The European werewolf, a human who has transformed into an animal, usually a wolf, dog, or other canine, through the use of extraordinary means, has a long historical tradition. The ancient Greeks told folklore stories about the werewolf, as did the Vikings. The Greek Gods would often times transform into animals themselves and Odysseus’s crew was turned into pigs, not surprisingly by a witch, during their journey. Later, in the Middle Ages the threat of werewolves became very real in European minds and the courts. Werewolf folklore at this time transformed from a merely benign and harmless set of stories, myths, and legends, into a real and punishable threat to society. The werewolf became an evil tool of Satan channeled through a person as opposed to a power vested within the gods which they used for both good and evil means. Transformation into a werewolf became a criminal activity in the Middle Ages and this criminality continued through the Reformation into the nineteenth century. I intend to examine how this once harmless mythical being became a real threat to European society worthy of accusation, trial, and deadly punishment. Anthropologists in general, and especially those who study folklore and supernatural beliefs and processes, have left a gap in the literature concerning theories of the origin of and reasoning behind werewolf accusations. I aim to construct a new theory which integrates the power relationships of the actors involved, the historical significance of folklore and a belief in otherness, along with social institutions such as the court system, especially the process of secretive sentencing, into a web of circumstances and variables which together will be seen as a rational system of social control.