[SPEAKER_00]: Warning, this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the late 1500s, a series of mutilated animals and missing children terrified the people of Germany near the town of Bedberg.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rumors spread through taverns, shops, and homes that a creature was to blame.
[SPEAKER_00]: A creature born of sin, half man, half wolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: Authorities arrested a prosperous farmer named Peter Stump.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would soon confess to unspeakable acts of cannibalism and sorcery.
[SPEAKER_00]: On Halloween night in 1581, Peter suffered one of the most brutal public executions in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: But was stump really a monster, or a victim of superstition, torture, and political malice?
[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, we explore the sensational case of the werewolf of Bedberg, but of all other that ever lived, none was comparable unto this hellhound, whose tyranny and cruelty did well declare he was of his father the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a study of strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the show, I am Michael.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting over a cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my voice might sound a little nasally and weird or perhaps more sexy than normal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now on today's topic,
[SPEAKER_00]: most of what we now know about the Peter Stump story comes from one source, a pamphlet published soon after Stump's execution, but it's a translation of a German original and the German original has not been found.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this translation was found by a cultist and writer Monogue Summers in the early 1900s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Monogue Summers is somebody I've
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had it on my list to do an episode about him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a very interesting person to say the least.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not, that's for a different episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't go into it now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But some people have doubted the authenticity of this source.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you read about Peter Stump on line, everybody says, hey, everything we know comes from this pamphlet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's...
[SPEAKER_00]: not true, because there's about five different documents relating to the Peter Stump story out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some minor differences in each, which should be expected from this time period, and this includes a diary and wood carvings and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now before we get into that though, we have to ask where the wearwolf legends come from.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stories of humans turning into wolves goes back millennia.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the epic of Gilgamesh, which is roughly 4,000 years old, a hero refuses to love of the goddess Ishtar.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he learns that she once turned a former lover into a wolf, there are many accounts of varying degrees of scorned lovers becoming wolves, or being turned into wolves from early European folklore.
[SPEAKER_00]: That might have spread because of the tail of Gilgamesh, it's like a Hollywood movie, inventing the idea that a werewolf can be killed by a silver bullet, and then the silver bullet becomes part of the lore of the werewolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greek mythology offered a similar tale, King like Ann of Arcadia dared Zeus to prove his omniscience by serving him disguised human flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: In punishment, Zeus transformed like Ann into a wolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: From this myth, we derive the word like Anthropi, meaning both the act of becoming a wolf and the delusion of being one of
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll take this moment to say go back and listen to my wearwolf serial killer story that I published a few years ago for more of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The medieval ages treated like Anthropie as a very real threat, Saint Augustine wrote that it is generally believed that by certain witches spells men may be turned into wolves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Early English law codes warned against werewolves, which in fact comes from an old English word meaning manwolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: The chronicler Jervace of Tilbury claimed in the 13th century that people in
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the Middle Ages, religion was the hot topic of the day, so the werewolf became a legend associated with devils and demons and the like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our modern thoughts around werewolves are influenced by the thousands of years of folklore legend in myth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Hollywood has had a greater effect on the modern lore of the werewolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: Full moons already mentioned the silver bullet, a lot of that is just Hollywood inventions and you might have been aware of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we might not be aware of, was that there was a werewolf panic in Europe.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the 15th century, the belief that humans could become wolves was intertwined with the witch hunts that were sweeping Europe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wolves were Europe's most feared predators, attacking livestock and occasionally humans, in areas where forests and pastoral economies
[SPEAKER_00]: were right up against each other co-existing, especially parts of Germany and France.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fear of wolves blossomed into fears of demonic wolves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Religious wars, famine, and plague heightened anxieties in between the 15th and 18th century, Europe saw about 300 recorded werewolf trials, a very small number compared to the tens of thousands of witch prosecutions, but still an extraordinary number.
[SPEAKER_00]: During the Valle trials of the 1420s, Swiss authorities accused men and women of both witchcraft and adopting wolf form to mutilate cattle.
[SPEAKER_00]: and 1521, papal inquisitors in France, tried shepherds, Pierre Bersaud, and Michelle Verdun for making a pact with a black-clad stranger who gave them an ointment to transform into wolves.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something you usually see in the medieval where wolf stories, there's usually an ointment or clothing that someone puts on which changes them into a wolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the full moon that we think of now.
[SPEAKER_00]: During these various trials, men usually confess, always after torture, to attending nocturnal witch gatherings and hunting children.
[SPEAKER_00]: Subsequent wearable trials shared very common features to this story that's usually a bargain with the devil,
[SPEAKER_00]: torture followed by confession to stop, said torture, and sometimes naming names.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was always a big part of the witch trials, is hey, name names, tell us who else is a witch, and we'll stop the torture and kill you faster.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a way to get out of the pain, and cannot be trusted.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very archaic way of doing things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that brings us to the case of Peter Stump.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter Stump, whose name was spelled a variety of ways like Stumpf, or you'll hear him refer to as Stuba or Stubb.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a prosperous farmer born around 1530 near Bedberg in the electorate of Columbus.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to some accounts, he was missing his left hand, and the surname Stump or Stumpf may have been a nickname referring to this injury.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stump was most likely a Protestant, and that is an important part of the story I'll circle back to later, and by the 1580s he was a widower with two children, a daughter Biel, sometimes called Sible, and a son.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do not know the son's name, and I'll also mention that a few of the accounts don't mention Stump being a farmer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of them says he's a landlord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our main source is the pamphlet I've mentioned because it has the most information, but there are no official court records of Stump's trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: The full title of this pamphlet is a true discourse declaring the damnable life in death of one stube, Peter, a most wicked sorcerer.
[SPEAKER_00]: In it, it says that it is printed in London in 1590.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the pamphlet claims to translate this lost German original only two copies of this pamphlet are known to exist, one is in a British museum and another in the Lambeth Library.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pamphlet sets this up as a morality tale, to scare people away from witches and other demonic things, but it states that it is a true story.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the pamphlet, Stump made a pact with the devil at age 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: Satan supposedly gave him a magic girdle that, when warned, transformed him into a werewolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: The devil who saw him a fit instrument to perform mischief as a wicked fiend pleased with the desire of wrong and destruction gave unto him a girdle, which being put about him, he was straight transformed into the likeness of a greedy devouring wolf, strong and mighty with eyes great and large.
[SPEAKER_00]: which in the night sparkled like unto brands of fire, a mouth-great and wide with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws.
[SPEAKER_00]: And no sooner should he put off the same girdle, but presently, he should appear in his former shape, according to the proportion of a man as if he had never been changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that last sentence there is about him removing the belt of the girdle, and that returned him to human form whenever he shall please.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the other documents I'll say mentions a belt given to him by the devil and just to clarify in the manner of speaking at that time a girdle and belt for a man were roughly the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter Stump allegedly used this power to stalk the fields around Bedberg for 25 years murdering anyone who angered him or crossed his path.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pamphlet accuses stump of many crimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Serial murder and cannibalism, he supposedly killed 13 or 14 children, some of the other documents mentioned more.
[SPEAKER_00]: He killed two pregnant women tearing out their fetuses and eating their hearts.
[SPEAKER_00]: One victim was reportedly his own son, whose brain he ate, and he also gorged on livestock such as goats, lambs, and sheep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's another quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were not long ago certain small children playing in a meadow together hard by the town.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're also some store-of-kind graffiti, many of them having young calves sucking upon them, and suddenly among these children comes this wild wolf running, and caught a pretty fine girl by the collar with intent to pull out her throat.
[SPEAKER_00]: but such was the will of God that he could not pierce the collar of the child's coat, being high and very well stiffened, and closed clasped about her neck.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therewith all the sudden great cry of the rest of the children which escaped, so amazed the cattle feeding by that being fearful to be robbed of their young, they all together came running against the wolf, with such force that he was presently compelled to let go his hold and run away and escape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stump was also accused of incest and adultery.
[SPEAKER_00]: He, apparently, fathered a child with his daughter, Bill, he seduced a married woman named Katherine Troppen, described as his neighbor.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also slept with a demonic being that was being sent by the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know much about how the authorities were able to gather evidence or what evidence they had that stump had done all of this, but the story goes that a group of hunters were able to eventually surround stump as he was in wolf form.
[SPEAKER_00]: They corner him,
[SPEAKER_00]: and he removed his girdle, as if to appear to a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is told in the pamphlet in such a way, to almost make it seem like he tried to hide the fact that he was removing his girdle, so he could just appear and be like, hey, what are you guys doing out here?
[SPEAKER_00]: But that did not work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just made the hunters realize that he was, indeed, a werewolf, so they capture him and they put him on the rack, which is a torture device.
[SPEAKER_00]: Facing this torture, he allegedly voluntarily confessed his whole life.
[SPEAKER_00]: and said that he had taken his girdle when he took it off and threw it into the valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: The magistrates searched for this belt, but they found nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: His daughter, Beal, and his mistress, Katherine Troppen, were deemed accomplices to all of his horrors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after due examination, they were condemned right alongside of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: On Halloween 9, 1589, Stump was executed, and it was, well, for lack of a better term, just insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: His execution has become infamous for its brutality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Executioners tied him to a cartwheel, and tore his flesh from his body using red hot pincers in 10 different places.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then broke his arms and his legs with the backside of an axe, they beheaded him, and then burned his body.
[SPEAKER_00]: His daughter and Catherine Tropen were flayed, strangled, and burned right alongside of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a warning, authorities erected a very tall pole in town.
[SPEAKER_00]: They put up the torture wheel that they had used to dismember him, and at the top they put a carved wolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the summit, they placed Stump's head.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the conclusion of Peter Stump's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is essentially
[SPEAKER_00]: But how much of this story is true if any of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Modern Historians treat this case with caution and rightly so.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is very little evidence that any of this took place because there are no trial records or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the witch trials has an example.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have surviving court documents.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also have to look at the way stumps name, varies and various accounts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though that's kind of typical for this time period and there's also translations and things like that, we do have to consider that as we piece this together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But some tales, especially when we have at least five different existing documents that we know of that cover this case, have some basis and reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are a number of different theories about what actually happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll start with one of the more dramatic and provocative ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter Stump was a serial killer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The argument here is that there was no term for a serial killer back then, people didn't know what that was, so if somebody had been murdering multiple people, the crimes get sensationalized, the beliefs and religiosity of the time adds supernatural elements to the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a way to explain these evil deeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: and there's a suggestion that where Wolf Legends were used to explain serial killings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another theory is that this is all just political propaganda.
[SPEAKER_00]: The electorate of Cologne was torn by religious war in the 1580s, and Stump was a Protestant, and a region reconquered by Catholic forces.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is some mention that there were aristocrats and a Catholic elector at Peter Stump's execution, and this suggests a...
[SPEAKER_00]: public spectacle that had some political affiliation to it and could have been used to intimidate the remaining Protestants in the area.
[SPEAKER_00]: They portrayed stump as this demonic force, this werewolf, and that justified the harsh punishment and the torturous execution.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next series that Peter Stump was a scapegoat of superstition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many accused werewolves, much like many accused, which is, were marginalized individuals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fear of wolves, disease, famine, plague, this made communities eager for people to blame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under torture, people would confess to impossible acts like shapeshifting, being a witch or
[SPEAKER_00]: being a wearable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've covered this in the Connecticut witch trials episode and my Salem witch trials episode, but a lot of times communities would benefit from somebody being accused of something like a witch and if they had been killed or kicked out of town, the community would then inherit that person's wealth, land, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is motivation.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the community to turn against somebody like Peter Stump.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they didn't like them, and they might not have liked them because it was Protestant, they might not have liked them just because they didn't like them, they might not have liked his daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if he was having an affair with this Katherine person, in this very conservative community, that might have been enough for people to turn against him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then...
[SPEAKER_00]: either make up rightly or created in their own minds just to justify their hatred of him, they say that he's performing these demonic acts and he's aware of.
[SPEAKER_00]: The last theory I'll propose is that this is a combination of everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter's stump was living in a world of intense superstition and religion, there's also a ton of political propaganda and influence and stump.
[SPEAKER_00]: May have been a killer, or maybe he was just having an affair, or maybe the community wanted his property.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any of those things combined with the mix of propaganda and superstition to make people turn against him and accuse him of being a werewolf.
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite the questionable veracity, the questions of the authenticity of this story, I believe Peter Stump was real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I believe he was a werewolf?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, of course I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I believe he was arrested accused and under torture made a false confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even with the lack of court records, the fact that we have broad sheets, we have woodcut illustrations, we have the pamphlet that all show stump being executed, describing his execution.
[SPEAKER_00]: To me, that is enough to say that there are multiple angles of this story that all share most of the
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me that makes this a very valid story that this actually happened, and the horror of his deeds, the horror of the gruesome end that he went through, that turned Peter Stump into this archetypal, where Wolf of Bedberg, which undoubtedly inspired lore, legend, and beliefs of the
[SPEAKER_00]: and now a final quote from the damnable life and death of one stube Peter, a most wicked sorcerer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thus, gentle reader, have I set down the true discourse of this wicked man, Stube Peter, which I desire to be a warning to all sorcerers and witches, which unlawfully follow their own devilish imagination to the utter ruin and destruction of their souls eternally, from which wicked and damnable practice, I besiege God, keep all good men, and from the cruelty
[SPEAKER_00]: you've just listened to a study of strange, consider helping us keep the lantern lit, illuminating the unexplained, by subscribing to our sub-stack, just head to the support tab at a study of strange.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, stay curious and stay strange.