Because the 17-19 episode runs a little long, we’ve posted a special section just focusing on the fascinating discussion about the lore and significance of werewolves.

In this section, we discuss: Peter Stubbe, Werewolf of Bedburg; belts, nudity and violence in werewolf lore; werewolves all over the world and why there are so few female werewolves; werewolves and Christianity; werewolves as metaphors for homosexuality and deviant male sexuality; how JK Rowling doesn’t understand the metaphor she actually wrote; and why it’s far too simplistic to read Lupin as gay or an AIDS survivor; the power of NOT sterilizing your lore; male role models; Hermione and Ron and menstrual subtext; and really, just all the proof that the Year 3 Book is the sexiest Book so far.

So: WEREWOLVES! We really need to talk about werewolves. And there’s a lot of symbolism with the various creatures that all three of the Marauders transform into.

Let’s start by talking about Peter Stumpf, or Peter Stubbe.

C: Who is that?

S: Stubbe is pretty much the basic starting point of the werewolf as we know him. We know about him because of a 16-page pamphlet published in London in 1590, and was discovered again in 1920 by an occultist who found it interesting.

C: By an occultist?

S: Did you know that was a thing?

C: I know people who are into the occult exist. When you tell me 1920’s and the occult, I’m immediately like, Cthulu’s coming.

S: Peter Stubbe was a German farmer. He goes by several names – Griswold, Stumpf. Apparently he had his left hand cut off at a certain point. He lived Cologne, in the village of Eprath, and so apparently people called him Stumpf because he was missing his left hand. Which I also think is funny, given Peter Pettigrew missing a toe, but it’s purely coincidental, I think.

And, frankly, his story is pretty rough. He is known to history as the Werewolf of Bedburg. Weird stuff starts happening in Stubbe’s village, children are going missing, people start getting attacked, and a lot of animals start being found brutally massacred in fields. Logically, people assume that it’s an animal, a bear or a wolf or something. And for quite a while the people of the village are hunting, trying to find what it is that’s causing all of this. And I’m trying to find in here, if it says exactly how they come to the conclusion that it’s actually Peter who is doing all of this.

C: Well, it was the Middle Ages, and they were superstitious people who didn’t know much about science.

S: That is true. And to be fair, the jury is somewhat out as to whether or not Peter Stubbe actually did do this stuff or not. He’s arrested in 1589, and accused, and evidence is brought forth saying that he had been attacking and eating goats, lambs and sheep, but also men, women and children for over 25 years. That was the accusation. Now. This article says, “facing torture, he then confessed.” Now, I don’t know if that means he confessed before they tortured him or that he confessed while they were torturing him. It’s anyone’s guess.

Woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1512 (public domain)

C: How dare they ruin this for us with poor sentence structure?

S: It’s unfair. But he did confess to having murdered and eaten 14 children and two pregnant women. In fact, he describes — this is gross, I’m sorry, trigger warning — he described actually having extracted the fetuses from the pregnant women and eating that too.

C: I mean, in for a penny in for a pound.

S: Yeah. If you’re going to go that far, I guess he figured it was a bonus. He also confessed that he regularly had sex with his daughter.

C: And I’m sure his daughter appreciated that.

S: I’m sure she did. And he claimed to have had sex with a succubus that the devil had sent to him.

C: Okay, so I think now we know he’s crazy.

S: So either he’s making shit up, to get out of being tortured, which — fair? Or, he really was kind of crazy. It’s hard to know. What I’ve read about him has mostly led me to think that it might be a little bit of both. I know the evidence is limited, but my personal opinion is that he was a little crazy. And it is possible that he had killed some animals, and maybe some people, I mean, the fact that he went on for so long. And this was something that he claimed he had been doing for a really long time. I don’t know, there’s, as you can imagine, lots of very imaginative engravings of this. I just don’t know what to think. He could be crazy. He could be just making stuff up because they’re gonna torture him.

C: Here’s the thing, though. We don’t know that he actually confessed to any of this at all. And, presumably he was — anybody who is an expert in, you know, European Middle Ages, if I’m wrong about this, feel free to write in and tell us — probably not super educated, probably not even literate. So if they were like, here’s a whole bunch of shit that you did, including boning a succubus, he’d be like, okay, here’s the X. I did it.

S: It’s possible. Now I am going to say that the records indicate that he was wealthy and was a pretty respected member of the town and a wealthy farmer and landowner. So I don’t know. Now they do torture him and we find out the things he confesses to get more outlandish with torture, so you know, big surprise.

C: Wait, are you telling me waterboarding doesn’t work?!

S: Yeah. Just before being stretched on the rack, Stubbe confessed to having practiced black magic since he was 12. He said the Devil had forged and given to him a magical belt, enabling him to metamorphose into “the likeness of a greedy, devouring Wolf, strong and mighty with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws.” When the belt was removed, Stubbe claimed, he would transform back to his human form.

C: How did he take off his own belt? How is he even wearing about when he’s in wolf form? How does he take off his own belt with his big paws that don’t have opposable thumbs, without say, tearing the belt?

S: That’s like you asking why Jaco