Revewing Linda Godfrey's Real Wolfmen

Ever since I was young I was fascinated by werewolves. I had read most of the classics by the time I was in high school. From Montague Summers’ Werewolf (rather dry and boring), to Ian Woodward’s The Werewolf Delusion (best book on the subject I have read so far) so I am not unfamiliar with the basics.

Cover of my edition of the book

I purchased Linda S. Godfrey’s book Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America hoping to read some reports that would convince me that upright canines were real. Godfrey speaks of loads of folklore and has a tendency to use these myths to explain perfectly mundane things.

For example a black, shaggy, floppy-eared hound attacked a family’s pet dog one night in Argentina. Thinking it was a Lobizon the people beat the strange mutt with hoes and bricks until it was unconscious than dragged it outside.  It latter ran off and was last seen cowering behind a gas pump by a station attendant. Godfrey goes on about how it was probably a skinwalker that has lost his coyote skin and that was why it looked so scared when hiding behind the pump. I am not making this up - a skinwalker and not simply a terrified stray dog beaten by superstitious fools!

A Newfoundland (Right) compared to a coyote (Left) - No similarity other than both being canines.

 

She also claims things that are obvious falsehoods. Things easily checked simply by using google or going to a library. For example in the chapter on the beast of Gévaudan she claims the 2009, the documentary The Real Wolfman said the beast was an extinct species of hyena. The hyena in question is the Striped Hyena (Hyaena hyaena) which is still alive and well throughout Africa and Asia.

Her writing reminds me of Janet and Colin Bord Alien Animals who also prefer supernatural mumbo jumbo to facts and made absurd claims, The topping on the cake being that Archaeopteryx was a large creature responsible for the Cornish owlman reports. Yes the Bords describe Archaeopteryx as “Large” - an animal the size of a crow!

By the time I was done with Real Wolfmen I was absolutely convinced that 90% of all the sightings in this book were nothing more unusual then bears. The other 10% were a mix of bobcats, perfectly normal canines (mostly domestic dogs and in one case a wolf suffering from deafness), and people with WAY to much imagination and little ability to tell reality from fantasy.

Why bears, as opposed to Linda’s own hypothesis that wolves have learned to walk upright like a circus poodle as a threat display? Simply if its the size of a bear, has the stubby tail of a bear, is the color of a bear, has the feet of a bear, and even sounds like a bear - its a BEAR, no matter how much the witness insist it was not. 

Next post - why I think the majority of "dogman" reports are bears.