Lou’s View – Oct. 22, 2015
The Werewolf in Pennsylvania
By Lou Bernard
It’s October, and almost Halloween, which means I’m morally obligated to tell a Henry Shoemaker story. If you’ve never heard of Henry Wharton Shoemaker, then congratulations on reading my column for the first time. All of my regular readers have heard me write about Shoemaker before; he was a writer and folklorist from McElhattan.
A collection of Shoemaker’s scholarly papers are at the Ross Library, bound in book form, and the table of contents tells everything I love about Shoemaker’s work. Chapter One: Reasons For Collecting Pennsylvania Folklore. Chapter Two: Address at the Anniversary. And so on, until you get to Chapter Twelve, which is “The Werewolf In Pennsylvania,” presented with the same sincerity as all the others.
That, right there, tells you everything you need to know about Henry Shoemaker.
According to Shoemaker, Pennsylvania Governor William Alexis Stone told of having a werewolf encounter in Tioga County in the 1850s, having known a man named Richard Duryea who turned out to be a werewolf. I mean, unbelievable story, right? Except the researchable facts check out—Stone was, in fact, a Pennsylvania governor, and he was in the Tioga County area around that time.
Shoemaker goes on to tell some werewolf stories closer to home, too. Apparently werewolves were plentiful in Clinton County back in the old days; Shoemaker tells a story of a family in Wayne Township back in the colonial days that had a problem with them.
The family didn’t realize it was werewolves at first, because when you’re having problems with your horses, werewolves are not the first thing that come to mind. The family was finding their horses worn out, exhausted, battered and cut up as if they’d been ridden very roughly. Finally the wife decided to look into it and find out what was going on.
She went out and waited near the barn, in the dark. About midnight, she saw three wolves enter the stable. A minute later, she heard someone shout,”Here I go clear of everybody,” and the horses burst through the doors, riding fast, each ridden by a female werewolf.
The wife decided to put a stop to all this. (Exactly what a werewolf needs with a horse was never fully explained.) Before the next full moon, she gathered up some thorns and burrs and attached them to the horses’ backs. Then she waited.
Just before midnight, again, she saw the three wolves slink in. A moment later, they howled in pain, and went running out of the barn with thorns sticking to them. The wife fired her rifle, hitting one in the hip, but they got away. The next day, a neighbor woman was limping, and claimed to have fallen off her horse into the thorns.
The injury that gives away the secret is a common thread to many werewolf stories. Another Wayne Township family, the Quigleys, were having problems with a large wolf skulking around the farm, sometimes scaring the horses. (Seriously, what is it with these werewolves and the horses?) One night, George Quigley waited with his rifle, and shot the wolf in the front leg. It yowled in pain and ran away.
The next afternoon, an old woman from down the street came around, and was seen with her right arm dangling and bleeding, in need of medical care.
“I shot myself,” she said,”Trying to kill a fox.”
And then PETA came and began campaigning for werewolf rights. No, I’m just kidding, though that is oddly plausible. Quigley bound up the arm and treated the injury, which he’d caused in the first place, and the old woman stayed away from his farm after that. No more wolf problems; they’d come to an agreement.
Shoemaker documented several of these stories, happening all over the county. It’s too bad there aren’t any more werewolves around; that would be cool. Or maybe there are, and I’m just mistaking them for stray dogs. And instead of shooting them, I’m giving them treats and asking my wife if we can adopt them.
