Begbie and Porson sprang into action, would have dashed for the fence and tried to escape, but the detectives were too quick for them. Tommy's rugby tackle brought down Porson, whilst the CID officers leaped upon Begbie and bore him to the ground.
From the doorway of his battered caravan, Jeffrey watched and shook his head sadly. His touring circus would not even last until the end of the year now.
‘Well, I never thought a senseless act like the slashing of an ostrich would lead to the solving of an international crime,’ Richmond shook his head in disbelief.
‘Which just goes to show,’ Raymond Odell laughed, ‘that you never know what the outcome will be when you embark upon the most seemingly trivial of investigations. I treat them all the same initially, no detail must be overlooked, no matter how irrelevant it might seem. As they say, you never know…’
The Werewolf Legend
(from Graveyard Rendezvous 19)
Do werewolves really exist?
The legend goes back thousands of years and, as the saying goes, there is no smoke without fire.
The werewolf is the ultimate in evil and depravity, a legendary creature which dates back to time immemorial although the word 'werewolf' is Anglo-Saxon. Many countries throughout the world have their 'were' creatures. India has its were-tigers, Africa its were-lions and were-crocodiles although the origins of the legends are lost in the mists of time.
First, though, just what is a werewolf? It is a creature which is half-man, half-wolf, the strength and cunning of the animal taking over from the logic of the human being during the period of the full moon. A person may live an otherwise normal life, but during that terrible week of each month it reverts to the sub-human, the bloodlust uppermost in its crazed brain as it lavishes its victims mercilessly.
As the full moon rises the change from man to beast begins. The skin becomes coarse and hair begins to grow over the entire body. The features become enlarged and distorted, powerful fangs and razor-sharp claws enable him to savage man and beast, eyes glinting redly as he stumbles across the countryside, lurking in the shadows and baying the moon frequently.
The moon is the key to the existence of this terrible creature. Without it he is powerless, once it begins to wane and dawn breaks he must return to human form, slinking home, tortured by guilt and remorse at his nocturnal ravages. He is fully aware of everything that has happened, and powerless to prevent it happening again the following night.
The werewolf, though, can be identified even when in human shape. Those afflicted with the curse are reputed to have the third finger of each hand longer than the others, and during the Middle Ages, particularly in France and Germany, people were burnt at the stake purely on the evidence of this malformation. The creature is closely allied to the vampire, but there is one main difference, namely the latter is dead whilst the former is very much alive. After death, though, unless killed in the prescribed way, which is dealt with later in this article, the werewolf becomes a vampire. The curse is eternal. The soul knows no peace.
The legend was at its height during the Middle Ages, and there were two main ways in which one became one of the creatures of the damned. Auto suggestion, known as lycanthropy, was undoubtedly the most common, and here myth becomes reality. A person believed himself to be a werewolf whilst in fact no actual physical change took place during the phases between the full moon. It was a form of madness which today results in one becoming a psychopath.
The other method is when one is bitten by a werewolf. It this way the curse can spread like an outbreak of plague, and many of the very early stories concern remote villages where a large percentage of the inhabitants were werewolves.
In both cases the sadistic side of the sexual instinct is the dominant force. Some legends refer to a person making a pact with the devil, and in return receiving abnormal strength. One who has traded his soul for power is granted his wish in the most terrible way possible.
Yet there is a link between legend and reality. Whilst we have established that today the werewolf had been replaced by the psychopath the old beliefs still linger. Before the outbreak of war Adolf Hitler formed his 'Werewolf Organisation'. This consisted of a band of ruthless killers who inflicted terrible atrocities upon their enemies, people who openly opposed the Nazi movement. These men killed by night and, in a country whence the werewolf legend originated, created an aura of terror.
There is another school of thought which believes that the werewolf is an astral projection, yet if this were so the beast would not be able to inflict terrible wounds on its victims.
Whist there is no evidence to suggest there having been werewolves at any time during history, we must bear in mind the superstitions which were rife during the Middle Ages. There were many who sought to use the Forces of Darkness for
