Manuel Blanco Romasanta has been made famous in Spain due to two successful films about him, but his fame was already great in the 19th century. He is regarded as Spain’s first documented serial killer, criminal psychopath… and werewolf!
Romasant was born on 18 November 1989 in the small village of Regueiro, Orense province, in Spain’s most north-westerly Galicia region. According to documentation of the time, he was quite educated and well-off for his station in society. Unusual for the time, he could both read and write.
He started off as a tailor, but following the death of his wife when he was just 24, he gave up tailoring and decided to become a travelling salesman. According to legend, he became famous for the high quality fat and lard and travelled widely through Galicia, Portugal and Castile. Little did his customers know where this commodity came from.
The first murder case came on his travels outside Galicia, for the murder of Vicente Fernández, the constable of León.
The constable was charged with recovering a debt of 600 reales which Romasanta owed to a Ponferrada supplier where he bought the merchandise for his mobile shop. Fernández was found dead and Romasanta was judged by default (for failing to appear). He was sentenced to 10 years in 1844. He had escaped to the mountains of Orense and used the village of Rebordechao, in Vilar de Barrio, as his base for his peddling operations.
It wasn’t long before a number of women and children started disappearing. In total 7 women and 2 children who had known Romasanta had vanished after being in his company. In many cases he had offered to act as a guide around the city. He even passed on their news to family in other towns, telling them of how happy the victims were in their new life.
He now made a fatal mistake. He began to sell the clothing of the missing women in the towns where they had last been seen. It was also at this time that rumours started about the composition of his lard and fat he sold.
He was finally captured in Nombela, Toledo, and brought to trial in Allariz, Orense, in September 1852. The court case lasted seven months with more than 2000 pages of evidence recorded. These pages have survived the ravages of time and are still available to this day. (The Kingdom of Galicia Historical Archives: ‘Causa 1788, del hombre-lobo,’ – ‘Case 1788, of the wolf-man.’)
By the end of the trial, Romasanta had confessed to nine murders. However he had a chilling twist. He blamed the murders on a curse on him which turned him into a werewolf. He only killed when he was under the curse.
According to the testimony:
‘The first time I transformed, was in the mountains of Couso.
I came across two ferocious-looking wolves. I suddenly fell to the floor, and began to feel convulsions, I rolled over three times, and a few seconds later I myself was a wolf. Continue reading »
Bray Road is a quiet country road near the community of Elkhirm, Wisconsin. Nothing much ever happened there, that is until the late 1980′s and early 1990′s. Reports of strange encounters with a unknown beast began to emerge.
The story received media attention when Linda Godfrey, a writer and cartoonist for a weekly newspaper called The Week, started collecting eyewitness testimonies and writing about them. Articles also appeared in Strange magazine. Sightings have been reported in a much wider geographical area, even as far away as Milwaukee.
Godfrey has written a book on the sightings, The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf, published by Prairie Oak Press in 2003.
However the story of the beast goes back much further. One of the earliest recorded encounters happened in 1936. Mark Schackelman was a night watchman at a Catholic convent, St. Colleta, near Jefferson, Wisconsin.
One night, about midnight, while doing his rounds, he noticed something standing on top of a Native American burial mound.Looking closer he saw that the creature was clawing at the burial mound, as if it wanted to get in. He shouted out and started to move towards it. The creature looked at him startled and turned and fled into the darkness.
The following night at about the same time, Mark was again near the mound. Once more he saw the creature clawing at the gravesite. This time he crept closer, making sure to keep quiet. Suddenly the creature stopped what it was doing and looked around. Seeing Mark, it stood up and faced him.
The human-like beast was over six feet tall and was covered in dark hair. It had a muzzle like a wolf, with big prominent fangs. Its ears were pointed and on the top of its head. The creature growled at him and Mark could smell a horrible smell, like rotten meat.
By now Mark was terrified. He had expected the creature to be nothing more than grave-robbers or teenagers. After what felt like an eternity, the beast made a gutteral sound and turned and walked away.
Not much else was heard about the beast over the next few decades, save for rumour and speculation. It wasn’t until 1989 that a young woman, Lorianne Endrizzi, got a saw the Beast while driving on Bray Road at about 1:30 a.m.
At first she thought that she saw a person hunched over on the side of the road. Slowing down to see if all was well, she was shocked to see that this thing was no person. The thing was part human and part wolf!
The creature stared at her as she drove past and she got a good look at it. Continue reading »
![Beast [A Faery Story 2] (Siren Everlasting Classic)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZSHY20eoL._SL75_.jpg "Beast [A Faery Story 2] (Siren Everlasting Classic)")
