In the 16th Century people of Germany had it ruff, quite literally. Not only did they have to deal with the Black Death, get their heads around Martin Luther’s reformation of Christianity, be on high alert for any Ottomans that had settled their Empire just one country over but they also had a freaking werewolf prowling the countryside.
By the time of his trial Peter Stumpp had confessed to murdering and cannibalising fourteen children, two pregnant women and their fetuses, so this is no Twilight werewolf, just a straight up prick. Bear in mind that this confession was given under torture and the middle ages were experts at that but I think that we can infer that some kind of mental illness was involved in Peter’s case.
In 1920’s occultist Montague Summers rediscovered a 16 page pamphlet from 1590 that was exclusively devoted to case, trial and execution of Stumpp and the salaciousness of the reporting would make National Enquier journalists blush.
There’s no definitive birth date for Stumpp as the local church’s registers were destroyed during the 30 years war 30 years after his death (spooky), but historians put the date at around early 1530. Stumpp was married with two children and appeared to be a wealthy family in the area of Bedburg, Germany.
There were a series of brutal and strange killings in the area from the mid 1560’s for over twenty years, but because Stumpp was well known and liked in the area he was never a suspect up until rumours of a werewolf started to surface. When a girl was attacked by a wolf like creature and was only saved by the fact that a herd of cattle stampeded the wolf in panic. When this was reported the villagers went on a good ol’ fashioned werewolf hunt, I assume with torches and pitchforks, battled the beast and managed to cut its paw off. In another encounter the posse cornered the beast and it transformed back into Peter, their proof that he was the werewolf was that he was missing his left hand… not the fact they saw it transform then?
In an M Night Shyamalan twist, the German word for stump is stumpf which has been used in other reports of Peter’s name, so maybe he had lost his hand before all this happened and it was more a nom de guerre rather than his given name.
Peter was then thrown on the rack and was barely given a few turns before he started to sing better than Adele, poor torturer didn’t even get to get his happy ending.
Stump confessed to making a deal with Devil. The Dev gave Peter a sparklie new girdle(body conscious?) that would make him transform 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”, but with a girdle on.
Removing the girdle would transform him back into human form, last time I checked Wolves didn’t have opposable thumbs so there must have been a quick release option on it.
Peter claimed that he had been roaming the countryside for 25 years feasting on livestock and people alike. One of his victims was claimed to be his young son, whom he ate his brain, he was also claimed to be having an incestuous relationship with his daughter, and banged a succubus which Devil had sent to him.
His mistress and his daughter were sentenced to death alongside him for allowing him to live and harboring his existence. They were both flayed and then strangled, which in comparison to Peter’s death was lenient.
Peter was put on the wheel, where “flesh was torn from his body” with red hot pincers, his limbs were then broken by the blunt side of an axe to prevent him from rising from the grave, then he was beheaded with a sword, a bigger deterrent from coming back from the grave if you ask me, and for good measure he was thrown on a pyre while his head was put on a pyke.
Needless to say the killings stopped and Peter never rose from the grave like the werewolf he was assumed to be.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Stumpp
https://historyofyesterday.com/the-werewolf-of-bedburg-4352774f9804
The M.O Podcast 