by elzebrook – intended as speech

I would like to add that this sounds more intelligent spoken rather than read. In speech writing, you write for the ear rather than the eye.
Disclaimer: The “lifestylers” I mention are not otherkin, they are closer to wishkin than anything. This is not meant to disparage wolf-therians, it is meant as an informational source about the werewolf myths.
It’s a winter night, cold and snowing. Despite the full moon, the woods are dark, and God only knows what’s lurking in them. A branch cracks. Eyes seem glitter in the shadows. Panic sets in. Another branch snaps, closer this time. Suddenly, out of the darkness comes [insert howl here].

When faced with circumstances such as these, it is easy to jump to a supernatural conclusion. Experiences like it spawn and feed local legends and folklore, until they become like the werewolves of today. Nearly everyone knows something of the werewolf myth. Indeed, werewolves have become somewhat like vampires, a twisted pop culture icon with a massive following, alleged sightings and lifestylers.

Many cultures have some form of werewolf story. There are many different ways of becoming a werewolf, and it varies by culture. The simplest way is to put on a wolf skin. The most widely accepted way today is to be bitten by a werewolf, so the saliva enters the blood stream, infecting the victim. The time in which the werewolf shifts also differs, ranging from only on the full moon, to anytime felt like, to once every seven years or more. There are also many ways of killing a werewolf or shifting back to human form. The simplest way is to take off the wolf skin. There are other, more striking ways, like throwing an iron hatchet at their head, but the most well-known way now is to shoot them with a silver bullet. Silver is extremely toxic to a werewolf, rather like cyanide is to humans. These are only some of the folklore and myths surrounding the werewolf.

One possible explanation for what began the myths is hypertrichosis.
These are two pictures of what would appear to be wolf-men; Petrus Gonsalvus who bore such titles as The Wolf-Man, and the Hairy Man of the Canary Islands and Fedor Jeftichew, also known as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, a popular circus attraction. Both men suffered from hypertrichosis, which causes animal fur-like hair to grow all over the body. Hypertrichosis is a genetic mutation, a physical and sometimes mental throwback to the early Homo sapiens. Fedor’s father also suffered from hypertrichosis. Apparently, he was unable to be civilized, barking and growling instead of speaking. This could have been all show, but if it were true, it could not be a stronger contrast to Fedor. Fedor spoke five languages and was an extremely intelligent individual, despite his rather bestial appearance. The werewolves of so many legends could be isolated people like Fedor and his father, spotted by villagers, their stories told until they reached a mythic status.

There are, of course, other possible explanations for the werewolf. One of them is ergot poisoning. Ergot is a fungus that attacks wheat grain. It has properties similar to LSD, but is much stronger. If a village were poisoned with ergot, one person could “see” a wolfish monster, or a man turn into a wolf, and the rest of the poisoned village could begin to have their own sightings. The Northern European werewolves could be explained by berserkers, who often went into battle wearing wolf skins and fought like demons, due to the drugs they took in preparation. The tales of the berserker warriors could have carried from culture to culture, expanded and embellished upon.

The modern werewolf is probably an accumulation of all three of these possibilities and other folklore. One lost villager sees a dark shadow in the night, another spots a man shape covered with animal fur, and then hears tell of another village plagued by wolfish demons. Stories like this combine together to make a local legend, which expands and meets more local legends from other societies. Soon, legend becomes myth and there is a cultural phenomenon, a Hollywood icon and an everlasting tribute to the human gift of exaggeration.