however, revolves around monsters, rather than virally created zombies of the undead variety.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century, London, England’s Newgate Prison was the site of a horrific series of deaths that would have made even the average walker proud in the extreme—if such creatures possess significant numbers of brains to be proud. Due to a pronounced lack of regular food, on more than a few occasions the prisoners targeted the weakest members of the pack and turned them into food. It was very much a case of having to eat the living to avoid becoming one of the dead. We are, then, talking about cannibals in the cell block.
One of those savagely killed and partially eaten by the prisoners was an unnamed man who did exactly what the bitten and the equally semi-devoured of the prison of The Walking Dead did on so many occasions: he rose again. Not, however, as a voracious devotee of raw, human flesh, but as a ghastly and ghostly black dog with a pair of blazing red eyes.
Once again the mysterious dog manifested before the farmer, but this time, incredibly, it was supposedly heard to speak, in rumbling tones.…
The actions of this undead man-hound were not at all unlike those of its television-based equivalents. The creature violently slaughtered all of those who had taken its human life by savagely biting down on their necks with its immense and powerful jaws. Death swiftly followed for the guilty parties. Reanimation, however, did not. When the deed was done, the man—in spectral dog form—vanished, never, ever to be seen again.
Ruins of Newgate Prison, where, it is said, underfed prisoners killed and ate some of their fellow inmates back in the sixteenth century.
Then, there is the very similar, and very weird, tale of a pair of brothers: William and David Sutor. The dark saga all began late one night in December 1728, when William, a Scottish farmer, was hard at work in his fields and heard an unearthly shriek that was accompanied by a brief glimpse of a large, dark-colored dog, far bigger than any normal hound, and one possessed of a pair of glowing red eyes—just like the beast from Newgate Prison.
On several more occasions in both 1729 and 1730, the dog returned, always seemingly intent on plaguing the Sutor family. It was, however, in late November of 1730 that the affair ultimately reached its paranormal pinnacle. Once again the mysterious dog manifested before the farmer, but this time, incredibly, it was supposedly heard to speak, in rumbling tones, and directed William to make his way to a specific, nearby piece of ground within thirty minutes.
He did as he was told, and there waiting for him was the spectral hound of Hell. A terrified William pleaded to know what was going on. The hideous hound answered that he was none other than David Sutor—William’s brother—and that he had killed a man at that very spot some thirty-five years earlier.
As David had directed his own savage dog to kill the man, David had himself—as punishment—been returned to our plane of existence in the form of a gigantic hound. The dogman instructed William to seek out the buried bones of the murder victim, and then place them within consecrated ground, which William duly did, in the confines of the old Blair Churchyard.
The ghostly black dog—the spirit of David Sutor in animal form—vanished. Like the beast of Newgate Prison, when its work was done, it never made a reappearance.
STUUBE, PETER
Back in 1590, George Bores wrote a fascinating, but horrific, report on one of the most notorious cases of lycanthropy on record. It told the story of a deranged and homicidal man named Peter Stuube, who went on murderous killing sprees, while—so he claimed—in the form of a terrifying werewolf. Bores began.…
“In the towns of Cperadt and Bedbur near Collin in high Germany, there was continually brought up and nourished one Stubbe Peeter [note: there are several variations of spelling in the records], who from his youth was greatly inclined to evil and the practicing of wicked arts even from twelve years of age till twenty, and so forwards till his dying day, insomuch that surfeiting in the damnable desire of magic, necromancy, and sorcery, acquainting himself with many infernal spirits and fiends, insomuch that forgetting the God that made him, and that Savior that shed his blood man’s redemption: In the end, careless of salvation gave both soul and body to the Devil forever, for small carnal pleasure in this life, that he might be famous and spoken of on earth, though he lost heaven thereby.”
Bores continues that the Devil himself had pledged to provide Stuube “whatsoever his heart desired during his mortal life: whereupon this vile wretch neither desired riches nor promotion, nor was his fancy satisfied with any external or outward pleasure, but having a tyrannous heart and a most cruel bloody mind, requested that at his pleasure he might work his malice on men, women, and children, in the shape of some beast, whereby he might live without dread or danger of life, and unknown to be the executor of any bloody enterprise which he meant to commit.”
The Devil, added Bores, perceived Stuube as being someone who was “a fit instrument to perform mischief as a wicked fiend pleased with the desire of wrong and destruction.” The horned one gave Stuube a girdle which, upon being placed around his waist, mutated him into “the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like unto brands of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws. And no sooner should he put off the same girdle, but presently he should appear in his former shape, according to the proportion of a man, as if he had never been changed.”
It was then, having been given—by the Devil, no less—the ability to transform himself from man to monster and back again, Stuube went on to commit his gruesome acts. Or, as Bores worded it, Stuube “proceeded to the execution of sundry most heinous and vile murders; for if any person displeased him, he would incontinent thirst for revenge, and no sooner should they or any of theirs walk abroad in the fields or about the city, but in the shape of a wolf he would presently encounter them, and never rest till he had plucked out their throats and tear their joints asunder. And after he had gotten a taste hereof, he took such pleasure and delight in shedding of blood, that he would night and day walk the fields and work extreme cruelties.”
The horned one gave Stuube a girdle which, upon being placed around his waist, mutated him into “the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf.…”
Bores went into much detail regarding how, exactly, Stuube would go about his deadly, infernal business: “And sundry times he would go through the streets of Collin, Bedbur, and Cperadt, in comely habit, and very civilly, as one well known to all the inhabitants thereabout, and oftentimes was he saluted of those whose friends and children he had butchered, though nothing suspected for the same. In these places, I say, he would walk up and down, and if he could spy either maid, wife, or child that his eyes liked or his heart lusted after, he would wait their issuing out of the city or town. If he could by any means get them alone, he would in the fields ravish them, and after in his wolfish likeness cruelly murder them.”
Stuube, in werewolf form, had more than just murder in mind, when it came to the women of the area:
“Yea, often it came to pass that as he walked abroad in the fields, if he chanced to spy a company of maidens playing together or else a milking
