Threatened By a Potential Werewolf

 

Threatened by a Potential Werewolf

By Cole Herrold

Now before I even begin the telling of this case, I do need to stress that this encounter needs to be taken with a grain of salt. This account is similar in interpretation to some of the non-supernatural encounters of Men in Black and Black Eyed Kids as there is the chance this entire encounter could be simply an interaction with an overly bizarre behaving human. I first came across this encounter in Patty A. Wilson’s Monsters of Pennsylvania and found it seemingly nestled in between genuine Werewolf or Dogman encounters, and while skeptical, I felt that it was interesting enough to be brought into the spotlight.

A man who chose to be referred to only as Hank was walking down the street when he saw that a holistic and organic shop with whom he had been a patron on several occasions had an embossed Going Out of Business sign in the window. Hank, surprised as he knew the woman who owned the shop fairly well, proceeded to enter the store and began to check out the bargains and discounted prices. As he looked down the rows of shelves filled with crystals and herbs, he noticed the woman near a particular shelf tearing down a display and began to strike up a conversation with her. After dispensing with the pleasantries, he began to ask why she was closing up her shop. Hank had inquired whether her business was actually doing poorly even though every time he was a patron, he noticed that the store was almost always packed. She confirmed that the business was doing well, but there was a look of concern on her face. So, Hank asked once more, "Well Why are you closing down?"

It was at that final question she began to look around, and Hank could tell the woman was extremely frightened as though she was waiting for some prophetic axe to drop. The woman walked over to the door rather quickly and began to look to see if, by chance, someone was going to be coming in rather soon and, seeing that the sidewalk was clear, came back over and stated, "I probably shouldn't say anything." Yet she leaned in close to Hank and continued, "But I'm terribly frightened and I just have to tell someone. If I remember correctly you're a ghost hunter, so maybe you wont think I'm totally crazy". Hank confirmed that he was and that he certainly wouldn't think that the shopkeeper was crazy and that he would keep anything she told him confidentially. Hank was expecting the lady to tell him about a menacing shadow figure or a full-bodied apparition or a particularly peculiar poltergeist, but what she began to tell him both intrigued him and totally surprised him.

The lady began by stating, "About a month ago, a man came in here and asked me for some herbs. He also wanted Belladonna, and I explained to him that it was a hallucinogen and that its prohibited to sell it. He then asked for some other herbs and Wolf's Bane. I laughed and said, 'Are you planning to become a Werewolf or what?' because I recognized the herbs as having once been used in concoctions for that long ago." Apparently, this little jest was something that the man did not take too lightly for soon the moment which gave the shopkeeper so much glee would change her life as the man suddenly seemed to become aggressive she would go on stating, “I couldn’t believe the change that came over the man. He grabbed my wrist and squeezed it until it really hurt. ‘Why do you say that?’ He demanded. I laughed to calm him down and told him that it was just a joke. The man looked angry, almost evil. He threatened me. ‘I belong to a group of werewolves that meet in one of the state parks. We hunt and mate and are free there. We need the herbs. You’ll get them for us’. He was really frightening me now. I don’t know if what he said was true or not, but I know that he believed what he said. Well, I sold him the herbs and was glad to be rid of him. He’s come back once since then to reinforce his threats to kill me if I talked. He claims that he and his fellow werewolves were responsible for a dog attack that made the paper a couple weeks ago. Anyhow, I don’t care if he’s for real or not. I just think that he’s scary. I’m selling out and moving. I know that it sounds crazy, but I half believe the fellow. You didn’t see his eyes when he talked to me. There is something wrong with him. I’m not even going to open a shop where I move to. I don’t want him to ever find me again”. The woman once more glanced around, almost half expecting her lycanthropic patron to be behind her, and ended her tale with the following to Hank "anyhow I’m leaving. Just please don’t say anything until I leave next week. I’m afraid of him”.

Hank promised that he would keep her account secret and managed to keep her secret safe for over a year. This secret would then be revealed to Patty A. Wilson when the two talked, and he could not help but ask if she knew of any similar accounts from the area. Patty was surprised by the story but was aware of several werewolf/Dogman sightings reported in the general area, including one that occurred only several months earlier where a Bigfooting friend of hers came to her with an account from a terrified young man who encountered one in a state park in Ohio. Yet no werewolves masquerading as human reports were in her files, making this, if authentic, a particularly unique case.

While there has never been an official follow-up with this case for understandable reasons, there is an interesting postscript to this incident that makes it extremely interesting. This encounter occurred along the Pennsylvania-Ohio Border, which means the state park the saleswoman was talking about was either in Erie, Crawford, Mercer, Lawrence, and a portion of Beaver Counties. This seriously whittles down the search location, meaning it could be in Maurice K. Goddard State Park, Oil Creek State Park, Presque Island State Park, Pymatuning State Park, McConnell Mills State Park, and Raccoon Creek State Park. Of all of the state parks, only two are practically on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, and they are the Pymatuning State Park and the Raccoon Creek State Park. So, chances are one of the two parks are most likely the ones the witness/would-be werewolf were talking about.

As for the area where the group of lycanthropes are said to roam, it is interesting that the sanctuary for these creatures is in an area where Dogman and Werewolf-like creatures have been reported in the area since at least the 1960s and certainly earlier than that. I had already discussed a similar case of a lycanthropic creature that appeared in the 1800s in Northumberland County that I've come to call the Ghost Werewolf of Northumberland, but other sightings of creatures such as the Westmoreland Werewolf, The Mercer County Man-Wolf, and the Mud Creek Road Monster of Troy are just some of the countless cases of Dogman and Werewolf like creature sightings said to of occurred in Pennsylvania. Sightings of strange half-human half canines are said to still occur; the latest sighting, at least to my knowledge, occurred in 2019 and was mentioned briefly on Stan Gordon's UFO Anomalies Zone.

While this account has several interesting similarities to historical accounts of similar creatures being seen in the area, we as researchers must put that aside and look at it as secondary for this encounter is very different from a bigfoot or even classic Dogman sighting where it's just a creature seen in an area where there are similar creatures. This account is essentially an extremely aggressive man claiming to use some mystical or occult practices to transform into a werewolf, and he, outside of some threats, has had no other evidence to support his claims. Now with that said, how can we break this down even further. Well, it would seem that there are only two options, either A. He is simply trying to intimidate this woman, possibly for herbs that could help him get high or B. He actually is telling the truth, and he is a classic lycanthrope.

Skeptically speaking option, A seems to be the only answer people threaten and act aggressive for all sorts of reasons, so it would make sense that if it means going the extra mile to scare a woman into giving up the goods or even getting a discount, people will do it. Now I will say going so far as to claim that you're a werewolf seems a little overkill, but who knows, perhaps that's this guy's wheelhouse, or maybe he's some sort of overly zealous furry. All we can really do is speculate why this guy would follow up on his creature claims.

Now, as for option B, even though it seems extremely unlikely, there is an incredibly long history of tales of people transforming into a werewolf either via curse, magic, deal with the devil, etc. So perhaps there is some truth to this, seeing as this kind of phenomenon occurs in every culture in Africa there are reports and claims of Werehyenas, in South America Werejaguars, in Asia Weretigers even in the Americas with tales of Skinwalkers witches who transform into the form of coyotes its almost implausible to me that every culture has seemingly come up with basically the same types of creatures without some sort of preexisting form for these stories. So perhaps that is what this phenomenon truly is.

Adding to the plausibility of this being an authentic possibility, all one needs to look at is the history of Dogmen and similar creatures. Unlike Bigfoot, lake monsters, Chupacabras, living dinosaurs, and almost every other conceivable cryptid, Dogmen are rarely authentically photographed, rarely have any physical evidence, and have basically no audio files; they evidence wise have basically nothing. Bigfoot has countless hair, scat, footprint, fingerprints, handprint samples; Champ has been caught on sonar and has been recorded echolocating, even the most esoteric of cryptids, Mothman and the Jersey Devil, have been photographed a few times. For dogmen, almost every photo has been a hoax, be it the Onaway photo or the CCTV photo, and the only compelling evidence has been some incredibly high claw marks and an occasional footprint. It's flabbergasting to me how a creature that recently has been seen on almost every other day has basically nothing to show for its existence but a ton of anecdotal evidence. Now with that said, if these creatures were genuine shapeshifters, it would sort of make sense. Unlike Bigfoot, who spends 100% of his time in the woods, or Nessie, who spends 80% of her time in the water and 20% on land, they almost have to leave traces of themselves behind, whereas a creature that can change from a human form to an animal or monster has the best camouflage around for they can hide in plain sight. They would only transform if they like An American Werewolf in London or the Wolfman they were confined to transformation by the lunar seasons, but if they were like the werewolves in the Howling, they could transform whenever they wanted so they could seriously leave barely any trace evidence that is until they get hungry.

This account, to me personally, is very difficult to peg for it's very bizarre. I personally tend to lean more on the skeptical side on this case; however, this encounter clearly shook the shopkeeper to the point that it almost could not have been just a crazy kook who thinks he's a werewolf. Some of the details he drops also are extremely interesting, but unfortunately, upon further digging, I could not validate any of his claims. One thing, though, I really wish would have been transcribed was the complete list of herbs the man wanted so that I could have checked to see if the list would match any known ancient concoction for werewolfism. If I could have had access to this, I could see if he actually knew more about occult practices as opposed to simply being an avid horror fan as the only herbs referenced are the ones that appear in almost every werewolf movie ever made as either a cure or cause for werewolfism but unfortunately this probably will simply be another layer to the mystery. Until then, the area near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border should be on high alert, for while the man was the only supposed werewolf that came forward, he did say that there was an entire pack in the woodlands, so who knows what horror they could wreak when the moon is full.  

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Human, Lycanthrope, 

Location: Pennsylvania- Ohio Border

Sighted: Unspecified Sometime Before 2010

Works Cited:

Monsters of Pennsylvania By Patty A. Wilson