The Werewolf Scrapbook

[cauldronbrewer]

I'd read H. Warner Munn's "The Werewolf of Ponkert" and one of its sequels, "The Werewolf's Daughter," in a 1976 mass market paperback published by Centaur Press (also titled The Werewolf of Ponkert), but I'd never read any of the other stories in the series. So, a few days ago I started reading the 2015 Altus Press collection Tales of the Werewolf Clan.

The book's first foreword, by John Munn, is a heartwarming reflection on his grandfather's writing career. The second foreword, by H. Warner himself, is a wild effort at a backstory for the series involving the "Demon Star" Algol and the ancient Babylonians.

As a warmup, I reread the original story, which first appeared in the July 1925 issue of Weird Tales. It holds up well--"proper pulp gold," as Dem put it.

The second story is "The Werewolf's Daughter," originally serialized in the October, November, and December 1928 issues of Weird Tales. It's easily the longest story in the book, so I skipped it this time around.

Nov 18, 2016 12:39:35 GMT dem said:

Hugh Rankin (Weird Tales, Nov. 1930)

The November 1930 issue of Weird Tales apparently included two Tales of the Werewolf Clan, "The Cat-Organ" and "Hau! Hau! Huguenots!" The former takes place during a witch-burning in Brussels under the reign of Emperor Charles V. The latter takes place in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. The villain of the series plays only a minor role in each story, and at this point I began wondering whether Munn was using the series to explore a side interest in writing historical fiction.

The next two stories, "The Wreck of the Santa Ysabel" and "The Bug-Wolves of Castle Manglana," only reinforce this impression. Both appeared in the December 1930 issue of Weird Tales, and both draw inspiration from the history of the Spanish Armada. The first story takes place on a galleon during and after the Battle of Gravelines. The second is a fictionalized account of Francisco de Cuéllar's misadventures in Ireland following the sinking of his ship.

Of these four stories, only the last one features any juicy werewolf action; most of the time, the villainous Master only merely appears at the end to twirl his metaphorical mustache and taunt the scions of the Gunnar family. On the other hand, I guess I did learn some things about sixteenth-century European history, a topic that is largely a blank slate to me.

[Middoth]

I expect the Master's departure will be really spectacular.

[cauldronbrewer]

Aug 14, 2021 9:38:11 GMT Middoth said:

I expect the Master's departure will be really spectacular.

I just read four more stories in H. Warner Munn's Tales of the Werewolf Clan, including the one excerpted above ("The Master Meets a Worthy Foe"). "In the Tomb of the Bishop" is the last of three entries in the series from the December 1930 issue of Weird Tales. It's really more of a vignette about two Scottish warlocks who enter a tomb to recover a manuscript. Only one returns alive. "The Leather Cannon" (Weird Tales, January 1931) features more historical color, this time from Thirty Years War-era Germany (we're up to the 1600s now). The action moves to England Connecticut for "Aschah Young--of Windsor" (also Weird Tales, January 1931) a story about a witch trial told through fake (?) documents. "The Master Meets a Worthy Foe" (Lost Fantasies #5, 1977 ed. Robert Weinberg) shifts back and forth between Scotland and London, 1665-1666; we get plenty of pestilence, fire, and black magic, but not much lycanthropy.

[dem]

Eleanor Dobson [ed.] - Silver Bullets: Classic Werewolf Stories (British Library, 2017)

Rawshock Design

Eleanor Dobson - Introduction

Leitch Ritchie - The Man Wolf
Catherine Crowe - A Story of a Weir-Wolf
Hans Christian Andersen - The Werewolf (Verse)
George MacDonald - The Grey Wolf
Gilbert Campbell - The White Wolf of Kostopchin
Rudyard Kipling - The Mark of the Beast
Clemence Housman - The Werewolf
Rosamund Marriott Watson - A Ballad of the Werewolf (Verse)
Eugene Field - The Werewolf
William Butler Yeats - Where There Is Nothing, There Is God
Henry Beaugrand - The Werewolves
Saki - Gabriel-Ernest
Bernard Capes - The Thing in the Forest
Algernon Blackwood - Running Wolf

Blurb

OF THE MONSTERS that stalked the pages of nineteenth-and early twentieth century fiction, the werewolf has continued to represent the beast lurking underneath the veneer of human civilisation to this day, a composite creature which is all too easily released and, once at large, difficult to constrain.
From one of the very first werewolf stories appearing in Britain to a tale published after the First World War, this collection brings together the greatest werewolf fiction from a period stretching to nearly a century. Showcasing the work of some of the best-known names in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction alongside the twisted tales of their lesser-known but equally chilling contemporaries, this anthology unites figures as diverse as Hans Christian Andersen, Rudyard Kipling, and the Suffragette writer Clemence Housman.

Pre-Tales of the Weird, but otherwise in keeping with the BL's proud tradition of recycling cobwebbed anthology ever-presents, the occasional less familiar title thrown in to bait we hopeless cases.

[dem]

Eugene Field - The Werewolf: (Ladies’ Home Journal, March 1896). England during the reign of Egbert the Saxon (802 - 839). Harold is afflicted by the family curse, as passed down by his notorious grand-sire, Siegfried the Teuton. The young huntsman, in fear that the fair Yseult should discover his dreadful secret, always finds excuse to be away from home during a full moon.

There have been a series of werewolf attacks in the surrounding woods, and Harold begs Yseult not to visit the sacred grove for the feast of St. Ælfreda. "Why dost thou look at me so strangely, Harold? By the cruel light in thine eyes one might almost take three to be the werewolf!" Not at all! It's just that he suffers terrible dreams of tearing apart a blind girl!

The eve of the feast is upon us. The inevitable urgent business calls Harold away to Normandy. Yseult attends the feast, taking Siegfried's bewitched spear for protection should any wolfman show her his foam-flecked jaws .....

Bernard Capes - The Thing In The Forest: (The Fabulists, 1915). Hungary. Newlywed Elspet takes pity on a starving werewolf and throws it a scrap meat, only to later realise that, in so doing she has committed a mortal sin. Her only hope is to confess all to Father Ruhl and beg His forgiveness. The priest appears horribly amused at her distress. Hadn't read this in ages. It's great fun!

[dem]

Leitch Ritchie — The Man-Wolf: (The Romance of History: France, 1832). During the annual ceremonial ducking of the village fishermen, the Sire Baron of Keridreaux is dragged into the river by his aquaphobic factotum, Hugues. Furious to suffer such indignity before his lost love, Beatrix, Keridreaux threatens to slay the loyal Hugues, relents, and sets off to the inn to drown his sorrows, the laughter of all and sundry ringing in his ears. On returning through the wood, he is waylaid by a woman in white and her weird confederates, the upshot of which is, on awakening he believes himself a werewolf. The Baron trusts Hugues to deliver a note to the monastery requesting an urgent visit from his father confessor. Unfortunately, his termagant wife also prevails upon him to deliver a memorandum to the Abbot with whom she is plotting her husband's downfall. Predictably, the hapless Hugues hands each letter to the party it was most certainly not intended for. Dame Keridreaux, learning of her husband's misfortune is jubilant, especially on learning that, according to legend, she need only hide his clothing to leave him trapped in wolf form for the hunting down.

The style sometimes makes for the heaviest going — at least, it did for this reader — but if you're up for a cod-medieval werewolf farce, this thirty-pager sit com should see you right.

[dem]

John Cooling - The House of Fenris: (Mark Valentine [ed.], The Black Veil, 2008). Ghost-hunting mythologist Dr. Morrow investigates a long vacant house at Thorsby on behalf of Mr. Michael Overbury, who has leased the property and regrets doing so as it is haunted by a disembodied spectral hand. Morrow fast establishes that the house is built on the site of a Danish temple to Fenris, the were-wolf of Norse legend. The hand is vanquished with distressing ease. Our small consolation is that Overbury can forget about converting the basement to a grand wine cellar if he knows what's good for him.

Henry Aneley

George W. M. Reynolds - Wagner, The Wehr-Wolf (extract): (Jack C. Wolf and Barbara H. Wolf (eds.), Ghosts, Castles & Victims: Tales of Gothic Horror, 1974). I'm not sure anyone particularly likes extracts. At least these two work as stand alone short stories in their own right.

Prologue. Black Forest, Germany, Jan. 1516. Wagner, ninety, is distraught at the mysterious disappearance of his grand-daughter. A stranger calls at the small cottage in the trees. Wagner confides his woes. The stranger agrees his plight is hopeless. Won't be long before he dies of starvation, forgotten, unmourned, and feasted upon by the wolves of the forest. Unless ... The the stranger offers a drastic solution. If Wagner agrees to become his constant companion for eighteen months, he will restore his youth and health on condition "that you prey upon the human race, whom I hate — because of all the world I alone am so deeply, so terribly accurst!" Wagner agrees. So begins the reign of terror
Chapter XII: The Wehr-Wolf. An anguished Wagner, in lupine form, tears through the streets of a village near Florence, disrupting a funeral, felling an aged monk, and mangling a juicy infant in its powerful jaws. —"the blooming, violet-eyed, flaxen-haired boy — the darling of poor but tender parents, is weltering in his blood!" (That bit always cheers me up).

[dem]

No frills reprint, but it will do the job. Was very pleased to find that, sprinkled among the 'factual' entries are a number of O'Donnell supernatural horror stories.

Elliott O'Donnell - Werwolves (Tarl Warwick, 2019: originally 1912)

Foreword

What is a Werwolf?
Werwolf Metamorphosis compared with other Branches of Lycanthrope
The Spirits of Werwolves
How to Become a Werwolf
Werwolves and Exorcism
The Werwolf in the British Isles
The Werwolf in France
Werwolves and Vampires and Ghouls
Werwolves in Germany
A Lycanthropous Brook in the Hartz Mountains; or, the Case of the Countess Hilda Von Breber
Werwolves in Austria-Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula
The Werwolf in Spain
The Werwolf in Belgium and the Netherlands
The Werwolves and Maras of Denmark
Werwolves in Norway and Sweden
Werwolves in Iceland, Lapland and Finland
The Werwolf in Russia and Siberia

Blurb;

This work is quite simply titled — a compilation of various lore coming in the form of stories related by the (in)famous Elliot O'Donnell, related to various cultures as wide reaching as France, Denmark, and Siberia.

The concept of lycanthropy here finds a somewhat sympathetic mind — for the material is presented in loose connection with theories about existence popularized by the author — of spirits of various sorts, and of the literal existence of sorcery able to produce werewolves, among other things. This work contains recipes for literally becoming a lycanthrope, all of which are drastically psychoactive.

[dem]

Made a start on O'Donnell's Werwolves. Pure class.

Case of Constance Armande, Ghoul: A recent case from Brittany, as told to O'Donnell by unidentified witness to the events. Constance Armande was a beautiful young woman who, possibly without her own knowledge, nightly visited the cemetery to dig up fresh graves and feast upon the dead. Disturbed at her work, she fled the scene, jumped in the river and drowned.

Werwolves in the Netherlands: Van Renner, a young huntsman, fatally wounds a huge gray wolf in a field near Rousse. That night he is summoned to the death bed of his friend, the Burgomaster, to hear a startling confession.

The Case of Peter Anderson, Werwolf: Anderson, descended from a long line of Scandinavian werewolves, fails to appraise wife Elise of his condition. One night, returning from the fair, he feels the change upon him and cautions Elise; "If anything comes towards you, do not be afraid and don't hurt it; merely strike it with your apron." A few minutes later, a grey wolf leaps into the road and springs to attack. Remembering Peter's words, Elisa whips off her apron and flicks it in the wolf's face. It turns and runs. Anderson is rid of his hereditary curse. Pretty poor show from the Danish chapter.

[dem]

A Lycanthropous Brook in the Hartz Mountains; or, the Case of the Countess Hilda Von Breber: Count Von Breber, Chief of Magdeburg Police, and his wife, the Countess Hilda, spend a night at the Grautz village inn. The Countess has rashly taken a drink from the brook at Witches Hollow, shunned by locals on account of its evil reputation. Von Breber warns the innkeeper that the Countess is not to be troubled with ignorant peasant superstitions, so keep your ridiculous fancies to yourself if you know what's good for you!

The Von Breber's return home coincides with the first of several mysterious disappearances among children "of the poorer class." Martha Brochel, the town half-wit, claims to have witnessed the abduction of her baby — in the jaws of a she-werewolf! Van Breber is unimpressed — "Rubbish! What right has she to have children!" — but General Carl Rittenberg, whose dear little Elizabeth is among the missing, takes matters into his own hands.

A Case of Werwolves in the Ardennes: Returning home late at night, Bernard Vernard is pursued by three trampish-looking men lying in wait by the roadside. Remembering the Pastor's advice that the best way to evade an evil spirit is to climb an oak tree, Bernard does so. The tramps, now in wolf form, slouch off all miserable to have been denied their feast of flesh.

The Case of the Family of Kloska and the Lycanthropous Flower: Ivan and Olga, weaving wreathes from the flowers of the thicket at Kerovitsh, a village in the shadow of the Transylvanian Alps. Finding a strange white specimen too big for purpose, Olga wears it in her buttonhole. Her brother isn't too keen. "I don't like it. It's a nasty looking thing. I believe it's a sort of fungus." Too late! Olga pulls a frightening face, transforms into a huge grey wolf, and snaps at his throat. Hearing Ivan's screams for help, Mrs. Kloska leaps into the fray with a long steel skewer. Can she bring herself to kill one of her children to save the other? Or will she go insane on the spot?

This book would be better were it a straight reprint. The editing and reformatting is such a typo-laden mess as to detract from what should be a joy of reading experience.

[dem]

The Werwolf in the British Isles: Includes a contemporary account of a 'phantom werwolf,' provided by the Anderson family, whose first and last Christmas in Cumberland was ruined by the horrible howling of same. The final straw was when it padded into the children's bedroom at midnight while Dad was playing Santa Claus. Before selling up, Mr. Anderson discovered the skull of a wolf and the bones of a man in a nearby cave, so that probably had something to do with it. A Tavistock woman informed the author of a similar creature - tall, grey figure of a man, head of a wolf - sometimes to be encountered on a pathway through Exmoor's Valley of Doones.

As a fifteen year old, Mr. Warren stayed with his grandfather in the Hebrides. The old man, a church elder, was a keen geologist who filled his home with fossils discovered in caves and quarries. One day he brought home a human skeleton with a wolf's head found at the bottom of a drained tarn. That night, a slavering, hairy fanged face appeared at the window.
Grandfather Warren promptly returned the bones where they came from.

The Case of Sergeant Bertrand: "Always when morning broke the ravages of this unsavoury visitant were only too plainly visible - graves had been dug up, coffins burst open, and the contents nibbled and gnawed, and scattered all over the ground."

A series of outrages in Paris cemeteries throughout 1847 were brought to an end when the culprit was shot and wounded as he scaled the wall of Pere LaChaise. On his arrest, Bertrand, a popular officer in the 74th regiment, freely admitted to feasting upon corpses. "He had, he said, in one night exhumed and bitten as many as fifteen bodies." It began when, in childhood he'd watched gravediggers covering a body that had just been interred and "a terrible desire" came upon him. The graveyard ghoul served a year in jail before disappearing into obscurity.

[dem]

Dudley Tennant; Loup Garou: (The Windsor , July 1924)

Louisa Stuart Costello - La Malroche: (Legends of the Monts-Dores: II, Ainsworth's magazine, 1842: Duane The Night Season, 2002.

Alan Sullivan - Loup Garou: (Windsor Magazine, July 1924)

Leon Dupont - Mate of the Beast: (Eerie Stories, Aug. 1937. First appeared in Ace Mystery , May 1936, as Wolf Vengeance by Rex Grahame). Len Oakley found that no mortal man could steal a bride of the beast.

Bernard Taylor - Out of Sorts: Charles L. Grant [ed.]. The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror, 1983: This is Midnight, 2021).

"Jean crooked his finger, saw horses rearing in a tangle of harness, heard Marie cry out in a jangle of bells,"
Dudley Tennant; Loup Garou: (The Windsor , July 1924)

[dem]

Creeping up the 'to read' pile. We seem to have overlooked it on publication, but it sure looks the part.

Alexis Easley & Shannon Scott [eds.] - Terrifying Transformations: An Anthology of Victorian Werewolf Fiction, 1838-1896 (Valancourt, 2013)

Alexis Easley & Shannon Scott - Introduction
Sutherland Menzies - Hugues, the Wer-Wolf
Frederick Marryat - The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains
Catherine Crowe - A Story of a Weir-Wolf
G. W. M. Reynolds - Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf [exert]
Dudley Costello - Lycanthropy in London; or, The Wehr-Wolf of Wilton-Crescent
George MacDonald - The Gray-Wolf
F. Scarlett Potter - The Were-wolf of the Grendelwold
Gilbert Campbell - The White Wolf of Kostopchin
Arthur Conan Doyle - A Pastoral Horror
Rudyard Kipling - The Mark of the Beast
Clemence Housman - The Were-Wolf
Bram Stoker - Dracula's Guest
Eric Stenbock - The Other Side: A Breton Legend
Joseph Jacobs - Morraha
William Butler Yeats - Where There is Nothing, There is God

CONTEXTUAL MATERIALS

Anonymous - Wolf Children
Anonymous - Wolf Lore (1863)
Sabine Baring Gould - The Book of Were-Wolves [Extracts]
Rosamund Marriott Watson - A Ballad of the were-Wolf
Illustrations for Clemence Houseman's The Werewolf, by Laurence Houseman
A. M. Judd - Wolf Madness (Lycanthrope)

Blurb:
"From the summit of the ivy-grown tower, the very rooks, in the midst of their cawing, are scared away by the furious rush and the wild howl with which the Wehr-Wolf thunders over the hallowed ground." - G. W. M. Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

This collection brings together fifteen chilling stories of lycanthropy and murder written from 1838 to 1896, all taken from their original appearances in Victorian periodicals and story collections, many of them reprinted here for the first time. This edition includes a new introduction by Alexis Easley and Shannon Scott, explanatory notes, and numerous rare Victorian werewolf illustrations.

[dem]

F. Scarlett Potter - The Were-wolf of the Grendelwold: (London Reader of Literature, Science & Art, 17 June 1882). Everyone in the village is agreed that Carl and Theresa are the perfect match - until a stranger arrives on the day of the fête to horribly ruin everything! The mystery man, Fritz, taller, wealthier, and better dressed than the Grendlewold men, can also wrestle and outrun the best of them. Consequently, the newcomer can have his pick of the girls and does - Theresa! It seems she has entirely forgotten the man she loves, but the reality is, Theresa is bewitched. One night, Fritz vanishes with her into the cursed Grendel forest. The faithful Carl, fearful for Theresa's safety, takes up an axe and follows ...

G. W. M. Reynolds - Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf: (Reynolds Miscellany, 6 Nov 1846 - 24 July 1847). Horror melodrama at its most sensational and downright exciting. Chapter XII. Wagner's glorious - if involuntary - rampage through the Etrurian countryside, disrupting a funeral at the church of St. Benedict the Blessed, fatally knocking down a venerable father of eighty winters, savaging a tiny infant, etc. Chapter XXXIX. Wagner is wrongly convicted of murdering his niece, Agnes, and sentenced to hang on the scaffold. The date of the execution coincides with his monthly transformation to wehr-wolf form. A crowd gathers in the town square to see him swing. He breaks free, gores the Chief Judge, and leaps into the crowd, several of whom are trampled, crushed or suffocated to death in the ensuing riot. Chapter LXXIV. On the discovery of the mysterious cabinet, Wagner is finally freed of this Faustian bargain, though not without price.

[dem]

Arthur Conan Doyle - A Pastoral Horror: (People, 21 Dec 1890). " ... unless this mysterious and bloodthirsty villain is captured, the place will become deserted. Flesh and blood cannot stand such a strain. He is either some murderous misanthrope who has declared a vendetta against the whole human race, or else he is an escaped maniac."

Bavaria, May and early June, 1866. A killer is at large in a quiet Alpen village, felling his victims with a single pickaxe blow. The attacks centre around Grüner Mann public house whose landlady, Frau Bischoff, fortuitously survives an attack, clawing her assailant's wrist in the process. A celebrated detective arrives from Vienna. The murderer's mattock and thick woollen muffler are recovered. Father Verhagen celebrates a mass giving thanks for Frau Bischoff deliverance, but a final revelation dampens the jubilant mood. Narrated by Englishman on the spot, John Hudson, for whom at least, there is a happy ending. ACD's own Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Dudley Costello - Lycanthropy in London; or, The Wehr-Wolf of Wilton-Crescent: (Bentley's Miscellany, July 1855). "It is of little consequence, providing a man be not depressingly hideous, whether he is handsome or plain; some of the cleverest fellows of the present day are about the ugliest. And I need not go further than the House of Commons - than the Treasury bench in particular - to prove what I say."

Newly wed Beaufort and Eliza Fitz-Poodle set up home in fashionable Belgravia. While Eliza embarks on a marathon extended shopping spree, her husband takes refuge at suspiciously frequent 'Zoological Society meetings'. Lucky for Eliza, her cousin and confidante Adela Cunninghame has made a study of physiognomy (she's read a book) and can tell all there is to know about a person by the shape of their head. Beauford's betrays him as "very like a wolf" - Eliza's eulogizing of her beloved's adorable quirks and fondness for galloping on the Downs serve only to confirm Adela's worst fears! A non-horror comedy, in case you've not guesses.