THE MAN-WOLF

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1926, Page 16

THE MAN-WOLF

A VILLAGE PANIC IN FEAE OF

SOECEET.

In these days cases of a belief in witchcraft and sorcery do still occur ieven in Western Europe, but they are extremely rare, says the Paris correspondent of the "Manchester Guarddan." The trial at Strassburg 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 fear of sorcery. ..'

The • village is called UttanbeimJoseph Sur, the accused, believed sis cottage was taunted. Weird and evil dogs and eats and, he declared, "animals with human faces" appeared at nigiit <when ; the lights were out and the doors .closed. Ho told of these things first to his family, his two daughters »nd three sons, and then to hds neighbours. Soon the whole village was in a state of nerves save two mischievous boys, Marb'ach and Boepsflung, who started to play upon the fears of the family and to "haunt" at night the hedges near the cottage. Nor was what they were doing unknown to the "haunted" family, but so amazing was that 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 his door one evening the village policeman shot young Mar.bach dead with a bullet through the heart. His arrest and trial followed.

In Court the sons and daughters swore that they had shared tho visions of their fathers. T-hey aai other witnesses testified that the boys Marbacli and Boepsflung were well known "to have the power of turning themselves into animals and passing through keyholes into houses and disturbing people's sleep." As evideneo was being given the villagers in the Court and the witnesses were put into such a state nf nerves that the President of the Court had to intervene to calm them. Many women were worked up into such a state that they had to be taken out of the Courtroom.

Joseph Sur pleaded seriously that ho had acted in legitimate self-defence against the influence of .sorcerers, He was condemned to two years' imprisonment. The case is- interesting as showing that one of the oldest superstitions of Europe, tho. werwolf ■legend, is -as alive as ever in the Vofiges country. .