Professor Jonathan Chase: shape-shifter. Can such things be? Is it really possible for a man to turn himself into even a single animal, let alone several different ones? Strictly speaking, probably not. . . but strangely enough stories of men changing into beasts, and vice-versa, turn up from all parts of the world and all periods of history.
       The oldest and most famous legend of transmutation of course is that of the werewolf, the raging beast of the full moon so well known from countless horror films. "Werewolf is actually an Anglo-Saxon word that simply means "man-wolf", but the legend is much older than that, going back at least to the ancient Greeks. They knew the transformation as "lycanthropy", which means "wolf-man", and concocted a story about a king called Lycaon ("wolf) who invited the gods to a banquet where he served up a human child as part of the menu. Zeus was so enraged by this that he destroyed all Lycaon's sons with a thunderbolt, and turned the king himself into a wolf.
       Unlike the horror films, where the change is to a hair-covered human, halfway between man and wolf, most of the legends feature total transformation from man into four-footed canine. There are many ways of bringing the change about, not all of them depending on the full moon. Witchcraft is one, and from medieval Europe we hear tales of demonic rituals with magic circles, incantations and magical ointments. Often the man needed to put on a wolfskin cloak or belt, and sometimes he had to sell his soul to the devil in order to gain the power of transmutation.
       There were also accidental ways to become a werewolf. These range from the obvious ones like eating the flesh of a rabid wolf, through drinking from a stream where a wolf pack has drunk, to the more curious ones like sleeping outdoors on a Friday under a full moon. But it wasn't only at the full moon that the transformation could take place. Any time of the month would do in most cases, though usually the man was only a wolf by night, returning to normal at the break of day. Often he would have to immerse himself in water or roll naked on the ground to bring about the change in the first place, and he might have to do something similar at daybreak to reverse the process.
       Sometimes werewolves could be cured, by magic or exorcism, or, on their own part, by their refraining from eating human flesh for nine years. But for the most part they had to be killed. The silver bullet beloved of the horror films was one weapon, especially if it had been blessed by the church, but for the most part the beasts were simply clubbed, stabbed or shot to death; pretty much as would happen to a normal wolf. One thing everyone seems to agree on, though, is that once the werewolf is killed, it immediately regains its normal human form.
       For something like the hair-covered human portrayed in werewolf films, we have to look to Burma, where the beast is known as a Taw. Covered in thick dark hair, with little red eyes and long fangs, these furry humans are believed to attack jungle villages at certain times of the month and carry people off for food. When hunted down and shot in their cave-lairs, a transformation instantly follows, and the Taw is usually revealed as someone from the same village who tends to go mysteriously missing on occasion.
       Still out in the east, the Chinese tend to do things the other way round, as you might expect. With them, the legends are not so much of men changing into animals, as animals changing into people. Chinese legend has literally thousands of such stories, with all kinds of animals taking part, from grasshoppers to snakes, birds and buffaloes. But the most popular are tigers and foxes, both of which usually transform themselves into beautiful young girls. The tiger- ladies tend to lure young men off into the wilderness, then turn back to tiger form and eat them. The fox-girls are more subtle, draining the energy of their victims like psychic vampires. Fox- women are often discovered by the fact that despite all their human features they tend to keep their fox's tail, and then they usually have to be exorcised, as they have magic powers and aren't usually susceptible to such normal methods of execution as stabbing and shooting. One sure way to be rid of them, however, is to set the local dogs on them. In Japan similar tales abound, but there the most popular animal villains are transforming badgers and foxes.
       Africa too has its tales of shape-changers, but here we're back to the usual pattern of men changing into animals rather than the other way round. There are human hyenas in Ethiopia, lion-men on the central African veldt, and probably most famous of all. the leopard men of west Africa.
       Nigeria and Sierra Leone were the countries most famous for their leopard men. No one knows how far the stones go back, but they first started to come to our attention when the white men started to colonize the countries. The stories centered round the notorious Leopard Societies, who liked to put it about as "propaganda" that their members could actually change into jungle cats. For the most part though, they seem to have contented themselves with simply dressing up in leopard skins and claws and doing their best to behave like leopards . . . which included springing on innocent travelers in the jungle and clawing them to death. They caused universal terror in the 19th century, and perhaps in the most remote parts of the jungle, the societies might still exist today.
       As we said, we can more or less safely assume that no one ever changed from a man into any kind of animal, but the important point is that for thousands of years, people have actually believed that it was possible. And if we're willing to believe it as well, for an hour every now and then, we can get something of the same than as we follow the adventures of Jonathan Chase . . Manimal!