A werewolf is a person capable of assuming the form of an animal. In Slavic mythology, this animal is a wolf, in Lithuanian legends a fox, a leopard, a wild dog, and among the Scandinavians a wolf or a bear. North American Indians believed that a person could take the form of a totem of his tribe. Werewolf traits are also attributed to other mythical vampire creatures that can take the guise of a bat or large dog.
A person became a werewolf as a result of magical influence or the imposition of a curse, as well as due to the bite of another werewolf. But in the latter case, he can fight with his new essence until he tastes human blood.
According to the degree of danger to the people around them, all werewolves are divided into:
1) wolves are creatures that, as a result of transformation, lose all human features and become real wild animals;
2) demons of cruel killers, the motive of whose actions was revenge or hatred;
3) lycanthropes of creatures that preserve the human mind.
Legends about werewolves exist in one form or another among all the peoples of the world.
Most often, a wolf still appears under the guise of a werewolf, especially in those countries where these animals were widespread and attacked people or livestock, for example, in France and England.
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Signs that a person is a werewolf were thick eyebrows fused over the bridge of the nose, long bloody nails, small ears low on the head, unusually thick hair on the body, especially on the legs and arms. Werewolf people behave aggressively, often fall into an unreasonable rage, suffer from insomnia.
Whole villages hunted and raided werewolves, with the involvement of church officials. It was believed that a werewolf would turn back into a human if a priest wounded him. You could also injure a werewolf, spill three drops of his blood on the ground, and loudly pronounce his human name. But most often werewolves were hunted for the purpose of extermination. According to legends, it is not difficult to kill such a creature. It is enough to beat him with clubs or stones, or shoot him with a silver bullet. Wounded or killed, the werewolf became a human again.
Scientists have long considered stories about werewolves nothing more than a fairy tale. But in the second half of the 20th century, it was proved that werewolf is a really existing serious illness of lycanthropy, during the course of which the sick person loses their human features and loses their mind. Of course, he does not become absolutely like a wolf, but this creature also ceases to be a man.
The disease is hereditary. Outbreaks of it are observed under certain climatic conditions, the way and traditions of nutrition, genetic abnormalities. Therefore, in the Middle Ages, entire villages could get sick, which happened in Western Europe, especially in Sweden and Switzerland.
But, according to legends, the beast could turn back into a man. In the case of illness, this is impossible.