Ghost Werewolf of
Northumberland County
By Cole Herrold
During the span of the 1800s, a ton of
bizarre accounts occurred. These accounts are filled with all manner of
creatures, from yellow-skinned horned creatures to merfolk. One of the most prevalent
creature accounts were reports of hairy upright dogs that seemingly were
supernatural in origin. These entities, known colloquially as werewolves, have
a tradition beyond time, and memorial tales of these entities can be traced all
the way back to ancient Greece with tales of King Lycaon. Most of these
accounts describe a human either condemned to shift in form from a man to a
wolf-type creature. Other versions of this transformative beast describe a deal
with the devil for power. These accounts were prominent in Europe, but when
people immigrated to America, tales of werewolves came with them. These
accounts unsurprisingly managed to continue on in Pennsylvania. The most famous
case of a werewolf in Pennsylvania is sometimes known as the Line Mountain
Werewolf or the Northumberland Werewolf, but this lycanthrope is different from
other cases as it not only features a horrific shapeshifter but also the
existence of the creature after its death.
During some time in the 1800s, May Paul, a
12-year-old farm girl who lived in the Schwaben Valley in Northumberland
County. May, due to the fact that she lived on a farm in the country, had
several chores that were more than just important for her to do. One of these
tasks was to watch and tend over the sheep that her family had for the sole
purpose of sheering for wool. This wool helped clothe as well as pay for the
necessary supplies that the family needed to make it through each day. The area
around the farm was not fenced in, and there was not a neighbor for miles, so
oftentimes, she would take the herd and travel around looking for ideal patches
of grass for the animals to graze in. Now while there were large areas of
pasture, it was bordered by dark, secluded shadow shrouded woodland, and there
in the woodland area lived a local hermit.
The hermit was very much disliked in town,
and the man tended to keep to himself as he lived in a shanty shack in the
forest. Now the man had no contact with just about anyone on the outside, but
he did slowly develop a relationship with May. Now this relationship was
nothing intimate, the two barely spoke a word to each other, but they did share
some company on the times when the man would leave the dark embrace of the
forest and would sit on a set of fallen logs that appeared as a natural fence
from his property to hers. The man would watch the girl as she worked, and this
would continue for the entire day until she ultimately would return home with
her livestock.
May, as the time went on, soon started to
speak to the man, and he would be both respectful to her and talk to her
admiringly. The hermit and her continued to do this for some time until,
eventually, the two became very close and ultimately became friends. The man
was relatively new to the area, and even though Mary and him were close, the
townsfolk could not help but gossip about the man. The people were extremely
concerned for unlike May, who spent time talking to the man, so all they could
think was that this man was outside of the natural order of what they felt was
normal in their world. They knew not the man's name, where he lived, what he
did for a living, and so the townsfolk were very suspicious about this man.
The townsfolk, however, while curious
about the man, had other fish to fry as their area had been besieged around the
same time as the man arrived a huge mass death of livestock in the area. The
animals were torn apart, their flesh chewed and gnawed as though some large
predator had come through the land decimating all that was in its way. The townsfolk
expected the usual predators, mountain lions, bears, coyotes, but as time went
on, they had their answer. Over the course of several nights, many of the
farmers heard the eerie sound of their animals being slaughtered they would run
out, and there standing near the bleeding husk of their livelihood, was an
incredibly large wolf. This wolf which appeared to be the leader, was not alone
as several other smaller wolves were also running around aiding its siege on
the farms. The townsfolk were obviously concerned, and they seemed to be unable
to stop this onslaught.
It was around this time that whispers of
gossip became combined, and the memory of werewolves flashed in everyone’s
mind. The townsfolk soon returned to the old hermit and felt that it was odd that
the old man and the wolves seemed to of occurred at the same time. This
connection was added to when it broke that the Hermit and May had a kind of
friendship and that her livestock were the only ones spared from wolves
assault. Rumors spread; some felt he was a witch, causing a curse on the area.
Others felt that the old man himself might have been a lycanthrope. The
villagers became on guard for the man, and word of the rumors reached May's
parents.
One night when May arrived home from
grazing her cattle, her parents were waiting for her. The group entered the
farmhouse, and her parents strongly urged her to cease her friendship with the
old man. The girl, however, could not see how the sweet old man that she
befriended was the monster that the rumors seemed to indicate, and so she
continued their friendship. May, however, could not shake the rumors from town
and had information that the others knew not. She did have some experiences
with the wolves in the area. On several occasions during the day when out her
herd had been encircled by wolves, their forms skittering between the trees in
the tree line. They were circling her and ready to pounce on multiple times.
May had gotten her herding staff ready to protect herself and her livestock on
multiple occasions as she waited for the worse, but she thankfully never had
to. The wolves always would slink back and then disappear as if startled or
spooked by something she was unaware of, and then almost instantly after that
point, the old man would come from the woods.
These carnivorous attacks would occur for
some years after they began, and no wolf hunt seemed to stop the almost
coordinated assault. All the while, May and the old man continued to be
friends, and her sheep remained unblighted by the creatures. All this would
change, however, when one dark night, a tired old farmer had arisen from sleep
after hearing the sound of something large in his barn. The old farmer grabbed
a rifle and lantern and headed out towards the barn to investigate the sound.
The farmer started to move the heavy doors and as he peered into the darkness
with a lantern in hand and there in the barn was a huge grizzled grey wolf. The
wolf began to charge towards the farmer; the old man could not even get the
rifle to his shoulder by the time the creature was in front of him. The old man
braced himself for the worst expecting the long fangs to pierce his flesh and
render him asunder, but instead, the wolf ran straight past him. The old
farmer, seeing he could live another day, regained his wits and, lifting the
gun to his shoulder, took aim at the great grey form. The man taking a
shuttered breath pulled the trigger, the projectile skimming through the air
before ultimately taking root into the beast. The farmer could hear a loud
whimper and knew that he had hit the beast as it ran off into the woods.
The farmer, now revitalized by the scent
of the hunt, ran towards where he hit the creature and, shining his lantern,
noticed a dark crimson on the green grass. The crimson was a trail leading him
towards his quarry, and so he pursued; he followed the blood into the shrouded
darkness and continued to do so for some time until his wits caught up with
him. Realizing that it is overly dangerous to track a wounded wolf in the dark,
he decided that he should return home and continue the search in the light of
day. The following day the farmer returned to the spot where he shot the wolf
and refollowed the still crimson carpet through the woods. During this time,
there was a bounty on wolves, and a sum of 25 dollars a wolf was being paid for
each brought in, so the farmer was more than driven to find the beast. He
traveled the area for some time before ultimately finding that the trail ended
in a large thicket. He could not make out anything detailed in the thicket, but
he could see that a large still form was there. Holding up the gun on the
chance that the animal was still alive, he cautiously moved the brush to the
side, waiting for a head to turn or for the sound of a menacing growl, but
instead, he got the shock of his life. There lying in the grass was the form of
a man completely naked.
The farmer bent down, seeing this, and
began to roll the man over. He recognized the man right away; it was the hermit
everyone in town was talking about. He looked at the man's body, expecting to
see claw or teeth marks thinking maybe after he shot the wolf in its wounded
state, it attacked this man. This he found was not to be the case, for there in
the man's chest was a large gaping bullet wound and around his body a pool of
blood. He had bled to death. As the farmer stared at the man, he did notice
that there were some unusual features that seemed different from when he saw
him last; the hermit's body had hair on his palms and beneath his feet and on
his ears. The farmer stared in disbelief and also noted that as he began to
move the man's body, the corpse's mouth opened, revealing that the man had
several large wolf-like teeth. The farmer, unbelieving what he saw, lifted the
remains up and took it to a spot near the mountain ridge in the area to bury
before ultimately returning and telling the town of the man's death.
Word spread around the town of the event
that occurred the following night, and when May heard the news, she was
completely overcome with sorrow. This sorrow, however, was soon replaced by
hate as she heard that people still claimed that the old man was a werewolf and
responsible for the events around the area. May continued to deny this even to
her death, claiming that the man was kind and certainly not a horrendous
monster. The villagers, however, did not care for her assertions as after the
hermit died, the attacks from the wolves also began to dwindle to relatively
normal rates as opposed to the sheer savagery that occurred over the years.
While wolf attacks did occur after the hermit's death, May and her family
continued to never have a problem with the canines, and whenever there
potentially was a problem, a large gray wolf would appear from the woods near
the area where the old man used to come from, and the other wolves would back
down. Whenever May would look back over towards where the wolf was, however, it
would simply vanish.
To this day, people still claim that the
hermit's spirit resides in the woods and the area where May and him used to
frequent. People will say that spectral old man will sit in the exact spot
where the man used to, and on more frequent occasions, a large grey wolf will
also appear in the area and will sit in the exact same spot. The area where the
man was buried and where the apparition is said to still be seen has even been
named after the event as the area is now known as "Die Woolf Man's
Grob" or "the Wolf Man's Grave."
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Spectral
Transmogrified human
Location: Schwaben Valley, Northumberland
County, Pennsylvania
Sighted: Sometime in the 1800s
Works Cited:
Hunting the American Werewolf: Beast Men
in Wisconsin and Beyond By Linda S. Godfrey
Monsters of Pennsylvania By Patty A.
Wilson
Supernatural Lore of Pennsylvania: Ghosts,
Monsters, and Miracles By Thomas White
The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of
Shape-Shifting Beings By Brad Steiger
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