'WOLFEN' VS 'THE WOLFEN' – COMPARING AND CONTRASTING A CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL MOVIE WITH THE CLASSIC NOVEL THAT INSPIRED IT

Front cover of my copy of Whitley Strieber's fascinating novel The Wolfen, upon which the movie Wolfen was loosely based; this is the 1992 resissue of Coronet Books' 1979 paperback edition (© Whitley Strieber/Coronet Books – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 14 July 2020, I finally got around to watching Wolfen, directed by Michael Wadleigh and filmed on location in the South Bronx area of New York City. It is the 1981 movie version of The Wolfen, which is bestselling Communion author Whitley Strieber's fascinating, classic novel from 1978 about a cryptic – and cryptid – species of super-intelligent canid that through convergent evolution has attained a humanoid level of sentience and even certain morphological attributes, such as very dexterous hand-like paws.

Yet it has remained largely unknown to Homo sapiens, except for supposed legends of werewolves and cynocephali that in reality are based upon fleeting and generally fatal (for humans) encounters with wolfen, for whom lost, abandoned, and ill humans are their natural prey. And then, fate steps in, and suddenly a series of grisly human killings in modern-day NYC leads the police to the sensational discovery of this hitherto hidden species of dogman.

The Wolfen is definitely one of my all-time favourite cryptozoology-themed novels, but sadly the movie was for me a distinct disappointment. To begin with, Albert Finney played an increasingly tiresome NYPD cop named Captain Dewey Wilson who was meant to be the dysfunctional anti-social genius character that crops up so regularly in sci-fi movies. Sometimes these work well, other times they are simply irritating – Wilson was definitely drawn from the latter category.

Front cover of the official Wolfen DVD that I own and have now watched (© Michael Wadleigh/Orion Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Also, whereas in the novel the wolfen were categorically cryptozoological – as I noted earlier, even their paws were humanoid – in the movie they are portrayed entirely as morphologically normal wolves, super-intelligent but outwardly indistinguishable from typical black-furred or (in one instance) white-furred wolves, which for me was a major let-down. Conversely, their cunning ability in the movie to lure curious humans within range by imitating a baby crying is conspicuous only by its absence in the novel. There was also a recurrent red herring theme related to shape-shifting and recalling the skinwalkers, which again did not appear in the novel but perhaps featured in the movie in order to distract viewers from the distinct lack of morphological separation here between wolf and wolfen.

A modern CGI-driven remake may well succeed where in my opinion this present almost 40-year-old film has failed in doing justice to the highly original, thought-provoking subject of Strieber's novel. Don't get me wrong, Wolfen is by no means a bad movie, it's just not the movie that I was hoping – expecting – it to be. But everyone has their own opinion – so click here to check out the original theatrical trailer for Wolfen, and make up your own mind.

Also, click here and here to read more on ShukerNature concernng werewolves, wulvers, cynocephali, and other dogmen in traditional legends and lore from around the world.

Dramatic artistic representation of a scene from the movie Wolfen (© Richard Svensson)

 

 

CYNOCEPHALI AND OTHER DOG-HEADED DENIZENS OF LEGEND AND LORE

A cynocephalus, as depicted on p. 22 of Monstrorum Historia (1642), written by Italian naturalist Ulisse Androvandi (public domain)

In medieval times, scholars firmly believed in the reality of all manner of extraordinary semi-human entities, supposedly inhabiting exotic lands far beyond the well-explored terrain of Europe. Prominent among these tribes of 'half-men' were the cynocephali or dog-headed people, popularly referred to by travellers and chroniclers. Their domain's precise locality, conversely, depended to a large extent upon the opinion of the specific traveller or chronicler in question, as few seemed to share the same view.

CYNOCEPHALI FROM FAR-DISTANT SHORES

Among the many legendary feats romantically attributed to Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), was his successful battle against a 40,000-strong army of cannibalistic cynocephali after he had invaded India, sending them fleeing and howling in terror in his wake. Some, however, were not swift enough and therefore fortunate enough to escape Alexander's merciless wrath, and were duly captured by him, their dismal fate being to be walled up alive beyond the mountain peaks at the furthest reach of the world.

Alexander the Great fighting cynocephali, painted by an unknown Flemish artist and dating from the late 15th Century (public domain)

A century earlier, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (c.484-c.425 BC) had claimed that a race of Ethiopian dog-heads termed the kynokephaloi not only barked instead of speaking, but also could spew forth flames of fire from their mouths! Another Greek historian from this same time period, Ctesias, claimed that cynocephali existed in India.

According to the Roman naturalist and scholar Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), the mysterious country of Ethiopia, which he mistakenly assumed was one and the same as India, was home both to the cynocephali and to the similarly dog-headed cynamolgi. Numbering 120,000 in total, the cynamolgi wore the skins of wild animals, conversed only via canine barks and yelps, and obtained milk, of which they were very fond, not from cows but by milking female dogs.

Cynocephali from the Andaman Islands, in a 15^th-Century Book of Wonders (public domain)

Later authors also often stated that India and/or certain Asian island groups were populated by cynocephali. The 13^th-Century Venetian traveller Marco Polo, who could never be accused of letting a good story slip by unpublicised, soberly announced that the Andaman Islands off Burma (now Myanmar) were home to a race of milk-drinking, fruit-eating (and occasionally human-devouring) dog-heads who engaged in peaceful trade with India.

During the early 15^th Century,, a travelling Italian missionary monk named Friar Odoric of Pordenone, writing in his Itinerarium (produced c.1410-1412),  relocated these entities to the nearby Nicobar Islands. In the previous century, conversely, the writings of Catalonian Dominican missionary/explorer Friar Jordanus had deposited them rather unkindly in the ocean between Africa and India.

Cynocephali of the Nicobar Islands, in the Itinerarium of Odoric of Pordenone (public domain)

Cynocephali living in India itself were also reported by 17^th-Century English theologian and geographer Peter Heylyn. He travelled widely and write extensively during the reign of Charles I, the Interregnum, and the Restoration of Charles II.

Nor should we forget Sir John Mandeville, even though his (in)famous supposed journeys to incredible faraway lands in Africa and Asia during the 14^th Century owe considerably more to imagination than to peregrination. In his tome Travels, he averred that a tribe of hound-headed people inhabited a mysterious island of undetermined location called Macumeran. Here, curiously, they venerated an ox, and were ruled by a mighty but pious king, who was identified by a huge ruby around his neck and also wore a string of 300 precious oriental pearls.

Cynocephalus in Mandeville's tome The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (public domain)

There are even reports of cynocephali being seen, and shown, in Europe. For example, according to an entry and picture in the Tractatus de Signis, Prodigiis et Portentis Antiquis et Novis, Cod. 4417, folio 9v (1503), which was an illustrated script dealing with signs and miracles reported up to 1503, and produced by Austrian historian Jakob Mennel (c.1460-c.1525), a living captured cynocephalus had been brought before Louis the Pious (778-840 AD), King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father Charlemagne.

In addition, the Kiev or Spiridon Psalter, a very famous East Slavic illuminated manuscript produced in 1397 by Archdeacon Spiridon in Kiev, included among its more than 300 miniature illustrations a very striking, brightly-coloured depiction on folio 28r of two pairs of aggressive-looking cynocephali armed with spears and swords flanking at the centre of the picture a haloed human figure (Jesus?). This illustration can be seen at the end of the present ShukerNature blog article. Although Spiridon definitely wrote the text of the Kiev Psalter, at least some of its miniatures may have been added by others at later dates.

Louis the Pious witnessing the living cynocephalus brought before him, as pictured in Jakob Mennel's Tractatus de Signis, Prodigiis et Portentis Antiquis et Novis (public domain)

CYNOCEPHALI OF THE CELTIC KIND

Less well known than the above-mentioned examples is the fact that dog-headed entities also feature in Celtic lore and mythology. As pointed out by Professor David Gordon White in his definitive book, Myths of the Dog-Man (1991), Irish legends tell of several cynocephalic people.

Perhaps the most notable of these legends concerns a great invasion of Ireland from across the western sea by a race of dog-headed marauders known as the Coinceann or Conchind, who were ultimately vanquished by the demi-god warrior Cúchulainn. Moreover, a tribe of dog-heads opposed King Arthur, and were duly fought by him (or by Sir Kay in some versions of this tale).

Myths of the Dog-Man, by Prof. David Gordon White (© Prof. David Gordon White/University of Chicago Press - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Irish legends also claim that St Christopher, a Canaanite who became the patron saint of travellers, was originally a giant cynocephalus, standing 5 cubits (7.5 ft) tall, who could only bark and howl, but prayed to God to grant him the power of speech so that he could defend Christians and spread the Christian word. God answered his prayer, and St Christopher later carried the infant Jesus safely across a swiftly-flowing river, possibly his most famous deed.

Interestingly, certain Byzantine iconography also depicts St Christopher as a cynocephalus. However, in his book Medieval Art: A Topical Dictionary (1996), Leslie Ross speculated that this perhaps resulted from confusion between the Latin words 'cananeus' (meaning 'Canaanite') and 'canineus' (meaning 'canine').

17^th-Century depiction of St Christopher as a cynocephalus, at Kermira (Germir), in Cappadocia, Turkey (public domain)

Shetland folklore tells of a supernatural entity known as the wulver, which has the body of a man but is covered in short brown hair and has the head of a wolf. According to tradition, this semi-human being lives in a cave dug out of a steep mound halfway up a hill, and enjoys fishing in deep water. Despite its frightening appearance, however, the wulver is harmless if left alone, and will sometimes even leave a few fishes on the windowsill of poor folk. A similar wolf-man entity is also said to exist in Exmoor's famous Valley of the Doones. Click here for further information on ShukerNature concerning British dogmen.

DOG-HEADED DEITIES AND RULERS

Cynocephalic deities are not infrequent in mythology, but the most familiar example must surely be Anubis – ancient Egypt's traditionally jackal-headed god of the dead, but now needing a taxonomic makeover, as the Egyptian jackal has lately been revealed to be a species of wolf, not a jackal at all. Originally, Anubis was the much-dreaded god of putrefaction, but in later tellings he became transformed into a guardian deity, protecting the dead against robbers, and overseeing the embalming process. His head's form was derived from the canine scavengers in Egyptian burial graves during the far-distant age preceding the pyramids when graves were shallow and hence readily opened.

Statue of Anubis (© Dr Karl Shuker)

The Furies or Erinnyes – the terrifying trio of avenging goddesses from Greek mythology – were the three hideous daughters of the Greek sky god Uranus and Gaia (Mother Earth), consisting of Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. Although they are more commonly depicted wholly as women, in early traditions they were described as possessing canine heads, as well as leathery bat-wings, fiery bloodshot eyes, foul breath, and hair composed of living serpents (like the trio of gorgons). Their allotted task was to harangue and punish evil-doers, especially parent-killers and oath-breakers, but eventually they were transformed into the kinder Eumenides.

Another figure in Greek mythology who underwent a canine transformation, although this time in reverse, was Lycaon. This wicked, foolhardy king of Arcadia served up the roasted flesh of his own son, Nyctimus, to Zeus, in order to test whether the supreme Greek deity would recognise it. Needless to say, Zeus did, and as a punishment he changed Lycaon into a wolf. Interestingly, however, Lycaon is often portrayed not as a complete wolf, but rather as a wolf-headed man.

16^th-Century engraving of Lycaon depicted as a cynocephalus (public domain)

REAL-LIFE CYNOCEPHALI

Zoologists seeking to nominate real animals as the inspiration for the legends of cynocephali generally offer two principal candidates. The first of these is the baboon, of which there are several species. The heads of these large monkeys are certainly dog-like.

Indeed, the yellow baboon is actually known scientifically as Papio cynocephalus. Moreover, the sacred baboon P. hamadryas is native to Ethiopia – source of the earliest cynocephalus myths. An alternative name for a third species, the olive baboon, is the anubis baboon, and it has the taxonomic name P. anubis.

A beautiful 19^th-Century engraving depicting the olive or anubis baboon (public domain)

The second candidate is the indri Indri indri [once Indri brevicaudatus] – one of the largest modern-day species of lemur, and indigenous to Madagascar. Measuring over 3 ft, but only possessing a very short, inconspicuous tail (hence brevicaudatus), and often spied sitting upright in trees, this highly distinctive creature does look remarkably like a short dog-headed human.

The indri did not formally become known to science until 1768, when French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat arrived in Madagascar. Even so, when other, earlier travellers visiting this exotic island returned home to Europe and regaled their listeners with much-embellished accounts of their journeys, these may well have included exaggerated tales about the indri.

Indri illustration by Pierre Sonnerat, in Johann von Schreber's series of tomes Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen (1775-92) (public domain)

Certainly, it would not take a sizeable stretch of the imagination to convert a dog-headed lemur into a fully-fledged cynocephalus – thus breathing life into a being that never existed in reality, yet which would be faithfully chronicled by a succession of relatively uncritical scholars for many centuries.Of such, indeed, are legends all too often born.

This ShukerNature blog article is expanded and updated from my book The Beasts That Hide From Man.

Cynocephali depicted in a miniature illustration on folio 28r of the Kiev Psalter, a medieval illuminated manuscript dating from 1397  - in close-up on left, in situ on right (public domain)

CRYPTOZOOLOGY IN THE VATICAN

A bizarre, still-unidentified mystery beast depicted in Pietro Candido Decembrio's Animal Book (1460)

A few years ago, a friend bought me a wonderful little book entitled And To Every Beast..., one in a series of beautifully-illustrated thematic mini-volumes collectively entitled Treasures of the Vatican Library. All of them combine biblical quotations with illustrations selected from various tomes or manuscripts held in the vast collection of the Vatican's library (which contains over one million printed books, as well as 150,000 manuscripts and some 100,000 prints).

And To Every Beast... (Millennium Books: Alexandria, NSW, Australia, 1994)

And To Every Beast... focused upon animals, real and mythological, but it greatly intrigued me, because although it contained versions of several famous illustrations present in other bestiaries, it also included some eye-opening pictures that I'd never seen before, of creatures that were so extraordinary as to be scarcely identifiable with anything known either to modern-day zoology or to zoomythology. This made all the more frustrating the fact that it did not state anywhere within its pages the original book or manuscript in the Vatican library that was the source of its pictures.

Happily, however, an online investigation via Google soon uncovered that elusive source publication. It was The Animal Book, written by famous Italian humanist and Renaissance author Pietro Candido Decembrio (1399-1477), commissioned by Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and published in 1460, with its illustrations added during the next century. So now, having solved that little mystery, here are some of this early tome's most fascinating if baffling illustrations, together with some commentary by me on what they may, or may not, depict.

TRUNKO LIVES?

And where better to begin than with the totally bewildering, ostensibly aquatic mystery animal featured in the illustration opening this ShukerNature blog post and reproduced again below.

A hoofed, flippered, long-tailed, short-trunked mystery beast

Scouring the Web, I have found that some sites have sought to identify it as a sea lion, but I see little if any resemblance to those particular pinnipeds. More plausible, even if only for the trunk-like proboscis, is an elephant seal, but the depicted beast's long tail and, especially, its hoofed forelegs, swiftly eliminate this from serious consideration – unless the artist was attempting to illustrate such a creature merely from a verbal description (and quite probably a somewhat less than accurate one at that), rather than a physical specimen, because elephant seals weren't known scientifically until the mid-/late 1600s. Similarly, the aardvark Orycteropus afer, another potential identity (albeit greatly distorted), remained scientifically undescribed until 1766; and the platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus, which has also been suggested by some, remained unknown to Europeans until 1798.

When I first looked at this picture, the identity that came into my mind was that of a desman, especially the Russian desman Desmana moschata - that large aquatic relative of moles, which possesses a proboscis, a long tail, and clawed flipper-like hindfeet. However, this species' forefeet are also clawed and flipper-like, not hoofed (unless, once again, the artist was basing his illustration upon an inaccurate verbal description only?).

A stuffed Russian desman (Didier Descouens/Museum of Toulouse/Wikipedia)

Out of sheer desperation, I might even have considered the dramatic possibility that this was a portrait of the enigmatic Trunko - had I not been personally responsible for the latter entity's conclusive exposure as a non-living globster (click here for the full revelation). Perhaps the most reasonable assumption is that it represents some hoax taxiderm specimen, created via the skilful union of body parts from a variety of different creatures and displayed at sideshows or other public exhibitions, alongside stuffed mermaids, preserved dragons, dried Jenny Hanivers, and other assorted fauna of the fraudulent, fabricated kind.

A SCALY FISH-MAN?

Equally perplexing is this illustration of a humanoid figure completely covered in green scales. One might be forgiven for initially assuming that it was meant to represent a merman. However, it possesses neither a fishtail (sporting instead a normal, fully-formed pair of legs) nor even any webbing between its fingers, in stark contrast to typical mermen – one of which is depicted elsewhere in the same book, thereby emphasising the difference between itself and this weird scaly human.

The scaly fish-man illustration

Conversely, it may constitute an image of a man suffering from ichthyosis – a sometimes-extreme skin disorder in which the sufferer can indeed be covered in thick green scale-like flakes of skin. In the distant past, several unfortunate persons with this unsightly but striking medical condition have been displayed at freak shows and similar exhibitions, usually labelled as 'fish-men'.

The typical merman illustration

OTHER ODDITIES

Much the same problems arise with many of the other creatures depicted in Candido's book, i.e. are they (a) mythical, are they (b) real but sometimes inaccurately represented, or are they (c) potentially cryptozoological?

An oenophilic cynocephalus

Examples clearly belonging to the first of those three categories include a basilisk and a cockatrice, a griffin, an amphisbaena, a manticore, a flying horse, and a pair of onocentaurs; plus a donkey unicorn (or unicorn donkey?); a more typical white unicorn but with a red face and tricoloured horn; a manticore-related, tapir-reminiscent beast of legend known as a leucrocuta; a hairy dog-headed man or cynocephalus scrutinising a goblet of red wine; a peacock-crested, azure-breasted phoenix with crimson wings and rooster-like wattles; and a bat-winged, scaly-bodied, limbless aerial dragon known as an amphiptere.

A many-hued phoenix

Those from the second category, meanwhile, include such familiar beasts as a lion, a lynx, a leopard, an eagle, a lammergeyer, an owl, an elephant, a stag, various hounds and horses, and a pelican, all depicted fairly or very naturally. Also present, but in stark contrast to the above-listed animals in terms of accurate representation, is a brown giraffe patterned only with a light speckling of small white flecks and armed with a pair of long curved antelope-like horns. Nor should (or could!) we overlook a gaudy multicoloured rhinoceros with extraordinary body armour that was clearly based upon the famous rhinoceros engraving of 1515 by Albrecht Dürer.

A sparsely-patterned, antelope-horned giraffe

And creatures from the third (and most intriguing) category not only include the trunked mystery beast and scaly humanoid already discussed here. Also worthy of consideration are such curiosities as a snake bearing a veritable crown of horns around its brow; another one with a pair of lateral cow-like horns; a carnivorous deer (judging from its dentition) with antlers so palmate in shape that they resemble a pair of human hands; an even more mysterious carnivorous mammal with claws but a horse-like mane plus bright red fur mottled with grey and gold patches; and a frog sporting a pair of very long, slender, almost upright horns upon its head.

A lynx and the red mystery carnivore

What could have inspired such zoological oddities? A verbal description of a horned viper may possibly have inspired the bovine snake's depiction, but what of the others?

A frog with horns

Whoever would have guessed that the Vatican was such a rich repository of cryptozoological and zoomythological exotica? And if you can obtain a copy of And To Every Beast..., please do so, because it's a thoroughly delightful, beautiful little book – highly recommended!!!

The multicoloured rhino and red-faced unicorn

WULVERS AND WOLFEN AND WEREWOLVES, OH MY!! - TALES OF THE UNINVITED

Wolf-men appear in the mythology of many cultures worldwide (Richard Svensson)

One of the most unusual examples of the werewolf movie genre was the film 'Wolfen' (1981), based upon the novel The Wolfen (1978) by Whitley Strieber. Albert Finney starred as a Manhattan detective searching for a mysterious, elusive, and exceedingly intelligent species of highly-evolved humanoid wolf, which has been preying upon humans from the earliest times and is responsible for the werewolf legends but has never been revealed by science. Of course, wolfen are wholly fictional...aren't they?

Front cover of my copy of Whitley Strieber's novel The Wolfen; this is the 1992 reissue of Coronet Books' 1979 paperback edition (Dr Karl Shuker)

Similarly, world mythology is amply supplied with wolf-headed humans or wolf-men. These include ancient Egypt's jackal-headed god of the dead, Anubis; the evil Thessaly-originating king of Arcadia, Lycaon, transformed into a wolf by Zeus but often portrayed as a wolf-headed man; the cynocephali of India; and even St Christopher, frequently depicted as a dog-headed human. Moreover, the British Isles is famously rich in fabulous monsters, one of which is the wulver - a reclusive wolf-headed humanoid from Shetland mythology, which is covered in short brown hair, lives in caves dug out of steep hills, and enjoys fishing. Once again, however, wulvers are entirely legendary...or are they?

Medieval colour illustration of some cynocephali supposedly sighted by Marco Polo in the Andaman Islands

There is an unsettling number of reports on file describing reputedly authentic encounters with wolf-men. These include the following pair of spine-chilling incidents, each featuring an extraordinary skull and the even more extraordinary events that followed its discovery.

Southwest of the Shetlands is another group of Scottish islands - the Hebrides or Western Isles. According to ghost-hunter Elliot O'Donnell's book Werewolves (1912), these were once the setting for a frightening encounter with a decidedly malign wulver-like beast. Several years earlier, O'Donnell had taken down the testimony of the wolf-man eyewitness, a Mr Warren (named as Andrew Warren in an account of this episode included by Graham McEwan in his book Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland, 1986), who claimed that his creepy experience had occurred while he was a teenager, staying in the Hebrides:

"I was about fifteen years of age at the time, and had for several years been residing with my grandfather, who was an elder in the Kirk [Church] of Scotland. He was much interested in geology, and literally filled the house with fossils from the pits and caves round where we dwelt. One morning he came home in a great state of excitement, and made me go with him to look at some ancient remains he had found at the bottom of a dried-up tarn [lake]. 'Look!' he cried, bending down and pointing at them, 'here is a human skeleton with a wolf's head. What do you make of it?' I told him I did not know, but supposed it must be some kind of monstrosity. 'It's a werwolf[sic]! he rejoined, 'that's what it is. A werwolf! This island was once overrun with satyrs and werwolves! Help me carry it to the house.' I did as he bid me, and we placed it on the table in the back kitchen. That evening I was left alone in the house, my grandfather and the other members of the household having gone to the kirk. For some time I amused myself reading, and then, fancying I heard a noise in the back premises, I went into the kitchen. There was no one about, and becoming convinced that it could only have been a rat that had disturbed me, I sat on the table alongside the alleged remains of the werwolf, and waited to see if the noises would recommence. I was thus waiting in a listless sort of way, my back bent, my elbows on my knees, looking at the floor and thinking of nothing in particular, when there came a loud rat, tat, tat of knuckles on the window-pane. I immediately turned in the direction of the noise and encountered, to my alarm, a dark face looking in at me. At first dim and indistinct, it became more and more complete, until it developed into a very perfectly defined head of a wolf terminating in the neck of a human being. Though greatly shocked, my first act was to look in every direction for a possible reflection - but in vain. There was no light either without or within, other than that from the setting sun - nothing that could in any way have produced an illusion. I looked at the face and marked each feature intently. It was unmistakably a wolf's face, the jaws slightly distended; the lips wreathed in a savage snarl; the teeth sharp and white; the eyes light green; the ears pointed. The expression of the face was diabolically malignant, and as it gazed straight at me my horror was as intense as my wonder. This it seemed to notice, for a look of savage exultation crept into its eyes, and it raised one hand - a slender hand, like that of a woman, though with prodigiously long and curved finger-nails - menacingly, as if about to dash in the window-pane. Remembering what my grandfather had told me about evil spirits, I crossed myself; but as this had no effect, and I really feared the thing would get at me, I ran out of the kitchen and shut and locked the door, remaining in the hall till the family returned. My grandfather was much upset when I told him what had happened, and attributed my failure to make the spirit depart to my want of faith. Had he been there, he assured me, he would soon have got rid of it; but he nevertheless made me help him remove the bones from the kitchen, and we reinterred them in the very spot where we had found them, and where, for aught I know to the contrary, they still lie."

Quite aside from its highly sensational storyline, it is rather difficult to take seriously any account featuring someone (Warren's grandfather) who seriously believed that the Hebrides were "...once overrun with satyrs and werwolves"! By comparison, and despite his youthful age, Warren's own assumption that the skeleton was that of a deformed human would seem eminently more sensible - at least until the remainder of his account is read. Notwithstanding Warren's claim that his account was factual, however, the arrival of what was presumably another of the deceased wolf-headed entity's kind, seeking the return of the skeleton to its original resting place, draws upon a common theme in traditional folklore and legend.

King Lycaon, portrayed in this 16th-Century copperplate engraving by Italian artist Agostino de' Musi as a ferocious wolf-headed man comparable to the entity reported by Andrew Warren

As documented in Werewolves (1933) by the Reverend Montague Summers, an authority on such entities, the second of the two bloodcurdling episodes to be considered here occurred in summer 1888, and featured a professor from Oxford who had rented a holiday cottage in a mountainous area of Merionethshire, Wales. During his stay there, the professor decided to go fishing one day in a local lake, and while doing so he hooked an unusual object that proved to be the skull of an extremely large dog-like beast. Curious to discover more about his unusual catch, he took the skull back to the cottage, but left it in the kitchen when he went out for the evening with a friend, leaving his wife alone in the cottage.

While they were away, the professor's wife suddenly heard a strange snuffling sound outside the kitchen door, but when she went into the kitchen she saw to her horror the face of a terrifying red-eyed beast, seemingly part-human and part-wolf, outside the window, grasping the window ledge with paws that resembled hands. Greatly frightened, she ran back to the front door of the cottage and bolted it - just in time. Moments later, the monster was panting outside, and rattling the door's latch. Unable to open the door, it paced round and round the cottage, snarling and growling with rage as it vainly sought some way to enter, until eventually it departed, leaving the petrified woman shaking with fear inside.

When her husband returned with their friend, they made absolutely sure that the house was totally secure, and then sat waiting with stout sticks and a gun at the ready, in case the wolf-man, werewolf, wulver, or whatever it was, returned - which it did.

Holding a figure which may resemble the wolf-man that besieged the professor's holiday cottage in Wales (Dr Karl Shuker)

Later that same night, as the cottage lay enshrouded in a still darkness, its three alert occupants heard the soft crunching of paws upon the gravel outside, then the scratching of nails or claws against the kitchen window. And, to quote Summers, as they peered towards the sound: "...in a stale phosphorescent light they saw the hideous mask of a wolf with the eyes of a man glaring through the glass, eyes that were red with hellish rage". They raced to the door, but their quarry had heard them, and as they opened it they could just discern a huge form racing into the lake, and disappearing from view beneath the surface.

There seemed only one way of bringing this living nightmare to a close. So as soon as it was light, the professor left the cottage, rowed out into the lake, and hurled the mysterious skull as far as possible into the lake's depths. Returning the skull from whence it had come evidently restored an equilibrium of sorts, because its semi-lupine seeker never returned.

Coupled with its melodramatic storyline, this case's absence of names via which its details could be independently checked or pursued by other researchers does not bode well for its verisimilitude. Of course, it could be that the professor and the others did indeed exist but did not wish their identities to be made public - which, though perfectly understandable, is hardly beneficial in furthering the case's claims to authenticity.

What big teeth you have! (Richard Svensson)

Even more worrying, however, is this case's profound similarity to the earlier one, documented by O'Donnell. In both histories, a large canine skull (one in isolation, the other attached to a human skeleton) is found in a lake (one still containing water, the other dried up), brought back to the finder's residence, and left there in the kitchen during the evening with only a single person in the house. This person is duly confronted at the kitchen window by a terrifying face and hand(s) - presumably a living representative of the skull's species (described in near-identical manner within the two histories) searching for it. Although the entity is ultimately frustrated, it has elicited sufficient fear for the skull's finder to return the skull to its place of discovery, after which the entity is not seen again.

All the better to bite you with!! (Richard Svensson)

Yet even if we dismiss Summers's case as a piece of fiction inspired by O'Donnell's report, there are others still to account for, some of which are again included in O'Donnell's book and McEwan's. Hence it is a great pity that the remains reputedly found by Warren's grandfather were never examined by a qualified zoologist. After all, how often in modern times has science been presented with the skeleton of a mythical entity for formal scrutiny?

Wolf magic!

DOG-FACED OGRES AND TREE-CLIMBING MAN-BEASTS.

Kopuwai, a dog-faced maero from New Zealand (Angus McBride/Finding Out)

In a recent ShukerNature post (click here), I presented the entire set of spectacular and much sought-after cryptozoological and zoomythological illustrations by Angus McBride that appeared on the back covers of 36 issues of Finding Out – a British partwork magazine for children that was published during the 1960s.

Many of the creatures so depicted were very familiar, but a few were rather less so, and one in particular – due in no small way to Angus McBride’s extremely dramatic illustration – has led to my receiving a number of requests for information regarding it. The creature in question was the maero (featuring on the back cover of Vol 16 #12 of Finding Out in 1966), and McBride’s illustration of it is the stunning artwork that opens this present blog post of mine.

As it happens, beneath each of these back cover images in Finding Out was a concise account of the entity that it depicted, so I am presenting as follows the account that appeared there for the maero:

“Dense rain forests, great mountains and river gorges were the homes of the maero, strange hairy people who lived in the South Island of New Zealand.

“Some stories say that they were dog-faced ogres, but these were not true maero. The Maoris' highly complicated folklore includes many different types of enchanted beings and monsters.

“One of the dog-faced ogres was Kopuwai of the Matau, who had the body of a man, the head of a dog and was covered with scales like a fish. He had a special understanding of dogs and the dog-like characteristic of a keen sense of smell.

“Kopuwai had a pack of fierce, two-headed dogs which helped him in his hunt for food. And his favourite food was men and women.

“One day he saw Kaiamio of the Rapuwai tribe and captured her for his wife. He kept her tied to a long piece of rope, but as the years passed Kaiamio did not give up hope of escaping from the horrible monster.

“Finally she managed to build a raft, and she escaped from the cave high in the mountains down the river and back to her own people. Kopuwai was so angry that he drank all the water in the river until it was dry (his name means "Water Stomach").

“Kaiamio brought her tribesmen back to the cave where they lit a fire and battered Kopuwai to death when he tried to escape through the vent in the top.

The dogs escaped and fled to another cave where they were turned to stone and could be seen afterwards with their front paws hanging out of the cave.”

Thus ended Kopuwai, a veritable cynocephalus. As for the genuine maero (also known as the macro), I documented this little-known arboreal man-beast as follows in my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997):

“One of the most unlikely homes for furry mystery beasts must surely be New Zealand. Separated from all other land masses for over 64 million years, this dual-island country does not harbor any native species of terrestrial mammal - officially. In reality, cryptozoologists have long been perplexed by the supposed existence here of a mystifying otter-like creature termed the waitoreke, with numerous eyewitness records on file. However, this is not the only mystery mammal documented from New Zealand.

“Virtually unknown is a strange tree-climbing entity called the macro. In a letter of May 2 1846 to English zoologist J.E. Gray (Annals and Magazine of Natural History), New Zealand's Governor, Sir George Grey, noted that the natives had described to him:

‘...another new animal which they call a 'Macro'; they say it is like a man covered over with hair, but smaller and with long claws; it inhabits trees and lives on birds; they represent it as being strong and active, and state they are afraid of them. I hope in a few weeks to be able to visit the country (mountains covered with forests) which the animals live in, and as I am not afraid of them, I hope I shall send you one before long.’

“Yet despite Grey's promise, nothing more was heard. As for J.E. Gray, it is clear that he was not previously aware of such a creature, because he did not mention it in his 'Notes on the Materials at Present Existing Towards a Fauna of New Zealand', within Ernst Dieffenbach's Travels in New Zealand (1842).

“There is a species of non-native mammal currently thriving in New Zealand that initially seems to provide a satisfactory identity for the macro. This is the brush-tailed possum Trichosurus vulpecula [see photo below], a superficially lemur-like marsupial that originated from Australia. Unfortunately, however, the first specimens introduced into New Zealand did not arrive here until 1858.


“Even the macro's name is controversial. As I learned from Canterbury Museum researcher Ron Scarlett, 'macro' is a corruption. If a genuine Maori word, it would be spelled 'makaro', 'makero', 'makiro', or 'makuro' (the letter 'c' does not exist in the Maori language, and consonants rarely occur consecutively within a word - they are almost always separated by a vowel). Yet none of these, with any meaning applicable to an animal, is listed in Williams's standard Dictionary of the Maori Language.

“Thus I concluded that if the macro is genuine, it must now be extinct - unless it never actually existed in New Zealand to begin with! Perhaps it was only a folk memory of a monkey, lemur, or Asian loris spied by the Maoris' ancestors during their travels, whose description was preserved orally through successive generations, but gradually became so distorted in the telling and retelling that it ultimately 'transformed' into a seemingly unknown species allegedly frequenting the Maoris' new home, New Zealand.

“This scenario is reminiscent of the version proposed by Dr Bernard Heuvelmans in On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958) for Australia's bizarre yara-ma-yha-who - a sucker-fingered, toothless, frog-like dwarf with vampiresque tendencies.

“Although no such entity has ever been formally discovered here, in overall appearance it readily recalls those small lemur-related primates from southeast Asia known as tarsiers. Accordingly, Heuvelmans suggested that perhaps the yara-ma-yha-who comprises a memory of tarsiers that was retained by Malays invading Australia prior to the white man's arrival here.

“In reality, however, the macro is neither extinct nor a folk memory of something from beyond Australia - in fact, it never existed at all! I very recently solved the mystery of the macro while perusing through A.W. Reed's A Treasury of Maori Folklore (1963). Once again, it contained no mention of any macro - but it did refer, and in detail, to entities called the maero. Confined in most reports to South Island, the maero has been conjectured by researchers to be the last remnants of a primitive tribe of people called the Ngati-mamoe, driven by the more advanced Maoris into Fjordland's virtually inaccessible valleys and mountains.

“According to traditional accounts, the maero were said to be hairy, with long finger nails that they used to catch birds and fishes. Two male maero were allegedly captured a long time ago by the Maoris of Pelorus Sound, and supposedly sported four-inch-long nails. These descriptions of the maero and Grey's report of the macro closely match one another. And their names do too - so much so that there is little doubt that 'macro' in Grey's report was simply a printing error, with 'maero' as the intended name.”

Representation of the yara-ma-yha-who (Tim Morris)

Incidentally, as I also noted in From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings, the maero should not be confused (although it often is) with a much larger, man-like entity reputedly residing on North Island's Coromandel Peninsula (and Mount Moehau in particular), east of Auckland, and variously described as silver-haired or red-furred (based respectively upon sightings of old and young specimens?).

Usually referred to as Coromandel Man or the Moehau Monster, this human-sized biped has been reported spasmodically since the late 1930s, sometimes as a single being, or as one of several inhabiting this area. Many identities have been suggested, including an undiscovered bigfoot-like species, an eccentric hermit, or even a stranded extraterrestrial alien. More likely is that the sightings feature the last of the mainland Morioris or even involve racial memories of them. The Moriori were a tribe of Maori people (once thought to be pre-Maoris) that emigrated from mainland New Zealand to the Chatham Islands prior to 1500 AD, where they were later conquered and slaughtered in large numbers by other invading Maoris, who also refused to permit them to marry one another, so that pure-bred Morioris eventually died out there (the last apparently dying in 1933).