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Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Ghost Werewolf of Northumberland County

 

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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