werewolf trials.
In 1589, Peter Stubbe had one of the most lurid and famous werewolf trials in history. After being stretched on the rack, a close to 40-year-old Stubbe confessed to having practiced black magic since he was twelve years old. He claimed the devil had given him a magical belt which enabled him to metamorphose into “the likeness of a greedy devouring Woolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like vnto brandes of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharpe and cruell teeth, A huge body, and mighty pawes.” To turn back into his human form, all Stubbe had to do was remove the belt.
Also known as the “Werewolf of Bedburg” Stubbe was a German farmer, and alleged serial killer and cannibal, a self-described “insatiable bloodsucker” who gorged on the flesh of goats, lambs, sheep, men, women,
and children. He confessed to killing and eating fourteen children, two pregnant women, and the pregnant women’s foetuses. One of the fourteen children was his own son, whose brains he devoured.
Not only was Stubbe a murderer and cannibal, but he was also a fornicator. He had an incestuous relationship with his daughter, and he coupled with an assortment of mistresses and one succubus sent to him by the devil.
Stubbe was finally caught when hunters ran him down in his wolf form. He foolishly took off his belt and was recognized.
His execution is one of the most brutal on record: He was put to the wheel, where flesh was torn from his body, in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been strangled and were burned along with Stubbe’s body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stubbe’s severed head.
