Speaker 1: You're listening to an air wave media podcast, Monster House presents.
Speaker 2: You're a man who is pure in heart and says
Speaker 2: it's prayers by life may become a wolf. In the
Speaker 2: wolf pain brooms and the auto moon is brightened.
Speaker 3: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 2: A giant hairy creature.
Speaker 4: Part eight party mat in Luckness, a twenty four mile
Speaker 4: long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland, if a
Speaker 4: creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 3: Moormster.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 2: Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. Some recent werewolf related
Speaker 2: news from Karen inspired me to return to my silver
Speaker 2: Bullet research, which was in need of an update. After
Speaker 2: today's discussion, I plan to stop talking about this and
Speaker 2: turn my research into something more tangible, which we'll explain
Speaker 2: in this episode. And I think I figured out how
Speaker 2: the silver bullet got embedded in Werewolf floor And it's
Speaker 2: been a wild and moonlit run through the forest of
Speaker 2: folklore to get here. Momstert, it looks like another Monster
Speaker 2: Talk where we're catching up people on our research and
Speaker 2: projects and what we're up to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, in this case, this is a really long term,
Speaker 4: ongoing project for you, So I'm really interested in hearing
Speaker 4: what you've got to say about this.
Speaker 3: So we're talking were wolves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people often asked me what's my favorite monster? And I,
Speaker 2: even though we asked that question of our guests, I
Speaker 2: always have a hard time with it. But where wolves
Speaker 2: are my go to. They're the ones I keep coming
Speaker 2: back to, and they I have my whole life. I've
Speaker 2: always just been fascinated, whether it's the sort of the
Speaker 2: jeckyle and hide or Incredible Hulk sort of version, or
Speaker 2: whether it's the people deliberately seeking power through magical rituals,
Speaker 2: the transformative power, you know, someone becoming animal, or you know,
Speaker 2: there's so much metaphor in lore and folklore and history
Speaker 2: and science sort of tied up with you there is
Speaker 2: where wolves. It's very very, very very beloved topic.
Speaker 4: Well, it's Matt's favorite monster as well, and it's certainly
Speaker 4: high up there on the list of one of my
Speaker 4: favorites too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So what got me thinking about my research again
Speaker 2: was something that happened to you. Do you want to
Speaker 2: talk about that?
Speaker 3: That's right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I don't know, I don't even know how
Speaker 4: much I can say at this point, but because it's.
Speaker 3: Still early stages.
Speaker 4: But so I was contacted by a producer who is
Speaker 4: working on a project. He worked with Oliver Stone for
Speaker 4: about ten years on the jfk Assassination movie, and so
Speaker 4: his current project is The Wolfman, not the original one,
Speaker 4: but the twenty ten version. So this is an anniversary
Speaker 4: Blu ray that they're putting together, and they're wanting to
Speaker 4: interview the cast, and they also wanted a werewolf expert,
Speaker 4: if there is one at all, to come on and
Speaker 4: talk about were wolf culture and folklore and history.
Speaker 3: So I just finished that interview.
Speaker 4: We'll see what comes of it, but it's supposedly going
Speaker 4: to come out later this year. But it got you
Speaker 4: and I talking about all of these things. And I mean,
Speaker 4: to me, you're the werewolf experts, certainly when it comes
Speaker 4: to were wolves and silver, and I know you've been
Speaker 4: doing research into this for some time because I thought, oh,
Speaker 4: this goes back to the original Wolfman, as.
Speaker 3: They talk about using silver.
Speaker 4: It's the only thing that can kill a where wolf,
Speaker 4: whether it's applied to.
Speaker 3: The I guess to a blow to the head, or
Speaker 3: it's to the heart or.
Speaker 4: But killing the were wolf with silver, and it seems
Speaker 4: like it's a lot more involved than that. That goes
Speaker 4: back further and it's, i don't know, just a very
Speaker 4: tangled and twisted tail.
Speaker 2: It really is. And I think what originally got me
Speaker 2: onto this was when we were doing the Beasts of Sheevadn,
Speaker 2: which was sort of a series we covered. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: historian Jay Smith was talking about and he had not
Speaker 2: really run into the whole silver bullet stuff. It's not
Speaker 2: in the original contemporary lore from the seventeen hundreds, but
Speaker 2: it does show up in subsequent documents as being mentioned
Speaker 2: as something that people considered or tried or you know,
Speaker 2: we're trying to use it because silver's very closely associated
Speaker 2: with shape changing. But what I had found was it
Speaker 2: wasn't that closely associated with wolves in particular. It was
Speaker 2: mostly associated with witches. And so if you read a
Speaker 2: lot of monster books, you'll see people say that most
Speaker 2: of our silver and werewolf floor comes from the Wolfman
Speaker 2: from forty one. And basically, I've just been spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time running down whether that's true or not.
Speaker 2: When does the silver bullet firmly become entrenched with werewolf
Speaker 2: floor and Friend of the show Justin Mullis sent me
Speaker 2: a link to a book called Werewolves, Bird Women, Tiger Men,
Speaker 2: and Other Human Animals by Frank Hamil.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, obviously this is something I needed to have in
Speaker 2: my collection, so I appreciate it. But right in the intro,
Speaker 2: Justin points out that there's specific mention of silver bullets
Speaker 2: as being effective on shape changers, and he's absolutely right,
Speaker 2: And so I decided to see if I could get
Speaker 2: a little further down the who is it who's introducing
Speaker 2: silver bullets and wolves specifically? And I think I'm closer
Speaker 2: today than I ever have been in this whole search,
Speaker 2: So I don't Unfortunately, I don't think there's a silver
Speaker 2: bullet answer to this, but there's a strong, circumstantial case
Speaker 2: which I put together.
Speaker 3: I want to interject.
Speaker 4: I just want to interject and say, I think it's
Speaker 4: really interesting that you bring up witches, because there just
Speaker 4: seems to be a lot of overlap between the history
Speaker 4: of folklore of witches and that of where wolves are
Speaker 4: even just thinking about things like the witch trials, the
Speaker 4: witch hunts, and where wolf trials and hunts, so it
Speaker 4: does seem like they are connected in some way.
Speaker 3: And I was also thinking about the skin walkers.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, and that connection to witches were wolves as well,
Speaker 4: But I don't know if there's a connection there with silver.
Speaker 3: But I don't know where to begin. Where should we
Speaker 3: start then talking about this topic?
Speaker 2: Well, that's okay. So first of all, what I've been
Speaker 2: doing is collecting my sort of bibliography into a spreadsheet,
Speaker 2: which I've shared before. It's it's it's I'll put a
Speaker 2: link in the show notes if you just want to
Speaker 2: read it, because maybe you know other people in the
Speaker 2: honest are interested in this and want to use this
Speaker 2: as a jumping off point. Sure, but I basically went
Speaker 2: back into thanks to Google scanning lots and lots of
Speaker 2: books and other sort of things I was able to
Speaker 2: and also using multiple languages, you know, through translation tools,
Speaker 2: I was able to go back into. Yeah, quite so. French,
Speaker 2: we don't know, you know, sort of like prehistory. We
Speaker 2: know that, you know, there's the shamanic traditions of people
Speaker 2: turning into animals, but we don't have like a lot
Speaker 2: of written information about that. But sort of the earliest
Speaker 2: stories we have about people changing into wolves come from mythology,
Speaker 2: and the Greeks had the story of Lichen who offends
Speaker 2: the gods and has turned into a wolf, and we
Speaker 2: get licanthropy or like aanthropy or likeenthropes from that story.
Speaker 2: And then if you go up into Roman times in
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire, there's a really interesting story about a
Speaker 2: man who is traveling with a companion and the companion
Speaker 2: changes into a wolf. So it's very much a were
Speaker 2: wolf story of about someone who has the ability to
Speaker 2: do this.
Speaker 4: And then yeah, you've also got me thinking when you
Speaker 4: talk about Roman mythology about Romulus and Remus, yes, and
Speaker 4: that wolf children, feral children, founding Rome, all that sort
Speaker 4: of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that idea of a founding fine, you know, and
Speaker 2: having these sort of heroic quasi. You know, they're sort
Speaker 2: of human, but they're sort of beyond human founding stories
Speaker 2: that that demi gods Yep, exactly. So Romulus and Remus,
Speaker 2: you know, famously are raised by a wolf and they're
Speaker 2: the yeah exactly. Yeah. In fact, this is just local stuff.
Speaker 2: I was actually born in Rome, Georgia, which is a
Speaker 2: little city north of me now, uh yeah, and a
Speaker 2: room there. And I think before World War two started,
Speaker 2: when Mussolini was in charge in Italy. Uh, and some
Speaker 2: people that this was shocking, but some people used to
Speaker 2: really like, uh the effectiveness of fascists getting those trains
Speaker 2: to around on time. Uh you know, so at least. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And Mussolini established Rome, Georgia as being a sister city
Speaker 2: and gifted the city with a statue, like a replica
Speaker 2: statue of this famous wolf suckling the two children. And
Speaker 2: it's still.
Speaker 3: You're Italian and spirit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. Well you know, Kathleen, my wife is
Speaker 2: half Italian, so there you go, there you go. So
Speaker 2: well see, in fact, I think, you know, if you
Speaker 2: think about it, you get that Italian werewolf connection. And
Speaker 2: then her other side is Latvian, which is I think
Speaker 2: that's where the Werewolf of Livonia story comes from, which
Speaker 2: is a really cool that's a really interesting story we've
Speaker 2: talked about briefly where the werewolf basically descends into Hell
Speaker 2: to punish centers, so it's like a superhero force for God,
Speaker 2: which is an extremely funny story which we won't get
Speaker 2: into here, but it's a very interesting.
Speaker 3: So many variations that really highlight highlights just how.
Speaker 4: Many stories are out there, and whether they're good wear
Speaker 4: wolves or bad were wolves or good wolves bad wolves.
Speaker 3: There's just so much more out there. It is really
Speaker 3: mind boggling.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think one of the things I struggle
Speaker 2: with is I am really interested in how ideas get
Speaker 2: trans admitted from one place to another, one person to another,
Speaker 2: you know, and you can't always know, because it's very
Speaker 2: rare that you get someone says, I'm a writer, and
Speaker 2: so and so told me this story. I did a
Speaker 2: little research here, and I combine them together to make
Speaker 2: this new thing. That's not a thing people typically write
Speaker 2: down in their journals, right, so I can kind of
Speaker 2: piece it together. But I know that like in the pulps,
Speaker 2: which were really sort of an emergent form of media
Speaker 2: in the early twentieth century, they were cheaply printed, but
Speaker 2: you get stuff like weird Tales and other sort of
Speaker 2: newsprints pulpy magazines that published fiction.
Speaker 3: And is that the same thing as like Penny dreadfuls.
Speaker 2: There's similar it's a sort of similar quality the pulps.
Speaker 2: Ultimately they sort of sit in between comic books and
Speaker 2: news premira very they're entertaining and some of them are
Speaker 2: quite influential. Maybe we should do some coverage with that,
Speaker 2: a little deeper dive when I'm more prepared for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's totally yeah.
Speaker 2: But out of that world you get like what we
Speaker 2: think of his genre fiction. So you know, early sci fi,
Speaker 2: early fantasy, horror, all those things emerged there because it
Speaker 2: was a place where it was low cost, wasn't really
Speaker 2: you know, risky market exactly, so people experimented, like the
Speaker 2: publishers themselves experiment with lots of different types of fiction.
Speaker 2: The editorial work was somewhat sketchy, so you'll famously get
Speaker 2: writers being extraordinarily mad because the editors would just rewrite
Speaker 2: their stories, you know, so oh yeah, frustrating different world.
Speaker 2: But out of that that's where you get the publishing
Speaker 2: of Roberty Howard, who writes Conan Brand Macmoor, call The Conqueror,
Speaker 2: all these sort of heroic, you know, two fisted adventure things.
Speaker 2: But he also writes a lot of horror stories. He
Speaker 2: becomes friends and correspondence with HB. Lovecraft, and he wrote
Speaker 2: a couple of werewolf stories that are pretty important, I think,
Speaker 2: because they use the power of the full moon as
Speaker 2: being an influential part of the transformation, and they use
Speaker 2: the idea that werewolves could be a curse that's passed
Speaker 2: on to someone that's not part of folklore very much.
Speaker 2: It's something that he's adding himself, and I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm still looking to see what other authors may have
Speaker 2: sort of explored this idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that sounds a little bit like the
Speaker 4: Epic of Gilgamesh story with Ishtar. I mean you get
Speaker 4: different names, different variations, but where she falls in love
Speaker 4: with Gilgamesh and he finds out that she's cursed a
Speaker 4: former lover turned him into a wolf, and a little
Speaker 4: bit like the Greek story, the Acadian story with the
Speaker 4: King Lakian A little bit like that, don't you think
Speaker 4: the idea of a divine punishment or a curse.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know that part of the story. So
Speaker 2: this is new to me, and no inky do Gilgamesh
Speaker 2: is her suit companion is a lot of people think
Speaker 2: that's one of the one of the many hairy man
Speaker 2: Harry Wildman type proto stories. So but I know he
Speaker 2: falls in love with Istar, has a relationship there, but
Speaker 2: I didn't know about the wolf thing. That's really interesting. Well,
Speaker 2: I obviously need to refresh my familiarity with the Epic
Speaker 2: of Gilgamesh and the part of the story that Karen's
Speaker 2: talking about Ishtar asks Gilgamesh to be her lover, and
Speaker 2: he refuses, citing times when she has become bored or
Speaker 2: annoyed with previous lovers, sometimes turning them into animals, including
Speaker 2: in one case, turning a peaceful shepherd into a wolf,
Speaker 2: which leads to the shepherd being torn to pieces by
Speaker 2: his own beloved hounds. So it's not surprising that despite
Speaker 2: what an awesome girlfriend, a goddess might be capable of
Speaker 2: being the risk or just too high for Gilgamesh's taste.
Speaker 2: But his refusal of her offer leads to her begging
Speaker 2: her father to send divine punishment onto Gilgamesh, and in
Speaker 2: this case that's the gigantic bull of heaven.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think there's just so many variations out there.
Speaker 4: And again, often these narratives are told just you know,
Speaker 4: person to person stories a here on Facebook or YouTube
Speaker 4: or hear around on the internet. So who knows how
Speaker 4: much of this is accurate from the original.
Speaker 3: Well, the manuscripts or inscriptions is probably a very different thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well it's interesting too because the so I think
Speaker 2: of Gilgamesh as being an ancient story, but it was
Speaker 2: lost for a long time, so it was preserved in
Speaker 2: caneiform clay tablets, but people couldn't read canea form, so
Speaker 2: you needed to have it to be rediscovered and to
Speaker 2: be translated for that story to come back into play.
Speaker 2: But that's sort of the I think maybe the reason.
Speaker 2: I think that of all the technologies humanity has developed,
Speaker 2: writing is the most significant and influential because it allows
Speaker 2: the preservation of ideas.
Speaker 4: Passed totally, I mean it you totally watching and language
Speaker 4: absolutely yeah, because people say the most important invention is
Speaker 4: the wheel or fire, all this all that right, Absolutely,
Speaker 4: language necessitates yeah, and these things necessitate language and writing.
Speaker 2: Like written language in particular. It's it's look, there's a
Speaker 2: perfect example that whole story was just gone from history,
Speaker 2: and now we can find it, and then you not
Speaker 2: only do you find the story, but when it's originally rediscovered,
Speaker 2: they discovered that within that story is a story of
Speaker 2: the flood that predates the Bible, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2: And it's like it was so exciting and thrilling to
Speaker 2: Victorian culture to have these discoveries being made. So I
Speaker 2: find that really interesting, like very very interesting.
Speaker 4: So again maybe we're getting off on a well we are,
Speaker 4: we'll come back.
Speaker 2: So one of the mysteries. Still remaining for me was
Speaker 2: how did this silver bullet concepts get so firmly entrenched
Speaker 2: with wolf floor. Now, even in nineteen forty one, when
Speaker 2: you have the Wolfman movie, silver is the method by
Speaker 2: which they kill the werewolf. But it's not a bullet.
Speaker 2: Talbot's father beats him to death with a silver wolf cane,
Speaker 2: like a cane with a silver wolf on the end
Speaker 2: of it. And it's not until I think, well, even
Speaker 2: when the forty three version there's a freakas I meets
Speaker 2: the Wolfman. Then that's when they have the full moon
Speaker 2: resurrect the Talbot as a wolf again because he but
Speaker 2: that's a little iffy, But you know the movies. I
Speaker 2: guess My point is the movies have a big influence
Speaker 2: on werewell floor, and then that feeds back into fiction.
Speaker 2: But before this, this is what excited me about justin
Speaker 2: Mollis's letter, was Okay, here's a book from nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 2: This is clearly talking about silver and werewolves and witches.
Speaker 2: But even it is not explicitly saying that they're the
Speaker 2: same thing. But I wanted to know why it was
Speaker 2: coming up in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 3: Well, it makes you think it's got to go back
Speaker 3: further than.
Speaker 2: That, exactly, exactly, and so I think that the culprit
Speaker 2: is actually the Golden Bough. James George Fraser wrote The
Speaker 2: Golden Bowel, but now he wrote it. Originally it was
Speaker 2: a two volume set in eighteen ninety, and then he
Speaker 2: experided on it and does a three volume version in
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred, and then a twelve volume version that comes
Speaker 2: out between nineteen oh six and nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 3: Twelve volume wit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so it's in that longer twelve volume
Speaker 2: version that in volume seven there's a whole section called
Speaker 2: Balder the Beautiful talking about balder from the Norse.
Speaker 3: Sounds like bold and the beautiful.
Speaker 2: Oh doesn't it. It doesn't. Golly, I didn't make that connection,
Speaker 2: but yeah, Balder the Beautiful, and in that yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: they had. There's just story after a story about folkloric
Speaker 2: transformation of creatures, and a bunch of stuff about werewolves
Speaker 2: and witches. And again it doesn't explicitly say that they're
Speaker 2: the same thing, but it puts them literally on the
Speaker 2: same page or within a page of each other, of
Speaker 2: stories of werewolves that are almost identical to the stories
Speaker 2: of witches. So I think it would be incredibly easy
Speaker 2: for someone to read that book and draw that conclusion,
Speaker 2: even if Fraser himself never says these are the same
Speaker 2: exact phenomenon, right and so, And it's not really clear.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's collecting the folklore and a lot of
Speaker 2: the folklorus were just repeating the stories, not speculating on
Speaker 2: whether they were true or not. You know that exactly
Speaker 2: sort of you himerius tendency to try to find the
Speaker 2: real cause of this stuff that wasn't there. This is
Speaker 2: just a huge, massive collection of folk tales, and Fraser
Speaker 2: himself heavily references where he gets his stuff from. And
Speaker 2: I found I put some links to previous material that
Speaker 2: was being used by him that's coming out of Celtic folklore.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of this stuff going on, and
Speaker 2: I think the connector there is Fraser. I think Fraser
Speaker 2: is clearly putting it right there on the page that
Speaker 2: you have werewolves in shape changing, and you have witches
Speaker 2: in shape changing, and what's good for the goose is
Speaker 2: good for the gander. Grab that silver right and have
Speaker 2: some fun. I think that's what's really going on.
Speaker 4: Well, I wonder have you dived into any mortoguse Summers
Speaker 4: to see if he makes mention of.
Speaker 3: Any of this.
Speaker 2: Okay, So his book comes out in thirty three, and
Speaker 2: it is an astonishing collection of folklore and uh legend
Speaker 2: and thoughts. It's it's really a comprehensive book. If you're
Speaker 2: going to study wherebeles, you have to have it. Uh.
Speaker 2: And that's the werewolf and Lauren legend. But he annoys
Speaker 2: me so much I can't talk about him without mentioning
Speaker 2: that he constantly assumes we've all had a classical British education.
Speaker 2: So we speak Greek and we speak Latin and we
Speaker 2: don't need a translation to explain, so he'll just cut yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: and uh and we I apparently like young men a
Speaker 2: bit more than we ought to. Yeah, he's a Summers
Speaker 2: is a problematic dude to get to be blunt. Uh
Speaker 2: he is he is? He is. Yeah, but did his
Speaker 2: books on vampires, the books on werewolf absolutely uh core material.
Speaker 2: He did a tremendous job of collecting all that material
Speaker 2: into one volume. So I'd like to get and I
Speaker 2: haven't found one. There's some similar stuff and not quite
Speaker 2: I'd like an annotated version that actually bothers to translate
Speaker 2: all that stuff, and if nobody ever gets to it,
Speaker 2: whenever the copyright expires, maybe I'll get to it because
Speaker 2: I would really like that. It would be.
Speaker 4: Really nice, fantastic idea, but that would be a hell
Speaker 4: of a lot of work.
Speaker 2: It would be a ton of work, but it would
Speaker 2: be really useful. So I agree. Yeah, Okay, well enough
Speaker 2: of that, But that's a funny. Year thirty three, you
Speaker 2: get his book, and you also get The Werewolf of
Speaker 2: Paris comes out the same year, and that book explicitly
Speaker 2: talks about silver bullets and getting them blessed, and that
Speaker 2: again is coming straight out of the folklore and is
Speaker 2: mentioned by Fraser. But that's not how they kill the
Speaker 2: world either.
Speaker 4: So already established then at that point, by nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 4: that generally accepted that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does appear to be somewhere, right. You don't
Speaker 2: see it in the folklore in the eighteen hundreds, but
Speaker 2: by the nineteen hundreds it's starting to be backfilled. Which
Speaker 2: is another problem. If you get modern retellings of the folklore,
Speaker 2: they will frequently throw in stuff that's anachronistic, right, Like
Speaker 2: that's what happens with Jaevadon. It's not until the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: people start inserting the silver bullet into the story, and
Speaker 2: it's not until the twentieth century that they actually literally
Speaker 2: make the claim that a silver bullet was used to
Speaker 2: kill the wolf.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: That was one of my big questions, and I've come
Speaker 2: down pretty hard that that was John Keel's work. That
Speaker 2: John Keel in nineteen seventy. It's not even supposed to
Speaker 2: be a well researched part of the book. He just
Speaker 2: throws out there that in the case of Jeva Don
Speaker 2: a blessed silver bullet was used by Chastelle to to
Speaker 2: kill the wolf. It's just out of his butt. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's not so yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just shows them that many layers, like an onion,
Speaker 4: really peeling back those layers to get to the truth
Speaker 4: of this story. But it does seem like it is
Speaker 4: a relatively modern notion.
Speaker 2: It does. And I think one of the problems I've
Speaker 2: got as a researcher is, you know, I've talked about
Speaker 2: this a few times on the show, but this is
Speaker 2: not useful. I mean, I can say these things, I
Speaker 2: could put stuff in the show notes, but that's not
Speaker 2: really useful for researchers. Researchers want something published, So I
Speaker 2: think what I've decided is exactly and I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to take all my findings and put them into
Speaker 2: a monograph.
Speaker 3: I think that's a wonderful I had sort.
Speaker 2: Of toyed with that idea before, but I've realized that
Speaker 2: and now that I've actually done some publishing myself with
Speaker 2: the KDP, the Kindle point. Yeah, it was just Nichols's book.
Speaker 2: The barrier to entry is very low, and it also
Speaker 2: means that I can do something pretty cool, which is
Speaker 2: I've got the spreadsheet which somebody can go look at now.
Speaker 2: But it'd be much better, I think, to put this
Speaker 2: into a format where it's more like each page or
Speaker 2: each section is an entry from the table, and then
Speaker 2: it's got links to it. So if you want to
Speaker 2: go back to the source materwier, you can click the
Speaker 2: link and go straight to the web page from the ebook.
Speaker 3: Very cool.
Speaker 2: That would be a better approach, and so it would
Speaker 2: allow a lot of hopping around within the text to
Speaker 2: go to references. And I really like that idea, so
Speaker 2: when you're researching something, it's really a good useful tool.
Speaker 2: So I think I'm going to try to put that
Speaker 2: together and just I don't think it'll be very long,
Speaker 2: but well formatted monograph. I think that would be the
Speaker 2: next thing to come out of Monster House Publishing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is something that a lot of people
Speaker 4: have talked about, but I think you and I go
Speaker 4: into a lot more detail, hit a lot of these stories,
Speaker 4: doing research, and I think to compile all of that
Speaker 4: and to make it accessible would be really great, but
Speaker 4: a big task again, not another mamoth task when you
Speaker 4: can get around to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the good news is the core work
Speaker 2: is done, so you know, turning that into something that's
Speaker 2: a little bit more narratively structured with chapters, and you know,
Speaker 2: I want people to get value. So I mean what
Speaker 2: I have now would be a ninety nine cent book,
Speaker 2: but if I put it all together, I think it
Speaker 2: could be two or three bucks worth of work. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, I have to look at
Speaker 2: the pricing. But I, for example, I mean this core
Speaker 2: historical research into these references. That's useful for a lot
Speaker 2: of people, I think if they're interested in this topic.
Speaker 2: But also I think we've just uncovered a lot of
Speaker 2: little tidbits that would be worth having published. You know,
Speaker 2: the whole thing about when did silver bullets enter the
Speaker 2: Jevadon legend? Well, that could be a chapter, like I
Speaker 2: you know, I could, I could make that a chapter.
Speaker 2: And then when did the moon become an influential part
Speaker 2: of where we'll full coward? Yeah? Yes, all these things
Speaker 2: like who who introduced them? Where they first show up?
Speaker 2: That those are like, that's really useful material, I think
Speaker 2: for people who have this sort of mindset. So I
Speaker 2: don't know why I'm so interested in this stuff, but
Speaker 2: I am. And I'm glad that we have an audience
Speaker 2: that also cares. So thanks, we have.
Speaker 4: A fantastic audience. And I guess I've got one final
Speaker 4: question about this. So you have this association of silver
Speaker 4: with were wolves. Are they associated with any other materials
Speaker 4: or maybe gemstones or anything like that, maybe used as
Speaker 4: amulets to protect people against were wolves or to to
Speaker 4: kill them, or anything else.
Speaker 2: So we get to use one of my favorite words,
Speaker 2: apotropaic magic, like the bless you you know, all those
Speaker 2: little necklaces people wear to ward off the evil eye,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. I don't remember much of that.
Speaker 2: Herbs seem to be the thing. Obviously, wolf spring comes
Speaker 2: up a lot, and that's worth investigating, you know what.
Speaker 2: That would be a how do you make a werewolf?
Speaker 2: Is one thing I thought would be a useful chapter
Speaker 2: because there's so much conflicting more over that, and how
Speaker 2: do you dispatch your werewolf? Would be another one, And
Speaker 2: but a third option would be how do you just
Speaker 2: keep them at bay?
Speaker 4: I think that's yeah, protect yourself against them, or a
Speaker 4: talisman if you want to attract them for some reason,
Speaker 4: A sixy exactly.
Speaker 2: But boy, howdy is there a lot of that going around?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it really is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's I don't know if that stems from the
Speaker 4: whole vampire sixy vampire angle.
Speaker 2: The Laurel K. Hamilton writes a series Anita Blake Anita
Speaker 2: Blake Vampire Hunter, and boy that is it is full
Speaker 2: of sexy vampires and werewolves and all kinds of it.
Speaker 2: I liked it. Originally it started out like as a
Speaker 2: more like a racier version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Speaker 2: and then it just got into explicitly it's it's werewolf
Speaker 2: and vampire porn from a lady's perspective.
Speaker 3: So bizarre, but stronger than Harlequin.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, quite a bit, quite a bit.
Speaker 2: So there's if you look at uh, I mean, we've
Speaker 2: talked about this before with Bigfoot, there is a ton
Speaker 2: of bigfoot porn and werewolf porn and vampire porn. If
Speaker 2: there's a monster, there is nessy porn. There's like, if
Speaker 2: there's a monster, there's people writing about sleeping with it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's a real thing.
Speaker 4: You know, we need to cover that, I think in
Speaker 4: a show as well, because I'm going to have to
Speaker 4: admit I've never read anything like that, but there is
Speaker 4: a lot of it out.
Speaker 3: There, and it seems to be on the increase too.
Speaker 4: I remember first hearing about this maybe ten to fifteen
Speaker 4: years ago, so it's really floaded.
Speaker 2: I think there was a period when people got them, ironically,
Speaker 2: but I think that period may have passed. I mean,
Speaker 2: some of these things, I mean are still You've got
Speaker 2: people who write porn about dinosaurs and people like Pterodactyl's
Speaker 2: kidnapping women, and.
Speaker 4: It is Oh, if you can think of it, you
Speaker 4: can imagine it, you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, I think right about it. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, that might actually be a really interesting
Speaker 2: sort of thing to dive into. And I don't know
Speaker 2: what sort of numbers we can find, but it would
Speaker 2: be interesting to know. I don't know if Amazon shares this,
Speaker 2: but I'd like to know, like, how well did these
Speaker 2: things actually sell?
Speaker 4: I know back, I think they'd sell pretty well because
Speaker 4: I recently uploaded my book on the story of Abraham
Speaker 4: Lincoln and ghost stories surrounding him and the Ghost Train.
Speaker 4: And the funny thing is it was a category. One
Speaker 4: of the categories was historical short fiction, and when I
Speaker 4: went and looked at other books in that genre, there
Speaker 4: were a lot of short stories that were kind of
Speaker 4: historical romances and I mean stuff along the lines of
Speaker 4: what we're talking about too. So I think it's it's
Speaker 4: weirdly popular. Maybe it's not so weird, but it's really
Speaker 4: a popular genre.
Speaker 2: Mister Lincoln, what a big hat? You have? Everything? Over
Speaker 2: with everything? Well, they've already had Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter,
Speaker 2: so why not Abraham Lincoln Werewolf's Lover?
Speaker 3: Yep, you're going to be the one to write that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm all over that. Well, So when can
Speaker 2: we expect to hear more about your DVD project? You know,
Speaker 2: they're all up in the air.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, the interview is done and they seem to
Speaker 4: be happy with it, so I'll let the gang know
Speaker 4: as soon as I know. I was hoping that you
Speaker 4: could get involved as well. I certainly a name dropped you,
Speaker 4: and because you are a wealth of law and folklore
Speaker 4: and information about where really know your stuff.
Speaker 2: I've read almost three books and seen nearly five movies
Speaker 2: all most.
Speaker 4: But I am really excited about the idea of you
Speaker 4: putting together a book on werewolves and compiling all of
Speaker 4: this research and there's just so much more out there.
Speaker 3: Maybe I should to get involved too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this would be a fun one, and
Speaker 2: you know what, if it's successful, maybe we can do
Speaker 2: more Monster Talk series books That would be really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that is the goals for sure.
Speaker 2: For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well again, in case you haven't
Speaker 2: caught on, we're obsessed with monsters here at Monster Talk,
Speaker 2: so we hope you continue to be as well. So
Speaker 2: thank you for listening. This. This is the latest joinny
Speaker 2: us what we're doing, and we will be exploding into
Speaker 2: your world with more monsters next week. Very will monster
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith.
Speaker 3: And I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 2: You just heard a discussion of some upcoming werewolf projects
Speaker 2: Karen and I are working on. Check the show notes
Speaker 2: for links to our previous coverage of this topic, and
Speaker 2: stay tuned for what I hope will be a useful
Speaker 2: project for fellow werewolf efficients. This has been the extended
Speaker 2: commercial free version of the show exclusive for patreons. Here's
Speaker 2: a little bonus tidbit for you that'll show up in
Speaker 2: the monograph if I succeed in that project. Wolf Spain
Speaker 2: shows up in so many werewolf movies as a kind
Speaker 2: of magic herb, similar to how fresh garlic sposed to
Speaker 2: ward off vampires. But in nature, wolf spain does not
Speaker 2: deter wolves. So why did you get this name? According
Speaker 2: to my reading, the ancient Greeks used this highly poisonous
Speaker 2: plant as a coating on meat which was used to
Speaker 2: bait wolves. The wolves would eat the bait and then
Speaker 2: they would die, hence the name wolf Spain. But in
Speaker 2: Europe the name came to be associated with a folkloric
Speaker 2: tradition that the plant could ward off wolves or even
Speaker 2: were wolves. It was even said to have been used
Speaker 2: as a kind of were wolf cure, but do not
Speaker 2: even think about trying that this plant will kill you.
Speaker 2: It is extremely toxic, very pretty, but very deadly. Thanks
Speaker 2: for your kind patronage and extraordinary generosity. Karen and I
Speaker 2: deeply appreciate your support and comments. Monster Talk theme music
Speaker 2: is by Pete Stealing Monkeys. Thank you, as always for
Speaker 2: taking the time to make us a part of your
Speaker 2: listening life.
Speaker 3: This has been a Monster House presentation. Yeah, werewolf, werewolf there,
Speaker 3: but therewolf, the castles. Why are you talking that way?
Speaker 3: I thought you wanted to No, I don't want to
Speaker 3: suit yourself. I'm easy