Werewolves and snow go together like moonlight and blood. Those snowy climes were usually in the Hartz Mountains in Transylvania or the Scandinavia of Clemence Houseman. The 20th Century paired the werewolf with the ice and snow of the Northern, fiction set in Canada’s deep woods or Arctic snows. What could be more natural with a large French population in the eastern woods? The French bring their Loup Garou, the Swedes and Scots their werewolves, and even the local First Nations have stories to tell.
Elia W. Peattie (1862-1935) is the first author to make the connection. She was a prolific Chicago writer for newspapers and magazines who moved out West to Omaha. “On the Northern Ice” ( The Shape of Fear and Other Ghostly Tales, 1898) tells the story of a man skating across a large lake near Sault Ste. Marie. He is headed to a party. He sees a mysterious figure who leads him away from some open ice.
“… It came to him with a shock that he was not alone. His eyelashes were frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold, so at first he thought it might be an illusion. But when he had rubbed his eyes hard, he made sure that not very far in front of him was a long white skater in fluttering garments who sped over the ice as fast as ever werewolf went.”
When he arrives safely at the party he finds out his love has fallen in that dangerous spot and died. He realizes the strange figure he saw was her “ghost” warning him away.
This short tale seems to confuse ghost and werewolf tales. Peattie doesn’t introduce the werewolf (or was it a ghost?) with any subtlety. Just an odd little tale.
Susan Carleton Jones (1864-1926) wrote under a number of pseudonyms including S. Carleton. “The Lame Priest” (The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1901) has an old man living in the woods run into a lame priest that frightens the local natives. The priest becomes his friend but always insist that the front door be locked at night. The beast lurks outside the cabin speaking in a high, sweet voice to come out, then in a deep, angry voice to stay away. In a scene reminiscent of Gollum talking to himself, the listener knows though it is two voices it is only one speaker. In the end the priest is shot with a silver bullet and buried.
Jones’s style is so good I can only compare her to A. Conan Doyle for richness and excitement. That’s why I was happy to see she wrote two Canadian horror stories. “The Clasp of Rank” by S. Carleton (The Thrill Book, April 1, 1919) is a ghost story, not a werewolf tale, so we’ll save it for another time.
“Running Wolf” by Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) (The Century Magazine, August 1920) is Blackwood’s third werewolf tale. “The Empty Sleeve” and “The Camp of the Dog” are not set in Canada. “Camp” features a Canadien named Sangree but is set in Sweden. His equally famous “The Wendigo” takes place in Quebec but doesn’t feature a lycanthrope. Blackwood was the famous “Ghost Man” who read his ghost stories on the BBC.
“Running Wolf” has a hunter following a wolf spirit to the location of a skeleton. As with so many ghost stories, the lost remains of a murder victim is often haunted by a ghost.
“The bit of pitch-pine fell in a shower of sparks that lit the dry grass this side of the animal, flared up a moment, then died quickly down again. But in that instant of bright illumination he saw clearly what his unwelcome visitor was. A big timber wolf sat on its hindquarters, staring steadily at him through the firelight. He saw its legs and shoulders, he saw its hair, he saw also the big hemlock trunks lit up behind it, and the willow scrub on each side. It formed a vivid, clear-cut picture shown in clear detail by the momentary blaze. To his amazement, however, the wolf did not turn and bolt away from the burning log, but withdrew a few yards only, and sat there again on its haunches, staring, staring as before. Heavens, how it stared! He ‘shoo-ed’ it, but without effect; it did not budge. He did not waste another good log on it, for his fear was dissipated now; a timber wolf was a timber wolf, and it might sit there as long as it pleased, provided it did not try to steal his catch. No alarm was in him any more. He knew that wolves were harmless in the summer and autumn, and even when ‘packed’ in the winter they would attack a man only when suffering desperate hunger. So he lay and watched the beast, threw bits of stick in its direction, even talked to it, wondering only that it never moved.” (“Running Wolf” by Algernon Blackwood)
The possessed wolf has the ghost of an Native man inside it, controlling the animal’s movements. It wants someone to find his murdered bones and bury them properly. It is the opposite of the Ectoplasmic Werewolf, a man possessed by a wolf-like spirit that appears in “The Camp of the Dog”. Blackwood wrote several werewolf stories, but this one seems to get reprinted the most. Probably because it isn’t soaked in the usually Spiritualist jargon.
“The Eyes of Sebastien” (The Popular Magazine (January 20, 1925) by Alan Sullivan (1868-1947) is set in the French backwoods along the Saguenay River. Jean Deslormes is a lumberjack who is to wed the beauty of Villeneuve( a village ninety miles away), Marie Fisette. When the Loup Garou, Sebastien says he is headed for Villeneuve and Marie, Jean must travel hard and fast to get there. The whole way he is dogged by a lean wolf.
Jean gets to Villineuve and finds Marie and her family are fine. He goes to the church to Pere Leduc to asks him to marry them in three days. Jean also asks him to bless some bullets for only a bullet blessed by a priest can kill a Loup Garou. Leduc refuses, thinking the idea ridiculous. When Jean tells Marie, her mother takes things into her own hand. She has a small lead figure of St. Joseph, once blessed by a famous cleric. The head of the figure is the size of a bullet.
The day of the wedding the newly-weds are riding a horse-drawn sleigh to the near-by hamlet of Beaulieu, when a wolf attacks and kills one of their horses. Marie hands the gun loaded with the St. Joseph bullet to Jean, and their troubles with werewolves are over.
I thought the Canadian werewolf story ended with the magazines of the early 1920s but “The Wolf” (Weird Tales, November 1927) by Sewell Peaslee Wright (1897-1970) is a final hold-out in the world’s most famous Horror pulp. Wright was a pulp writer of Science Fiction but he also wrote the Northern Half Wolf (1946) and many others for magazines like Macleans and North-West Stories. Like all good Northerns, this one is told around a campfire. Dr. Saunders, prisoner to a Mountie, tells his version of what happened when he hired the French Indian, Victor, as guide.
Once on the trail, the guide disappeared but a large wolf attacked Saunders, jumping right through his campfire. Saunders shoots the wolf in the left leg. When Victor returns after the wolf flees, his leg too is similarly wounded. Saunders shoots him for a werewolf. The Mountie, Constable Tieg Macdonald (what a Canadian name!) says the body of Victor had two gunshot wounds, one in the left leg. The wound was matted with yellow wolf hair. Despite this evidence, Saunders will hang for the crime.
“…There were lots of things in the woods of the far north that man is foolish to attempt to explain.”
