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Werewolf
(redirected from Werewolfs)

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werewolf: see lycanthropy lycanthropy , in folklore, assumption by a human of the appearance and characteristics of an animal. Ancient belief in lycanthropy was widespread, and it still exists in parts of the world.
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werewolf

Enlarge picture
Lon Chaney, Jr., as a werewolf in The Wolf Man (1941).
(credit: Courtesy of Universal Pictures; photograph, Lincoln Center Library of the Performing Arts, New York Public Library)
In European folklore, a man who changes into a wolf at night and devours animals, people, or corpses, returning to human form by day. Some werewolves are thought to change shape at will; others, who inherited the condition or acquired it by being bitten by a werewolf, are transformed involuntarily under the influence of a full moon. Belief in werewolves is found throughout the world and was especially common in 16th-century France. Humans who believe they are wolves suffer from a mental disorder called lycanthropy.


werewolf
a person fabled in folklore and superstition to have been changed into a wolf by being bewitched or said to be able to assume wolf form at will

werewolf
a man transformed into a wolf. [Eur. Folklore: Benét, 1082]
See : Monsters

Werewolf 

in folk belief, a man who allegedly has the ability to transform himself into a beast or, more rarely, into a bush, stone, or similar object. In the popular beliefs of European peoples, a werewolf is a sorcerer who has taken the form of a wolf or an ordinary man who has been turned into a wolf by a magic spell. Analogous popular beliefs are known to exist among the peoples of India, where instead of a wolf the beast is a tiger; in Africa, it is a leopard or hyena; and in South America, it is a jaguar.”



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Out of 21 reported sightings of werewolfs, the Cannock Chase werewolf in Staffordshire was the most spotted.
The quarterly magazine will be called Bloodreams Magazine of Vampires and Werewolfs and will be directed toward writers of short horror fiction.
 
 
 
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