WEREWOLVES

WEREWOLVES

People of a certain age will remember being told stories about lutins (imps), feux follets (will o' the wisps) and chasse galeries (mid night journeys by flying canoe). Here are a few local stories about the loup-garou (werewolf):

told by Mrs. Diana Matthews (nee Trepanier), from Ruscom:

There was a very bad man. Everybody knew be wasn't a good person. He had the power to turn himself into a loup-garou
whenever he wanted to. This time, he had turned himself into a wolf. And so... this other man was in a sleigh, he was on his
way home, from Belle River to St. Joachim. And he was very tired, it was late, so he says to his horse : "Get up... get up!"
All of a sudden, a wolf jumps on his back - him and his grand daughter. So the grand father hit the wolf with the end
of his whip. And that made him bleed. And right then, the wolf turned back into a man! And the man said : "Don't ever
give me away, Joseph... because you'll see what will happen to you!"

Werewolves, Brett Jubinville. Little man facing a werewolf.

told by Mr. Normand Drouillard, from Riviere aux Canards

The family was travelling by sleigh, on the snow, with their horses. And there was a huge pig following them, complaining all the way. And he would put his feet on the back of the sleigh, and he was so heavy, the horses couldn't pull him. So finally the driver gets mad and he takes his buggy whip and he turns around and gives the pig a whack on the snout to get him to take his feet down. The pig started to bleed. And now, and I don't remember if it changed back into a man or a woman but I know this person had been delivered from his punishment, because he had bled. And it was one of their neighbours - they were quite surprised.

From the American side of the Detroit River comes the following loup-garou story, told by Ed Labadie in 1976. It was collected by Dennis M. Au :

The people were troubled. They would hear a knock on the door, answer the door and every time they would answer the door it would be nothing more than a police dog standing there. And this would happen every once in a while throughout the weeks and months and they got to where they discussed it with their neighbors. And one man said, he said, “Listen.” He said, “Do you have a set of keys to the outbuildings and to the house.” He said, “The next time you hear the knock on this door and you open it and the police dog is standing there, take the keys and hit the dog in the face. Make sure you draw blood.” And he said, “You will be surprised what you see. It’ll be somebody you know or one of your neighbors sure!” And they said they did this, and there was a person that appeared whom they had known. [Au, Dennis, et Joanna Brode, (1987) «The Lingering Shadow of New France: The French-Canadian Community of Monroe County, Michigan», Michigan Folklife Reader, Kurt C. Dewhurst et Yvonne Lockwood, ed., East Lansing, Michigan, Michigan State University Press, p.337]

Werewolves, Brett Jubinville. Little man is turning into a werewolf.

Another legend told in Rivière-aux-Canards

It's Pépé who used to tell this. He says he would go into the barn in the morning, there was always a horse - one of the stalls was empty - and every morning there would be a white horse in this stall.
He would take him, he would lead him to the door and take him out and the horse would leave. Two or three mornings in a row, like that. The third morning, lie said:

- I sent you away three times. This time you're going away for good!
Takes the pitchfork, sticks the pitchfork in his rear end to chase him out. He turned right in front of him turned into a man!
And he said:

- If ever you tell anybody about this, you'll end up just like me!

It was a man he knew.