Louis C. Jones

Writer and folklorist Louis C. Jones received a Guggenheim Fellowship to research the stories of werewolf sightings that had been handed down among generations of Italian American immigrants through the mid—1940s. The following excerpt is based on reports Jones collected from his Italian American students between 1940 and 1946 while teaching a folklore seminar at New York State College for Teachers. The essay relates several popular stories circulated about the werewolf in Italy, as well as detailed descriptions of werewolf behaviors and traits. Jones never asserts that werewolves exist; however, this collection of werewolf accounts representing a segment of the twentieth—century Italian American belief system has been handed down over generations and is continuing to be preserved. The continued circulation of these stories raises the possibility that, even...