Rambling 109: Werewolf Science
/
What is the science behind the stories of werewolves? What are the possible events that lead to their stories being shared over generations? Answers and theories to that on this episode.
Story:
After an episode where Calm Cristy elaborated on the intricate folklore and stories of Werewolves, Genocidal Jack decides to do an even deeper dive to see if the stories hold and scientific validity. With hopes of coming to a conclusion and maybe one day capturing their own pet werewolf, the duo unpack the origin of their stories. But what they discover about werewolves, native tribes and synthetic drugs throws their plans for a loop in ways they could not have predicted. All that and more on this episode of Just Conversation.
+Episode Details
Remember to leaves us a rating wherever you listen to podcast!
Topics Discussed
- Werewolf Origin Story
- Yellow Eyes
- Monster in the Woods
- Hauling Wolves
- Tribal Native Outfits
- Synthetic Drugs
- Bath Salts
- Rabies
- Full Moon
Our Links:
Official Website - https://greythoughts.info/podcast
Twitter - https://twitter.com/JustConvoPod
Facebook - https://facebook.com/justconvopod
Instagram - https://instagram.com/justconvopod
+Transcripts
Jack: Where do werewolves come from? Is there an example in nature of what a werewolf could be? Or maybe a werewolf is just a collection of ideas, possibilities, stories passed through generation. So what is a werewolf? The answer to that and more coming up on this episode of Just Conversation.
Cristina: Warning. This program contains strong themes meant for a mature audience. Discretion is advised.
Jack: Going live in 5, 4.
Cristina: What does live mean?
Jack: Welcome to the Just Conversation podcast, the show where we ground humanity's most absurd and baffling ideas in childish ways. I'm your host, Jack.
Cristina: And I'm your host, Christina.
Jack: And if you haven't yet, remember to hit that subscribe button to get notified the second new episodes are released.
Cristina: And also, this show is most enjoyable with a listening partner to share opinions and ideas on topics we discuss.
Jack: Yes. So make sure to get some body pulled up nice and close and prepare to be en. Wokened. It's like the combination of enlightened and woke.
Cristina: Whoa. The next level.
Jack: The next level. It's because the woke movement is of dumbasses and the enlightened movement is of, like, self help and like, what is it called? The. The essential oils and crystals, people. And it's like, how are you supposed to communicate if you ban everything?
Cristina: I don't know. What's. Your facial expressions?
Jack: I don't even know, man. Because you're not allowed to say everything because everybody's emotions. The end. Just everybody's emotions. And it's like, all right, so if everybody's censoring themselves for everybody's emotions, everybody's being f. But you get offended by fake people because they're not being real, which is where all those. You know, if somebody's lying to you, you're being fake, then, you know, remove them from your life. But you put them there because they can't say anything. You don't let them say. So they have to be fake in the first place in order to communicate. But then you don't like them being fake because it's fake. And so you remove them from your life. Before long, you force everybody to censor themselves, but you don't like anybody because they're all being this fake person. And then you find yourself alone and kill yourself.
Cristina: And you're also depressed because you're always having to be fake.
Jack: Yes, you also. You're a hypocrite. You land as a hypocrite at the.
Cristina: End of it because, yeah, you're doing the same. You have to do the same thing for everyone else. If you expect everyone else to do the same that to you. And Yep.
Jack: Although I don't believe that. No, I don't believe any of them. Like practice what they preach.
Cristina: Well, next we'll have to censor emotions. That's the next thing.
Jack: I think the only thing. We should be censoring our emotions. There should be no f*** speech. There should be because we need to communicate. There should be emotion police because you shouldn't. The problem is we're living in a backwards society where people rely on others for how they feel. Like why can words affect you that way? What the f***? Just suck it up. Your emotions are your emotions, not anybody else's. Actions that affect people, that's a problem.
Cristina: And they, they need help. Everyone needs help.
Jack: Everybody needs help. That's crazy.
Cristina: I want to be emotion police. What do I have to do?
Jack: I don't know. There's. I mean any kind of police, I guess you just sign up, they give you a gun and a badge like a day later and they're like, go out there and kill as many as you can.
Cristina: Yeah. Anyone who shows emotion, I just shoot them.
Jack: Yeah. They're like, if they show emotion, they're getting hostile. And then you put them down.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: That's how you do it. They show emotion. The suspect is being hostile. Then you throw yourself on the floor. Officer down, I need backup. Then you pull out your gun, he's attacking and then you just shoot him a couple of times. And he was just Karen ing it out.
Cristina: Yeah. And I'm just being a soccer player.
Jack: A soccer player?
Cristina: Yeah. Just like, oh no, my ankle. Oh yeah.
Jack: Like when a soccer player barely gets touched. Like that guy who got tapped in the shoulder and then threw himself on the floor and pretended to like be super hurt.
Cristina: Yeah, those soccer moves, those are my favorite part of soccer. There's nothing better. It's so. That's even more so papyri than like any other sport. There's nothing, no drama like soccer drama.
Jack: Like it. No. They will pretend everything is the end of the world. Yes, it's so funny. But keeping on the theme of rage and anger and going hostile and cops shooting people for no reason because that's what cops do. And if you're going to be emotion police, you better be ready to shoot anybody emotional. Which means all the Karens are going to die.
Cristina: Sorry, Karen's.
Jack: They gotta. They're ruining the world anyways. As people get wokened, we can educate them on anger. Particularly like rage filled anger. No. All jokes aside, previously previously on this Conversation. You were telling us some wolf related folklore. Werewolves. Yes. And although we came to some interesting conclusions. That episode turned out unique. We landed. We stumbled on some things that I didn't think would connect, but they did.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: That was interesting. But that gave me the thought that, like, how much do we really, like, sure, we know folklore, but, like, can we make a real werewolf? Is that like, a thing? Could it. Could it be possible that there was always a real werewolf? Like, everything?
Cristina: But when you're saying make, are you talking about, like, scientists, like, Scooby Doo lab?
Jack: No, I'm saying, like, is it based on something true?
Cristina: Oh, okay.
Jack: I'm saying, like, in every circumstance, every bit of folklore is based. It's like a rumor or a stereotype. Like some part of what's happening is true somehow.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So where did a werewolf come from? There must be something in there that's truth. Something that isn't a lie.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Even when we think of some of the conclusions from that very episode, those have to be based on some manner, shape, or form of something that was real to begin with.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: And so I started to sort of look into it, trying to find out. And obviously it took me to situations from the past and situations from the present. Mixture of things sprinkled together create a pretty interesting painting of what a werewolf could have rooted from. There is a multitude of things. And one of the things I didn't know about werewolves is that they have yellow eyes.
Cristina: What?
Jack: Yeah. A lot of folklore about werewolves referenced yellow eyed beasts. Yeah. That they had almost like cat like, eye slit, but that their surrounding eye is very yellow. Like you could see bright yellow eyes.
Cristina: They look like cat eyes.
Jack: The pupil.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: But the rest of the eye, the cornea, I guess, would be. Looks very, very yellow. And I couldn't zero in on anything in reality that for some reason would cause that. Except one very specific thing, which is actually pretty common. If you don't take care of yourself. And that thing is when you have an inflamed liver, when you have liver damage and it can't process things properly.
Cristina: It turns your eyes yellow.
Jack: Your eyes turn yellow.
Cristina: Oh, like the white part turns yellow or.
Jack: Yes.
Cristina: Okay. That's what.
Jack: Yes.
Cristina: And you looked at pictures of it?
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: Whoa. Does it look creepy looking?
Jack: It looks pretty normal.
Cristina: Oh, so you wouldn't, in the dead of night, see someone with those yellow eyes?
Jack: They wouldn't have, like, glowing eyes. Like, that's an exaggeration. I don't know why. They'd have, like, fluorescent eyes or some s***.
Cristina: Yeah. But just those eyes wouldn't creep you out.
Jack: Yes. And if you saw those Eyes in a figure that was more or less in shadow. You would more than anything, like in any other case, see the eyes, most likely.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: And when it comes to eyes darkness, there's the stereotype of the black person in the dark. One of the few things you can see from them is their teeth and their eyes, because those are white. In the case that a dark skinned person is hanging out in the woods, teeth and eyes are what you'd see if you see teeth and yellow eyes, but they're hard to make out, you have a monster. Especially considering that most of these things go back to racist old white people from old times. So they had slaves. Slaves would escape, they would run away. And it's not an empty everything around you. There's other people. So you're running through the woods and you stumble into somebody's yard or some s***, they look your way, they can see teeth and yellow eyes, and they're scared there's a creature running through the woods. Especially if they've never seen a black person before. You're already something that they don't understand. So you're some sort of. And this is not doing anything extreme. You're malnourished, you have very little water, you have liver damage for some reason. You have yellow eyes. As a result, you're running through the woods and all they can see are your teeth and your yellow eyes. You're just escaping slave masters.
Cristina: You're a werewolf.
Jack: You're werewolf. You're some feral creature to them.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: And we're just talking. You don't even have to be black. You could have just been Hispanic or some s***. You could have been Native American. And you're just dark skin enough that you disappear into particular dark light or you're hard to make out.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: If we think of Native Americans and their tribal where these tribes in the times of white people first arriving here, they still had their tribal wear in large numbers. If you come to a new land and you're not familiar with and you're still, you still miss, you believe in mystical things and a lot of fantasy based things. And you arrive from, whether it be England or Spain or Italy or Portugal or any of these conquistador infested locations, and you believe in gods and angels and demons and creatures created by monsters, you arrive in the land, you know some of the natives, but they live in nature. And in the middle of the night, you see, they're dark skinned, they're tan at minimum, and it gets darker from there. They're running around doing their thing. Maybe they're doing some ritual or something. They're in their tribal uniform and they look not the way. They don't have the normal shape of anything you could identify. They maybe have a helmet on. The helmet has weird spikes. Maybe they have the skull of a dead creature on them. Okay, so a dead cow or something that they put that on top of, like a buffalo? Yeah, anything.
Cristina: You know, just looking at like a chattel or something of it.
Jack: Yes. You're seeing something alien as f***.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: And it's just a Native American with tribal gear on. They're just doing what they do, but you don't understand what they do. And it's the middle of the night, you look, maybe you're wandering, maybe, who knows, you're delivering goods from one town to another. It takes you a couple of days, which means you got to camp out in the woods and you just happen to be close to a camp and they're just walking their normal route before you see something really weird and you're like, what the f*** is that? I saw a f****** werewolf. It did not. It looked humanoid. It looked like he had a bunch of excessive hair or feathers and horns and a head that was oversized and he was way bigger than. And it's because they were wearing an outfit that was huge and fluffy and odd looking.
Cristina: What? Yeah, that could be the werewolf.
Jack: So now we're building where the stories are coming from before anything gets confirmed. We just have. Oh, I've seen them. Even if I've. If I haven't been up close. I've seen shadows and things. I know what they are. Those are werewolves. Those are a human creed, although it hasn't been a wolf yet. But you come to the United States before the United States. You come to America and you are exploring and you see these Native Americans or captives, slaves running away. You are in America. We have wolves of many different kinds.
Cristina: Yeah, this.
Jack: And they live where? The woods, the forests. And where do the Native Americans live? The deserts, the woods and the forest. So you're either seeing them with coyotes or you're seeing them with wolves. Either way.
Cristina: So they're wearing a wolf.
Jack: They could be wearing a wolf. And they're probably at peace in nature with the wolves.
Cristina: Ah, you hear like a wolf howling and then you see them and you're.
Jack: Like, there's a harmony between them and you're confusing one with the other. You hear the wolf and then you see the guy in the outfit you can't identify. It looks like some alien. It looks like a creature you can't but it's an outfit in the dark, and you can't really make out that they're wearing an outfit. You're just like, I. You could even think that's f****** Bigfoot. You don't know. You saw some crazy s***, but you heard the wolf. Now you're making associations. Now you're connecting dots, but there's nothing happening. These are just circumstances that happen to be close to one another.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: They're from the forest. The wolves are from the forest. You're walking on route to make a delivery by the force. You hear one thing, you see the other, you think it's the same thing. I heard a wolf. I know what a wolf sounds like, but then I saw a creature, and I'm already thinking wolf. But then I see that. I associate wolf to it. It's a wolf, man.
Cristina: Yeah. I'm not gonna investigate that.
Jack: Exactly. I saw Wolfman. Yeah, I heard it, then I saw it.
Cristina: Yeah. Real life werewolves.
Jack: Interesting, right? So there's definitely a psychological factor that leads to these things. There's the way rumors get started and myths begin. Is always base and grounded. There's something real going on.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: That gets twisted and turned by superstitious people and by ideologies and by narratives sometimes intentionally twisted in order to, like, think of. What's his name? Shakespeare. He writes stories about situations that aren't real to warn people about possibilities. And so that probably happened a million times. Fairy tales, a lot of the time were told because you wanted to warn somebody.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: We had a guest, our last guest before this episode, Chris Rustic, who was telling us about the banana tree, who would rape people. But it's really just a story you come up with to scare kids out of going into the woods, but not scare them away from other people. You just don't want them to be anywhere they can't be be seen where something horrible could happen.
Cristina: So saying werewolves are in the woods could scare off the kids from entering the woods?
Jack: Yes. At the beginning, it began as somebody really saw something. They don't know what they saw, but that mental association happens. But then they start twisting it because, look, I don't know what the f*** I saw, and I don't want my kids going into the woods.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So we make a story about the werewolves we saw because we did see werewolves. I saw it. I was there. I ran into town immediately afterwards. I'm like, I can't make this delivery. There's a monster in the woods. It was half man, half wolf. They tell the whole town. They tell the Kids, how long before that becomes just a tale that that town knows of, that the forest is filled with werewolves?
Cristina: And it's just to protect the kids, though, or.
Jack: It didn't begin that way. It was warning. It was like somebody saw a f****** creature in there.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: Somebody saw a werewolf, and we don't know what those werewolves do.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Jump forward. Many, many, many, many years. We're in Modern Era. 2012, Miami, Florida. Some guy is on the street eating another m***********'s face.
Cristina: That's not a zombie. That wasn't the first case of a zombie.
Jack: That was the first case of a zombie. But it came from a person having bath salts, which are just a synthetic drug imitating, usually a methamphetamine or heroin. These synthetic drugs that are made to imitate, whether it be heroin or it be methamphetamines or whatever, they have very specific behaviors that happen to people. They do things that these other drugs don't. And like. Wait, what?
Cristina: What is it?
Jack: Oh, what things do they do?
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Well, there's a couple of effects that they have that they create. You know, primarily the bath salt, specifically, it is a unique compound of things. Right. For short, it's called mdpv. But usually when people take these things, they tend to cause the user to go hypermanic with psychosis, and then they become highly aggressive.
Cristina: But do they take it for that?
Jack: No.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: They think they're getting high as if it were heroin or as if it were methamphetamine.
Cristina: So is this something like they're lied to that what it is or.
Jack: No, they know what it is. They just think they're going to have that reaction.
Cristina: Okay. But. Okay.
Jack: Not everybody reacts the same way.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: It's not like everyone who takes bath salts behaves the same way.
Cristina: No.
Jack: But some people do take bath salts, and. Because it's not like a science.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: It's not down to a T. It's. Everybody makes it different, and it's always tainted one way or another. People are going to react in weird ways. Exactly. So with a lot of people having these sort of very aggressive behaviors come weird sporadic brain patterns and, like, irrational tendencies that they have. They scream and they throw themselves on the floor and roll over and they tear at their chest and they tear at their legs. They scratch themselves till they bleed. They kind of go crazy, essentially. In one of these cases we saw in Miami, the guy who ate the face, he was one of two. I think the other one was in California or something who attacked an individual and kind of started Just eating a f****** person while they were still alive.
Cristina: Were they? Did they sound like an animal? Like what did they sound like?
Jack: Their screams were f****** crazy. We can hear.
Cristina: We can hear it.
Jack: Yeah. So we can hear what this individual sounds like.
Cristina: Okay, that's gonna be horrifying. I know. Is that the guy?
Jack: Yes, that's a guy on Bath Sal.
Cristina: Wow. But did they do something?
Jack: No, they're just watching him trip out on bath salts.
Cristina: Stop it.
Jack: All right, all right, I'll stop the video. Sir.
Cristina: Stay down. Stay down.
Jack: You're going to hurt yourself. Okay, so that are the sounds that a person on bath salts makes?
Cristina: What? What? Hearing that in the middle of the night. Horrifying, definitely.
Jack: Hearing that in the middle of the night is a nightmare of sorts, especially if you don't know what is happening. Now, as we know, it's been associated with cannibalistic tendencies.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Now, let's keep all of these things in mind as we go back in time to hearing weird things. And a man runs into the woods saying, I was on my delivery route and I saw a f******. I heard a howl. I saw a weird creature walking through the woods. It was a f****** werewolf.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: You know, it has yellow eyes. You saw teeth, you saw big build, which is probably just a f****** outfit of some sort. And you heard a howl. There's a whole mentality happening here.
Cristina: A picture is being made.
Jack: Yes. Now, you, in these times, don't have a doctor the way traditional doctors work. Now we're talking 1700s.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: So a doctor is a bit different of a concept. A doctor is really an alchemist, a witch doctor. And what do they do? They grab random chemicals, put them together, trying to heal. Random s***.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Usually they give you something. It's not even research. They're just like this s*** with that s***. Yeah, here's some poison. Take it. You know, it'll cure you. People are getting f****** given. What was that thing that's inside of a thermometer?
Cristina: Mercury.
Jack: Mercury. People are getting mercury. F****** cure s***. Like, come on, bro.
Cristina: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: So, like, it wasn't the smartest of practices, but let's say you have liver problems. So you have yellow eyes. Your liver isn't functional the way it should be. You go to this witch doctor, the alchemist, and he's like, I got something for you. I'm gonna throw a couple of these things together, and you're gonna take this. It's random s***. It's random. What are the odds that once in a while there was an adverse reaction that behaved the way a chemical compound like bath salts does. You can actually get close to this type of behavior with mercury poisoning.
Cristina: Really?
Jack: You get fevers, you get hallucinations, you become manic, you become aggressive. And you can get that from mercury poisoning. You become very delusional. Okay, so what stops a witch doctor from giving somebody who has a failing liver without knowing that that's the case? Some concoction that works like bath salts. Person, for whatever reason, wanders the woods and now you have a yellow person freaking the out, running out at and.
Cristina: Trying to eat them, trying to bite their faces.
Jack: Yes.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: But you're alone, walking through the woods. It's dark. You get randomly attacked by this individual. You don't get to see them. You already just heard the stories. You heard the other guy and he was a. You were like, he's a p****. He does. He's just seeing. Yeah, Imma do the delivery and imma get the money he didn't earn. And now I'm walking through the woods and then boom. I got attacked by somebody, some s*** in the middle of the night. It kind of looked human, but I couldn't really tell because it was too quick. But I know it bit me, it scratched me and then it threw itself on the floor, started screaming and scratching itself, and then ran off into the woods. What the f*** did I just see? Yeah, it was the werewolf that guy was talking about.
Cristina: No, you're gonna become one. Or if you know that's part of the story, if that's part of the story already.
Jack: Not yet, but it's gonna be. Because the guy who spends his time in the woods is exposed to particular, that puts him in a unique kind of circumstance.
Cristina: Wait, which guy?
Jack: The quote, werewolf. Oh, okay, okay, so Native Americans, people wandering, making deliveries, slaves trying to escape captivity, running through the woods. Whatever the case might be, animals have parasites and have diseases. And if you get attacked by animals, there are certain kinds of diseases that are more prominent in creatures and others enter the most dangerous thing you could have gotten at that time. That now is one of the most easily curable things you could ever get. Rabies.
Cristina: Rabies? Oh, yeah.
Jack: Now, rabies, basic things, it's transmitted through saliva, usually through a bite. If you touch saliva with rabies, you're not gonna get it. So how do you get. You either need that saliva to fall into your mouth, to be ingested somehow, or to come in contact with your blood.
Cristina: Okay, like being bitten?
Jack: Like being bitten. Now, the virus is enclosed in the saliva. That's why it travels through it. It's sort of protected by the saliva itself. And it targets the nervous system and particular brain cells.
Cristina: And what does the rabies. What is it gonna do?
Jack: Well, the rabies is going to cause muscle spasm, aggressive behavior, psychosis, hallucinations, and very particularly foaming from the mouth.
Cristina: Foaming from the mouth?
Jack: Yep.
Cristina: That's pretty horrifying. If you see that in the woods and it bites you.
Jack: Yes.
Cristina: And then just a person biting you, you will get rabies.
Jack: It would be transmitted? Yes.
Cristina: Oh, so in the story, the guy who gets bitten gets rabies.
Jack: Yes. So if we follow the picture perfectly, there might be a Native American roaming the woods. He's where the wood, where the wolves are. The guy is first, guys walking through. He hears a wolf, sees the Native American, panics, doesn't make the delivery. Somewhere in that time, the Native American gets bitten himself by some creature in the woods. They don't have a vaccine. They catch rabies. The rabies causes a series of behaviors that makes their liver fail for whatever reason. Now you got yellow eyes. You still got your outfit on. You're savage. You're crazy. You're acting like a maniac. Your tribe leader creates a alchemic concoction, gives it to you, enhances the problems you're already dealing with. Now you are extra manic, extra crazy, extra psychotic. And you're attacking yourself. And anything you see, you get cast out. You're no longer part of the village. You're a danger.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: You're running through the woods. That other guy's coming through because that other previous delivery man is a b****. Imma do the job. He's paranoid. You run out, suddenly attack them in your big fluffy outfit because you haven't taken it off. Nobody could get close enough to you. You're danger.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So you still got it. You come out looking like some crazy creature they can't identify. You don't look human because of what you're wearing, but you kind of do look human because of your general shape, except you're not making sense. You're making crazy sounds like the ones we just heard.
Cristina: And you're foaming at the mouth.
Jack: You're foaming out of the mouth. You're crawling. So it's somewhere between animalistic and not. Your higher brain functions are shutting off because of the rabies. And the hallucination are coming on because of the rabies as well as because of the poisoning, probably from mercury. You have a ton of symptoms stacking up on top of each other. And then you go and you bite the guy on Top of your struggle, you're fighting him, you're fighting yourself. You bite him, you scratch him. He panics. He manages to get out in time. He leaves the package behind. He gets back to town, he's like, I was attacked by that thing.
Cristina: Oh, no.
Jack: There is a f****** werewolf out there. You don't know that. That bite has f***** you up.
Cristina: Yep. So.
Jack: So you have the bite. This guy's been living in the woods God knows how long, going crazy. He's gonna die soon anyways because he has rabies. Your s*** gets f***** up. You start developing a fever. The wound gets infected. You start getting started, starting to hallucinate, developing fevers and developing crazy behaviors. They're, like, associated with the thing. Yeah. Becoming a werewolf, they think, dude, you got whatever that guy got.
Cristina: Yeah. Then their solution to hunt down that guy.
Jack: No. Their solution is we gotta give you some s*** to cure you.
Cristina: Oh.
Jack: But in those times, you go to nat to the means, you know, back to alchemy. So you give this person something that basically accelerates their behavior and behaves like bath salts. On top of the fact that the rabies was already causing a series of symptoms that are very crazy. Animalistic psychosis, hallucination.
Cristina: So he goes through the same thing the other guy is going through times two.
Jack: Yeah, I guess literally exactly what the other guy's going through. You're going through the symptoms of rabies plus the symptoms of, essentially, bath salts put together. And they're watching you slowly become animalistic.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: You're becoming a beast to them.
Cristina: Didn't they stab you in the forehead to see if you're a werewolf?
Jack: No, probably. A lot of the times they probably just ended up killing these people. Now, there are a couple of things that could enhance this narrative. It depends on who gets it. There's actually a condition called hypotrichosis, which is the growth of excessive body hair. And it could grow not just everywhere on your body, but it includes your face.
Cristina: Yeah. So you could have seen people. Yeah. That look like. They kind of look like wolf people. Yeah. Yeah. Like what you'd imagine, like in a corny werewolf movie. They kind of look like that.
Jack: Yeah, you could have. Yeah, exactly. Like. Like wolf man or some s***.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So you could have this condition and go through all the same symptoms. I just said you actually don't even have to go through s***. You could have been attacked by a wolf and seen a man with this condition walking through the woods.
Cristina: Yeah. Well, even if he didn't attack you, just seeing this man through the woods Is probably frightening enough.
Jack: Yeah, fair enough. But in order to get the condition in which we see somebody get infected and then become, then we must consider that the person that they saw who had hypertrichosis was a person who also had rabies. So maybe this guy in the woods has rabies, has hypertrichosis. He doesn't. He looks deformed to you, Harry. Everywhere, you can't really tell. Runs out he has rabies. He's crazy. Comes in, he attacks you. He bites you, freaks out, runs off into the woods. You swear that was a wolf man. You go back home, then you're starting to freak out. You're starting to have symptoms. The local alchemist comes and he gives you your toxic poison that's gonna make you worse than that guy who only had rabies. But now you're freaking out quicker and sooner and behaving like a psychopath. And they swear you're becoming a werewolf. Yeah, yeah.
Cristina: Yes, Yes, I could see that.
Jack: Now, there are specific circumstances that are very interesting relative to the story. And in the case of the woods, the brightest nights in the woods are full moons, because the moon is reflecting the most light back down to earth. Meaning you can see things in the woods, most likely during a full moon than any other time of the month. Meaning anything you'd probably already see anyways if you could. Yeah, you're just way more aware of during a full moon. And if there's people normally roaming the woods but you can't see them, maybe they live in the woods.
Cristina: Yeah, you're more likely to see them in the full moon.
Jack: Yep. Full moon comes through and you're like, they're out only during the full moon. Not really. They're always there.
Cristina: That's where the whole full moon thing comes from as well. Transforming during a full moon.
Jack: Yes, yes. It's just that that one is entirely circumstantial that that's happening. So the we can assume that the first delivery guy probably was making that delivery close to ordering a full moon.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: And then that's why he saw what he saw. He heard the wolf looking into the woods. He saw a figure roaming while the other guy had less visibility. The full moon is gone. The delivery still has to be made. It's been a couple of days. We need to get this out there. People are too scared. I'm the brave one. I'll go do it. But now it's way darker. You have way less moonlight.
Cristina: Then you get surprised.
Jack: Then you get surprised.
Cristina: Okay, now you have.
Jack: With less visibility. You don't know what's happening, how long.
Cristina: That you're sick for and when you're at your worst. And then it just happens to be a full moon when you're getting really bad.
Jack: Yeah. Not only, only that, the possibility that you run off before any of that. Like they don't see you become hairy, they see you run off into the same woods they're accusing people of being werewolves in. But that place already has wolves. If by any chance wolves are hungry, you roam into the woods. One, they're killing you. Second, they're not leaving just because they ate you. So people are gonna be like became a werewolf. I can hear him out there.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: So you ran off into the woods because you're crazy and irrational. Got eaten by wolves. But the number of wolves are still there.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: So they're just associating the wolves they're seeing with oh, one of them is him.
Cristina: Yes. They're gonna think one of them are you unless they burn the body. I think they have to burn the body and then that wolf you will die too.
Jack: But that's way in the future after these stories become more prominent and everybody knows. So this is around the face that building solutions for the werewolf. We can't have them adding to the werewolves in the forest because it's going to make it impossible for us to travel if it's just packed with werewolves. So we got to dispose of anybody who's infected. Yes, that's where that solution comes in. Because it becomes a problem if everybody who goes out either never comes back. Which means they got killed or they became one of them.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: And that also creates the circumstance where you are traveling in large caravans. So you build large groups, you no longer make deliveries as individuals. But wolves stay away from groups larger than their own because they don't want to be the prey. So when there's a ton of people together, the wolves aren't coming out to play. They're gonna f****** hide. Same thing happens with native tribes. They don't know these f****** white skinned people coming through. If it's just one of them and there's a f*** ton you, that's cool. But if they're roaming together with gun and f****** carriages, you're not f****** with that.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So in large groups they're safer. And then caravans form and they start traveling like that instead. So people only see werewolves when they cannot confirm that it is in fact not.
Cristina: So when you're alone, when you're.
Jack: Yeah, when there's either less of you.
Cristina: Or you're alone to actually investigate or yes.
Jack: When you're too scared to think clearly.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: That's when you're more likely to see a werewolf. And again, it's just an alignment of situations. A person with this condition could run outside, get rabies, behave like an animal. It could have been a slave that got away. They have dark skin in any of these cases. Any of them could have had liver damage, creating the yellow eyes. In the case of any dark skinned individual, whether it be the native or the slave, could have. You can see their teeth in the dark, even if their skin is dark. If it was a native, they have, using any of their tribal wear, they have large outfits that make them look disproportionate but still humanoid. There are many, many, many. And the woods equals wolves instinctively.
Cristina: Yeah. That's the biggest thing though for the werewolves is just you're surrounded by wolves.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, you're definitely surrounded by wolves. And that creates a pretty vivid picture for people. And the solutions that come as time goes by are just all a product of this. So we have individuals believing, just experimenting, essentially. You gotta try to cure them, you gotta try to kill them, you gotta try to. You do everything you can. This is where we bring in the scientists of the times. Which probably led to a lot of torture.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Because we think of like the Salem witch trials when the things they did there, this is no different, this is just a new, a new foe to them. You know, some new circuit circumstances. They got to learn to navigate.
Cristina: There were strange things we talked about that they do. Like the stabbing on the forehead.
Jack: Yep.
Cristina: We're cutting the skin to see if there's fur behind the skin.
Jack: That as well. Especially if it's somebody with a hypertrichosis. But they wouldn't have the fur inside, they would have it outside, which is.
Cristina: Yeah. So I don't think there'll be any tests. You. That person's a werewolf.
Jack: That person's a werewolf. Yeah.
Cristina: Test for that.
Jack: That person is definitely a werewolf. But this brings in another interesting point. This is unrelated to all those things, but related to the entire idea that there is a condition which makes a person believe that they are a shapeshifter. It's called clinical lisanthropy. And people with this condition, it's a psychological affliction which causes delusions of one having been or currently being a shapeshifter most commonly associated with werewolves.
Cristina: But that means that they also. There are some that have different animals in mind.
Jack: Yes. But now let's reassociate this with the story you hear about the Werewolf. Nobody thinks anything about it. The story flies through the town. Oh, he talking. Oh, no, that guy's crazy. He's always talking nonsense like that. You don't have to believe him. But then the second guy comes and he's like, I saw it. I was attacked by it. And then he, quote, turns into it, unquote.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Now the fear is in the town. There's f****** werewolves out there. Two different people in two different circumstances have seen it. One of them was attacked by it. And somebody can develop this condition out of fear. The trauma alone could make them believe.
Cristina: That they're aware that they're werewolf.
Jack: So they'll think I either got bitten at some point and I don't know, or something along those lines. And then they start freaking out. And then they start showing weird behaviors that they think are what a werewolf would do, then causing other people to panic.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Now this leads us into a circumstance where we have somebody who is not transformed but claiming to be. Probably even claiming to have gotten bitten.
Cristina: Or maybe he drank that wolf water.
Jack: Well, that's a weird one. But you don't have a full moon yet, and that's usually when you see them. This person hasn't transformed and there hasn't been a full moon yet. Now you start making these sort of unnecessary associations of there hasn't been a full moon, they're bitten, they haven't turned, and that's the only time we see them. Do they only turn during full moons?
Cristina: Oh, okay, yeah.
Jack: You're starting to connect all the dots. So what? The people who catalog these things. Things, they start connecting random f****** dots. And it's like the first sighting during a moon during full moon. Second and third sightings during full moon. But the attack happened during a regular night, meaning the full moon turned them. And then they had. They were already this in the woods, just roaming aimlessly so they afterwards couldn't go back. They turned during the full moon, which is why we see more of them then. And then they're just out there stuck in this form.
Cristina: Okay, and then. But then why isn't this one like.
Jack: Because there's no full moon yet. That's where the panic starts. That's probably why they are more likely. We got to figure the salute, we got to solve the problem before the full moon. Or kill them.
Cristina: And then they end up killing.
Jack: Then they end up killing them. This is where the experimentation phases come in, where they end up stabbing somebody in the f****** head.
Cristina: Burning them alive.
Jack: Burning them alive and things of that nature.
Cristina: Where does the silver come from just a random torture tool that just got on, like, catch.
Jack: That's a weird one, right?
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Now, in thinking about this whole shapeshifter thing, I started digging into that, trying to find out if there are any creatures in nature that shapeshift that have the ability to shapeshift. To my disappointment, there is no land creature that could do it. The closest thing is a frog that changes its color at will and some reptiles.
Cristina: Yeah, but what about butterflies? I mean, a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, that's pretty shape shifting.
Jack: No, I mean like actively changing its shape. Okay, that's your butterfly. Your butterfly, yeah. Saying like swamping from one to the other. And the only examples of this in nature are cephalopods, which include octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, and nautilus.
Cristina: So they're all very similar.
Jack: Yeah, they're all pretty, pretty similar. They imitate their environment. They change their body shape by aligning because they're boneless. They get kind of like assort themselves in weird ways and they all have the capacity to change color.
Cristina: That helps. I guess that helps.
Jack: Yeah. But there doesn't seem to be any examples of this in nature other than those things. There doesn't seem to be land versions of these creatures.
Cristina: There's no Boo. That's so sad.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's definitely problematic because there is the lacking of where the original idea of a person turning into it come from. Because the best we can do is assume somebody saw a wolf or heard a wolf and then saw a person.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: It makes more sense if he saw somebody with hypertrichosis. So you hear a wolf and then you see maybe a Native American wandering the woods. And you can tell them very easily, but they're covered in fur, including their face. And you're like, that's what I saw. Heard howling. That's a wolf, man. Whatever the f*** you know.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So I don't entirely have any other path there than that because there is no shape shifting in nature, per se.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: But that brings us to an interesting detail though, which is at the end of your episode, we got to the conclusion that it's completely possible that a werewolf and a vampire are similar and a not just similar, but probably the same creature.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: We're talking about a creature that either drinks blood or eats people. In every one of these instances, the werewolf, it took us getting to the story of somebody seeing bodies at war that were drained of blood. The vampires are commonly discussed as showing up in the middle of nowhere and biting somebody.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: And the chupacabra very similarly goes and drains animals that it can of blood.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Doing like looking into this, the, the most interesting connecting line here was lysanthropy, which makes people believe that they are a shapeshifter. And that's fascinating because it's common most commonly for a werewolf.
Cristina: That's very strange that it's most commonly for a werewolf.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most commonly that they believe they're like half dog or something. But at no moment does it prevent them from thinking they're becoming a different type of dog or creature. Four legged creature. They're turning into some other s***, maybe even a bat sometimes. Who knows what they think they're turning into. It's the fact that these people believe they're turning into something.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: And that's a common thread between all those things that I found particularly interesting that they could all root back to this condition and rumors of this condition.
Cristina: It could be all on this. Wait, do you mean like vampires and chupacabras could somehow.
Jack: If they. If it's not all real. But they are all so similar. It's either the regional differences of everything. If we think the difference between a Sasquatch, Bigfoot and the Yeti, it's like the same creature. You're just talking about different places.
Cristina: Yeah. You know, in some places though, instead of werewolf, there's like were hyena or were, you know, other creatures.
Jack: Yes, yes. I'm thinking that a werewolf to the west is a vampire to Europe the same way that a Chupacabra is to the southwest. I'm thinking it's regional and they're talking about the same thing every time. The stories were because of the culture.
Cristina: And the area depends on what animals around them.
Jack: Yes, that's a big influencer, what they're likely to see. Why is it that the west is so prominent with werewolves, but wolves are so prominent in the west?
Cristina: Because they're scared of wolves. Exactly.
Jack: It's in the area you are where the thing came to be. So there's a wolf man because you're surrounded by wolves. But in the south there are other creatures. You live by jungles, you live by deserts, you live in very specific circumstances. So you're gonna have some not wolf kind of dog like thing happening over there. Sometimes they describe it even being like a little dinosaur, which is probably just a f****** lizard of some sort.
Cristina: They describe it as a dinosaur?
Jack: Yeah, like a little dinosaur. The chupacara. That looks.
Cristina: Oh, okay. Yes, yes.
Jack: Yeah. So it's probably just some sort of lizard of which they have f*** tons.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Because jungle's everywhere.
Cristina: Yeah. Whatever they're afraid of.
Jack: Whatever they're afraid of. Whatever's in your region is most likely what your big bad monster is made of.
Cristina: Yeah. And people like before, though, I think it helped them explain serial killers with werewolves. Of the idea of, like, how could a human murder all these people?
Jack: Well, that's actually interesting, the possibility that it's a way to tell a story without making people inherently evil. Because we have a tendency of thinking we're superior, then we have to keep that idea moving forward. So even if we might know it was a person, we don't want our kids to know what's a person. So we make up a story and we tell them the story to explain things away.
Cristina: And we might also believe these stories because we don't want to believe we could. We're capable of doing something like that.
Jack: Here's where the twist of information that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode comes in.
Cristina: In what?
Jack: Because somebody makes up the fairy tale.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: But how long before. How many generations go by before you don't know where it came from? And it's just a story of something that did happen. And the person who said it probably even had that in mind. They come. They just tell it like it's real.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Then a couple of generations down, nobody knows where it came from. They just know it's a story about a series of events. Not that it's a fairy tale. Then you have this creature is real because these many people experienced it at these times and it's somewhere. But you gotta be careful. But really it's just a bunch of psychopathic murderers or tribe sacrificing people or some s***.
Cristina: Yeah. That's crazy. What if though? Well, now I wonder if there was also, like, besides blaming murderers as werewolves, maybe cannibals.
Jack: I definitely think that's a big one. In times when total crucial survival was needed. Anybody who's starving. Like there was a lot of cannibalism back then.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So for survival sake.
Cristina: But once that's over and they're still eating, then.
Jack: But also not just that. Like you could just be killed by a pack of wolves.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: You could just have been murdered by random pack of wolves while you're were making your f******. There was never anything. It was just wolves.
Cristina: But you find your dead body covered in fur or something.
Jack: Yeah. But people are like, you know, I can handle wolves, but can you handle a werewolf?
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: So it could also be a tactic of getting people's stupidity in check oh.
Cristina: But you know, people still believe in werewolves, right? There are people who believe it.
Jack: What, today?
Cristina: Yeah. Like there was recently a dog or I guess a dog, a creature that they couldn't tell what the creature was, so they needed to take a DNA test of it because they didn't know what it was. I have the picture of it if you want to look at it.
Jack: Sure.
Cristina: This is the creature. And some people thought it was a dire wolf. I guess that's like an ancient wolf.
Jack: Yes, that's a very old wolf.
Cristina: I guess, maybe. But the DNA results was that it was a deformed female gray wolf. Deformed.
Jack: That's interesting.
Cristina: Yeah. Because it has oddly long gray fur, oversized claws and extra large head, which made them. Like there's something weird about this dead dog thing.
Jack: Like it's not like the others.
Cristina: Yeah, yeah. So that's why they were really. That's why they needed the DNA test because it just. It's just something off about this dead creature.
Jack: Interesting, interesting. Is it like larger than usual?
Cristina: Yeah, it's larger than usual. So. But its legs were too short also to be a wolf or a dog. They described it as. So I don't know, like everything else was big except their legs. So it was a really deformed looking wolf dog thing.
Jack: Interesting. I wonder what could have caused this mutation that made it that way. Maybe it had like cerebral palsy or some form of genetic disorder that caused it to be. Did. Did they ever see it alive?
Cristina: I don't think so. I think they found the dead because.
Jack: There'S a bunch of disorders that cause physical defects as well as some of them also cause sort of mental defects. So they could have probably told whether this had some human type of. Really. Because there's animals who've had mental retardation and there's animals who've had cerebral palsy and autism and things of that nature. So they could have perhaps been able to tell if it was alive and they could have seen its behavior.
Cristina: Maybe they. It was alive and they got too scared and decided, you gotta kill it before it kills me.
Jack: People panic.
Cristina: Yeah. It could be a panicky situation.
Jack: Yeah. This is what I found related to werewolves and the origin story of what, where it could have come from or what might have perpetuated the folklore in the first place. Like where did these stories really originate? It. It was probably a collection of circumstances because the probability that anything of this nature is real seems unlikely. Yeah, it seems highly unlikely that a werewolf would be real. It's like all the evidence is painting Pointing towards a collection of events sort of lining up in the right order.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: But not like any singular thing could have all of these things all together in one instance. I think it's just circumstantial evidence and superstitious people putting two and two together on top of mixtures of drugs and diseases and fears. Fears. Weird timing. A bunch of put together equals what we know as a werewolf.
Cristina: Yeah. The conclusion is that vampires are cooler than werewolves, though.
Jack: No. The conclusion is the only circumstance that could make a werewolf be real by any means is that it's not a werewolf. The only possible solution for there being a werewolf. It seems like a vampire and a chupacabra are a million times more likely than a werewolf could be. Because a chupacabra is not just considered a creature. It's considered a creature that was probably made in a lab. That seems way more likely. And a vampire could just be a cannibalistic human. Human. Which is also something else.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: But the werewolf circumstances. Iffy. It's hard to come across. And it seems like the only way that a werewolf could be is if the other two are also the same thing. If we have a bit of a shape shifter going on, then it could also assume the form of a wolf man or a wolf.
Cristina: But it's hard to prove anything about shape shifting.
Jack: It's hard to prove anything about shape shifting because there's zero evidence in that direction.
Cristina: No. Maybe they're just so sneaky about it.
Jack: How do you prove something is even shifted into a shape?
Cristina: Yeah. I don't know.
Jack: It just looks like something else. But. Yeah. So that's basically what's out there. That's. The possibilities are there's either no werewolf and an alignment of stars led to the stories being born.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: Or people trying to explain things away or warn people without scaring them about other people. Made up folklore and fairy tales.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Or f****** shapeshifter. That's it. You're either a shapeshifter, You're a product of a fairy tale that somebody was just using to warn people, or a very specific alignment of events, including drugs and diseases and too many things. Yeah. That one's the least likely is the possibility that it's real.
Cristina: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: A vampire in a chupacabra. A million times more real than the possibility of a werewolf. A werewolf is just very unlikely.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: So that's pretty much what it is. There is no chance that's rooming. Anyways, if you guys enjoyed this, if you guys agree with that, that leave us a Message.
Cristina: If you don't leave us a message.
Jack: Yeah, either way, just tell us what you think about these things. Tell us what you think about werewolves and is. Is it a vampire? Chupacabra? Shapeshifty thingy? Is it an alignment of the stars? Is it a story, a fairy tale? Or do you believe maybe there are werewolves? And I'm up. So let us know. Anyways, you can find the podcast on the official website greatthoughts.info on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcast.
Cristina: And you can reach us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tick Tock at just Convopod.
Jack: Yes, and remember to subscribe and rate the show. Give us some stars of any amount. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 30, 50, 100. 150 f****** stars. However many stars you think we deserve. And review if you feel something so inclined.
Cristina: And let someone who might like this show know about it.
Jack: Yes, the power of word of mouth. You guys know. Tell people about the show. Tell them, hey, we just proved your crazy theory about werewolves wrong. Bob, you're talking about that werewolf in the woods. You're an idiot. Listen to this show. That proves you wrong. Or Bob, these people say it not, but you got photographic proof of a werewolf. Send it to them. Please do that, Bob.
Cristina: Send us the videos. This has been the Just Conversation podcast. Take nothing personal and thanks for listening.
Jack: Bye.
Cristina: Okay, I'm hanged. So I died to this person.
Jack: But then, oh my God.
Cristina: Come back to listen to a newer episode. You're like, oh my God, she's still alive.
Jack: Hans, bro. Like that.
Cristina: Shocking though, didn't they? Well, it was in one movie I think where they thought his girl died. But then she wasn't dead. She just forgot her memories. But then bro, they do this. Converted her from the bad guy to the good guy anyway. And I don't even know if she gained her memories back.
Jack: I don't. Look, I don't even understand.
Cristina: She a new person who just. I don't fell in love with him.
Jack: Understand why this works. Wasn't a in movie reveal. They showed us this. What could be left inside that movie that's gonna blow our Brian.
Cristina: He's gonna come back.
Jack: He's gonna come back and it isn't even gonna be like his brother look alike. We're just gonna have Paul Walker in the movie. I like. What else could possibly happen?
Cristina: What is the point of showing us that? I don't know. And then it's crazy. Good morning.
Jack: Dub a dub. Dub dub.
Cristina: Good morning. The Just Conversation podcast is hosted by Christina Colazo and Jack Thomas, produced by Lynn Taylor and published by Great Thoughts info, art by Zero Lupo and logo by Seth McAllister with social media managed by Amber Black.