Two Thousand Years of Werewolves, Graded Against Their Own Calendar

Werewolf chronology, mythic Arcadia to 2025

1. WR-0008-OVD / Punitive transformation

   Plate I

   Metamorphoses, Book I

   8

   Ovid

   poem

   The Register Opens With a Sentence Handed Down at Dinner

   Metamorphoses, Book I · the Lycaon episode, in which a host is sentenced

   Period mythic · Arcadia The poem fixes no date and could not. The desk has placed it before every other filing on the register because that is the only claim the story makes about its own time, and prints a number so the placement can be argued with.

   Jurisdiction

   Divine and punitive. A king serves human flesh to a god and is sentenced for it.

   Mechanism

   Judicial. The transformation is the penalty, imposed from outside, and nothing about it is monthly, infectious or reversible.

   Cross-reference

   The register's oldest reading of the condition, and the one the twentieth century abandoned: the werewolf is not a patient, he is a defendant.

   The register opens on a catering complaint with an unusually severe outcome. A king serves human flesh to a god and is made a wolf for it. What the desk files is the shape of the finding rather than its severity: the condition here is imposed, deserved and singular. Nobody catches it, nobody schedules it, nobody is asked to keep it quiet, and nobody is sorry for the man it happens to. Every sympathetic word on this register arrives nineteen centuries later, and the desk notes how long the record went without one. This is the punishment reading, and it is the oldest thing on the page.

2. WR-0061-PET / Account given at table

   Plate II

   Satyricon, ch. 61–62

   61

   Petronius

   novel

   The Oldest Set of Working Rules, Told Between Courses

   Satyricon · Niceros's tale, told at a dinner · filed as the work it sits inside

   Period c. AD 60 · Campania The work's date and the tale's are both approximate. The desk prints the conventional range and does not pretend to a year.

   Jurisdiction

   Domestic and conversational. A guest at a dinner tells the table about a soldier, and the table believes him.

   Mechanism

   Stated in full and never explained. The soldier strips, marks a circle, becomes a wolf, and the clothes he left behind turn to stone. A wound taken as a wolf is found afterwards on the man.

   Classification

   Filed as a novel, because the work is one. The register wants two chapters of it and says so, rather than inventing a separate work out of a tale that was never published alone.

   Two thousand years before anybody filmed any of this, a guest at a dinner supplies the register with its two oldest operative rules and does it inside a single anecdote told between courses. The clothes come off first and have to be there to come back to. A wound given to the wolf is found afterwards on the man. The desk records with some feeling that the earliest surviving account already understands the part every later filing forgets, which is that the transformation has a logistics problem attached to it. Somebody has to look after the clothes, and in this filing the clothes turn to stone, which is the earliest recorded failure of a storage arrangement on any register this desk keeps.

3. WR-1160-BIS / Domestic disclosure

   Plate III

   Bisclavret

   1160

   Marie de France

   poem

   A Husband Explains the Arrangement and the Arrangement Is Used Against Him

   A lai, composed c. 1160–1180 · three days a week, and a wife who hides his clothes

   Period the 1100s · Brittany The lai gives no year, and its own composition is dated only to a range. The placement in the twelfth century is the desk's, and is printed so it can be argued with.

   Jurisdiction

   Domestic. A husband, a wife, a weekly absence, and one set of clothes.

   Mechanism

   Weekly and known. Three days out of seven, and he cannot return without his clothes.

   Inventory

   One set of clothes, which the wife hides. No other filing on the register makes the whole condition depend on one hiding place.

   Eight centuries before this paper existed, somebody wrote the household filing and got it right first time. A husband is absent three days a week, he cannot come back without his clothes, and his wife hides them. He must have told her where they were, since she is able to hide them, and the desk offers that as a reading rather than as a line in the poem. What it files is the mechanism. The condition is survivable, scheduled and, on any reading, disclosed. What destroys the household is not the wolf but the storage: one set of clothes, one hiding place, no spare, and a single point of failure known to exactly the wrong person.

4. WR-1188-GRL / Ecclesiastical account

   Plate IV

   Topographia Hibernica

   1188

   Gerald of Wales

   nonfiction

   The Church Files a Werewolf and Refers the Question Upward

   Topographia Hibernica · the last rites given to a she-wolf, and a matter put to a synod

   Period reported · Ossory, a few years before the writing The text dates neither itself precisely nor the encounter it reports, so the placement is the desk's reading. The chapter reference the desk has seen quoted elsewhere is unconfirmed and is not printed.

   Jurisdiction

   Ecclesiastical. A priest gives the last rites to a she-wolf, and the matter is afterwards put to a bishop's synod.

   Mechanism

   Not entered. The document records a sacrament administered to a wolf; the desk files what the church did about that and does not reconstruct what the wolves were.

   Confidence

   The account is a document and says what it says. Whether anything happened is not a question this desk can settle, and the register files the paperwork rather than the event.

   The most administratively interesting filing on the register and easily the strangest. A cleric writes down that a priest gave the last rites to a she-wolf. The priest then did what anybody in an institution does after making a decision above their grade: the matter went to a bishop's synod, and the synod considered it. The desk has no view on whether the wolves existed and is not going to reconstruct the encounter beyond what the document is cited for. What it files is the response. Presented with a jurisdictional problem, the church produced a referral, a hearing and a written record, which is more than any household on this register manages in two thousand years.

5. WR-1896-HSM / Admitted at the door

   Plate XI

   The Were-Wolf

   1896

   Clemence Housman, illustrated by Laurence Housman

   novella

   The Household Opens the Door and Is Charmed

   The Were-Wolf · White Fell, a predator, welcomed at the door

   Period undated · the medieval north The story fixes neither year nor country. The desk has placed it in the late middle ages, and prints a number so the placement can be argued with.

   Jurisdiction

   Domestic. The crisis is a question about a guest, and the guest is a predator.

   Perimeter

   Intact and irrelevant. Nothing forces the door. The household opens it and makes her welcome.

   Cross-reference

   The invitation rule, which the vampire archive built an entire body of law out of, appears on the werewolf file here and nowhere else.

   A predator arrives at a door and is welcomed through it. The register keeps the filing because it is the only werewolf card on which the mechanism is hospitality: the threat does not break in, it is admitted, and the household is pleased to have it. The desk notes that the vampire archive built an entire body of law out of exactly this situation and the werewolf file did not, which is why this card sits slightly apart from everything around it. It is also, sentence for sentence, among the best writing on the page, and the desk would file it for that alone if the invitation were not already doing the work.

6. WR-1846-WAG / Serial publication

   Plate IX

   Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

   1846

   G. W. M. Reynolds

   serial

   Youth Bought on Credit, and the Condition Is What It Costs

   Serialised in Reynolds's Miscellany from 7 November 1846 · a bargain, and the instalments that pay for it

   Period the sixteenth century · Florence The setting is the desk's reading of the serial's own furniture. The specific year the desk has seen cited for it is unconfirmed and is not printed as the work's own.

   Jurisdiction

   Contractual. An old man accepts the restoration of his youth on stated terms, and the terms include the condition.

   Mechanism

   A bargain entered into knowingly. The youth is what is bought and the condition is what it is paid in, which the desk reads as an interest payment.

   Cross-reference

   The penny-dreadful twin of the vampire archive's long-running serial, and filed the same way: a run in parts is one work and gets one card.

   The Victorian werewolf arrives as a finance product. A man makes a bargain for his youth and the price of it is lycanthropy, disclosed at signature and payable thereafter. The desk finds the framing unexpectedly modern and files it firmly among the willing subjects, because the whole of the twentieth century will insist that nobody chooses this, and here is a man reading the terms and signing them. It is also the first filing on the register with a repayment attached, which is not the same thing as a lunar calendar, and the register is careful about the difference.

7. WR-1590-STB / Printed trial account

   Plate VI

   A True Discourse… (Bedburg, 1590)

   1590

   Anonymous; translated by George Bores, printed at London

   official report

   The Only Surviving Source Is a Pamphlet, and What It Reports Is a Neighbour

   A sixteen-page pamphlet, translated by George Bores and printed at London in 1590 · the German original is lost

   Period 1564 to 1589 · Bedburg, in the Rhineland

   Jurisdiction

   Criminal, at Bedburg, reported to an English readership by a translator working from a German document nobody has seen since.

   Mechanism

   A belt, according to the pamphlet, said to have been supplied by the Devil and put on and taken off at will. No moon, no bite, no schedule of any kind.

   Confidence

   The only surviving source, and a printed sensation as well as a record: the register cites it for what it caused as much as for what it says. Its full printed title names the accused. The desk does not reproduce that title, cites the pamphlet by the town instead, and files the man as the subject of a prosecution rather than as an exhibit.

   The most famous werewolf case in Europe survives in one pamphlet, printed in a foreign country, translated out of an original that is now lost, and sold as news. The desk therefore treats it as two objects at once: an account of a prosecution, and the first werewolf bestseller. What has kept it in circulation for four centuries is not the belt and not the confession. It is that the document reports a defendant the town had lived alongside for twenty-five years, which is a statement about proximity and the only part of this source the register needs. The sentence was recorded as carried out on 31 October 1589, which the desk notes and makes nothing of. The finding is about the document, not the man: what this source records is a neighbour.

8. WR-1573-GAR / Criminal proceedings

   Plate V

   Proceedings at Dole, 1573

   1573

   Parlement of Dole

   official report

   Fifty Witnesses, a Secular Bench, and a Sentence Carried Out in January

   Criminal proceedings, 1573 · sentence carried out 18 January 1574

   Period 1572 · the Bois de la Serre

   Jurisdiction

   Secular and criminal. The court is a parlement rather than an inquisition, and it decides on witness testimony rather than on a question of belief.

   Mechanism

   Not entered. The court heard fifty witnesses and convicted; the desk's reading is that a bench with that much testimony did not need a mechanism and did not rest on one.

   Confidence

   The charge, the conviction, the sentence and the date are on the record, and they are the whole of what this register prints. The desk does not reproduce the accused's name, the content of the confession, or anything the proceedings did not establish.

   The register's first criminal filing, and the desk has kept it short on purpose. A secular bench sat, heard some fifty witnesses, convicted, and the sentence was carried out in January 1574. That is the whole of what this register prints, and the omissions are deliberate: this card names no defendant, describes no offence, and repeats no confession. The court described what it was trying in the only language available to it in 1573, which was the language of lycanthropy, and the desk files that language as evidence about the court and not about the person in front of it. What the case establishes here is the disposition. In the sixteenth century the condition is a capital matter, heard by a secular bench, and settled by burning.

9. WR-1603-GRN / Appellate disposition

   Plate VII

   Judgment at Bordeaux, 1603

   1603

   Parlement of Bordeaux; reported by Pierre de Lancre

   official report

   A Court Declines to Burn a Boy of Thirteen and Confines Him Instead

   Judgment of 6 September 1603 · reported in de Lancre's Tableau, 1612

   Period 1603 · the Landes, and the bench at Bordeaux

   Jurisdiction

   Appellate and criminal. The court had the power to execute, courts of its kind had used it within living memory, and this one declined.

   Mechanism

   A salve, as alleged in the proceedings. The court treated that account as a product of the defendant's condition rather than as evidence of a transformation.

   Confidence

   The judgment, the ground of it and the confinement are on the record, and they are the whole of what this register prints. The desk does not reproduce the defendant's name and does not repeat the trial gossip; the fuller reconstruction it relied on is the 2019 journal article on the shelf.

   Thirty years after a court of the same kind ordered an execution on a charge of this sort, a bench at Bordeaux considered a defendant of thirteen and declined to execute him, on grounds of his age and of weakness of mind. The disposition was confinement to a friary rather than the fire. The desk files this as the register's first clinical disposition, and as the point at which the record acquires an alternative. It matters more than the trials around it, because the clinical reading of the werewolf is usually presented as a modern kindness, and here it is in a judgment of 1603, before anybody had a word for it.

10. WR-2020-WWK / Occupation and enclosure

    Plate XLVI

    Wolfwalkers

    2020

    Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, for Cartoon Saloon

    animated film

    The Body Sleeps at Home While the Wolf Is Out

    Cartoon Saloon, 2020 · animated · Cromwell's occupation, and a variant of the oldest rule on the file

    Period 1650 · Kilkenny, under Cromwell's occupation

    Jurisdiction

    Occupying. Cromwell's administration in Kilkenny, which makes this the only filing on the register whose antagonist is a government.

    Mechanism

    The wolfwalker leaves her body asleep in the house and runs as a wolf. What is left behind at home is the vulnerability.

    Cross-reference

    A variant of the clothes rule. The thing left behind at home is the vulnerability, and no filing since Rome has disagreed.

    The register's prettiest filing and one of its most administrative, because the antagonist is an occupation rather than an animal. Against that, a girl who runs at night while her body sleeps in the house. The desk files the mechanism as the clothes rule in another form, and thinks the variation makes the rule clearer rather than weaker: what a Roman dinner guest left folded at the roadside, this filing leaves in a bed. The danger is identical and so is the failure mode. Somebody may move it, and then there is nothing to come back to. Animated, and fine for about seven.

11. WR-2001-MLH / The finding, playable

    Plate XXXIV

    The Werewolves of Millers Hollow

    2001

    Philippe des Pallières and Hervé Marly

    game

    The Household Finding, Sold in a Box, With a Vote Every Night

    A card game, 2001 · Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux · descended from a Moscow party game of 1986, rethemed in 1997

    Period undated · a village The game fixes no period at all. The eighteenth-century placement is arbitrary, is the desk's, and is printed so it can be argued with.

    Jurisdiction

    Communal and self-governing. The werewolf is one of the villagers, and the village votes.

    Mechanism

    Concealed identity. The only mechanism on the register that requires the community to be wrong about somebody in order to work at all.

    Cross-reference

    The register's household finding stated as a rule set. The 1974 film ran the same exercise on an English estate, with a distributor attached.

    The register's conclusion arrived here first and was sold as an evening's entertainment. The design began as a hidden-mobster game in Moscow in 1986 and was rethemed in 1997 by a designer who found that a hidden wolf in a village worked better on players than a hidden gangster in a city, which the desk regards as a finding in itself and the best evidence on this page that the household reading is the one people feel. Everything the file has spent two thousand years establishing is in the rules. The werewolf is one of the villagers. The village votes. The village is frequently wrong. Nobody is ever attacked from outside.

12. WR-1961-CRS / Licensed adaptation

    Plate XVIII

    The Curse of the Werewolf

    1961

    Terence Fisher, for Hammer, with Oliver Reed

    film

    The 1933 Novel, Moved to Spain

    Hammer, 1961 · adapted from the 1933 novel, with Paris exchanged for Spain

    Period eighteenth century · Spain The film relocates the novel, and the desk has not confirmed the year it sets itself in. The placement is the desk's reading and is printed as such.

    Jurisdiction

    Adaptive. The filing's claim on this register is that it is Hammer's only werewolf and the 1933 novel's only film.

    Mechanism

    Congenital, carried over from the novel unaltered. The inheritance survives the crossing; the setting does not.

    Cross-reference

    Duplicate of the 1933 filing. Both hold their own place on the clock, because the two disagree about where and when the events happen.

    Hammer made one werewolf picture and it is an adaptation of the register's best novel with the setting moved from Paris to Spain. What survives the crossing is the inherited condition. What does not is the Commune, and the Commune was the argument, which the desk records as the difference between a novel about a state and a film about a young man. It files as a duplicate rather than being folded into the novel's card, because the two disagree about where and when the events happen, and a register that concealed a disagreement of that size on its own period clock would be no use to anybody.

13. WR-1979-CMP / Tale, reworked

    Plate XXI

    The Company of Wolves

    1979

    Angela Carter, in The Bloody Chamber

    story

    The Finest Prose on the Register, and the Point of It Is the Household

    A story in The Bloody Chamber · a forest, a grandmother's house, and an ending about the household

    Period undated · a forest, and a grandmother's house The story fixes no year. The placement in the eighteenth century is the desk's, and the number is printed so it can be argued with.

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic. A forest and a grandmother's house, which is the whole of the premises the register needs from it.

    Mechanism

    Not entered, and deliberately. This is the one card on the register where the desk would rather send a reader to the prose than summarise it.

    Cross-reference

    Adapted for the screen in 1984 by the author working with a director. The two file separately, as everything on this register does.

    The best prose on the register, and the filing that most repays this desk's method, because the premises are the whole of it: a forest, and a house at the end of the journey through it. The story is famous for its ending and the desk will not spoil it, beyond recording the one thing that puts the card here rather than on somebody else's page. What the ending is about is the household. Every other filing in this file arrives at that finding by accident, after the chase is over and the desk has counted the doors. This one starts there and gets there, in a story short enough to read in a sitting.

14. WR-1984-CMP / Adaptation, dreamed

    Plate XXV

    The Company of Wolves (1984)

    1984

    Neil Jordan, written with Angela Carter

    film

    The Story, Filmed by Its Author, Inside a Dream

    ITC, 1984 · adapted by the author of the 1979 story, working with Neil Jordan

    Period a dream, set in the 1700s The film is a dream and fixes no year inside it. The eighteenth-century placement is the desk's reading, and matches where it has put the story this adapts.

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic, and dreamed. The register files the premises it is given and notes that this filing gives them twice over.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. The register cites this filing for its authorship and its frame, and sends the reader to the story for the rest.

    Cross-reference

    Duplicate subject to the 1979 story. The two file separately, as a story and a film always do on this register.

    The rare case of an author adapting her own story, working with a director, which is why the register keeps it separate from the 1979 filing rather than treating the two as one work with two formats. They are not. One is a story and one is a dream on film, and the desk's period clock puts them in the same century while its plate numbers keep them five years apart. That is the whole argument for arranging a register by two clocks at once, and this page carries a second pair in the same shape two years later.

15. WR-1764-GEV / Public emergency, animal

    Plate VIII

    The Beast of Gévaudan

    1764

    The contemporary gazettes; Jay M. Smith (2011) for the modern account

    official report

    Three Years, an Army, and the Wrong Kind of Animal

    A public emergency, 1764–67 · roughly a hundred dead · the shooting of 19 June 1767

    Period 1764 to 1767 · the Margeride, in the Gévaudan

    Jurisdiction

    Local, then national. The killings were reported in the gazettes and the army was sent, which is the whole of the escalation this register needs from it.

    Mechanism

    An animal, never identified to anybody's satisfaction. The register files it as an identification failure and not as a transformation.

    Confidence

    The deaths, the reporting, the army and the date of the final shooting are on the record. The silver bullet is not. It is a later embellishment and the register prints it as one.

    The one filing on this register where the thing outside was a real animal in a real place, and the desk keeps it for what it took to end. Three years, a press that reported it, the army, and roughly a hundred dead before a shot on 19 June 1767 stopped the killings. What the register takes from it is the contrast with everything else here. The threat came from outside, was never identified, and required the state. Every other named werewolf in this file lived in the village. The famous silver ball is a later embellishment, added to the account long after the event by a route the desk has not been able to confirm, and it is filed with the folklore rather than with the record.

16. WR-2001-BRW / Document, dramatised

    Plate XXXIII

    Brotherhood of the Wolf

    2001

    Christophe Gans

    film

    The 1764 File, Filmed, With the Beast Given a Manufacturer

    Studio Canal, 2001 · Le Pacte des loups · the emergency of 1764, with an explanation supplied

    Period 1764 · the Gévaudan

    Jurisdiction

    Adaptive. The filing dramatises a document already on this register, and the register keeps both rather than choosing.

    Mechanism

    An engineered animal. Not a transformation, which is why the card carries the objection rather than burying it.

    Cross-reference

    Dramatises the 1764 document filed at the front of this register. The two disagree about the cause and the register keeps both.

    A film about the register's one genuine animal emergency, which solves the identification problem the historical record never solved by supplying an answer the record does not have: the beast is engineered. The desk files it beside the document rather than instead of it, and prints the disagreement, because that disagreement is the most useful thing on either card. The record says an unidentified animal killed roughly a hundred people and was eventually shot. The film says the animal was made. There is no evidence for the second proposition and it makes a much better picture, which is a sentence this desk has had to write about a great deal of the material on this page.

17. WR-1933-END / The condition, argued

    Plate XII

    The Werewolf of Paris

    1933

    Guy Endore

    novel

    The Affliction Becomes a Condition, and the State Is the Larger Animal

    The Werewolf of Paris · the register's Dracula, and its most political filing

    Period 1850s to the Commune of 1871 · Paris, and the country outside it

    Jurisdiction

    Inherited, then civil. The condition arrives by birth, and the book sets it against the Commune and its suppression.

    Mechanism

    Congenital. The condition is inherited rather than caught, which is the register's earliest statement of the case the whole shelf side will make.

    Cross-reference

    The unwilling sufferer enters the register here, eight years before the film that is universally credited with inventing him.

    The book the werewolf file needed and the one nobody reads. Its subject is a young man who asked for none of this, and its argument is that a state which has just put down a rising in its own capital is poorly placed to be shocked by one afflicted person. That is what the desk means by the state as the larger wolf, and the novel means it too. The register files it as the founding document of the sympathetic reading and asks the reader to note the date. Everything the 1941 picture is praised for inventing — the sufferer, the inheritance, the pity — is on the page eight years earlier, in a novel that is angrier and better.

18. WR-1865-BGB / Period survey

    Plate X

    The Book of Were-Wolves

    1865

    Sabine Baring-Gould

    nonfiction

    The First English Survey, and the Desk Has Not Finished Reading It

    The Book of Were-Wolves · the first English attempt to gather the whole subject into one volume

    Period survey · 1865, looking backwards

    Jurisdiction

    Antiquarian. A compiler gathering the trials, the folklore and the classical accounts into one volume, with no method beyond diligence and no apparatus for doubting a source.

    Classification

    Filed as a period document rather than as a finding. This is where the Victorian reader met the trials, and a great deal of what it repeats it repeats uncritically.

    Confidence

    Incomplete, and the register says so. The desk's leading finding is about what is absent from the record before 1941, and an absence is only as good as the reading behind it. This volume has not been read cover to cover for that purpose, so no finding on this page cites it and this card explains why.

    The first English survey of the subject, which is a considerable achievement and not a reliable one, and the desk's reading is that it is how most English readers of the period met the trials at all. Baring-Gould gathered the material and believed a good deal more of it than a modern reader will, which is why the register files it as a document about the nineteenth century rather than as evidence about anything earlier. It also files an admission, which the desk would rather print than bury: the silver finding on this page rests on the trials, the fiction and a screenwriter's own account of what he made up, and not on a line-by-line reading of this survey, because that reading is not finished.

19. WR-2010-WFM / Remake, period shifted

    Plate XXXIX

    The Wolfman (2010)

    2010

    Joe Johnston, with makeup by Rick Baker

    film

    The Same Household, Moved Back Fifty Years

    Universal, 2010 · a remake of the 1941 filing, with the events moved into the Victorian period

    Period 1891 · Blackmoor

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic and dynastic, as in 1941, and moved back into the Victorian period.

    Mechanism

    Silver, carried over unexamined from the 1941 invention, which is why the register's silver finding cites the remake as well as its source.

    Cross-reference

    Duplicate of the 1941 filing. Both hold their own place on the clock, and the remake sits fifty years earlier on it than its source.

    The register keeps remakes as separate cards, and this one earns the separation on the period clock alone: the 1941 filing is contemporary with itself and this one is set in 1891, so the two sit half a century apart on the spine while telling the same story. That is the best argument this page can make for arranging a register by period rather than by release. What the remake inherits without inspection is the silver, which is the desk's point about how an invented rule becomes a traditional one. Nobody checks, because by 2010 nobody imagines there is anything to check. It also keeps Rick Baker, which is the one continuity nobody had to argue for.

20. WR-1935-WOL / Moon, first entered

    Plate XIII

    Werewolf of London

    1935

    Stuart Walker, with Henry Hull

    film

    The Moon Arrives Six Years Before Anybody Noticed

    Universal, 1935 · a botanist, the mariphasa, and the register's first lunar schedule

    Period contemporary · Tibet, then London

    Jurisdiction

    Scientific. A botanist, a plant collected in Tibet, and a condition brought home with it.

    Mechanism

    The bite, with the transformation tied to the full moon and held off by the mariphasa, which is an antidote and a Tibetan flower and not wolfsbane.

    Cross-reference

    Both of the rules the public credits to 1941 — the bite and the moon — are already here, in a film almost nobody has seen.

    The register's most under-read filing, and the one that quietly does the work. A botanist is bitten, and the thing that holds the condition off is a plant. The desk reads that as a supply problem with a fixed deadline, which is this paper's entire beat, and it is on screen six years before the famous picture. It also records the finding that matters more. The full moon enters the screen record here. Transmission by bite enters here. And the film that gets the credit for both of them keeps one and drops the other.

21. WR-1948-DTY / Heredity, as science fiction

    Plate XVI

    Darker Than You Think

    1948

    Jack Williamson

    novel

    A Second Species, With a Population and a Programme

    Novel, 1948, expanded from the 1940 magazine version in Unknown · the condition as biology

    Period the 1940s · Clarendon

    Jurisdiction

    Anthropological. The filing is framed as a finding about a second kind of person living inside the population, rather than as a case about one man.

    Mechanism

    Hereditary, and named: Homo lycanthropus, which files the condition as biology rather than as affliction.

    Classification

    The register's first filing to argue that the werewolf is a separate kind of being with a population, rather than an individual carrying an inherited affliction. The inheritance itself is fifteen years older and belongs to the 1933 filing.

    The inherited case is not invented here — the register's Paris novel had the condition congenital fifteen years earlier — and the desk is careful to say so, because the two filings are cited together everywhere else on this page. What is new in 1948 is that the inheritance is given a species and a Latin name, so that the werewolf stops being one family's problem and becomes a population living inside another. The framing has not aged evenly. A hidden kind of person passing unsuspected among a majority is a device that carries freight, and the register records that the freight is there rather than pretending the filing is neutral about it.

22. WR-1941-WLF / Founding invention

    Plate XIV

    The Wolf Man

    1941

    George Waggner, written by Curt Siodmak, with Lon Chaney Jr.

    film

    The Founding Document of Everything People Think Is Folklore

    Universal, 1941 · silver, the pentagram, the poem, and the son of the house

    Period contemporary · Llanwelly, in Wales

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic and dynastic. The werewolf is the son of the house, and the house is where the register files him.

    Mechanism

    The bite; silver as the countermeasure; the pentagram; and — pointedly — the autumn moon, when the wolfsbane blooms, rather than a monthly full moon.

    Confidence

    The screenwriter said in later life that he invented this material because the folklore was unsatisfactory. The desk has not verified the wording of that statement and does not quote it. It prints the substance, and its own reading of the record agrees with him.

    The most consequential filing on the register, and almost none of it is old. Silver is here for the first time. The pentagram is here. The poem that generations have taken for a folk verse was written for the picture. The desk has gone looking for all three in the trials, in the medieval accounts and in the classical ones, and has not found them, which is the whole of its leading finding. What the film does keep is the household, because the werewolf is the son of the house. That part is as old as this file. The rest is 1941, and the screenwriter said as much.

23. WR-1943-FMW / Rule fixed by sequel

    Plate XV

    Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

    1943

    Roy William Neill

    film

    The Full Moon Becomes Law in a Crossover Picture

    Universal, 1943 · the ensemble picture in which the calendar is settled for good

    Period contemporary · Llanwelly, then Vasaria

    Jurisdiction

    Two households at once, and the register notes that a crossover is where a rule hardens rather than where it is invented.

    Mechanism

    The full moon, stated flatly and without the seasonal qualification the 1941 film used. From here onward it is simply the rule.

    Cross-reference

    The second household belongs to the mad-science file, which this paper opens at the end of the month.

    Talbot is dug up, and the full moon is fixed as law. Two years earlier the same character's condition was tied to the autumn and the blooming of the wolfsbane. Here it is the full moon with no seasonal small print, and that is the version the next eighty years use. The desk files this as the register's clearest example of a rule being settled not by the film that invented it but by the sequel that repeated it without argument, which is precisely the mechanism that gave the vampire archive its sunlight. Two households in one picture, and the second belongs to another register.

24. WR-1957-TNW / Induced by treatment

    Plate XVII

    I Was a Teenage Werewolf

    1957

    Gene Fowler Jr., with Michael Landon

    film

    A Doctor Induces It Deliberately and Calls It Therapy

    American International, 1957 · the condition as an outcome of treatment

    Period contemporary · Rockdale

    Jurisdiction

    Clinical, and improperly so. A doctor treats a patient and the treatment is the cause.

    Mechanism

    Hypnosis, administered by a doctor who induces the condition rather than finding it.

    Cross-reference

    The register's only filing in which the condition is caused by the person supposed to be treating it. The mad-science file will want a copy.

    The desk includes it because it inverts the register's clinical finding in a way nothing else here does. Since 1603 the doctor has been the figure who reclassifies the werewolf as a patient. In 1957 the doctor induces the condition by hypnosis, which makes him the cause, and the question of what a patient agreed to becomes the uncomfortable thing under a lurid title. It is a mad-science filing and it belongs as much to the file this paper opens at the end of the month. What it contributes here is the first werewolf manufactured in an office, by appointment.

25. WR-1974-BMD / Guest list, audited

    Plate XIX

    The Beast Must Die

    1974

    Paul Annett, for Amicus

    film

    A Whodunit on an English Estate, and Then the Film Stops

    Amicus, 1974 · from a 1950 story by James Blish · the werewolf break, in which the film stops so the audience can guess

    Period contemporary · an English estate

    Jurisdiction

    Private premises. An English estate, a closed set of candidates, and one of them is the answer.

    Mechanism

    Beside the point, and the film knows it. This is a whodunit, so the question is identification and not transformation.

    Classification

    The household finding as a parlour game, twenty-seven years before anybody sold it in a box.

    A whodunit on an English estate, and then the celebrated part: the film stops so that the audience can guess. The desk files it high for one reason. That pause is the register's household finding stated as a procedure — the threat is one of the people already in the house, the exercise is to work out which, and the film is confident enough of the premise to hand the exercise to the room. It is a parlour game with a distributor. The last card on this register is the same exercise with the budget removed and the rules printed on the box.

26. WR-1985-SLV / Countermeasure, procured

    Plate XXVI

    Silver Bullet

    1985

    Daniel Attias, screenplay by Stephen King

    film

    The Bullet in the Title Was Invented Forty-Four Years Earlier

    Paramount, 1985 · from the 1983 novella, with the events moved back seven years

    Period 1976 · Tarker's Mills, Maine

    Jurisdiction

    Municipal. Tarker's Mills again, seven years before the novella puts it on the clock.

    Mechanism

    Silver, and the film is named for it. The register's interest is in where that requirement came from rather than in how this household met it.

    Cross-reference

    Adaptation of the 1983 novella. Filed separately, and the desk notes that the film moves the events back seven years.

    A film named for its countermeasure, which no other filing on the register is, and the desk reads a title like that as a procurement statement: a silver bullet is a thing somebody has to obtain, since nobody is issued one. That is more forethought than most of this file manages. The finding the film cannot help is what the specification is worth. Silver was invented for a studio picture in 1941 and appears in no trial, no survey and no medieval account on this page. The title names a requirement that is younger than the audience thinks and was made up by a screenwriter who said so.

27. WR-1977-HWL / Retreat, residential

    Plate XX

    The Howling (1977)

    1977

    Gary Brandner

    novel

    The Novel the 1981 Film Took Its Title From

    Novel, 1977 · the source of the 1981 film, which kept the title

    Period contemporary · Drago, California

    Jurisdiction

    Residential. The premises is a settlement in California called Drago, and a settlement is the unit this register files.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. The register's interest here is the premises, and the desk does not reconstruct a novel it is citing for its setting and its descendant.

    Cross-reference

    Adapted in 1981, which kept the title and moved the setting to a therapeutic retreat. Both file separately on this spine.

    The card earns its place by what it is the origin of. Four years later a film took this title, kept it, and moved the premises from Drago to a therapy retreat, and the register keeps both rather than folding one into the other, because a change of premises is exactly the kind of thing a register exists to record. What the desk will say about the novel itself is limited to what it can source: a settlement in California, and a condition filed against it. That is thin for a card, and the register would rather print a thin card than a confident one it cannot stand behind.

28. WR-1981-HWL / Residential therapy

    Plate XXIII

    The Howling (1981)

    1981

    Joe Dante, with effects by Rob Bottin

    film

    A Therapy Retreat, Filed as a Household

    Avco Embassy, 1981 · from the 1977 novel · a therapy retreat, filed as a household

    Period contemporary · "the Colony", on the northern California coast

    Jurisdiction

    Residential and therapeutic. A retreat, called the Colony, filed by this register as a household rather than as a treatment programme.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. What the register cites this filing for is silver, which it carries, and the premises, which it is about.

    Cross-reference

    Adapted from the 1977 novel, with the premises moved from a settlement to a retreat. The register keeps both and files the move.

    A therapy retreat, treated by this register as a household with a membership rather than as a clinic with a caseload, which is the move that earns the card. Once the Colony is a place people live in, every question on this page applies to it at once: who is admitted, who decides, and what the community does about the member it will not discuss. The desk also notes that the register's two great 1981 filings arrived in the same year, one built by Rob Bottin and one by Rick Baker, and that nobody has repeated the year since. This is the one about institutions. The other is the one about being a long way from home.

29. WR-1981-AWL / Clothing, unaccounted

    Plate XXII

    An American Werewolf in London

    1981

    John Landis, with effects by Rick Baker

    film

    Wakes in the Wolf Enclosure With Nothing to Wear

    Universal, 1981 · the first Academy Award for makeup was given for this

    Period contemporary · the moors, then London

    Jurisdiction

    Transient. An American in England, and no household anywhere in the picture that belongs to him.

    Mechanism

    The bite, taken on the moors, and the consequences taken in London.

    Inventory

    Nil, and the film is honest about it. He wakes naked in the wolf enclosure, which is the clothes rule arriving in 1981 with nothing to hand.

    Two thousand years after a Roman dinner guest explained that the clothes have to be somewhere, a young man wakes naked in a wolf enclosure with the same problem and no better answer. The desk regards that single image as the most useful piece of evidence on the register, because it is the one filing that puts the reader on the wrong side of the transformation, in the morning, with the practical question still outstanding. Everything else here cuts away. The picture also took the first Academy Award ever given for makeup, and it is a comedy for about forty minutes, after which it is not.

30. WR-1983-CYC / Annual schedule

    Plate XXIV

    Cycle of the Werewolf

    1983

    Stephen King, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson

    novella

    Twelve Months, Twelve Full Moons, One Town

    An illustrated novella, 1983 · one chapter per month, one full moon in each

    Period across one calendar year · Tarker's Mills, Maine

    Jurisdiction

    Municipal. One town, twelve months, and an incident in each of them.

    Mechanism

    The full moon, applied with a rigour no other filing attempts. The schedule is the book's actual structure.

    Inventory

    None kept. Twelve warnings arrive, in order, on dates printed in every almanac, and there is a body in each month regardless.

    The register's scheduling finding in book form, by an author who evidently noticed the same thing this desk did. The condition here is not a mystery but a calendar: twelve months, twelve full moons, one town, and a body in each month. The reader can see every incident coming from the previous page, which is precisely the register's complaint about the whole subject. Twelve months arrive on the dates twelve months arrive on, and there is a body in each of them. No curfew that holds, no room that locks, no rota. It is the clearest demonstration on the page that a published schedule and a prepared household are two entirely different things.

31. WR-1985-TNW / Disclosure, familial

    Plate XXVII

    Teen Wolf

    1985

    Rod Daniel, with Michael J. Fox

    film

    The Father Tells Him at the Bathroom Mirror

    Atlantic, 1985 · a comedy, and the register's plainest statement of the inherited case

    Period contemporary · Beacontown

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic. A father, a son, and a conversation at a bathroom mirror.

    Mechanism

    Hereditary, and filed by the film as a household fact rather than as a horror.

    Cross-reference

    The register's clearest household filing on the screen side. The parent has it, the parent knew, and the parent waited.

    The father discloses the family condition at the bathroom mirror, and the desk files the disclosure rather than the film. It is the plainest moment on the register of a household handling the werewolf the way households handle anything else difficult: at the mirror, in private, and considerably later than it should have been handled. Heredity here is not a curse and not a diagnosis. It is a household fact, of the kind that gets mentioned when it can no longer be postponed. The rest of the picture is a comedy, which the register notes for readers planning an evening, but the scene at the mirror is the finding.

32. WR-2016-MNG / Itinerant household

    Plate XLIV

    Mongrels

    2016

    Stephen Graham Jones

    novel

    A Family Living Out of Cars, Filed as a Housing Case

    Novel, 2016 · a werewolf family living out of cars

    Period the 1990s · the American South, largely from a car The novel does not fix its years. The placement in the 1990s is the desk's.

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic and itinerant. A family, and no fixed premises to file them at.

    Mechanism

    Hereditary. It runs in the family, which is what makes the family the unit and not the individual.

    Inventory

    What fits in a car, and what the household eats. The register has no other filing where both questions are asked at once.

    The best household filing on the shelf side of the register, because it is the one with no premises in it. A werewolf family lives out of cars, which is a housing arrangement, an itinerary and a budget all at once, and the register has been looking for a filing that treats the condition as an ongoing cost rather than a night. The desk also notes what the book is willing to be direct about, which is what the household eats. Every other filing on this page either makes that the horror or looks away from it. This one files it as catering, which is harder to read and much more use.

33. WR-1992-WTA / Tabletop, constituted

    Plate XXVIII

    Werewolf: The Apocalypse

    1992

    White Wolf; Mark Rein-Hagen and others

    game

    The Condition Issued With a Rulebook

    A tabletop roleplaying game, 1992 · the companion volume to the vampire archive's 1991 filing

    Period contemporary · wherever the table is

    Jurisdiction

    Whatever the table decides, within written rules. This is the first filing on the register where the rules exist before the story does.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. The register cites the object rather than the setting, and the object is a rulebook.

    Classification

    A tabletop game. Filed by form, as this register files anything: the object is a rulebook and it behaves like one.

    The companion volume to the vampire archive's 1991 filing, and the first werewolf on this register to arrive with a rulebook rather than a plot. The desk finds it useful for the reason a household paper finds any rulebook useful: a game has to answer, in advance and in writing, the questions fiction is free to leave hanging. Who decides. Who is admitted. What happens on the night, and who is responsible for it afterwards. Whatever answers this particular book gives, the fact that it has to give them is the finding, and no film on the page is under the same obligation.

34. WR-1999-HPA / Medication and facilities

    Plate XXXI

    Prisoner of Azkaban

    1999

    J. K. Rowling

    novel

    The Only Filing With a Prescription and a Purpose-Built Room

    Novel, 1999 · a monthly condition, a monthly dose, and a building put up for the purpose

    Period one school year · a school The novels do not date themselves. The placement follows the series' own internal chronology and is the desk's reading rather than the book's statement.

    Filed at WT-1999-HPA, in the Coven Register.

    Jurisdiction

    Institutional. A school, a member of it with the condition, and a building put up for the purpose before the events of the novel.

    Mechanism

    Lunar, and — uniquely on this register — medically managed. Wolfsbane Potion, which makes this the file's only medicated werewolf.

    Inventory

    The register's only facilities plan. The Shrieking Shack was built as a restraint room, which is a capital project undertaken so that one child would have somewhere to spend the night.

    This desk read the whole register looking for a household that made a plan, and this is the household that made a plan. It is a school. Somebody with a monthly condition needed somewhere to spend the night, so a building went up and was used as a restraint room, which is the only capital expenditure anywhere in this file. There is a prescription as well: a potion, taken as medication, making this the register's only medicated werewolf. Two provisions, both boring, both institutional, and between them they solve a problem that defeats every other household on the page. The filing itself belongs to the coven register and is carried here for that reason alone.

35. WR-1994-WLF / Occupational advantage

    Plate XXIX

    Wolf

    1994

    Mike Nichols, with Jack Nicholson

    film

    The Bite Improves His Career and the Desk Declines to Draw the Conclusion

    Columbia, 1994 · the bite improves his career

    Period contemporary · Manhattan publishing

    Jurisdiction

    Corporate. The affected premises is an office, in Manhattan publishing, and it is the only office on the register.

    Mechanism

    The bite, with the effects presented as improvements. His career gets better.

    Classification

    The register's only filing in which the condition is an advantage rather than a burden.

    A man in Manhattan publishing is bitten, and his career improves. That is the filing, and the desk has read it several times looking for a reason not to draw the obvious conclusion about the industry. It declines to draw it, on the grounds that this is a household paper and not a business one, and files the card for what it does to the register instead. Every other filing here treats the condition as something to be survived, concealed or paid for. Exactly one treats it as a promotion, and the register would be less honest with that exception left off the page.

36. WR-1997-BLC / Pack, as extended family

    Plate XXX

    Blood and Chocolate

    1997

    Annette Curtis Klause

    novel

    The Pack, Filed as an Extended Household

    A novel for teenage readers, 1997 · the pack as an extended household

    Period the 1990s · Maryland

    Jurisdiction

    Communal. The pack is an extended household, which is the reading this card exists to carry.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. The filing's interest for this register is the arrangement rather than the transformation.

    Cross-reference

    Written for teenage readers, and the register notes that its teenage tier takes the household reading more seriously than its adult tier does.

    The desk keeps this one for a single load-bearing move: it files the pack as an extended household rather than as a hunting party. That sounds small and is not. A pack that is a household has the frictions a household has, and every question the register cares about — who is admitted, who decides, what is said outside the door — becomes available at once, without the transformation having to carry any of it. It was written for teenagers, and the desk records here what it records again on the juvenile cards: the young tiers of this file take the household reading more seriously than the adult tier does.

37. WR-2000-GNS / Sibling household

    Plate XXXII

    Ginger Snaps

    2000

    John Fawcett, written by Karen Walton

    film

    Two Sisters, a Bathroom, and a Metaphor Stated Outright

    Motion International, 2000 · the sisters, the bathroom, and a metaphor stated outright

    Period contemporary · Bailey Downs

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic. Two sisters and a bathroom, which is the entire premises the register needs.

    Mechanism

    The bite. The metaphor running alongside it is stated outright by the film and then exceeded by it.

    Cross-reference

    Teen tier on the register's own recommendations, and the card says so rather than leaving a reader to find out.

    The film states its metaphor outright, early, and then exceeds it, which is a much harder thing to do than to describe and is why this card sits where it does. What the register takes from it is the pairing. The subject is not one afflicted person but two sisters, and the premises is a bathroom, so the condition is a domestic arrangement from the first reel rather than becoming one later. The desk files it as the best account here of a household under a concealed obligation, and puts it in the teen tier rather than the general one.

38. WR-2012-WCH / Single-parent household

    Plate XLII

    Wolf Children

    2012

    Mamoru Hosoda

    animated film

    A Mother Raises Two Children Who Turn, and Files It as Childcare

    Studio Chizu, 2012 · animated · a single mother raising two children who turn

    Period the 2000s · Tokyo, then the countryside The film fixes no year of its own and covers a long stretch of one. The placement in the 2000s is the desk's.

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic, and almost nothing else. A single mother and two children, in a city and then not in one.

    Mechanism

    Hereditary. The children turn, and the register notes that no moon, no bite and no antagonist is required for a werewolf filing to work.

    Inventory

    The move itself. A household leaves the city for the countryside because the countryside is what the condition requires, which is the largest provisioning decision anybody on this register takes.

    The best household filing on the register, and the one where the werewolf is a child. The problem is not danger; it is that the standard arrangements a city offers a family do not fit this family, so the mother relocates to the countryside and takes it on herself. That is a housing decision made on account of a condition, which is the thing this register has been looking for since Rome and has found almost nowhere else. The desk read fifty filings hunting for maintenance, provisioning and tenancy. They are here, drawn, animated, and made for children of about eight.

39. WR-2002-DGS / Farmhouse siege

    Plate XXXV

    Dog Soldiers

    2002

    Neil Marshall

    film

    Soldiers in a Farmhouse, and the Only Wall on the Register

    Kismet, 2002 · a farmhouse siege, and the only proper siege on this register

    Period contemporary · the Highlands

    Jurisdiction

    Military, then domestic. Soldiers in a farmhouse, defending premises that are not theirs.

    Perimeter

    The register's only one. Every other filing here is about a member of the household; this is the one with a wall and a night to get through.

    Inventory

    Filed by inheritance. A siege is a stock-take with a body count, which is the zombie register's finding rather than this one's. Silver is present here, which is why the register's silver finding cites this card.

    The zombie register's floor plan with wolves in it, which is exactly how the desk would describe it if it had not been described that way already. What makes it useful here is that it is the exception. Every other filing on this page is about somebody already inside the house, and the perimeter is therefore beside the point; this one puts soldiers in a farmhouse and makes the wall matter. The register keeps it as the control case, and notes that a siege film on a werewolf register has to borrow its whole apparatus — the doors, the stock, the night — from another file entirely.

40. WR-2005-WGR / Pest control, altered

    Plate XXXVI

    The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

    2005

    Nick Park and Steve Box

    animated film

    The Vegetable Contract Acquires a Lunar Clause

    2005 · stop-motion animated comedy horror film · written by Park, Box, Mark Burton and Bob Baker

    Period undated · the annual giant vegetable competition The story supplies no calendar year. The desk uses the film's release year as a sorting anchor, not a story date.

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic provisioning. Anti-Pesto protects the townspeople's vegetables from rabbits before the competition at Tottington Hall.

    Mechanism

    An appetite-altering invention fuses brains; a transformation into the Were-Rabbit accompanies the full moon.

    Procurement

    Victor obtains golden bullets from the vicar. Golden is the specification supplied by this film.

    The Lunar filing begins with a service meant to prevent damage to the household stock. Wallace wants rabbits to dislike vegetables and himself to eat more of them; the Mind Manipulation-O-Matic makes a less selective alteration. The town then has a garden emergency with an astronomical trigger. That is the register's maintenance problem arriving through the contractor rather than through an inherited condition. Anti-Pesto has expanded the job considerably without saving the marrow.

41. WR-2008-XTW / Ruling on jurisdiction

    Plate XXXVIII

    Twilight

    2008

    Catherine Hardwicke

    film

    The Register Rules These Out, on the Filing's Own Evidence

    Twilight · carried from the vampire archive, and ruled outside this register's jurisdiction

    Period as the vampire file sets it · Forks, Washington

    Filed at UR-2008-TW1, in the Undead Register.

    Jurisdiction

    Not this register's, and the desk would rather print the ruling than leave a hole. The filing belongs to the vampire archive, which already carries it.

    Mechanism

    Shape-changing at will, hereditary within one community, and unconnected to any schedule. The source distinguishes these from true werewolves and gives them a different name, and the desk takes it at its word.

    Cross-reference

    The commonest objection this register expects, answered on a card rather than in a footnote nobody reads.

    Readers will want to know where the wolves of this very large franchise have gone, so the desk is answering on a plate. They are not on this register, and the reason is not squeamishness about popularity. It is that the source itself separates them from the thing this file is about: the change is willed rather than scheduled, it belongs to one community by descent, and the books give the two kinds different names on purpose. This register rules on the evidence in front of it, and the evidence here was supplied by the work. The filing lives in the Undead Register, which claims it for entirely different reasons, and this card exists to point at it.

42. WR-2008-SHT / Tenancy and territory

    Plate XXXVII

    Sharp Teeth

    2008

    Toby Barlow

    novel

    Packs, Dogcatchers, and the Housing Arrangements

    A novel written in free verse, 2008 · packs, dogcatchers, and where the packs live

    Period contemporary · Los Angeles

    Jurisdiction

    Residential. The subject is the housing arrangements of the packs, and the register's interest is entirely in who is living where.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. The register cites this filing for the housing and not for the transformation.

    Classification

    Filed as a novel. That it is written in unrhymed verse is on the card and not in the kind, because the object is a novel and reads as one.

    A book about werewolves that is really about where they live, which is why the desk likes it. The packs are households with housing arrangements, and the register has spent two thousand years waiting for somebody to file the arrangement rather than the animal. There are also dogcatchers, which is the only public authority on this page whose remit fits the problem by accident rather than by design. The desk records that as the register's one glimpse of a municipal answer, and notes that nobody in the filing tells them.

43. WR-2011-LWW / Administrative burden

    Plate XL

    The Last Werewolf

    2011

    Glen Duncan

    novel

    Two Centuries of the Same Monthly Arrangement, Wearily Documented

    Novel, 2011 · emphatically for adult readers · the condition as a very long administrative career

    Period contemporary · London, with two hundred years behind it

    Jurisdiction

    Private. Two centuries of the condition, carried by one person, and filed by the novel as a burden rather than as a curse.

    Mechanism

    Lunar and lifelong. The interest is the duration, which is what turns a condition into an administration.

    Inventory

    Not itemised. The desk has not reconstructed the ledger, because the filing's own claim is the burden and not the list.

    The only filing that treats the condition as a standing overhead rather than an event, and the desk finds it the most administratively honest thing on the page. Two centuries is the whole argument: at that length the transformation stops being a crisis and becomes an overhead, something with a running cost and a tone of voice, and the tone of voice here is exhaustion. It is explicit and not for younger readers, which the register states on the card rather than in a footnote. What it establishes for the file is that the household problem is not solved by time. It is only amortised.

44. WR-2011-TWM / Pack, as broadcast

    Plate XLI

    Teen Wolf (2011)

    2011

    Jeff Davis, for MTV

    television series

    The 1985 Title, Attached to a Pack and Given Room to Run

    MTV, from 2011 · from the 1985 film, and filed separately from it

    Period contemporary · Beacon Hills, California

    Jurisdiction

    Communal. The pack as an extended household, given the length television has and a novel does not.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. The register cites this filing for the arrangement rather than for the condition.

    Cross-reference

    Files separately from the 1985 film it takes its title from, which is the register's rule for every adaptation on the page.

    The 1985 comedy's title, attached to a pack filed as an extended household and given the length a broadcast run allows. The desk keeps it because television can afford the boring parts, and the boring parts are what this register is for. A household with one werewolf in it has a problem. A household with several has a membership, and a membership needs rules about who belongs to it — which is the same question the 1590 document, the 1974 estate and the 2001 card game all put in different words. It files separately from the film, as everything here does.

45. WR-2012-WLB / Concealment, domestic

    Plate XLIII

    Wolfblood

    2012

    Debbie Moon, for CBBC

    television series

    A Family Keeping It From the Village, on Children's Television

    CBBC, from 2012 · a family hiding a condition from the village

    Period contemporary · Stoneybridge

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic. A family who have it, and a village who do not know.

    Mechanism

    Not entered. The filing's subject is the concealment, and the concealment is what the register files.

    Inventory

    Not itemised. What the family maintains is a policy about what is said outside the house, which is the cheapest provision on the register and among the most effective.

    A children's series whose entire premise is the register's finding: a family have the condition, the village does not know, and keeping it that way is the standing work of the household. The desk notes, not for the first time, that the juvenile tier of this file states the finding more plainly than the adult tier manages. There is no siege here, no perimeter and no countermeasure. There is a family with something to conceal and a community that would take it badly, which is the same arrangement the 1590 document describes and the same one the party game sells in a box. Written for about nine and up.

46. WR-2020-WSH / Investigation, resisted

    Plate XLV

    The Wolf of Snow Hollow

    2020

    Jim Cummings

    film

    A Sheriff's Department That Would Much Rather It Were a Man

    Orion, 2020 · a sheriff's department that would rather it were a man

    Period contemporary · Snow Hollow, Utah

    Jurisdiction

    Municipal law enforcement. A sheriff's department, and a case it would much rather were an ordinary one.

    Mechanism

    Resisted rather than established. The department's working theory is that the perpetrator is a man, and the film is about how hard that theory is to give up.

    Cross-reference

    The clinical reading of 1603, restated four centuries later by a department rather than by a court.

    A sheriff's department would rather it were a man, and the desk files that preference as the whole of the card. A man can be arrested, charged and processed. The other thing cannot be entered on any form the department holds. This is therefore the register's workplace filing: an organisation being asked to handle something outside its remit by a public that expects an answer, and defending itself with the only classification it has. It is also comical, which the register mentions because a reader planning an evening deserves to know, and because the comedy is entirely institutional.

47. WR-2021-WWI / Vote, held in an inn

    Plate XLVII

    Werewolves Within

    2021

    Josh Ruben

    film

    Snowed In, With a Vote Scheduled for the Morning

    IFC, 2021 · from the 2016 Ubisoft game · a snowed-in inn, and a vote

    Period contemporary · Beaverfield, snowed in

    Jurisdiction

    Communal, and temporarily total. The snow shuts the place in, and the entire community is housed in one inn.

    Mechanism

    Not entered, and correctly so. The picture is an identification exercise rather than a transformation film.

    Cross-reference

    The party game, filmed. The 1974 filing ran the same exercise on an English estate; the 2001 game sells it in a box.

    A snowed-in inn and a vote, which is the party game with a distributor and a cast. The desk files it as the cleanest statement of the household finding on the screen side, because the film is not really about a werewolf at all. It is about what a vote does when the voters already know each other. Shut a community in one building, ask it to identify the danger among its own members, and what you get is an audit of the community. The monster is the procedure, not the subject.

48. WR-2022-WLM / Disclosure to a new partner

    Plate XLVIII

    Wolf Like Me

    2022

    Abe Forsythe

    television series

    A Monthly Arrangement, Disclosed at the Wrong Point in the Relationship

    Peacock and Stan, from 2022 · a monthly arrangement, and a disclosure to a new partner

    Period contemporary · Adelaide

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic. A household with a monthly arrangement, and a new partner who has to be told about it.

    Mechanism

    Lunar and absolute. The 1983 novella runs the same clock over a town; this is the filing that runs it over a household.

    Cross-reference

    The clothes rule, still running in 2022, nineteen centuries after the filing that states it first.

    The register's most direct treatment of the thing it keeps finding, which is that the werewolf is a member of the household with a calendar. She is not a hazard to be contained. She is a mother with a monthly arrangement, and the story is what happens when a new partner has to be told about it. The comedy is entirely in the disclosure. The desk files it as the best account on the page of the schedule as a social problem rather than a physical one, and notes the question it asks that nothing else here does. Every other filing wants to know what the werewolf will do on the night. This one wants to know who else needs to be told.

49. WR-2025-WLM / One night, one household

    Plate XLIX

    Wolf Man (2025)

    2025

    Leigh Whannell

    film

    One Family, One Farmhouse, One Night, and a Disease

    Universal, released 17 January 2025 · the 1941 title, rebuilt as a domestic illness

    Period contemporary · an Oregon farmhouse

    Jurisdiction

    Domestic and total. One family, one night, one house, and no other premises in the picture.

    Mechanism

    The disease reading. The condition is an illness with a course rather than a curse with a rule.

    Perimeter

    Beside the point, as everywhere else on this register. The danger is one of the family, so there is nothing for a wall to do.

    The most recent filing on the register and the one that states the register's thesis most bluntly: one family, one night, one house, and the danger is one of the family. The desk files it as a duplicate of 1941 and puts the two side by side, because the comparison is the finding. In 1941 the same title gave the file silver, a pentagram and a poem, all of them invented for the occasion. In 2025 the same title gives it an illness with a course. Eighty-four years, one household, and the apparatus has been replaced by a diagnosis.

No filings match. The register is complete; your criteria are not.