WHERE

Washington Forge is simple town. A humble town. With a school, a smith, and a house of worship. The vast expanse of land and open space surrounding its core, demonstrates the pivotal relationship between the larger agrarian community and the service-oriented node of the village. It was originally called River Forge, but, like so many other towns, it changed its name after he won the War. It probably would have slipped through the cracks of history. Had it not been for a single night. This night.

The term ‘werewolf’ comes from the Old English werwulf, a compound noun of wer (‘man’) and wulf (‘wolf’).Man and wolf have long been enemies, and culture has typically seen the two as opposites: the essentially good and rational man, and the inherently evil and irrational wolf. To call someone a wolf was rarely a compliment (warriors excepted): in Anglo-Saxon law, outlaws were known as wulfheafod (‘wolf head), a reference to an earlier custom of tying a wolf’s head around anyone whose life was forfeit. Beyond allegory, however, history also furnishes us with several genuine tales of werewolves.

 

 

There's the Gandillon Wolves, the Hermit of Dole, Peter Stubbe, the Werewolves of Poligny, the Beast of Bengalaru, Hans the Many Haired, and La Bête du Gévaudan. But these accounts are all set elsewhere. In exotic far-off lands: France, Bavaria, India. The Wolf of Washington Forge is the only such case, history would have us believe, to have occurred within the borders of the United States of America. The only case to have somehow, quite remarkably, escaped the rewriting of the Revolution, the reshaping of America's history, and the fallacious retelling of our country's story, as smooth-cheeked, clean-shaven, and without wolves. Tonight, my friends, we set the record straight.