Werewolf, according to superstition, is a person who changes into a wolf. The word comes from the Old English term werwulf, meaning man-wolf. One of the earliest werewolf stories, from Greek mythology, involves a king named Lycaon who was turned into a wolf by the god Zeus. The Greek word for wolf, lykos, and thus the technical term for werewolf, lycanthrope, may have come from Lycaon’s name. Lycanthropy is a mental illness in which a person imagines he or she is a wolf.
Werewolves appear in many old stories. In some tales, they turn themselves into wolves by putting on a wolf skin, by drinking water from a wolf’s footprint, or by rubbing a magic ointment on their bodies. In other stories, they are transformed through a curse.
The werewolves in most stories try to eat people. Various methods can return a werewolf to human form. These include removing the wolf skin, speaking the werewolf’s real name, hitting a werewolf on the head, and making the sign of the cross. According to stories, one way to learn a werewolf’s identity is to wound it and later look for that wound in a suspected person.
Many werewolf stories are known from Europe. Similar tales from other places tell of people who turn into other kinds of ferocious animals.
