In my life, I’ve had the privilege of being friends with two genuine werewolves. I know how that sounds - surely I’m crazy, right? Right??
But no, I’m not crazy - and I have proof. In this example, we are looking at a so-called “slip” - a small involuntary physical shift that, in my friend’s case, happened every three days or so. He also experienced full shifts, although would not allow them to be photographed, as they would show his face and risk doxxing him. He was very, very cautious.
His name was Aaron J. McFarlane, born about June 13, 1989. He was originally from Glasgow, Scotland, but lived in St. Germain, Wisconsin when I knew him. He hoped to move back to Scotland at some point.
I knew him for two years, from early 2016 to late 2017. His case was heartbreaking. He had no control, and his shifts were excruciatingly painful, but he was too terrified of revealing his secret to go to a doctor for help. I’m a biomedical scientist - but not a medical doctor - although I know enough pharmacology to be useful, and I hoped to help him manage his pain. But before I got the chance, he vanished, and none of his friends - me included - ever heard from him again. Part of me wonders if he died, but I have to believe he isn’t, and that he’s still out there somewhere. I hope one day I can find him so that he doesn’t have to be so utterly alone with his condition.
At any rate, I digress. Lycanthropy exists, and here is some proof, showing the early stages of a claw forming and breaking through the skin. I hope that by posting this, I’ll get the attention of other werewolves out there, who I would also like to use my knowledge to help. As a therian, I feel an unshakable kinship with werewolves.
Please feel free to DM me if you’d like to discuss in private, or comment on this post.
While this is likely bullshit, I’m upvoting you because it’s well written and I always keep an open mind where the weird is concerned.
So, if you got pictures, let me ask you this - did you get samples? When did you get them and can they still be used for a DNA test? Do you have any other pictures? Any recordings of the subject? Did you complete any sort of medical report on the subject at the time of examination, and if so, can you post it here? Are you willing to go public, and if so, can we see your credentials as a “biomedical scientist”?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is tantalizing, but without more you’re just pissing in the wind.
First of all, thank you for having an open mind. I agree, it’s an extraordinary claim, and for anyone to believe it conclusively, extraordinary evidence is required.
Do you have any other pictures?
I have one other picture of the same event from a different angle; see here:
Any recordings of the subject?
There is a recording, but it’s on his computer. I’ve seen parts of it. He understandably didn’t trust any recordings showing his face to be kept on any device other than his own.
did you get samples? When did you get them and can they still be used for a DNA test?
I hoped to convince him to consent to giving samples for laboratory testing, but he was very distrustful of his information being stored anywhere, and it would be a violation of professional ethics to test without express consent. I thought I had made progress in giving him the assurances that he needed - namely, that I would be doing all the testing myself, and that the information would not be stored anywhere except my own computer. But before we could get any further, he went missing, and still remains a missing person today.
Did you complete any sort of medical report on the subject at the time of examination, and if so, can you post it here?
I did write a medical case report, yes. I’d be happy to post a redacted and abridged copy of it here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iAh4h6uNKlbjmdO21cfNpAi_72As7go1Zm4eIbcEMP8/edit?usp=sharing
Are you willing to go public, and if so, can we see your credentials as a “biomedical scientist”?
No. If I were to go public and reveal my legal name, it would be, shall we say, career-limiting. It would also potentially cause a scandal/media flurry for my department that none of us can afford right now. While I respect your skepticism, and would likely have a healthy dose of it myself if our roles were reversed, my hands are tied on this.
Reading through your doc, and will have more commentary later, but wanted to give you a heads up you name yourself as author and your subject there. This appears to be counterproductive to your wish to remain anonymous.
Upvote for the detail of the response, however. I’m not convinced - but I am intrigued, especially as Wisconsin is Dogman territory.
EDIT: So, using the name detail I tracked down your werewolf Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1273057963766932/posts/1278380449901350/
…which indicates that either you have a lot more evidence that you’re not showing here, and that the privacy concerns you express here apparently don’t apply to facebook, where you post the following below along with pictures of Aaron:
Missing werewolf: Aaron J. McFarlane
Profile: Aaron McFarlane (newer) & Aaron McFarlane (old)
Birthdate: ~June 13, 1989 (on or near)
Type: Werewolf experiencing uncontrolled physical shifts Last seen: Dec. 20, 2017 Last known location: St. Germain, Wisconsin Other locations: Glasgow, Scotland (prior to moving to the US) Gorey, North Wexford, Ireland (relatives living there) Notes: As many of you know, Aaron was my friend, and I cared a lot about him, even if I didn’t always show it. I still care, and even though it’s been over 7 years since he vanished, I don’t think I’ll ever truly move on from this. Aaron viewed his condition as a curse - understandably so, considering he never developed control, and his shifts were excruciatingly painful. His shifts happen every two weeks or so, as well as additional smaller shifts - we call them “slips” - that occur up to every few days. The photo in the bottom right of this image shows one such instance of a slip. I hoped to help Aaron get more control over his condition and also to treat the pain. No one deserves to suffer like that, and it breaks my heart to think that he’s out there, somewhere, alone and in pain, and unable to trust anyone enough to get close to for support. The life of a werewolf can be an impossibly lonely one, and in Aaron’s case, it has led to deep depression at times. If anyone has information about Aaron’s whereabouts or contact information, please reach out to me either here or by email. I hope I can find him and give him the support he needs.
So, if you have all this evidence on the Facebook page, where you publicly detail the subject’s name and your own, why all the secrecy on Lemmy, which is remarkably less exposed to the public than Facebook, and where your profile isn’t attached to your IRL identity?
There’s a lot here that doesn’t add up. Either it’s a detailed fan-fic that you’ve been working on for awhile, or you’re not including key parts of the story to give it more gravitas and legitimize your own claim as an uninvolved 3rd party researcher, when in fact you were close with the subject and considered him a friend.
Here’s what I think:
You were friends with this kid. He was already suffering from mental health issues, and was sick:
McFarlane has been diagnosed with premature ventricular contractions (PVCs), iron-deficient anemia, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
So your friend gets wiggy, starts making claims about having Lycanthropy, and shows up one day with this thing sticking out of his finger. You, likely a pre-med student, examine him and can’t explain the claw, but don’t have the resources to get an x-ray to determine if this something that grew out or if it’s something he did to himself. He’s paranoid as fuck (likely experiencing a severe break with reality), which prevents you from doing further examination, and then disappears as his mental state worsens.
This is a pattern I’ve seen a LOT in my work with the homeless and mentally ill. They get a hold of a delusion, the delusion gives them a reason behind their mental illness (“I’m married to Robert Plant!”, “I’m an angel sent to hell to redeem people!” “I’m a werewolf!” are all claims I’ve heard from folks I’ve worked with), which is why “life is against them”. A severe episode can lead them to self-mutilate in an attempt to reinforce the delusion, and memory slips as they descend into a fugue state are very common - they many times don’t even know what they’ve done to themselves.
If this is real, consider the fact that it’s far more likely that your friend had a breakdown and did this to himself than it is that he had a medical condition where he can inexplicably grow bone at a rate faster than any known organism:
It is at this point that the toothaches begin, culminating in bleeding gingival tissue as the teeth elongate and, to some extent, sharpen.
In your report, you point out how unusual (and unlikely) this is:
The etiology of this condition is not currently known, and establishing a mechanism is likely to require tissue samples at different stages of the transformation. It is also unknown as to how the fractures are able to reorganize and seal so quickly, as cartilage deposition and bone calcification are very slow processes that occur over months, not hours.
Finally, you only observed the claw incident (to our knowledge) not the overall transformation claimed by the subject.
Here’s my final analysis. You really cared for your friend. He had a severe mental breakdown and ended up mutilating himself to prove a delusion to you. You believed him, and as a good friend, you did all you could to help him… except the one thing that would help: call him out on his bullshit and get him into treatment.
Now, seven years later, you’re realizing he’s really gone, and you’re trying to make sense of it all - most particularly the points of proof he offered you. But there’s no sense to delusions like these. Maybe you need someone on outside the situation to point this out, but you’re chasing a madman’s paranoid delusion in hopes that you’ll get your friend back.
From your point of view, I can understand why you would think this, and I really do appreciate the concern. Here are some additional thoughts, and although I suppose it’s unlikely that I’ll change your mind without showing exhaustive evidence, I’d still ask that you keep an open mind to an alternative interpretation.
About my identity, thank you for the heads up, although you need not worry. “Adam Shaw” is a pseudonym, not my real name. I’ve used several pseudonyms over the years, and am careful enough to change personal details to ensure no one makes the connection to my real identity.
You suggested that there is a possibility that I have more evidence that I’m not showing here. I can assure you that in Aaron’s specific case, this is not true. That being said, I do have further evidence from other cases, which may be the subject of future posts.
You also suggested that my publishing of Aaron’s face shots contradicts what I’ve said about privacy here. There is some truth to this, although you must admit that there’s a difference between showing his pictures next to the evidence, vs. showing evidence in which his face is clearly visible and connected to the phenomena at hand. That said, it was a difficult decision to publish the identifying photos, and in truth, it does violate some of his privacy. I held my silence for several years, in the hope that he would resurface on his own, but now I worry that this was a mistake and that something awful may have happened to him.
If someone does recognize him and comes forward, then as soon as I reestablish contact, I’ll be taking those identifying posts down to protect his privacy.
On the point about being an uninvolved third party, I’ve never claimed that - although it’s true that I omitted some details about the personal connection. With that being said, it’s no secret that Aaron was my friend, and a good friend at that. I knew him for nearly two years, and we got pretty close - why else do you suppose I would go to such lengths to try to get a hold of him? I worry for his safety.
If this is real, consider the fact that it’s far more likely that your friend had a breakdown and did this to himself than it is that he had a medical condition where he can inexplicably grow bone at a rate faster than any known organism
From your point of view, I can understand how it would look like this is the obvious alternative explanation. I do acknowledge the unlikely nature of such rapid growth, which would probably require either 1) rapid error-prone mitosis, or 2) asynthetic fission. However, I have seen additional evidence with my own eyes, including the growth process in real time, that I can’t discount so quickly. It’s a shame that I don’t have those files on my own computer, but as I mentioned earlier, he was very careful.
You, likely a pre-med student, examine him and can’t explain the claw, but don’t have the resources to get an x-ray to determine if this something that grew out or if it’s something he did to himself.
Self-inflicted wounds shown very specific characteristics that this wound did not possess. For example, if an incision was made and the claw was then inserted into it, we would see asymmetric tension, as well as noticeable notching along the axis of the cut. The only way to get around this would be something like a punch biopsy, where a special circular blade is used to cut a small cylinder out of the skin, but that’s a surgical instrument that Aaron could not have had access to. Furthermore, without treatment, a self-inflicted wound like this would almost surely lead to an infection - but it didn’t.
He’s paranoid as fuck (likely experiencing a severe break with reality), which prevents you from doing further examination, and then disappears as his mental state worsens.
He was remarkably lucid and rational in all of our conversations, even when distressed. Remember, this is something that had been happening to him since he was a teenager, and he was ~27 when we met. While the episodes were excruciating and distressing each and every time they happened, they also weren’t unexpected.
Finally, you only observed the claw incident (to our knowledge) not the overall transformation claimed by the subject.
As I said, there is also a video of the overall transformation, which I have seen. Said video cannot be shared because it shows his face and is thus very identifying, so he never sent it to anyone, and would only show from his own device.
Maybe you need someone on outside the situation to point this out, but you’re chasing a madman’s paranoid delusion in hopes that you’ll get your friend back.
I really do respect your desire to help, and your reasoning for this opinion. I doubt there’s much I can say to change your mind, beyond what I’ve said above. I will only ask that you allow for the small possibility, from your perspective, that my description of the case could nonetheless be the truth.
