Werewolves: The Real Folklore Behind the Full Moon and Silver Bullet

For centuries, the werewolf was far more than a creature that changed under a full moon. In some traditions it was a punishment for cruelty. In others, a curse carried by innocent people. There were even werewolves who claimed to protect their neighbours from evil. The familiar rules about silver, bites and moonlight only became widespread much later.

Where did werewolves come from?

One of the earliest surviving written accounts of a person becoming a wolf appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh. When the goddess Ishtar proposes marriage to Gilgamesh, he recalls the fate of an earlier lover: a shepherd whom she transformed into a wolf. His own dogs then turned on him. The poem doesn’t connect this change to a full moon, nor does it suggest the shepherd could pass his condition to anyone else.

Ancient Greek and Roman writers offered different versions of the idea. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the cruel king Lycaon serves human flesh to Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus, and is punished by being changed into a wolf. His outward form changes, but his violent nature remains.

A tale in Petronius’ Satyricon sounds more like a recognisable werewolf story. A soldier removes his clothes near a cemetery and turns into a wolf. Later, a wolf is wounded in the neck, and the soldier is found with a matching injury. The moon illuminates the journey, but Petronius doesn’t say it causes the transformation.

When werewolves weren’t villains

In the Norse Völsunga saga, Sigmund and Sinfjötli discover enchanted wolf-skins that allow them to take animal form. Once transformed, they cannot remove the skins until the magic permits it. The danger comes from the spell and their own actions, rather than an infectious bite.

Medieval Ireland had a gentler, stranger werewolf tradition. Gerald of Wales recorded a story about a priest who meets a speaking wolf from Ossory. The wolf explains that he and his wife are humans trapped in animal bodies under a curse. His dying wife wishes to receive Holy Communion, forcing the priest to confront the question of whether the person beneath the wolf’s skin is still human.

In the twelfth-century poem Bisclavret, Marie de France tells of a respected Breton nobleman who becomes a wolf for three days each week. His wife betrays him by stealing the clothes he needs to return to human form. Bisclavret is not simply a monster; much of the story’s cruelty comes from the humans around him.

When a werewolf accusation could cost your life

By the sixteenth century, parts of Europe were seeing prosecutions involving supposed werewolves. These accusations often mixed fears about wolves with beliefs about witchcraft and the Devil. They were serious charges, not proof that anyone could actually transform.

Perhaps the most notorious case is Peter Stumpp, executed at Bedburg in 1589. A pamphlet printed in England the following year claimed that Stumpp committed murders after receiving a magical belt from the Devil. But the pamphlet wasn’t a trial transcript, and accounts of the case were shaped by sensational reporting and confessions obtained through torture. Historians therefore treat its most dramatic claims with considerable caution.

The werewolf who called himself a hound of God

The case of Old Thiess of Livonia provides a remarkable contrast. Questioned by a court in 1691, the elderly man admitted that he had once been a werewolf. Yet he insisted that werewolves were enemies of the Devil, not his servants.

Thiess claimed that they travelled into Hell to recover grain and livestock stolen by sorcerers, helping protect the harvest and the communities that depended on it. When challenged by judges and clergy, he described werewolves as the ‘hounds of God’. His testimony survives as evidence of what one man said he believed, not evidence that those supernatural journeys occurred.

The proceedings continued into 1692, when the court sentenced Thiess for forbidden practices and the spread of superstition. His story is a reminder that the meaning of a werewolf varied dramatically between places and periods.

Where did the full moon and silver bullet come from?

The now-familiar rules were not shared by every early tradition. A German tale recorded by J. D. H. Temme in 1840 tells of students using inherited silver buttons against werewolves. George W. M. Reynolds’ novel Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf (1846–47) features a transformation on a set day each month, but not specifically under a full moon.

Twentieth-century horror cinema helped standardise many of these ideas. Werewolf of London (1935) linked a werewolf’s curse to a bite and the full moon. The Wolf Man (1941) made silver a memorable weapon, while Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) strengthened the connection between transformation and the moon.

Later films placed greater emphasis on the physical horror of changing shape. An American Werewolf in London (1981) became especially famous for its transformation effects, created by Rick Baker. On screen, the werewolf increasingly became a tragic figure: someone who might harm others while unable to control what was happening to their own body.

What is a werewolf, really?

There isn’t one original werewolf with a single set of rules. Across the stories, people become wolves through punishment, enchantment, inherited curses, rituals or bargains. Some are feared as killers; others are innocent victims, noble figures or even supposed defenders of their communities.

From the wolf-skins of Norse legend to the testimony of Old Thiess and the monsters of Hollywood, the werewolf has changed almost as much as the people in its stories.

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Sources and further reading

• The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI — Ishtar’s earlier lovers, including the shepherd transformed into a wolf.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I, lines 163–252, translated by Henry Thomas Riley — the account of Lycaon.
• Petronius, Satyricon, sections 61–62, translated by A. S. Kline — Niceros’ tale of the soldier and the wolf.
• The Story of the Volsungs, translated by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon — Sigmund and Sinfjötli’s enchanted wolf-skins.
• Gerald of Wales, Topography of Ireland, Second Distinction, chapter 19 — the werewolves of Ossory; a medieval account, rather than independent verification of a transformation.
• Marie de France, “Bisclavret”, in French Mediaeval Romances, translated by Eugene Mason — the betrayed nobleman and his stolen clothes.
• Carlo Ginzburg and Bruce Lincoln, Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf: A Classic Case in Comparative Perspective (University of Chicago Press, 2020) — an English translation of the court proceedings and competing historical interpretations.
• The English pamphlet on Peter Stumpp (1590); J. D. H. Temme, Die Volkssagen von Pommern und Rügen (1840); and George W. M. Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf (1846–47) — respectively sensational reporting, a folklore collection and Gothic fiction. They should be read in those different contexts.

Related Mysteries

Why Vikings Feared Their Own Dead | The Draugr — another tradition in which dangerous bodies, curses and community fears overlap.

The Abhartach: Ireland’s Ancient Vampire Legend — how a local account acquires more familiar supernatural features in later retellings.

Herne the Hunter: Ghost, God, or Invention? — the difference between an early written account and claims about older origins.