A werewolf is one of the central figures of the oldest superstitions. This monster featured in numerous Hollywood blockbusters has been terrifying children and adults worldwide for thousands of years as well as vampires, witches, mermaids, ghosts and sorcerers. Werewolf is also known by the name ‘lycanthrope’ meaning “a wolf human” and originating from the Greek word Likantropia. Some dictionaries define the word as ‘turning a witch into a wolf”.
The werewolf theme was always popular in the folklore worldwide, and each country has its name for the creature. Beginning from the epoch of Romulus and Remus, stories about wolves and werewolves excited the imagination of such prominent figures as Jean-Jack Rousseau, Carolus Linnaeus and Jonathan Swift. The talented writers composed an entire series of wonderful stories about werewolves.
However, the werewolf is little known as compared with his fellow, the vampire. The werewolf is more multiform and more mysterious than the vampire. The modern science may easily discredit all the mythical characteristics given to the vampire. But it is known that in old times some strange disease really affected entire settlements and turned people living there into furious beasts. Those diseased revealed all the classical symptoms of lycanthropy.
The interest to the werewolf issue seems to be inexhaustible. In the 20th century, filmmakers were inspired with the issue for making a great number of films about werewolves. Today, fiction and journalism reveal even a deeper approach to the werewolf issue and consider it in a wider aspect.
December 17, 1976 London’s The Daily Mail published a story entitled ‘Werewolf Killer Caught, The Police Say’ that told about the seizure of a criminal known as the Paris werewolf for committing numerous killings. At the end of WWII, Nazis founded a terrorist organization code named Werwolf (Werewolf). Criminals are often described with the strong moral metaphor ‘werewolves’ when they commit really wild series killings, violations that are beyond logic; when they practice cannibalism, tortures, sadomasochism and Satanism. The irony of the metaphor means that the wolf never attacks and kills itself unless it is hungry or wounded. According to recent researches, wolves in a pack maintain close trusting relations where the entire pack is based upon mutual responsibility. And in case some of the wolves in a pack reveals the killer instinct they liquidate it for the welfare of the rest of the pack.
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