LYCANTHROPY NOT DEAD

Shannon News, 9 February 1926, Page 3

LYCANTHROPY NOT DEAD

VOSGES VILLAGE IN FEAR, OF SORCERY. In these' days cases of belief in witchcraft and sorcery do still occur even in Wsetern Europe, but they are extremely rare, savs the Paris correspondent of tlic “Manchester Guardian.”' The trial at Strasburg of a village policeman for the murder of a boy revealed the astonishing fact of almost the whole population of an Alsatian village living in panic feai of sorcery. The village called Uttenheim. Joseph Sur, the accused, believed his cottage was haunted. Weird and evil dogs and cats and, he declared, “animals with human faces” appeared at nights, when the lights were out and the doors closed. He told of these things first to his family, , his two daughters and rhice sons, and then to his neighbours. Soon the whole village was in a state of nerves, sav e two mischievous boys, Marbach and Boepaflung, who started to play upon the fears of the family and to “haunt” at night the hedges near the oottage. Nor was what they were doing unknown to the “haunted” family, but so amazing was the family’s credulity and superstition that its members came to believe, and with them many of the neighbours, that the boys were evil sorcerers and had turned themselves into these maleficent animals at night. Suddenly flinging open the door one evening, the village policeman shot young Marbach dead with a bullet through the heart. His arrest and trial followed. In Court the sons and daughters swore that they had shared the visions Of their father. They and other witnesses Idstitied ihat the boys Marbach and Boepsllung were well known to “have the power of turning themselves into animals and passing through keyholes into houses and disturbing people’s cdpep.” As evidence was being given the villagers in the Court and witnesses were put into such a state of nerves that the President of the Court had to intervene and calm them. Many women worked up into such a state that they had to be taken out of the Court-room. Joseph Sur pleaded, seriously that he’had acted in legitimate self-defence against the influence or sorcerers. He was condemned lo two years’ imprisonment. The case is interesting as showing that one of the oldest superstitions of Europe, the wer-wolf legend, is os alive as ever in the Vosges country.