Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we chronicle the Rougarou. Monday we looked at the origin story, Wednesday we explored the byzantine rules that come along with the curse.

We’ve heard almost too many stories of white colonists co-opting and literalizing indigenous folklore. Starting with Lake Champlain’s Champ and moving westward, plenty of the classic American lake monster tales started when some eager fishermen heard about, or saw a native drawing of, a serpentine lake spirit and took it as a warning of tangible aquatic horror. Aboriginal bunyip legends found British interlopers tramping through the Australian brush, rifles raised and taxidermists on call. More recently, American Indian Skinwalker legends were dumped into the boiling, paranoid slurry of UFOs, portals, cryptoeverythingology and government conspiracy theories. So it’s kinda nice to know that the Rougarou legend cross-pollinated in the opposite direction.
The Rugaru of Chippewa and Ojibwa legend isn’t the wolf-headed antagonist that bullied the French, nor does it adhere to that monster’s seasonal schedule or incomprehensible 101-day statute of limitations. So what is it? That, my buddies, is a source of some contention. While scholars know for a fact that the word “Rugaru” isn’t derived from any Native American language – meaning it’s almost certainly a bastardized version of either the Cajun term “Rougarou” or the French “Loup Garou” – it’s not entirely clear as to how various tribes and groups applied the word to their established mythologies.

It’s clear that the native Rugaru was a mysterious hairy humanoid who lived out in the forest. Some researchers suggest that tribes began using the term “Rugaru” in relation to their already-extant Sasquatch equivalents (not actually Sasquatch, but rather a physically similar entity with the same Type B personality). And that makes sense. If you aren’t Catholic, haven’t been raised in constant aural proximity to European werewolf stories and can already account for your own packed pantheon of culturally loaded monstrosities, it jibes that, when French traders start going off about some sort of animal guy hiding out in the wilderness, your mind turns immediately to the one animal guy hiding out in the wilderness that you’re already hip to. In this way, this native Rugaru is loosely comparable to our modern Bigfoot – a lumbering mascot for the enduring connection between nature and man, and an animal that couldn’t give two bunyips whether or not you eat a cheeseburger on Good Friday.

(more…)

I’m going to shimmy out to the end of a limb and guess that most of you aren’t chomping your nails to the quick in fearful expectation of Lent 2011 and its supernatural enforcer, the Rougarou. Maybe it’s because you aren’t Catholic, you don’t live in Louisiana or you own an elephant gun. Maybe it’s because you are the Rougarou (in which case, stop Googling yourself). The point is, a monster that’s only on duty for 1/11 of the year and only kills people of one religion in one state doesn’t have the scare potential of, say, Bloody Mary, who only requires a mirror and mood lighting.

Fortunately, as Cajun culture began expanding to include not only those of Acadian decent, but also miscellaneous immigrants who fully embraced the local lifestyle, the Rougarou legend expanded as well, metastasizing into an equal opportunity nightmare.

Many believe the Rougarou to be a transfigured human, cursed or infected, double-crossed in a deal with the devil or otherwise debased by some catch-all evil contagion. Louisiana’s Caribbean population even threw some voodoo witch doctor malpractice into the mix. Aside from the standard threat to children –eat your greens, take your bath, go to bed or get Rougaroued – the most prevalent of these stories holds that a person, once transformed into the wolf-headed monster, hungers for human meat treats and stalks the bayous and swamps. In some versions, he seeks out victims and attacks without mercy; in others, he hides in the shadows, travels by night and invests all his energy in resisting the urge to draw blood.
Additionally, there’s a 101-day clause that appears consistently throughout these stories, though the specifics of it differ.

A few of the rules to Rougarou-ship AFTER THE JUMP…

(more…)

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we chronicle the Rougarou. Come back Wednesday and Friday for more!

The Protestants have always seemed happy with limiting the fate of sinners to eternal suffering in a big torture cave filled with fire and basically every type of snake. Leave it to the Catholics to throw an Earth-dwelling, flesh-eating mutant into the mix.

The French emigrates of the Cajun community had it pretty lousy even before the bloodthirsty, wolf-headed Rougarou shambled out of the swamps all parched and grumpy. A cultural casualty of the French and Indian War, the Cajuns (then known as Acadians, Acadia being the ye olde moniker for the eastern coast of Canada and northern tip of Maine) were ousted by the British. Some were returned to sender on French-bound ships, while others found themselves scurrying southward in search of a replacement home. French-speaking and accustomed to a maritime lifestyle, the Canada-forsaken exiles headed southward through the states, wending their way to the coast of Louisiana, where they could comfortably re-settle along the waters of the Gulf, in a region owned and operated by the French government. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the wandering Acadians, France had recently signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which, among other things, ceded control and ownership of Louisiana to the Spanish government. Sácre bleu!

Fortunately, both the newly empowered Spaniards and the hang-dog former French Canadians were fervent Roman Catholics, and got along well enough that the Cajuns were allowed to hang out and roll how they rolled. After the Revolutionary War (in which many land-snatching-limey-despising Acadians fought with gusto), thousands of Cajuns returned to New Orleans and Southern Louisiana, some arriving haggard and powder-stained from the battlefront, and others showing up nauseous and gaunt after government-authorized emigrations from France. Resettled and reunited, the former Acadians started a new life amid the swamps, bayous and prairies of Louisiana, where, every spring, the Rougarou lifts his nose and sniffs the air, canvassing the ether for the acrid hint of sin. Upon finding it, he narrows his eyes and bounds onward toward the smell, goaded onward by the promise of struggling, guilty meat, and the colorful warning mess it will leave on the ground.

Click AFTER THE JUMP to find out how even you could become a Rougarou!
(more…)

Every generation of teenagers has their own “outsider” sub-culture. Goth, hippie, punk, raver… All pleasantly strange without being scary. But as yet another sign we live in the future, teenagers have finally found a way to freak out even the most die hard counter-culturist. At over a dozen high schools in San Antonio, TX teenagers are transforming into werewolves.

While there isn’t much supernatural about these teens (they put together outfits made of fake tales, novelty contacts, fangs, and dog leashes to approximate the real thing) there is plenty weird about it. The kids involved don’t find it terribly odd though.  To them it’s not a gang or a cult or a sign they need therapy. They consider their pack a support system, which is a something they’ll desperately need to make it through High School dressed as werewolves.

Is this happening elsewhere, or is it just a Texas thing? If you’ve seen a pack of wolves in your town let us know in the comments!

Watching the new Wolf Man movie, I couldn’t help but think that maybe it’s a little one sided. Really, though, what can you expect from those liberal Hollywood types? “Ugh! Wolf man! Boo! Hiss! Destroy all wolf men!” Sure, wolf men kill some people and send the local chamber of commerce into a bit of a tizzy, but water slide parks do that, too. Honestly, though, I think our local wolf man is the best thing to happen to this town since they closed down the water slide park. Now I’m not shouting “wolf man for mayor” or anything like that (certainly not here in print), but damned if that hairy virgin murderer hasn’t done his part for our humble village.

Lazy Gypsy Motivator

Before the wolf man came, all the gypsies did was lie around their camp drinking raven’s feather schnapps and selling cursed jewelry that turned pregnant women’s babies into foals. After the wolf man though – when everyone started blaming the gypsies for the wolf man – those shawl-draped reprobates really stepped up! At first, it was just little things, like giving away free horse brushes with the cursed jewelry, but as the wolf attacks persisted and the townsfolk got increasingly grumpy, the gypsies actually started to help out. That one-eyed gypsy with three teeth showed the butcher how to prepare goat meat for soothsaying, and the extra mysterious gypsy (the one without thumbs) taught the town drunk to play a funny little drum. I even heard that the one-eyed gypsy with no teeth called a lightning storm down to set fire to our rival town’s high school. Take that, Ockton Otters! Hawks rule!

Family Bonding Facilitator

Before the wolf man came, evenings were just an excuse for me to hit O’Higgity’s pub, for the kids to hickey their schoolmates comatose out in the woods and for my wife to short out the sewing machine motor with her drunken tears. Now, two nights a month, the streets and the woods become the gruesome playground for a voracious monster that can’t tell skin from blood from bone until he turns human again and has to crap out big chunks of bone. What’s that mean? Family fun night! Now, twice a month, evening is a time for awkward silence and forced conversations about daily banalities; a time for arguing over what movie to watch and losing rock, paper, scissors, and having to sit through “Ghost”; a time for me to know full well the sort of domestic hell storm that will result if I make even one hilarious fart noise during “Ghost,” but not caring and waiting until the big climactic kiss to make the biggest, most hilarious fart noise ever; a time for involuntary sobriety and screaming at each other about who cheated at Uno; a time for reminding ourselves why we stopped spending time together in the first place.

Sheriff Comeuppance

Before the wolf man came, everyone had to put up with the meddling Sheriff and his incessant law enforcement: “You can’t park in a crosswalk!” “Actually, the speed limit does apply to motorcycles!” “You’re under arrest for firing a gun in church!” But then, the wolf man ate the sheriff. After that, the deputy was made acting sheriff, and he was even worse! Everyone knows that no man can enforce the Law of the Lake, but try telling that to acting sheriff Reardon, who somehow got Art Putney sent to jail for beating his wife in the lake. Fortunately, the next month, the wolf man ate him, too. That’s when we started having new moon parties over at O’Higgity’s. Now, every month, the first night after the full moon, everyone gets together at the pub and celebrates the death of the most recent sheriff, who inevitably got elected on an “I’ll stop the wolf man” platform, and who inevitably died failing to stop the wolf man. Except sheriff Porter. He died in a lightning storm while watching his nephew’s football practice in Ockton. Hawks rule!

Today’s playlist pays musical tribute to Weird Things’ third-favorite human/animal comprise (ranking just behind the Mothman and college-age female centaurs), the werewolf. Combining the vicious cunning of the wolf with the clumsy impulsiveness of the human, these insane, reckless monsters remind a preoccupied modern world what true human weakness looks like – your neighbor screaming in terror as he gets eaten by a werewolf.

Warren Zevon – “Werewolves of London”

It would be a crime against werewolf-themed pop hits to omit the late Warren Zevon’s anthem to the Chow Mein-fueled rampage of coifed Limey werewolves. Supposedly written in a fevered quarter-hour, but recorded over 70 exhausting takes, the song bears all the hallmarks of Zevon’s off-kilter and brilliantly deranged songwriting – a painfully catchy melody, manic energy and winking, gleeful references to acts of brutality.

Sonata Arctica – “Fullmoon”

You know when you go to the zoo and there’s a light-up digital board with a perpetually changing 9-digit number that represents real-time rainforest destruction in acres? Change the title plaque to read “Werewolf-related songs written by heavy metal and hardcore bands” and you’ve got an accurate sense of the genre’s predilections. Also, a suspicious statistical link. This song by European prog-metal band Sonata Arctica represents my personal favorite of the bunch. Seriously. This song is undeniable.

The Cramps – “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”

Gothed-out rockabilly band The Cramps boast an impressive oeuvre of sleazy horror-themed barn-burners that consistently treat murder and sex as delightfully interchangeable pleasures to be approached with roughly the same techniques, accessories and enthusiasm. This particular tale of a pubescent monster run amok swaggers and howls with all the awkward, horny angst of a sober Gary Busey.

Tracey Jordon – “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah”

This Monster Mash-spoofing tribute to “La Chaim” shouting lycanthropes was presented on NBC’s “30 Rock” as character Tracey Jordon’s gold record-scoring novelty hit. The song speaks for itself.

Five Man Electrical Band – “Werewolf”

An almost-was contender for late ‘60s pop stardom, these L.A.-based Canadian immigrants flirted briefly with popularity before getting lost amid the sea of posturing hacks and talented wannabes that composed a veritable invasion of the Beatle snatchers. Full of goofy energy and joyous, sing-along werewolf extermination, this song was the band’s last charting single, definitively placing them on the Neil Young-recommended “burn out” side of career endings.