Trevor Collins

I've never heard that before.

You're combining the two at that point.

Yeah, truly.

And so it's almost like death then begets the other entity in a way.

And this does kind of remind me more of the Irish Abertook.

if I'm pronouncing that properly, as opposed to the quintessential Nosferatu or vampire, but essentially an entity that you can't be killed and it will simply just keep rising from the dead to go kill, not to feed, not to spread some sort of curse, but to kill.

Meanwhile, and this will set us up for where we're about to head, Western Europe kind of sees the werewolf as more affiliated with witchcraft and sorcery.

And within the idea, you know, we think of witches on brooms and the very modern look of it, but witchcraft is a very big umbrella term for any sort of magics, shapeshifting being very much a part of that.

And so throughout the 15th, the 16th and 17th centuries, their Germanic werewolves were often viewed as shapeshifters who had made a pact with the devil in order to gain this ability or almost kind of become a servant.

In fact, around this time, Europe was experiencing a viral trend, so to speak, accusations of witchcraft.

A small but notable portion of those, I would say, I think I saw somewhere between two and three percent.

So, you know, a very small but focused set of these accusations featured specifically shapeshifting.

Not the other kind of magics you might be accustomed to, especially in the more American Salem witch trials.

But most shapeshifting across Europe focused on wolves, though, as you kind of indicated, some do lean towards bears more.

I've seen some about cats.

I've seen some about hares.

Other animals do sneak their way in.

But let's talk about these trials, because these happened 200 years before the Salem Witch Trials.

European courts were convicting civilians of being shapeshifters with claims that people were transforming into werewolves and then mutilating and even eating children in towns across the countries across Europe.

And these werewolf trials took place, like I said, between the 15th and 17th centuries and were largely fueled by superstitions, clashes between religious and political groups,