The Legend of the Converse Werewolf (Bexar County, Texas)

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The Legend of the Converse Werewolf (Bexar County, Texas)

Post by Jamie »

I've recently come across The Legend of the Converse Werewolf, from the town of Converse in Texas. Like most American werewolf legends that modern researchers show any interest in, they are trying to re-frame it in terms of a Bigfoot sighting. But, from the description and from the "werewolf" label given to it in local folklore, it is clear that it was originally a werewolf legend.
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Post by White Paw »

interesting... :)
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Post by Uniform Two Six »

Off topic: The title of this thread threw me. I read it and got this image of a nine foot gestalt form werewolf, with shredded clothing hanging off, and a half eaten sheep in one paw... and a pair of oversized Converse sneakers on.
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Post by Lupin »

Uniform Two Six wrote:Off topic: The title of this thread threw me. I read it and got this image of a nine foot gestalt form werewolf, with shredded clothing hanging off, and a half eaten sheep in one paw... and a pair of oversized Converse sneakers on.
That actually sounds about right. The first time I heard about Converse I confused it with the sneakers too.
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Post by Figarou »

Ha!! I live VERY close to Converse.

(About 10 miles or less)


I always go to thier Post office because its the closest one.
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Post by Jamie »

Figarou wrote:Ha!! I live VERY close to Converse.

(About 10 miles or less)


I always go to thier Post office because its the closest one.
Maybe you could find someone who's actually heard the legend in person. Or maybe you could find written accounts (if any exist) in the local historical society archives or in old newspaper clippings.
It would also be interesting to know if anyone actually died. When you track down legends, sometimes it happens that, even though the monster was said to have killed people, no people actually disappeared or died of violence in the area and time period specified.
For example, this phenomena is notorious in witch legends. A witch may be described as having killed dozens of children in a tiny village by hacking off their heads and putting their blood into potions, but when the legend gets investigated, it may turn out that there are only a couple dozen children in the entire village, and that none of them were missing or had died mysteriously.
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Post by dnl »

Converse, Texas is locted right out side of San Antonio. The town is only has six miles of land and is the home of 11,000 people. I have contacted some people see what I find.


Edit... This happened during the mid 1800 century????????????????????????
The town was only formed in 1877. In 1885 it population was only at 30.
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Post by RedWolf »

Here are three websites I found about Texas werewolves:

1) http://www.texasbigfoot.com/Bexar2.html

"Witness described a 9 ft werewolf looking creature. He was seen devouring a 15 year old boy, son of a local rancher. The rancher was last seen chasing the monster into the woods. This is the basis for the "Legend of the Converse Werewolf" . . . The creature's face was described as half wolf and half gorilla."

2) http://www.texasescapes.com/MurrayMontg ... avidad.htm

"In the early days of Texas, settlers living near the banks of the Navidad, southeast of Hallettsville, were subjected to visits by beings of unknown origin — several hairy and stealth-like individuals roamed through the brushy bottoms of the river — witnesses indicating that there was a male and female. Many folks back then were convinced that the male half of the duo had died and only the female remained. She became known as the Wild Woman of the Navidad" . . .

Some websites link this story with the Converse Werewolf.

3) http://www.mexicanwerewolf.com/_movie/faq.html

A movie website ("Mexican Werewolf in Texas") attempted to reinvent the Hispanic Chupacabra legend (Goatsucker) as a werewolf myth.
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Post by Lupin »

dnl wrote: Edit... This happened during the mid 1800 century????????????????????????
The town was only formed in 1877. In 1885 it population was only at 30.
That just means that they became a town in 1877. People were probably living in that area long before that.
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Post by Jamie »

Lupin wrote:
dnl wrote: Edit... This happened during the mid 1800 century????????????????????????
The town was only formed in 1877. In 1885 it population was only at 30.
That just means that they became a town in 1877. People were probably living in that area long before that.
Formally becoming a town and people living in an area in a town-like arrangement are indeed two different things.
Quite a number of smaller towns in the old west never formally became towns, and left only ruins and a few written records to prove that they had ever existed. Besides, the setting for the legend is a ranch, which can certainly exist in an area before even a "non-town" town.
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Post by Rhuen »

Cryptozoologists have a hissy fit sometime if you mix common folklore monsters like vampires, werwolves, and various other monsters in with them. They will take any werewolf stories and somehow make them bigfoot. funny thing though Native American lore has a monster called the Windigo which actaully fits in very nicely with werewolf mythos yet looks alot like a big foot "evil big foot".

Some Crypto types though are trying to pass off a "dog man" version for many North American biped wolf and dog creatures like the Beast of Bray Road amongst other sightings (which seem to be reported more on ghost sites than crypto sites or werewolf sites) Basically they try to say its a biped canine creature but not a shapeshifter of any sort. Like a new species (that unlike its cousins is somehow smart enough to elude us despite appearing in Urban areas unlike other cryptids which tend to be hidden away)
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Post by Jamie »

Rhuen wrote:Cryptozoologists have a hissy fit sometime if you mix common folklore monsters like vampires, werwolves, and various other monsters in with them. They will take any werewolf stories and somehow make them bigfoot. funny thing though Native American lore has a monster called the Windigo which actaully fits in very nicely with werewolf mythos yet looks alot like a big foot "evil big foot".

Some Crypto types though are trying to pass off a "dog man" version for many North American biped wolf and dog creatures like the Beast of Bray Road amongst other sightings (which seem to be reported more on ghost sites than crypto sites or werewolf sites) Basically they try to say its a biped canine creature but not a shapeshifter of any sort. Like a new species (that unlike its cousins is somehow smart enough to elude us despite appearing in Urban areas unlike other cryptids which tend to be hidden away)
Yeah, that's pretty much the way it goes. Every type of researcher wants to interpret creature sightings according to their own field of study, whether it is cryptozoology, the supernatural, theology of a particular brand, or the idea that aliens are secretly responsible for everything. It generally makes me think that you're missing the big picture if you are, for example, trying to jam all werewolf legends into a Bigfoot mold, or vice versa. Sometimes, you're just never going to get to the bottom of stories anyway, and trying to pretend that all the stories point in the same direction ususally doesn't win converts over to that researcher's point of view. It's like preaching to the choir. The people who already tend to think the same way will be convinced, but to most other people, it'll just seem like bad logic and thereby hurt the reputation of whatever field of study that researcher belongs to.
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Post by StellaMagic »

Sounds like how they described the Beast of Bray Road.
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Post by Rhuen »

StellaMagic wrote:Sounds like how they described the Beast of Bray Road.
Weirdest thing about that event, the description of the Beast to me sounded like a WereBadger to me more than a werewolf. Especially by traditional north american native monsters. Or some dwarf windigos.
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Post by Figarou »

heh....Lupin and I drove through the town and we didn't spot any werewolves.



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Post by Lupin »

Figarou wrote:heh....Lupin and I drove through the town and we didn't spot any werewolves.



Image
I did see a Sonic, though.

Can I get the large image for that?
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Post by Figarou »

Lupin wrote:
I did see a Sonic, though.
The Hedgehog? :D
Lupin wrote: Can I get the large image for that?

http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/3156/dsc00044st2.jpg
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Post by Lupin »

Figarou wrote:
Lupin wrote:
I did see a Sonic, though.
The Hedgehog? :D
The resturant.

This should be easier to see:

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Post by Ashkin-Tyr »

Rhuen wrote:
StellaMagic wrote:Sounds like how they described the Beast of Bray Road.
Weirdest thing about that event, the description of the Beast to me sounded like a WereBadger to me more than a werewolf. Especially by traditional north american native monsters. Or some dwarf windigos.
The "Beast of Bray Road" sounds like a badger to you? Well, Wisconsin is the badger state... :D But, seriously, all the accounts I heard and read of the Beast is described as a wolf-like creature rather than a badger.
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Post by Rhuen »

Ashkin-Tyr wrote:
Rhuen wrote:
StellaMagic wrote:Sounds like how they described the Beast of Bray Road.
Weirdest thing about that event, the description of the Beast to me sounded like a WereBadger to me more than a werewolf. Especially by traditional north american native monsters. Or some dwarf windigos.
The "Beast of Bray Road" sounds like a badger to you? Well, Wisconsin is the badger state... :D But, seriously, all the accounts I heard and read of the Beast is described as a wolf-like creature rather than a badger.
well a giant biped Wolverine to be more exact, the descriptions I heard were more monstrous less wolf like and when I thought about them seemed to describe somekind of giant wolverine. a badger relative. I just forgot the name yesterday at the time I wrote that.
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Post by Neybulot »

Wow, i'm surprised I never heard of this. Must be because i'm in the DFW area. Kinda surprising and cool that Texas has werewolf legends.
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Post by Jamie »

Neybulot wrote:Wow, i'm surprised I never heard of this. Must be because i'm in the DFW area. Kinda surprising and cool that Texas has werewolf legends.
I believe my running count is about six werewolf legends for Texas. Pretty much ties it with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the other front runners (although, if you're talking about shapeshifter legends in general instead of just werewolves, then Arizona and New Mexico are the winners with well over 50 legends apiece).
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Post by dnl »

I e-mailed the Liberian and got this responds. I would look at the stuff she sent but I'm busy on a lab report for school.


Hello,

Thank you for your question to the Internet Public Library (IPL)
concerning
the Legend of the Converse Werewolf. I should say up front that
locating
any newspaper articles of reported sightings does not necessarily
constitute "proof" that such a creature existed, but merely that it has
been written about. Reviewing your message, I have to say that I think
you
have completed a very thorough search and my own efforts duplicated
many of
the results you have already uncovered. I believe your best avenue is
to
pursue local history with librarians or local newspapers as you are
doing.
I don't believe that many newspaper articles from the 1800s will be
available online unless scanned and posted by interested parties such
as
yourself. Here is what little additional information I could
contribute.

With that in mind, I visited the IPL homepage at http://www.ipl.org and
selected the "Entertainment" subject heading to begin my search. Once
at
the Entertainment page I then selected the sub-heading for "Paranormal
Phenomena" which can be found at
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/ent70.00.00/.

There are several promising resources on this page that you might find
helpful in your research. The About.com site on Paranormal Phenomena
can be
accessed at http://paranormal.about.com/. Once here I used the
navigation
menu on the left and chose Weird Creatures/Monsters that is at the
following page: http://paranormal.about.com/od/weirdcreaturesmonsters/.

Select the sub-topic of Other Creatures and you will find a number of
werewolf stories and links to various werewolf sites. I did not find
any
mention of the Converse Werewolf upon first examination, but if you dig
into the links, you may have some luck. There is a great deal of
information about werewolves in general that may provide some leads.

I returned to the Paranormal Phenomena main page and then selected the
"Skeptics Dictionary" which can be found at http://www.skepdic.com/
This
site provides links to various paranormal events. Werewolves are
classified
under the heading of "Cryptozoology", a term that you may want to use
in
further searches. The Cryptozoology page is located at
http://www.skepdic.com/ticrypto.html and contains information under the
sub-heading of werewolves and also Lycanthropy. Again, I did not find
particular mention of the Converse Werewolf.

At this point, I left the IPL and went to the search engine Google that
is
located at http://www.google.com. I entered the term "converse
werewolf"
(in quotation marks) and a number of entries were returned. I was able
to
determine that the legend has roots in Bexar County Texas at this page:
http://www.texasbigfoot.com/Bexar2.html I also found the Texas Bigfoot
Research Center, which collects information on this type of incident.

This page http://www.texasbigfoot.com/articles1.html contains links to
many
articles about sightings but does not readily identify the name of the
creature in the article title. I would suggest contacting this
organization, which has obviously worked on tracking this type of
phenomena
in the area that your legend originated. They might be able to direct
you
to specific material or provide you with the names of local newspaper
archives that might have records for the time period of interest to
you.

I hope that I have answered your question and have been of assistance
in
your research. If I have not, or if you require further assistance
please
don't hesitate to contact us at the IPL.

Good Luck!
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