98 Fun Facts About Werewolf

'Werewolf' descends from wer(e)wulf, a compound from which historical language in which wer meant 'man'?

Old English werwulf joined wer, 'man', to wulf; wer later dropped out of the language altogether, so the compound has outlived the word it was built from.

The word 'lycanthropy' comes from an Ancient Greek term meaning what?

Wolf-man is the literal sense, from Greek lykos, 'wolf', and anthropos, 'man'; Ovid supplied the best-known ancient case, a king whom Jupiter turns into a wolf.

Which ancient historian reported that the Neuri were said to turn into wolves once a year?

Herodotus recorded the claim in Book 4 of his Histories, attributing it to the Scythians and to Greeks settled in Scythia, and said he did not believe it himself.

Which Roman work has a soldier urinate in a circle around his clothes and turn into a wolf?

Petronius' Satyricon gives the tale to a guest at Trimalchio's dinner: a servant spears the wolf in the neck, and next morning the soldier is found in bed with a doctor dressing the wound.

In Marie de France's 12th-century lai Bisclavret, how does the knight's wife trap him in wolf form?

Bisclavret cannot change back without his clothes, so his wife steals his hidden clothing with a knight's help; the king later takes the strangely noble wolf into his court.

When Bisclavret finally gets revenge on his treacherous wife, which body part does the wolf tear off?

The wolf bites off her nose, and the lai adds that many of the wife's female descendants were born without noses afterwards.

What were the Norse warriors who fought in wolfskins, cousins of the berserkers, called?

Ulfheðnar wore a wolf's pelt over their mail and appear in the sagas as the elite guard of Harald Fairhair, Norway's first king; the name means roughly 'wolf-skin wearers'.

Peter Stumpp, the 'Werewolf of Bedburg' executed in 1589, said the Devil gave him what to transform?

Stumpp said a magical belt, or girdle, from the Devil turned him into 'a greedy, devouring wolf'; after his execution his head was displayed on a pole beside a wooden wolf.

Which king's gun-bearer hunted the Beast of Gévaudan in the 1760s?

Louis XV sent François Antoine, who shot a huge wolf in 1765 and had it stuffed for Versailles, but the killings soon resumed and went on for nearly two more years.

Which local hunter is credited with shooting the final Beast of Gévaudan at Mont Mouchet?

Jean Chastel shot it during a hunt got up by a local marquis; the story that he used silver bullets cast from medals of the Virgin Mary is a 20th-century novelist's invention.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, why does Jupiter turn the Arcadian king Lycaon into a wolf?

Served him human flesh: Lycaon wanted to test whether his guest was truly a god, and Ovid has him flee howling into the fields, his clothes turning to hair.

Wolfsbane, the poisonous plant of werewolf lore, is also widely known by which common name?

Monkshood, named for its hooded flowers, is the same plant; its other name is thought to come from hunters using its poison on arrows and bait to kill wolves.

In psychiatry, clinical lycanthropy is classified as which kind of symptom?

A delusion: some psychiatrists thought the syndrome extinct until a 1988 review at McLean Hospital turned up twelve cases, lasting anywhere from one day to 13 years.

Which actor played high-school werewolf Scott Howard in the 1985 comedy Teen Wolf?

Michael J. Fox's werewolf comedy was a hit that spawned a cartoon series, a sequel and, decades later, a television drama.

Whose 1857 novel The Wolf Leader follows Thibault, a shoemaker who makes a pact with an upright-walking wolf?

Alexandre Dumas set The Wolf Leader around 1780 in Villers-Cotterêts, his home town, building it on a folk tale he heard as a child from the gamekeeper Mocquet.

Which 1933 novel did Guy Endore write about a young man cursed with lycanthropy?

The Werewolf of Paris follows Bertrand Caillet through the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune; Hammer's 1961 film of it, The Curse of the Werewolf, moved the story to 18th-century Spain.

Which werewolf bit Remus Lupin as a child in the Harry Potter series?

Fenrir Greyback attacked Lupin as a small boy to punish his father; Lupin's schoolfriends later became Animagi to keep him company and nicknamed him Moony.

Which actor played Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter films?

David Thewlis played Lupin from Prisoner of Azkaban onward, the year Lupin taught Defence Against the Dark Arts and coached Harry to cast a Patronus.

Twilight's Jacob Black, the wolf shapeshifter played by Taylor Lautner, belongs to which tribe?

Jacob is Quileute and lives on the tribe's reservation at La Push, Washington; Stephenie Meyer said she originally intended him as a minor plot device.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the werewolf Angua von Überwald serves in which organisation?

Angua joined the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in Men at Arms, keeps a strict vegetarian diet in human form, and falls in love with Carrot Ironfoundersson.

The 1985 werewolf film Silver Bullet is based on a novella by which author?

Stephen King adapted his own novella, Cycle of the Werewolf, for the screen; the title is the nickname of the motorised wheelchair that young Marty's uncle builds him.

In Werewolf of London (1935), where is botanist Wilfred Glendon bitten while hunting a rare flower?

Glendon is bitten in Tibet while gathering the mariphasa, a plant said to bloom by moonlight and the only thing that can hold off his transformations.

Which actor played the botanist-turned-werewolf in Universal's Werewolf of London (1935)?

Henry Hull played Glendon; Jack Pierce, who created Karloff's Frankenstein look, designed a lighter makeup for him, and Pierce's fuller design was used for The Wolf Man in 1941.

Who played Larry Talbot in Universal's The Wolf Man (1941)?

Lon Chaney Jr.'s Talbot returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales, and is finally beaten to death by his father with his own silver-headed cane.

Which screenwriter invented the 'Even a man who is pure in heart...' verse for The Wolf Man (1941)?

Curt Siodmak made the verse up, along with the pentagram that marks the werewolf's next victim; the sequels kept reciting it, with a new last line about the full moon.

Who played Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)?

Bela Lugosi played the Monster as blind and talking, but the studio cut all his dialogue after a test screening, so the finished film never explains his groping walk.

Which pub do the American backpackers enter on the moors at the start of An American Werewolf in London?

The Slaughtered Lamb's regulars turn hostile when asked about the star on the wall, then send the pair off with a warning to keep to the road and beware the moon.

Whose transformation effects in An American Werewolf in London won the first Oscar for Best Makeup?

Rick Baker's transformation work won the inaugural Best Makeup award, a category introduced for 1981 films; the soundtrack is built almost entirely from songs with 'moon' in the title.

Who wrote and directed An American Werewolf in London?

John Landis wrote the first draft in 1969 while working as a production assistant in Yugoslavia, then waited over a decade because backers found it too funny for horror.

In The Howling (1981), Karen White is sent to recover at a secluded rural retreat called what?

Dr. Waggner's retreat, the Colony, hides a werewolf community; Rob Bottin built Eddie Quist's transformation with air bladders under latex, and the film adapts Gary Brandner's 1977 novel.

In Teen Wolf (1985), Scott Howard uses his werewolf powers to star in which sport?

Basketball it is: Scott turns the Beavers, his school's hopeless team, into winners, then starts to worry he is being cheered as a novelty rather than for himself.

In MTV's Teen Wolf (2011-17), Tyler Posey's Scott McCall protects which fictional California town?

Beacon Hills is the show's fictional town; creator Jeff Davis set out to make a darker, edgier thriller than the 1985 comedy, taking The Lost Boys as his model.

In Wolf (1994), Jack Nicholson's Will Randall is bitten by a wolf while working in which profession?

Book publishing is his world: Randall is editor-in-chief of a New York house, bitten on a Vermont road after hitting a wolf, and the new vigour helps him fight to keep his job.

Ginger Snaps (2000), which ties lycanthropy to puberty, follows the Fitzgerald sisters in which country?

Canada: Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins play Ginger and Brigitte in Bailey Downs, a fictional Ontario suburb, and the film earned a sequel and a prequel, shot back-to-back.

Dog Soldiers (2002) was shot in Luxembourg, standing in for which region where its soldiers meet werewolves?

The Scottish Highlands of the story were really Luxembourg's forests; on screen a squad on a routine training exercise finds a massacred special-forces camp, then the werewolves find them.

Which actress plays Selene, the vampire who hunts werewolves in Underworld (2003)?

Kate Beckinsale's Selene hunts the Lycans, werewolves who in the films' backstory were the vampires' enslaved daytime guards until their leader Lucian led a revolt.

Who played Lawrence Talbot in the 2010 remake The Wolfman, opposite Anthony Hopkins as his father?

Benicio del Toro, a lifelong fan of the 1941 film, starred; the remake won the Academy Award for Best Makeup, but reshoots pushed the budget from $85 million to $150 million.

Which horror director made Blumhouse's 2025 Wolf Man?

Leigh Whannell, director of The Invisible Man, took over in 2023 after Ryan Gosling, who had pitched the film and planned to star, dropped out along with director Derek Cianfrance.

In What We Do in the Shadows (2014), which comedian plays werewolf pack leader Anton?

Rhys Darby, of Flight of the Conchords, leads the pack whose polite motto is 'werewolves, not swearwolves'; co-directors Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement play vampires.

Marvel's 2022 special Werewolf by Night was directed by which Oscar-winning film composer?

Michael Giacchino, the composer of Up, both directed and scored the special, which was released in black and white and only reissued in colour a year later.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, how does Oz (Seth Green) become a werewolf?

Oz is bitten by his young cousin Jordy, who nips his finger in the episode 'Phases'; the guitarist for Dingoes Ate My Baby later leaves Sunnydale to learn to control the wolf.

Which actor played the werewolf George Sands in BBC Three's Being Human?

Russell Tovey played George from the 2008 pilot until the opening of series four, when the character dies rescuing his baby daughter, Eve.

Which actor's guest role as werewolf Alcide Herveaux on True Blood was expanded to series regular?

Joe Manganiello was first called in to read for a different werewolf, Coot, before the producers asked him to try Alcide; he was promoted to the main cast a season later.

The party game Mafia was invented in 1986 by Dmitry Davidoff at a university in which city?

Moscow State University's psychology department is where Davidoff first tried it on his students; in 1997 Andrew Plotkin swapped the gangsters for werewolves because he found them 'niftier'.

What are the player-character werewolves called in Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992)?

The Garou see themselves as the planet's immune system and can shift between five forms, from human to full wolf.

Which Skyrim expansion expands the abilities of vampire and werewolf players?

Dawnguard (2012) added the Vampire Lord form and a werewolf perk tree; Bloodmoon, by contrast, was the werewolf expansion for the earlier Morrowind, set on Solstheim.

The creature Michael Jackson becomes at the start of Thriller was designed as what?

A werecat: the makeup artist, fresh from An American Werewolf in London, did not want to build another wolf, so he started from a black panther and added a mane and big ears.

Warren Zevon's 1978 hit 'Werewolves of London' features the drummer and bassist of which band?

Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood and John McVie supplied the rhythm section; the song began as nothing more than a title, tossed at Zevon by Phil Everly, who wanted a dance tune to go with it.

Which animal does the inventor Wallace become under a full moon in a 2005 stop-motion parody of classic monster films?

A giant rabbit with a taste for prize vegetables is what Wallace becomes in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

In the 1960s sitcom The Munsters, which family member is a werewolf despite having a vampire for a mother?

Eddie, the only child of Herman and Lily Munster, is a typical schoolboy apart from being a werewolf, and Butch Patrick played him in the original series.

In the TV series Wednesday, which colorful werewolf played by Emma Myers shares a dorm room with Wednesday Addams?

Enid Sinclair was designed as a sunny foil to the gloomy Wednesday, and Emma Myers first auditioned for the title role before being cast as the roommate.

Which rare condition that covers the body in thick hair is nicknamed 'werewolf syndrome'?

Hypertrichosis affected several circus sideshow performers of the 19th century, among them Julia Pastrana, who toured the United States billed as a bearded lady.

The rougarou, a werewolf said to hunt Catholics who break Lent, prowls the swamps of which US state?

Louisiana storytellers have long used the rougarou, whose name is a local twist on an older French word, to scare Cajun and Creole children into behaving.

Which comedy duo met the Wolf Man, Count Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in a 1948 Universal horror spoof?

Abbott and Costello both disliked the script, yet the spoof became one of Universal's top films of its year and launched a run of monster team-ups.

In The Wolf Man (1941), Larry Talbot returns to his family's ancestral estate in which country?

Wales is the setting of the fictional village of Llanwelly, where Larry Talbot comes home to bury his brother and make peace with his estranged father.

Which actor voices Wayne, the exhausted werewolf father of hundreds of pups, in the Hotel Transylvania films?

Steve Buscemi voices Wayne opposite Adam Sandler's Dracula, and it is the scent-tracking skill of Wayne's daughter Winnie that finds Johnny in the first film.

Which author wrote The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, about a boy whose family moves next to a Florida bog?

R. L. Stine made it the fourteenth book of his original Goosebumps series, and it climbed onto the Publishers Weekly bestseller list.

Remus Lupin first appears, as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, in which Harry Potter book?

Prisoner of Azkaban closes Lupin's only year in the job with a full moon catching him in the open on the walk back to the castle.

In the Twilight saga's Breaking Dawn, the wolf Jacob Black imprints on which newborn daughter of Bella and Edward?

Renesmee is the baby whose arrival ends Jacob's long heartache over Bella and finally settles the saga's love triangle.

Which heavy metal singer turns into a werewolf in the video for his 1983 single Bark at the Moon?

Ozzy Osbourne plays a mad scientist who swallows a potion and becomes the beast from the album cover, in what was the first music video of his career.

On the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, which character is said to have recorded the novelty song Werewolf Bar Mitzvah?

Tracy Jordan is said to have cut the spooky novelty single for Geffen Records, one of many odd credits in the movie star's back story.

In a 1988 Scooby-Doo TV movie, Count Dracula turns which of the gang into a werewolf to fill a monster road race?

Shaggy is transformed at a drive-in movie on the third night, after Scooby twice foils Dracula's bumbling henchmen, the Hunch Bunch.

Which actor made his feature film debut as Todd Howard, the werewolf college boxer of Teen Wolf Too (1987)?

Jason Bateman's Todd would rather be a veterinarian, but a coach recruits him hoping the family genes will rescue a struggling boxing team.

Astronaut John Jameson, later Marvel's werewolf Man-Wolf, is first seen being saved in a space mishap by which hero?

Spider-Man rescues the astronaut years before a ruby found on the Moon grafts itself to Jameson's throat and turns him into a white-furred beast.

In The Vampire Diaries, which thousand-year-old villain played by Joseph Morgan is a hybrid of vampire and werewolf?

Klaus comes to Mystic Falls intent on lifting a curse that restricts his hybrid abilities, and Joseph Morgan won the part over several hundred candidates.

Which actress plays Valerie, whose forest village is stalked by a werewolf, in the 2011 film Red Riding Hood?

Amanda Seyfried took the title role in a loose retelling of the folk tale that was produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Catherine Hardwicke.

Which actor's monster hunter is cursed and kills Count Dracula in werewolf form in Van Helsing (2004)?

Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing learns that only a werewolf can kill Dracula, so the bite that curses him is also the one weapon that can win the fight.

In Harry Potter, which boarded-up house on the edge of Hogsmeade was built as a hiding place for young Remus Lupin?

The Shrieking Shack became known as the most haunted building in Britain, and Lupin reached it through a secret tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow.

Hemlock Grove, a 2013 horror series about a teenage werewolf in Pennsylvania, premiered on which streaming service?

Netflix released all 13 episodes at once, and the show was among the three originals that earned the service its first Primetime Emmy nominations.

Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer star played arson investigator Kristin Ramsey in the 2023 werewolf drama Wolf Pack?

Sarah Michelle Gellar's character investigates the forest fire during which a werewolf bites two high school students caught in the stampede.

Which future Bonanza star played a student turned monster by a hypnotist in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)?

Michael Landon played troubled teenager Tony Rivers two years before Bonanza made him a household name as Little Joe Cartwright.

Which director made the 1981 werewolf film The Howling, whose success got him hired to make Gremlins?

Joe Dante both directed and edited the film, and its makeup effects by Rob Bottin drew particular praise from reviewers.

Which novelist co-wrote the 1984 werewolf film The Company of Wolves, adapting her own short story?

Angela Carter wrote the screenplay with the film's director from her own 1979 tale, a dark reworking of Little Red Riding Hood.

Which actor plays Etienne of Navarre, the captain cursed to become a wolf each night, in Ladyhawke (1985)?

Rutger Hauer shared the part with a quartet of black Siberian wolves, while Michelle Pfeiffer's Isabeau spends each day as a hawk.

Which actor took his first leading film role as the werewolf Leon in Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)?

Oliver Reed's film flopped at the box office, which is why it remained the only werewolf picture Hammer ever made.

Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers (2020) is set in 1650 in which Irish town, ordered to clear its woods of wolves?

Kilkenny answers to the Lord Protector in the film, which completes director Tomm Moore's Irish folklore trilogy after The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea.

Telltale's The Wolf Among Us, starring sheriff Bigby Wolf, is a prequel to which comic book series by Bill Willingham?

Fables casts the reformed Big Bad Wolf as Bigby, sheriff of a secret New York community of fairy-tale exiles called Fabletown.

In MTV's Teen Wolf, which best friend and sidekick of the werewolf Scott McCall is played by Dylan O'Brien?

Stiles Stilinski, whose father is the town sheriff, has a talent for solving mysteries, and Dylan O'Brien also played the demon that possesses him.

In Marvel Comics, what is the real name of the 1970s horror hero who transforms into Werewolf by Night?

Jack Russell is also a breed of dog, a joke co-creator Gerry Conway doubts he intended, since he never owned one.

In the Doctor Who episode Tooth and Claw, warrior monks plot to turn which British monarch into a werewolf?

Queen Victoria survives the night and founds the Torchwood Institute to guard Britain against alien threats, the Doctor included.

Which actor plays Marty Coslaw, the boy who battles a werewolf from a motorised wheelchair, in Silver Bullet (1985)?

Corey Haim's Marty rides a custom wheelchair-motorcycle built by his Uncle Red, played by Gary Busey, and the machine gives the film its title.

Sabrewulf, a man afflicted by lycanthropy, is a playable fighter in which 1994 arcade game developed by Rare?

Killer Instinct sets Sabrewulf against a cyborg, an alien and a cloned velociraptor in a tournament run by the megacorporation Ultratech.

Manuel Blanco Romasanta, who in 1853 blamed 13 murders on a curse that made him a wolf, was tried in which country?

Spain's Isabella II commuted his death sentence so that doctors could study the claim, and folklore remembers him as the Werewolf of Allariz.

Which Anglican priest, author of the 1865 study The Book of Were-Wolves, also wrote the hymn Onward, Christian Soldiers?

Sabine Baring-Gould produced one of the most frequently cited studies of lycanthropy, and the Devon parson habitually wrote standing up at a tall desk.

In the lobizón legend of Argentina and Paraguay, which child in a family is fated to become a werewolf?

The seventh son is said to transform on his 13th birthday, a legend that attached itself to the maned wolf, the lanky wild canid of South America.

Which Japanese director made Wolf Children (2012), about a young mother raising two half-werewolf children alone?

Mamoru Hosoda founded Studio Chizu to make the film, the first he wrote himself, and modelled its countryside on his home region of Toyama.

In which gothic horror set of Magic: The Gathering is every werewolf a double-faced card with a human side?

Innistrad prints each werewolf with the afflicted human on one face and the monster on the other, flipping when the card's conditions are met.

Which director of The Graduate made the 1994 werewolf drama Wolf, starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer?

Mike Nichols fell out with screenwriter Jim Harrison, who quit complaining that the director had turned his wolf into a Chihuahua.

The Beast of Bray Road, a wolf-like creature reported near Elkhorn in the 1980s, is part of which US state's folklore?

Wisconsin reporter Linda Godfrey began as a skeptic, but her newspaper articles on the sightings grew into a book about the state's own werewolf.

Which author writes the Mercy Thompson novels, about a coyote shapeshifter raised by a pack of werewolves?

Patricia Briggs has Mercy's mother find a coyote pup in the crib and hand the baby to the pack led by Bran, ruler of North America's werewolves.

Which game publisher's film arm produced Werewolves Within (2021), a snowed-in whodunit adapted from a video game?

Ubisoft handed director Josh Ruben a virtual reality kit so he could play the game before filming its mystery in a small Vermont town.

Which author's Wolves of Mercy Falls series opens with Shiver (2009), a romance between Grace and the werewolf Sam?

Maggie Stiefvater has said the real town of Ely, Minnesota would be the nearest neighbour of her fictional Mercy Falls, sharing its climate.

In NBC's Grimm, Silas Weir Mitchell plays Monroe, a friendly member of which wolflike kind of Wesen?

Blutbad is the kind Monroe belongs to, and he becomes the hero's main guide to the supernatural community before marrying the foxlike Rosalee.

Which author's debut novel The Wolfen, about wolf-like beings stalking New York, became a 1981 film with Albert Finney?

Whitley Strieber made his creatures an intelligent species descended from canids rather than cursed people, giving the horror a scientific explanation.

Which early medieval Irish kingdom was said to be home to people who lived as wolves for seven years at a time?

Ossory's werewolves were traced to a legendary warrior, and in one 12th-century tale a wolf explains to a frightened priest that an abbot's curse is to blame.

Which game designer, known online as Zarf, gave the party game Mafia its werewolf theme in 1997?

Andrew Plotkin argued that gangsters had less cultural resonance than a monster who looks normal by day, which suited a game about a secret enemy.

Which Universal makeup artist designed the Wolf Man's look, which took five to six hours to apply to its star in 1941?

Jack Pierce recycled a design he had first made for an earlier werewolf film, whose star had objected that it covered too much of his face.

Which actor plays the American backpacker who survives the attack and transforms in An American Werewolf in London?

David Naughton's character Kessler changes under the next full moon, after the night-time attack that kills his friend Jack Goodman.