The trail of the wolf man

THE TOWN OF BLANKENBURG SITS AT THE NORTH FOOT OF THE HARZ, a mystical highland region of mountains, castles, caves and eerie, straight pine trees on sandy, dry soil, that is the epicenter of German fairytale myth.

A few hundred meters east of the old town is one end of the Teufelsmauer, or the Devil’s Walls, a long row of stone cliffs that are reputed to have been built by Satan to divide his part of the world from God's, or by giants descended from the Biblical Cain, perhaps as altars of sacrifice.

Another folk tale, recorded in the 19th century, tells of four working men in Harz who were mowing grass. One among them was a werewolf. A traveling merchant stopped to let his livestock graze nearby. Three of the men stopped work. But the fourth, the lycanthrope, unable to resist the delicious horses he saw arrayed, slipped away and transformed. When his colleagues confronted him, he ran into the woods in wolf form, never to be seen again.

Underneath the 2,000-acre forest north of town, known as the Heers, is an eight-kilometre network of tunnels driven into the sandstone rock in 1944 by prisoners from a local subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. During the war it was intended to house a facility for making V-2 rockets. It is now home to what’s said to be the world's largest underground pharmacy, operated by the German armed forces.

The woods were only planted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but ghostly pale sandcaves in the area have attracted ritual gatherings and inspired myths since the times of the pre-Christian Germanic tribes. In recent years, the small volunteer fire department responsible for the Heers has grappled with a new local curiosity.

About seven years ago, unexpected calls started coming in. They alerted officials to a mysterious man in the forest. Signs of habitation were found. So were the remains of fires, abandoned and poorly extinguished. Someone wearing a costume, or animal skin, perhaps a wolf pelt. Someone living secretly in the forest.

Reports involving fire were taken especially seriously. Even a fire that seems like it is out can burn on undetected, and reignite into the pines. And other men are known to live in the forests of Germany, as wild as they can manage. But the calls led to nothing, except frustrated firemen.

On March 25, 2023 at 10:31.a.m., another call came in. This time it was more explicit. There was a Wolfsmensch — a wolfman — in the Heers. A thin column of smoke could be seen rising above the woods to mark his location.

Nine firefighters, two engines and two police patrol cars traveled to the heart of the forest. Alexander Beck, the local fire chief, found the illegal fire,. He looked up at the horizon, and saw a man fleeing into the woods, possibly wearing a fur cap. Later, officials found temporary dwellings made of branches, sometimes expertly constructed.

“Someone there knows a thing or two about living outdoors and adapts to the changing seasons," the fire chief told the broadsheet Volksstimme. Ultimately, he didn’t think all the reported incidents related to the wolfman figure, or that the wolfman lived permanently outdoors.

Then, on August 22, 2023, at about 6.30pm, a visitor named Gina Weiss and her partner Tobi were walking nearby, at the sandstone caves which form the epicenter for ritual activity. Something caught their attention, about 50 feet away, on top of the caves. It looked like a man, but not wearing clothing. Smeared in dirt, perhaps, and holding a long stick, which he was using to scratch into the ground.

"He didn't take his eyes off us, didn't say a word," she told Bild, Germany’s largest tabloid, which published the image. "He looked dirty and acted like a caveman from a history book." She took a grainy picture with her phone. It was picked up by the international media.

Soon the forest was filled with reporters, and motion or heat-triggered wildlife cameras, with night vision. They caught nothing.

Then, on the afternoon of December 22, 2024, the fire service received another call. A column of smoke rising from a different area, this one west of town.

Thirteen firefighters and three engines were dispatched. Police arrived after they had extinguished the flames. After investigating the scene, officers determined a makeshift wood shelter caught fire, which spread into nearby vegetation. It was too near a walking path to be the work of someone trying to hide, officials reasoned. Maybe it was an improvised site for illegal waste burning, they thought.

The only way to find out what happened next seemed to be to venture into the forest myself.