified by the abilities to shapeshift, fly or ride objects through the air, and use of cannibalism, child murder, salves, animal familiars, and demon invocations.     
      
1246    Hundreds of cathars are burned at the stake when Montsegur falls.    
1246    Toulouse becomes the headquarters of the Inquisition.    
      
1250    LAI DE MELION composed.    
      
1252    Inquisitors are placed above the law by Pope Innocent IV's papal bull, AD EXTIRPANDA.    
      
1257    The Roman Catholic Church sanctions torture to force witches, werewolves, and shape-shifters to confess.    
      
1275    Toulouse woman gives birth to a half-wolf, half-snake child after having sex with a succubus.    
      
1275-1300    The Viking saga of VOLSUNGA (or VÖLSUNGASAGA), containing the story of Sigmund and his son Sinfiotli who don ulf-har to become werewolves for a time, is recorded.    
      
1305    Knights Templar are accused of worshipping cat demons and having intercourse with succubi.    
      
1312    Templars are burned at the stake en masse and their order is disbanded by Pope Clement V.    
      
1320    Women who worship Diana and transform men for serfdom in Elfland are targeted by the Inquisition, as per PRACTICA and FASCICULUS MORUM.    
      
1324    Alice Kyteler is found guilty of consorting with a demon in Ireland's 1st witchcraft trial.    
      
1336 c.    Tales of human transformations into animals written by Klaus Wisse and Philipp Colin are put in a new version of Wolfram von Eschenbach's PARZIVAL.    
      
1344    Wolf child of Hesse (feral child) discovered.    
      
1347-51    Bubonic Plague spreads across Asia and Europe as the Black Death.    
      
1390    Gypsies begin to appear in Europe.    
      
1407    Werewolves are tortured and burned during witchcraft trials at Basel.    
      
1440    Gilles de Rais, the monstrous Marshall of France (and former ally of Joan of Arc) is tried and burned for nearly 1000 child murders, worshipping Satan, and shape-shifting.    
      
1450    Else of Meerburg accused of riding a wolf.    
      
1458    THE BOOK OF THE SACRED MAGIC OF ABRAMELIN, translated from Hebrew, describes the summoning of tutelary spirits.    
      
1469    Sir Thomas Mallory pens the definitive book of Arthurian legends, Le Morte D'Arthur.  In Book XIX, Chapter 11, he relates the story of a werewolf among King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table; Sir Marrok.    
      
1484    Inquisitors are tasked with crushing witchcraft in Germany by Pope Innocent VIII's papal bull, SUMMIS DESIDERANTES AFFECTIBUS.    
      
1486    Publication of MALLEUS MALEFICARUM ("Hammer to Strike the Witches") by Inquisitors Institoris and Sprenger, which becomes the 'bible' of the Inquisition's heretic-hunters.    
      
1494    Swiss woman tried for riding a wolf.

[Cryptkeeper]

1495     Woman tried for riding a wolf at Lucerne.     
      
1500    The Diet of Augsburg rules that Christians may kill gypsies without legal penalty.    
1500 c.    Isawiyya, a fanatical Muslim sect which practices gory feral rituals, is founded by a fakir / mystic called Sheik Abu Abd Allah Sidi Muhammad ben Isa as-Sofiani (Ibn Isa), who could communicate with all animals and claimed that all men, animals, and jinn were devoted to him.    
      
1521    Three werewolves of Poligny are burnt at the stake for eating children, consorting with wild she-wolves, and transforming into wolf form via a magic salve.    
      
1540    BEWARE OF THE CAT warns that black cats may be shapeshifting witches, who may assume the form 9 times.    
      
1541    A Paduan werewolf dies after torture, and after his inquisitors hack off his arms and legs searching for the wolf hair that he wore on his inside.    
      
1542    Werewolves ran amok outside Constantinople so often that the Emperor himself had to go out and kill 150 of them.    
      
1549    An Ukumar bigfoot-type creature is killed near Charcas, Bolivia.    
      
1550    Witekind interviews a self-confessed werewolf at Riga.    
1550    Johann Weyer (Weir), a critic of the Inquisition takes up the post of doctor at Cleve. Weyer believes in the power of Satan, but he believes that the devil has only deluded certain men and women into believing that they have supernatural powers as witches and shapeshifters, thus causing them to worship dark forces rather than God.    
      
1552    Modern French version of GUILLAUME published at Lyon.    
      
1555    Olaus Magnus records [Historia de gentibu septenrionalibusl his observation that the Baltic werewolves of Livonia put on a girdle of wolf skin, drink a cup of beer, and utter certain magic words to accomplish their transformation from humans to wolves.    
      
1556    In the eleventh book of his MARVELS, Job Fincel tells of a lycanthrope of Padua who when his wolf-claws were cut later appeared in human form with his hands cut. Fincel also relates an account of an old chateau inhabited by a number of cat people.    
1556    Peter Gonzales in born in the Canary Islands.  The Hypertrichotic child is later sent to King Henry of France, who believes the hairy youth to be a genuine wild man.    
      
1560    The first publication of Giambartisra Della Porta’s MAGIAE NATURALIS.    
      
1563    Against strong opposition, Johann Weyer publishes DE PRAESTIGIIS DAEMONUM, arguing that while Satan does seek to ensnare and destroy, the charges that witches and other shapeshifters possess supernatural powers exists only in their minds and imaginations.

[Cryptkeeper]

1573     Gilles Garnier is burned as a werewolf, after having committed at least 4 child murders as a loup-garou in the French village of Dole.     
1575    Trials begin for the Benandanti -- The Witchhunter Werewolves, a fertility cult in the Friuili that claims to be marked at birth with lycanthropy.  These trials last a century.    
      
1580    As if to provide an antidote to Weyer’s call for a rational approach in dealing with accusations of witchcraft and shapeshifting, the respected intellectual, Jean Bodin, often referred to as the Aristotle of the sixteenth century, writes DE LA DEMONOMANIE DES SORCIES, the book that causes the flames to burn even higher around thousands of heretics’ stakes.    
   During the Benandanti hearings, it is revealed that they are werewolves, normally indistinguishable from their countrymen in the regions around the Baltic and Mediterranean seas, fighting for the protection of humanity against the Malandanti (the Evil Walkers); dark sorcerors and evil spirits called "Strige" and "Stregoni." [testimony of Battista Moduco before the Inquisition, June 27, 1580]    
      
1584    Reginald Scot risks accusations of heresy to support the call for reason championed by Weyer and to write DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT.  In this work, he brings the term "lycanthropy" into the English language.    
      
1588    Alleged date of the execution of Auvergne female werewolf after a trial presided over by Grand Justice Henri Bouget, a judge especially noted for his cruelty.    
      
1589    Peter Stubbe is executed as a werewolf at Cologne.  Stubb had committed numerous acts of murder, cannibalism, and incest.    
      
1590    English adventurer Edward Webb writes of a hairy wild man he saw in captivity at the court of Prester John.    
      
1595    DAEMONOLATREIA by Nicholas Remy is hailed as the greatest encyclopedia of witchcraft since MALLEUS MALEFICARUM.    
      
1596    Scholler, a sorcerer imprisoned at Newgate in England, is killed and eaten by starving inmates.  Shortly thereafter a large black dog shows up, slaying all the prisoners who had participated in the act, and remaining to haunt the prison ever since.    
      
1598    Roulet is tried as werewolf, but his sentence is commuted.    
1598    The Werewolf of Châlons, a tailor accused of eating children in his shop, is executed in Paris.

[Cryptkeeper]

1598     The Gandillon family is burned as werewolves in the Jura Mountains of France after a wolf is killed while in the act of attacking a village girl and is witnessed by the mob to return to the human form of local woman Perrenette Gandillon in 1584.     
1598    Eight year old Louise Maillat is found to be possessed by demons and cursed with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf.    
      
1599    B. de Chavincourt publishes DISCOURS DE LA LYCANTHROPIC.    
      
1600    In Spain, Remy’s DAEMONOLATREIA is replaced as the new Catholic 'Malleus' by the massive encyclopedia DISQUISITIONES MAGICAE, compiled by the Jesuit scholar Martin del Rio.    
      
1602    The Cardinal-Archbishop of Besancon underwrites the publication of "Examen des sorciers [Discours des sorciers]", a work assigned to the legal scholar Henri Bouget, an accomplished judge, torturer, and burner of heretics.    
1602    King James of Scotland becomes so incensed by Scot's DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT that he writes his own book, DEMONOLGIE, and supervises the large-scale burning of Scott volume.    
      
1603    13-year old Jean Grenier begins attacking and eating children in the Gascony region of France as a werewolf.    
      
1608    Henry Hudson's crew spots two mermaids.    
      
1610    Two women are condemned to death as werewolves at Liege.    
   Jean Grenier dies after being tried as a werewolf and sentenced to life imprisonment at a monastery in Bordeaux.    
   On New Year's Eve, Elisabeth Bathory's **** of blood is interrupted at Castle Csejthe in Hungary, revealing the mutilated bodies of at least 600 girls she had tortured and drained of blood over the last 11 years.  Elisabeth practiced satanic witchcraft and bathed in the blood of young maids to remain eternally youthful.  She was known to consort with Sorcerers, Alchemists, Vampires, and Werewolves.    
      
1612    In Linconstance, Pierre de Lancre, a noted judge of Bordeaux, writes of his visit to the cell of Jean Grenier and declares that the werewolf had sharp, protruding teeth and appeared more comfortable on all fours than in walking upright.    
      
1614    Death of Elisabeth Bathory, Hungary's Countess of Blood, who still looked young and beautiful at age 50.    
   Webster's DUCHESS OF MALFI published.    
      
1630    Prince-Bishop Johann Georg II Fuchs von Dornheim, the infamous Hexenbishof (Witch Bishop) constructs a special torture chamber which he decorates with appropriate passages from scripture. He burns at least six hundred heretics and shapeshifters, including a fellow bishop he suspects of being too lenient.    
      
1621    Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), wrote lengthy discussions of lycanthropy as a non-demonic form of madness or disease.    
      
1631    Witch trial judge Pierre de Lancre, author of TABLEAU, dies.  By his own boast, he tortured and burned over six hundred persons.    
   Jesuit Friedrich Spree has his hair turned prematurely white when he is assigned as a confessor to accused witches. To protest the cruelties he witnessed in the torture chambers, he writes CAUTIO CRIMINALIS.    
   During the past 110 years (1520 - 1630), over 30,000 "loup garou" trials were conducted in France.    
      
1632    Queen Zingua comes to power in Angola (Africa) by having her brother assassinated.  Her reign is marked by torture, capricious executions, cannibalism, and sexual deviancy.

[Cryptkeeper]

1635     Benedict Carpzov publishes PRACTICA RERUM CRIMINALIUM, a work that is often referred to as the 'Malleus' of Lutheranism. Carpzov acknowledges that torture of the innocent is deplorable, but necessary to ferret out the disciples of Satan.     
      
1637    Famine in Franche-Comté: cannibalism reported.    
      
1640 c.    German city of Greifwald is overrun with werewolves for months, until local teens slay the lycanthropes with silver bullets.    
      
1652    Cromwellian law forbids export of Irish wolfhounds.    
      
1670    85 witches burnt in Swedish trials.    
      
1680    Catherine Montvoisin goes to the stake in Paris, claiming she sacrificed over 2500 infants on her satanic altar.    
      
1685    The Bavarian town of Anspach (now Ansbach) is plagued with the deaths of animals, women, and children.  The townsfolk determine the predator to be the werewolf form of their former Burgomeister, which is killed and put on display.    
      
1692    Salem witchcraft trials.    
   Livonian werewolf Theiss reveals under interrogation that Livonian & Russian werewolves are servants of God, & fight Hell's minions on St Lucy's night (before Christmas), St John's night, & the night of Pentecost.    
      
1694    Bear-child of Lithuania found.    
      
1697    "Little Red Riding Hood" published in Perrault's CONTES.   Early versions of the tales involved werewolves, witches, and the Dark Woodsman.    
      
1701    De Tournefort witnesses vampire exhumation.    
      
1735    "Mother" Leeds gives birth to the Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens on NJ.    
      
1756    Mme. Leprince de Beaumont records the most familiar version of the 'Beauty and the Beast' legend in her MAGASIN DES ENFANS.    
      
1764    Bête de Gévaudon (the Beast of Le Gevaudon) starts a widespread werewolf scare in Auvergne that lasts 3 year.  The Beast was a two-legged Loup-garou, black and hairy, and was slain by Jean Chastel on June 19, 1767, using bullets made from a silver chalice.  One version of these events appear in the 2002 film "Brotherhod of the Wolf".    
      
1772    Burning of the Gaspee.    
      
1776    The Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria of Adam Weishaupt founded in Ingolstadt.    
      
1790    North Wales - a stagecoach travelling between Denbigh and Wrexham is attacked and overturned by an enormous black beast almost as long as the coach horses.  The attack took place just after dusk, with a blood-red full moon on the horizon.  [Check out the BBC Myths and Legends page for more details]    
      
1791    In the winter of 1791, a farmer went into his snow-covered field just seven miles east of Gresford, and he saw enormous tracks that looked like those belonging to an overgrown wolf. Following the trail, he sees what appears to be a wolf walking on its hind legs, which then proceeded ravage his farm.  [Check out the BBC Myths and Legends page for more details]    
      
1796    Widespread fear of wolves reported in France, lasts at least three years.    
      
1797    Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, 1st seen in Lacaune region of France.    
      
1798    Two men walking across the Bickerton Hills in Cheshire saw something that sent them running for their lives.  They rushed into an inn and refused to continue their journey until morning.  At dawn on the following day, the mutilated bodies of two vagrants were found in a wood just five miles from the inn.  [Check out the BBC Myths and Legends page for more details]

[Cryptkeeper]

1801     French explorers traveling the Swan River in Australia are spooked by a bunyip.     
      
1806    French wolf population falls below 2000.    
      
1812    Brothers Grimm publish their version of “Little Red Riding Hood.”    
      
1814    Death of Marquis Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade after 37 years of imprisonment.    
      
1820 c.    Resurrectionists make their livings robbing graves of their inhabitants for the benefit of doctors needing to perform dissections.    
      
1824    Antoine Léger tried for werewolf crimes, sentenced to lunatic asylum.    
   A werewolf figures as a minor character in Charles Maturin's THE ALBIGENES (1st werewolf in Gothic literature).    
      
1825    The Navajo Long Salt family is cursed by a blind priest.  Over the next 103 years a Chindi spirit slays all 100 members of the tribe.    
      
1828    Death of Victor, wild boy of Aveyron.    
      
1830    Sioux warriors reported hunting in wolfskins.    
      
1837    Spring-Heeled Jack sightings begin in London.  Some accounts describe him as having wings, claws, or horns, breathing blue fire, wearing a helmet and a shiny suit, and leaping incredibly high.    
      
1846    G.W.M. Reynolds publishes WAGNER THE WEHR-WOLF.    
      
1847    Twenty-five year old French Sgt. Francois Bertrand, the "Werewolf of Paris" is arrested for eating corpses (making him more properly a ghoul, not a werewolf).    
      
1848    The Moon turns blood red during an eclipse and sets off an epidemic of werewolf sightings.    
      
1857    Accusations of being "wolf leader" end in court in St. Gervaise.    
      
1858    Alexandre Dumas' story "Le Meneur de loups" (The Wolf Leader) is published, in which a downtrodden man named Thibault makes a demonic pact with a werewolf, and becomes a monster himself.    
      
1864    Prince Achba gives his friend Genaba a wild female Almasti (Yeti) whom he domesticates and names Zana.  Zana is eventually allowed free movement about the village of Tkhina.    
      
1880 c.    Death of Zana, an Almasti (Yeti) domesticates in the village of Tkhina.  According to legend the almasti gave birth to 5 human/almasti children, 1 of which survived to seek his people in the wilderness.    
1880    Folklorist collects werewolf tale in Picardy.    
      
1881    Boston newspaper reports that a mermaid was brought to New Orleans.    
      
1884    A sasquash dubbed Jacko by its captures and the press is caught in British Columbia, but disappears before it can be sent to England for study.    
      
1886    Robert Louis Stevenson publishes THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.    

[Cryptkeeper]

1887     The Order of the Golden Dawn is founded. The order is largely based on the Sacred Magic of Abramalin and restores a fascination with vampires, werewolves, and spirits of darkness and light. Among its members are such luminaries as Nobel Prize winner W.B. Yeats and the notorious Aleister Crowley.     
   Miners in Saskatchewan, Canada are terrorized by a red werecoyote that is slain with a gold bullet and returns to the form of Red Morgan, a local hermit.    
      
1888    Jack the Ripper terrorizes London with his werewolf-like slashings and mutilations of prostitutes.    
      
1893    Orcadian folkore, recounted by Walter Traill Dennison, in the Scottish Antiquary (1893), relates the tale of Ursilla, a woman of the Orkney Islands impregnated by a Selkie (wereseal).    
      
1897    Vacher the Ripper mutilates and kills as many as twenty victims before he is apprehended in France.    
   Arkansas Gazette of Little Rock reports that a monstrous Growrow was hunted down.    
   Thomas Russell Sullivan adapts THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE for the stage in Boston.    
   Bram Stoker's DRACULA casts the Transylvanian Prince as a vampire who could become a bat or wolf.    
      
1898    McGregor Matthews, Visible Head of the Order of the Golden Dawn, translates the grimoire, THE SACRED MAGIC OF ABRAMALIN THE MAGE.    
      
1899 c.    When a large wolf attacking a flock of sheep is killed, it transforms into the body of a local PA hermit, confirming suspicions that he was the Northumberland Werewolf.    
1899    Natural death of Jeremiah "Liver-Eating Johnson" in a LA hospital, who 50 years earlier has begun a one-man vendetta against the crow Indians that left 300 braves dead and partially eaten.    
      
1905    Wolves become extinct in Japan.    
      
1906    Freud lists Weyer's DE PRAESTIGIIS DAEMONUM as one of the ten most significant books ever published.    
      
1908    The first film version of 'Jekyll and Hyde' is produced by the Selig company in America.    
   On June 30, 1908, a huge explosion occurred in the sky above the central Siberian wilderness near the Tunguska River in Russia. The concussion from the blast, estimated at 20 megatons of TNT, leveled trees in an area nearly 40 miles in diameter. Oddly, the explosion produced no crater or other evidence of impact.    
      
1909    Bristol NJ is the site of many Jersey Devil sightings in January 1909.    
   Esteban, a 15 year old Navajo shepherd on the Arizona-New Mexico border encounters a coven of 6 witches who could shapeshift into young girls and cats.    
   A Danish film company produces their version of 'Jekyll and Hyde'.

[Cryptkeeper]

1912     Elliott O'Donnell's book "Werwolves" contains this recipe for curing lycanthropy: "[A] werwolf is sprinkled with a compound either of 1/2 ounce of sulphur, 4 drachms of asafoetida, 1/4 ounce of castoreum; or of 3/4 ounce of hypericum in 3 ounces of vinegar; or with a solution of carbolic acid further diluted with a pint of clear spring water. The sprinkling must be done over the head and shoulders, and the werwolf must at the same time be addressed in his Christian name."     
   The Laemmle production company in America releases their take on 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'.    
      
1913    The silent film "The Werewolf" uses a real wolf in the transformation scene. Film production companies in the U.S. and Great Britain release fourth and fifth versions of "Jekyll and Hyde".    
   Moscow scientist Dr. V.A. Khakhlov presents a detailed report on the wild humanoid creatures inhabiting remote areas of eastern Asia, which are now known as Yetis.    
      
1914    Sigmund Freud publishes his "Wolf Man" paper.    
      
1916    Dr. Edward Jacobson writes in a Dutch scientific journal of his encounter with an Orang Pendek in Sumatra.    
      
1919    The approximate date of the founding of the Thule Society in Germany. A young and earnest Adolf Hitler is among their early members.    
      
1920s    Series of killings around the African village of Tanganyika attributed to a Mngwa, a mythical feline predator.    
1920    Kamala and Amala, the Orissa wolf children (about 9 and 2), are discovered in India.  Amala dies after 11 months of civilized captivity.    
   Swiss geologist François de Loys reports finding an unknown Ape native to South America, which is given the identification "Ameranthropoides loysi".    
   Right-wing terror group, Operation Werewolf, is established in Germany by Fritz Kappe.    
   Four separate versions of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' are released that year. The most famous interpretation of the four is that of John Barrymore, produced by Famous Players-Lasky.    
      
1922    The Fraternity of the Inner Light is founded by Dion Fortune, who has a dramatic and frightening encounter with a werewolf.    
      
1923    Yvonne Marchand, daughter of a French colonel, is possessed by a vicious swamp demon in Indochina, when her father ignores local legends regarding the cursed swampland.    
   Dutch settler Van Herwaarden almost shoots an Orang Pendek in Sumatra.    
   The founding of Hitler’s **** Party, with much support from Operation Werewolf.    
      
1924    Fritz Haarmann, the Hanover Butcher, murders and cannibalizes as many as 50 young men. What he cannot himself devour, he sells as steaks and sausages to his unsuspecting customers.    
      
1925    Greek photographer N.A. Tombazi spots the Yeti in the Himmalayas.    
      
1929    Kamala the 17 year old Orissa wolf child dies of uremic poisoning.    
      
1932    "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" with esteemed actor Frederic March becomes the classic film version of the haunting tale.    
      
1933    Montague Summers publishes his study of THE WEREWOLF.    
   Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor and refers to himself as the “Father Wolf’ of the German people.    
   Guy Endore, a Hollywood producer, writes "The Werewolf of Paris", finally giving the world a "gothic" werewolf novel.

[Cryptkeeper]

1935     Henry Hull stars in "The Werewolf of London".     
   Albert Fish kills and eats as many as fifteen children in Washington, D.C.    
      
1940    Travelers in the Shennongija region of China shoot and kill a large hairy (Yeti-like) wild woman, whom scientists believe could have been a Gigantopithecus.    
   Harry Gordon, a.k.a. Harry Meyers, a.k.a. William Johnston, a.k.a. the Werewolf of San Francisco, is arrested.  He is executed the next year for 4 counts of murder.    
      
1941    "The Wolf Man" with Lon Chaney, Jr. establishes werewolf arcana according to Hollywood, notably the idea that werewolf bites can cause involuntary lycanthropy.    
      
1942    RAF cadet Gordon F. Cummins, London's “Wartime Jack the Ripper,” is apprehended.    
      
1943    Total Eclipse of the sun across Japan for 2 minutes & 39 seconds on Feb 4.    
   Childhood autism first described.    
   LSD discovered.    
   "Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man" pairs off the two titular monsters for the first time in film.    
      
1944    "The House of Frankenstein" includes mention of a silver bullet terminating a werewolf and adds to the lycanthropic mythology.    
      
1945    Goebbels resurrects Operation Werewolf as a terrorist society.    
   Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima; 78,000 killed.    
   "House of Dracula" features Dracula, the Wolf Man (Larry Talbot), and Frankenstein's Monster.    
      
1946    Two Atom Bombs tested on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific    
      
1947    Meteorite weighing 2360 lbs falls in Norton County KS.    
   Lion Men (and women) in Tanganyika claim the lives of over 40 victims this year.    

[Cryptkeeper]

1948     West African members of a leopard cult are arrested and sent to prison for murder, cannibalism, and other crimes.     
   "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" pits Dracula, the Wolf Man (Larry Talbot), and Frankenstein's Monster against the comedy duo.  Also 'appearing' is the Invisible Man.    
      
1951    Outbreak of ergotism at Pont-Saint-Esprit.    
   November 1951 sees a new batch of Jersey Devil sightings among teenagers.    
   Eric Shipton photographs evidence of the Yeti's presence in the Himmalayas.    
      
1952    Demonologist Ed Warren and his clairvoyant wife Lorraine found the New England Society for Psychic Research.  They have been involved in many high profile cases and run the Occult Museum in Farmington CT.    
1952    Ogburn and Bose publish ON THE TRAIL OF THE WOLF-CHILDREN.    
      
1953    "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"    
      
1954    Three scientists locate a Gill-Man. [Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954]    
      
1955    A member of the Argentinean Mountaineering Expedition is killed by a Kung-lu in Tibet.    
   William Roe claims he met a Sasquatch west of Jasper, Alberta.    
      
1956    The executed body of witch doctor Elifasi Msomi is displayed to the people of the South African village of Richmond, Natal, to ensure them that he would not escape again.  Msomi had previously escaped prison with the help of the Tokoloshe spirit that made him kill 15 people.    
      
1957    Prof. V.K. Leontiev spots a large hairy biped called the Almasti in the Russian territory known as the Gagan Sanctuary.    
   Ed Gein, the Wisconsin Ghoul, is arrested.    
   "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" stars Michael Landon.    
   Soviet hydrologist spies an Alma in the Pamir Mountains.    
      
1958    Russian spacecraft Luna II lands on the Moon, crashes.    
   Bulldozer operator Jerry Crew finds sasquatch prints near his construction site in Humboldt County, CA, and makes a plaster cast of them.  Photos of the big foot cast lead to the sasquatch's nickname "Big Foot".    
   Mrs. Delburt Gregg, of Greggton, TX, encounters a werewolf.    
      
1959    Chinese govt begins search for elusive yeti-like Yeren spotted in the Shennongjia Foreset Park in western Hubei province.    
      
1960    Harold M. Young kills a Taw werewolf along the Burma-Thailand border, which turns back into a Lahu tribesman upon death.    
   Himalayan expedition mounted by Sir Edmund Hillary fails to locate a Yeti.    
   Lawrence "the Wolf Man" Talbot gets his kicks on Route 66. (Route 66, 1960)

[Cryptkeeper]

1961     Oliver Reed stars in "The Curse of the Werewolf" (aka "The Curse of Siniestro").     
      
1963    Incan Goddess Magdalena is arrested with other cult leaders for committing human sacrifices in the Mexican village of Yerba Buena (even though the Incas lived in Peru, not Mexico).    
      
1964    Brooklyn native Bob Smith (b. 1939) creates the legendary persona of Wolfman Jack at XERF-AM, a superpowerful radio station in Mexico, just over the border at Del Rio, Texas.  Wolfman Jack will go on to become an international radio, televion, and motion picture star for three decades until his death in 1995.    
   The Munsters tv show features the man-made monster Hermann, his vampire wife Lily (and her father "Grampa"), 11-year old werewolf Eddie, and the couple's ordinary niece Evelyne.    
   "On Porphyria and the Aetiology of Werewolves" proposes that the blood desease Porphyria may be responsible for several reports of people believed to be werewolves and vampires.    
   Prof. Boris Porshenev excavates the grave of Zana, a female Almasti (Yeti), in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia.    
      
1965    Talah Malkoti, a village in Chamoli, India, is attacked by apelike Vanamanhas.    
      
1966    Ralph "Bud" Chambers tracks a skunk ape into a swamp near his Florida home.    
   Mothman, a humanoid with a large wingspan and capable of flying 100 mph, is spotted in the TNT area of West Viginia on November 14.    
   Richard Speck brutally slashes eight student nurses to death in Chicago.    
   Dark Shadows 1st aires, a tv show which features a vampire and two werewolves.    
      
1967    Henri Van Heerdan has a near fatal encounter with two santu sakais while on a hunting trip near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.    
   Mothman is thought to be responsible for the collapse of a suspension bridge between Ohio and West Virginia on 15 December.    
   Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin shoot their famous footage of a man/beast (Bigfoot) at Bluff Creek, California.    
      
1968    Zodiac killer claims his 1st victims in San Francisco Bay area.  Zodiac eluded police for three years before evidence of his crimes ended.  He was never caught, and is often copied.    
   Count Waldemar Daninsky becomes a werewolf and kills a pair of Hungarian vampires.  (Daninsky appears in 7 Spanish Werewolf movies) [La Marca del Hombre Lobo, 1968]    
      
1969    Men land on the Moon.    
   Sightings of a Bigfoot-like creature outside of Fort Worth, TX in July 1969 lead to a massive monster hunt for the "Lake Worth Monster".    
   The Charles Manson “family” commits a satanic mass murder in Beverly Hills.    
      
1970    H. C. Osborn and four friends spot a Skunk Ape in the Big Cypress Swamp, FL.    
   Four Gallup, NM youths are pursued along the highway by a werewolf.    
      
1971    35-year old Donald Childs of Lawton, TX witnesses a werewolf attempting to drink from an empty fish pond.    
   Two girls outside Hannibal, Missouri have their summer picnic interrupted by Mo-Mo, a bigfoot creature    
      
1972    Shamdeo discovered living among wolves in India.    
      
1973    A skunk ape is hit by a car in Florida and limps away, initiating nation-wide media frenzy over the Bigfoot-like creature.