Shifters often have a hard time, even in cultures where they are considered essentially harmless there is an irrational fear shown towards them by many people. This irrational fear has many sources, but it is mostly just a fear of that which is very very different. Well, it's fairly understandable, considering how easily humans fear people of another race or culture. What about people of a *different* species?

In folklore, there is a story of a woman who had a pretty nice life and a nice husband, but one day her husband disappeared. She tried to find out what might have happened to him, but with no luck. After 2 years or so she assumed he was probably dead, because she was sure he loved her too much to just leave her. She felt really bad. As a last-ditch effort to find him, she went to a local witch and asked her if she could see with her second sight what had happened. The witch replied that her husband was alive and well, that he was living in the forest as a wolf, for he was a werewolf. The witch said that the woman's husband had left because he was afraid the woman would reject him if she found out and was antagonizing over it, worried of losing her, but wanting to tell her. The witch said she also saw that the husband would return soon, and that if the woman wanted to keep him, she must accept him with love and without fear. The husband did come home not too long after this, in the form of a wolf, and changed back to a human in front of his wife. His wife was so glad to have him back that she made no fuss over the fact that he was a Werewolf and she lived pretty much happily ever after with him. Of course the witch's second sight may have merely been knowledge of what had happened through knowing a network of local werewolves and witches who could well have been in communication with the husband. If only there were more stories like this. The opposite type of story is far too common in folklore, and modern shifters have to deal with even weightier situations oftentimes, because they also have to deal with the fear of people who are insane or who hold very odd beliefs.

Here are a few links to places which illustrate the VERY SICK ideas that many people have about werewolves and shapeshifters in general.

• Lycanthropy Folklore from the Middle Ages with some REALLY SICK and totally untrue things to say about wolves.

• More Folklore, also very negatively inclined towards Werewolves

• About Werewolves: the purple urine test lots of nasty and untrue things.

• The Dark Side of the Web a HUGE compilation of links relating to very nasty horror stuff, including very sick views of what a Werewolf is.

• Hill House Investigations a place with a really nasty view of Werewolves and Shifters in general, it actually seems to be serious in it's offers to hunt down and kill Werecreatures...for a price. My advice: don't throw your money away on these flakey people, and be nice to your local werewolves, they're pretty harmless.

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