The Gandillon family

From THE BOOK OF WERE-WOLVESby SABINE BARING-GOULDSmith, Elder & Co., London1865  We come now to a more remarkable circumstance, the affliction of a whole family with the same form of insanity. Our information is derived from Boguet’s Discours de Sorciers, 1603-1610.  Pernette Gandillon was a poor girl in the Jura, who in 1598 ran about … Read more

Jean Grenier

From THE BOOK OF WERE-WOLVESby SABINE BARING-GOULDSmith, Elder & Co., London1865 These events happened in 1603 in the south-west of France in the region of Landes. One fine afternoon in the spring, some village girls were tending their sheep on the sand-dunes which intervene between the vast forests of pine covering the greater portion of … Read more

Susanna Martin

Susanna Martin, Werecat of Salem Susannah Martin (née North, baptized September 30, 1621 – July 19, 1692) was one of fourteen women executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of colonial Massachusetts. The following is from the 1692 testimony of Robert Downer in Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World:  That this Prisoner … Read more

A modern case of lycanthropy

Harvey Rostenstock, M.D. and Kenneth R. Vincent, Ed.D. The American Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 134, No. 10. October 1977 Case Report A 49-year-old married woman presented on an urgent basis for psychiatric evaluation because of delusions of being a wolf and “feeling like an animal with claws.”  She suffered from extreme apprehension and felt that … Read more