The Canadian Werewolf Chronicle: Stories from Witnesses to the Werewolf Phenomenon

THE CANADIAN WEREWOLF CHRONICLE

Stories from witnesses to the werewolf phenomenon.

SEAN CUMMINGS

Copyright © 2022 Sean Cummings

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

For Jack Pierce.

Contents

THE CANADIAN WEREWOLF CHRONICLE

Copyright

Dedication

About Werewolves and other Scary Things

Introduction

Protect Yourself! Stay ALive!

Chapter 1: The Werewolf Phenomenon is Real

CHAPTER 2: Hunter

CHAPTER 3: Similar Accounts, Various Locations

CHAPTER 4: Hunted

CHAPTER  5: From Silver Bullets to Wolfsbane

CHAPTER 6: Hosts

CHAPTER 7: Animal Rights

CHAPTER 9: Found Folklore

10: Three Savage Stories

CHAPTER 11: Werewolf Whistle-Blowers

CHAPTER 12: King of the Moonlight

Acknowledgements

About The Author

About Werewolves and other Scary Things

Everybody has a favorite monster. For some it is an enormous shark. For others it’s a mummy or a vampire. For me, it’s always going to be a werewolf. Ever since I was a kid and watched Henry Hull’s Werewolf of London. Scared the living hell out of me. And then The Wolfman and Lon Chaney’s excellent performance as the tortured Larry Talbot. The incredible makeup by Jack Pierce in both cases.

So, let’s just imagine if these things were real? What if raw, bestial howling filled the air beneath the light of a full moon? Now imagine being stalked by a creature that resembles a wolf but is as large as a full-grown brown bear. A creature with a face and fangs out of your worst nightmare. A beast that only knows hunting and killing in the most savage manner possible.

City, town, or village, rural or in the north, a monster is hungry, and you might be on the menu.

Just imagine … What would witnesses say about what they’ve just seen? What might survivors of a werewolf attack have to say knowing that they themselves will become a monster? And what about science? Is there any data on a phenomenon that no scholar or scientist can even agree exists?

Is there legal standing for a creature that only lives and breathes for a few hours each month? What about the legal standing of the human hosting the monster? How far might government go to hide evidence that werewolves existed? Are there stories from the past about the monsters? How could folklore become blood-soaked fact? Where do werewolves come from in the first place? (Lots of speculation on that one.)         

In this volume, I’ve envisioned a world where such terrifying creatures exist. Where there is no place to hide once the werewolf catches your scent. Whether it’s Canada’s Atlantic provinces or Vancouver Island. From Whistler Mountain to Winnipeg. From Capreol to Rivière-du-Loup. A monster is on the loose. It hasn’t eaten for a month and will kill everything in its path.

This is an expert hunter, and it will not be denied. It doesn’t matter if the prey is human, Hereford or even another pack of wolves.

So, here is my invitation to you: let’s explore what it might be like to live in a world where these monsters are on the hunt whenever there is a full moon. Where a dead terrifying howl fills the midnight sky and smart people stay in the house behind locked doors.

Sean Cummings - January 2022

Introduction

I saw a wolf on the side of the highway once. I was driving between Winnipeg and Brandon Manitoba. It was fucking huge. That (brief) encounter was one of the foundations of my wanting to write fantasy stories set in Manitoba. The moment was one of my first inklings that anything could be out there, lurking in the wilds once you leave the city lights. When I told the story to friends or strangers, everyone insisted it was probably just a dog. Or a coyote. I’ve seen dogs. I’ve seen coyotes. And I know a motherfucking wolf when I see one. I know the feeling of seeing something you weren’t prepared to see.

It’s never quite left me. The sensation was startlingly similar to when a dog you didn’t see growls and lunges at you while you’re out for a walk. You were safe, and then it’s there. Right. There. It’s close. Too close. Did you see a fence? Will that stop it? What I felt when I saw that wolf was that chill, magnified. I had a car around me, and I was traveling at highway speed, and still that wolf sticks with me. That’s the power and mystique they hold.

As cool as real wolves are, because I’m a fantasy and horror fan, I love their mythic cousins even more. Werewolves are awesome in pretty much any of their incarnations, from Lon Chaney in The Wolfman to the Werewolf TV show from the 80s, to True Blood. I’ve played the Werewolf the Apocalypse roleplaying game (when will you rage?) and I’ve had a Dungeons & Dragons character turned into a werewolf (tragically cured of the affliction, because my friends knew that I always roll gangbusters when forced into attacking the party). I’ve read werewolf detectives in urban fantasy and sexy shifters in paranormal romance. I’ve followed comic characters like Bigby Wolf in Fables, and, of course, good old Jack Russell, Marvel’s Werewolf by Night.

I love a good werewolf movie (and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll quickly see I also love a bad werewolf movie too). From Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London to the Tragically Hip’s I’m a Werewolf, Baby, I’ve filled playlists of lycanthropic mood music and homebrewed soundtracks. When Marvel Studios announced the Moon Knight TV show, I immediately began crossing my fingers and toes for a Werewolf by Night spinoff. But of all its incarnations, my absolute favourite version of the werewolf is the wolf-man engine of destruction and terror. The primal blend of the best and worst of civilization and nature. I still have the classic Universal Studios Wolfman action figure my grandma bought me in a variety store in a small town near my old home.

Sean and I tend to respond to all of each other’s werewolf-related social media posts, so I’ve been following The Canadian Werewolf Chronicle come together for some time. To say I’ve been looking forward to reading it is an understatement. An authoritative journalistic expose of the real werewolf problem? I haven’t seen that before, so how could I pass it up? I’m thrilled Sean trusted me with an early reading copy and asked me to write this introduction. In the ongoing hellscape of 2021 and beyond, why couldn’t werewolves be real? And if they are, maybe howling at the moon will bring us all some relief.

The Canadian Werewolf Chronicle brings together found evidence in journals and date books, accounts from animal rights activists, consultants, scientists, government, and law enforcement officials—all anonymous of course—and yes, stories from the teeth of the werewolves themselves. Is The Canadian Werewolf Chronicle a compelling tale of a horror that might be, or a dire warning of what is?

With a modern Kolchak narrator, and a terrifying Canada full of monsters for him to chase, the question hangs over the entire book: what is waiting for a humanity that has stopped fearing the supernatural? Do you dare to find out?  Read along with me, friends, and tell me, will you cower at the coming of the night, or will you bark at the moon?

Chadwick Ginther - December 2021

Protect Yourself! Stay ALive!

The Werewolf Phenomenon is real. Non-belief in werewolves will not protect you. There is no werewolf atheism. The monsters exist north of the 49th parallel, and they thrive in sub-zero cold and deep snow, so don’t think that Canada’s long, miserable winters will save you. Cities, towns, villages; the range of the Canadian Werewolf is everywhere human beings are found.

Officials will say that werewolves don’t exist, so, they stonewall and redact. Werewolves are here. Right now. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time you can count on being ripped to pieces in short order. For a small measure of that time, you will still be alive as the monster feeds. When the creature is done its grisly business, all that will be left of you is a shredded mass of freshly dead meat. Exposed ribs silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Torn and twitching muscle tissue, organs, crushed bones.

Folklore going back more than a thousand years speaks of shape shifting creatures. In the medieval world, a strange species known as Dog Heads were said to exist and even lived in their own villages. These strange creatures should be listed in the archaeological record somewhere but forget about it. You won’t find werewolf fossils either because, officially, such creatures cannot exist.

Werewolves cannot be real and yet must be.

They are here in the north.

It should be common knowledge: that each full moon a human host will completely transform in mind, body, and soul. They quite terrifyingly become another creature entirely – and it is a wholesale transformation. Nothing is left of the human being. It can take up to an excruciating thirty minutes to complete the change and for at least part of that time, the creature’s host can feel his or her bones snapping and reshaping. Their heart enlarging. Lungs. Claws tearing through fingertips.

The creature, now fully transformed, is as large as a sub-compact automobile. The moon has done its work, and the creature covets the night the way a beggar covets a twenty-dollar bill. It knows its time to hunt is short. Woe to the poor soul or dumb forest animal that lands the attention of its hypersensitive hearing or a nose that can pick up a man’s scent from miles away.

Over the years, there have been numerous accounts of monsters that hunt in the wild forests of northern Canada. Wolf-like creatures that feast on moose, or elk or deer. Sometimes the partially eaten carcass of a brown bear is found. One night a month. Twelve times a year. Nothing is safe. If your heart pumps warm blood and you happen to be in werewolf country during a full moon, start running. Run for your blessed life. Because it knows you are here, and it is stalking you. It hears the twigs snapping as you stagger, terrified through the twisted undergrowth. The beast isn’t far behind, and your time is up. Your life will end in terror and gore.

The monsters tear through the shadows on four legs, though, on occasion, they will appear as bipedal. Some believe a two-legged werewolf must mean the creature’s hold on the host has been weakened somehow. That the man or woman inside is fighting to come out. (I’m not sure anyone tested this theory.) Fully transformed, a great thick mane of silver-gray fur surrounds its neck, shoulders, and chest. Its glowing eyes are a pair of burning coals set deep inside a skull that is hard as granite. A wild face. Feral. Hungry. Calculating. A mouth full of gleaming white teeth like that of the Hyena except longer and sharper. A snout that can sniff out a pin drop of blood in a fountain of water.

A madman. An escaped lunatic. That’s how a werewolf attack will be dismissed when it’s the first instance. Only after a few more full moons when authorities realize no human being could render wounds on the victims with such savagery do they consider what their logical minds won’t allow. In the next breath, unfortunately, it is explained away as a wild animal of some kind – a bear perhaps? A mountain lion? (Wait a minute. Wasn’t the latest victim found on the eighteenth floor of an office building? Lots of wild animals in office buildings these days.)

Indeed, the mere notion that a human being can transform into another creature entirely, most often a wolf, is still scoffed at by most rational people. This is completely understandable as denial is the first line of defense. For many, a kind of tunnel vision sets in afterward.

Some rely on recipes that are half-baked folklore and half dumb luck to protect themselves and their loved ones. Runes carved into a doorway. Pagan spells buried all over one’s property because you can’t be sure of the direction the beast will be coming from. Magic circles surrounding the house. Crucifixes. (Wrong monster.) Cold iron. (Wrong monster again.)

Of course, there is always silver, the old lie.

Any metal jacketed high caliber bullet will do the trick. The creature has enhanced healing but nowhere enough reserve when it is full of holes. Bludgeoning works but is rare as human beings can count on having their own head torn off if within reach of the monster’s claws. If you somehow manage to take the creature’s head off, it will be dead. Some orders have shadowy men and women who carry swords blessed by the heads of all the world’s major religions. They are expert when it comes to tracking and killing the beasts. Cutting the bloodline. Cutting the possibility of future massacres out of the picture entirely.

As mentioned, there are few who believe in such things. It is usually the unbeliever who winds up as werewolf chow. Believers know better than to escort their significant others through a park beneath the light of a full moon. Werewolf attacks always, always, always happen just off the path inside a city park.

Canadians number somewhere between thirty and forty million souls. Here it is cold, mostly. Here is where the land is blanketed in starch white snow from October right on through to the beginning of April. Where the east coast sea churns up waves tall as office buildings and where wind and ice-cold rain batters those on the boats as well as on the docks. Here also is where the land is so flat that one is but a speck in a yellow golden field of canola. But here is where there exist towering mountain ranges stretching the length of the continent. Where the sting of frostbite and the crunch of sub-zero snow beneath your feet are your constant companion for months on end.

A bit of old and new technology. I have observed raw footage of these creatures, caught on CCTV. I have interviewed a police officer whose body camera contained footage of one of the creatures as it fed. Three shots from the officer’s .357 Magnum and the creature lay dead beside its prey, back in a bloodied human form. I have also seen the written gag order the officer lives under since the authorities will no doubt have seen the body camera footage and will have made up their minds for themselves.

I have witnessed footage of a boy in a locked panic room transform into a monster. A specially designed space that had triple grade industrial rebar woven into a tight mesh prior to the concrete being poured. Heavy steel reinforcement including a blast and fire-proof door. The child, incidentally, was not bitten by a werewolf and survived. At age six, according to his engineer father, the boy transformed for the first time and butchered the family dog. A mutation? Possibly. Research is needed and of course, a willing subject.

I have puzzled over several questions: is a werewolf a true species if only for one night a month? Is this phenomenon proof of another form of human evolution? Is there any other creature in the animal kingdom which possesses the ability to change its entire biology? If so, where does this lead our species? And what of the human soul? Does it cease to be during the time the full moon is calling the shots? If werewolves are real, surely God must also be real. So argues a host in one of the stories I have collected. If God is therefore real, then so must the Devil.

Of course, much depends on an individual’s interpretation of a supreme being.