I read an impassioned plea from a genre fan when I was researching my current series. His plea was, “Werewolves are dangerous. Please stop with the jokes like wet dog smell, etc.”
His plea was well thought out, well reasoned, and very convincing.
For the most part, I agree with him.
Except.
There are eyewitness accounts of people encountering werewolves. They report the same things. One of the things they reported was the smell of “wet dog, urine and blood.”
I heard that from all the eyewitness accounts. So, with apologies to the genre fan, I had to include the wet dog and blood smell.
What are the other things they report?
All agree they are physically huge. Common estimates are around eight feet tall. The theory is that alphas are larger than beta males, females smaller than beta males.
This figured in to my story. A common theme I explore is, “You just messed with the wrong person.” It’s a common refrain in my life, people assuming because of my height, weight and small build, that I’m a prime target for bullying.
Nope, I’ve studied some of the most effective martial arts on earth. I often share that knowledge with others who are interested. If you assume you can physically assault me with impunity, it’s not going to go well.
If I became a werewolf, what would I be? Alpha of course, because wolves have no example of sigma males. A sigma would be seen as an Alpha’s Alpha. So my height would be greater than that of a regular alpha, or “Grand Wolf”. Almost 9 feet tall.
Next. Most eyewitnesses report that werewolves get as much – if not more – of a thrill from fear than from killing. A werewolf who slaughters his victims attracts attention and retribution. Bad for the species. They would be hunted down by their own kind and killed, out of self preservation.
The description of werewolves broadcasting fear, and enjoying the result, is almost universal. The “Civil War” werewolf is described as playful because he’ll charge you and stop without killing you. Listen, if something over seven feet tall charges me, I’m not really going to take that as “playful.”
Witnesses often urinate on themselves encountering a werewolf. Some actually defecate in terror. This actually shook me to hear, because it’s the kind of embarrassing detail they tell that… listen, I don’t know too many men who make up stories about urinating on themselves out of terror.
This isn’t the only video I found. It seems there’s a number of them, some listed as dogmen, others werewolves. And some of the Yeti/Saasquatch stories sound more werewolf than Bigfoot.
There you go. Some of the information on how and why I decided to write a werewolf novel, which has turned into a series.
