Werewolves !!!!!

WEREWOLVES !!!!!

When the moon is full a man sprouts hair over his body and is metamorphosed into a beast.

Did you believe in werewolves as a child? There is a bit truth to the myth. After college, one of the favourite thing me and my roomees loved to do was to watch a B grade horror movies about monster like Mummy, Dracula and Wolf-man. We would settle down after dinner and have a blast watching movies like ‘Wolf (1994)’, ‘The Wolfman (2010)’, ‘Bad Moon (1996)’, ‘Underworld (2003)’……… the list is pretty long. We thought it’s just a fantasy…fun & entertainment…..but wait……

That’s not a fantasy; it exits in reality……

I would have been much more horrified when I was watching these films if I realized there really was a rare, genetically inherited condition called the “werewolf syndrome” and how this “likely contributed to the ancient ‘Wolfman’ folklore according to the How Stuff Works article, “10 Bizarre Medical Conditions.”  

I am surprised by how – from ignorance- these poor people have been often labelled monsters. The IMDB database describes the 1941 movie, The Wolfman, starring Lon Chaney like this: “A practical man returns to his homeland, is attacked by a creature of folklore, and infected with a horrific disease his disciplined mind tells him cannot (sic) possibly exist.” But a horrific disease such as this does exist……just not exactly as it is described……

The Wolfman camouflaging disease known as “Hypertrichosis” or “Amber Syndrome”, is a very rare genetic condition. According to the Live Science article “Werewolf gene may explain Hair disorder” there are ‘fewer than 100 cases documented worldwide’ – Ricki Lewis, a science writer with a Ph.D in genetics, wrote in her PLOS article — ‘The Curious Genetics of Werewolves’ that there are only 50 cases known since middle age.