The Legend of the Converse Werewolf

In early 1900, stories of large dogs or wolves began to surface with the townsfolk of Bertram and the surrounding communities. Soon after, a small group of rail workers simply disappeared. Could it be the wolves?

These stories in Bertram are not surprising as stories of the Converse Werewolf had started back in the 1880’s South of Bertram in Bexar County.

Bexar county is known as old time ranching county. and since ranching is nothing less of tough and often dangerous work, being strong and confident was next to having a good horse. You needed to be strong. In other words, you had to be a real man.

One ranchers son was fifteen years old and was on the verge of his sixteenth birthday. As a last rites, the father sent his son out in the wilderness to bring home a dear for the rest of the family to eat.

He was told not to come back until he had a deer.

Several days passed, and the son hadn’t returned. The father, somewhat embarrassed that his had failed the test, finally relented and gathered a search party that consisted of his neighbors.

A few hours into the search, they heard a noise of in the woods. The rancher went running off in that direction, thinking it was his son.

And he was right… at least about his son being there. But it wasn’t his boy making the noise.

What was making the noise was an eight-foot tall creature that looked like a direct cross between a wolf and a gorilla. And it was in the process of devouring the rancher’s son. The rancher opened fire, as did the rest of the search party. But it was far too late. The rancher’s son was long dead.

The rancher quickly plunged into a depression. He left the rest of his family and eventually stopped eating. He died soon afterward. Some say it was too much on the man’s soul, seeing his son devoured like that.¹

In Kimble County, just 120 or so miles from Bertram, the story of tombstone carver N. Q. Patterson whose rock carving of one particularly large image, a face with broad nose, glinting eyes and snarling mouth with long, fang-like teeth made people take notice.

What did the face represent? Some have said the face reminds them of a wild bear. Some believed, for years, the carving was made by Indians. But according to local accounts, the face was indeed carved by Patterson. Who or what it represented is still anyone’s guess.

In the what-it’s-worth department, some say there is legend around parts of the Hill Country that tell of an old Indian man who would change his shape in order to avoid capture by calvarymen stationed in the area. Legend has it that when cornered, the old man would assume the shape of a wolf and attack his pursuers, often resulting in death or serious injury.²

But by the 1920’s, all stories of wolf-men in the Central Texas area had all but disapeared. A final sighting in the late 50’s 300 miles from Bertram is the last we see of this type of sighting.

On a July night in 1958 Mrs. Delburt Gregg was getting ready for bed in her Greggton, Texas, home when she glanced out the window. Thunderstorms were on the way. When a sudden flash of lightning illuminated the countryside she saw a horrific sight outside her open window. It was a “huge, shaggy, wolf-like creature” that was clawing at the screen and glaring at her with “baleful, glowing, slitted eyes.”<sup>3



Sources: http://oatmealtexas.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117:wolves&catid=51:myths-legends&Itemid=196
1</sup>http://www.alphaluna.net/community/showthread.php?p=34497
²http://texaslesstraveled.com/werewolf.htm
³http://www.unmuseum.org/werewolf.htm

Ken Gerhard has a new article updating this case at SA Current, published April 9th, 2012 as follows:

Searching for the Converse Werewolf

While to most, the full moon represents frantic driving and unpredictable behavior, to those in the business of ‘monsters’ it is significant for an entirely different reason — lycanthropy, i.e. werewolves. Now, before you place the butterfly net over my head, please be advised that, while generally perceived to be strictly, fictional creatures from literature and fairy tales, modern accounts of these terrors do exist. Most notably, Wisconsin’s Beast of Bray Road, described by eyewitnesses as displaying the characteristics of a large wolf stalking the local forests and corn fields in an upright posture. During 2008, I had the distinct honor of traveling to France for a History Channel television special where I investigated The Beast of Gevaudan, which was alleged to have attacked hundreds of simple farm-folk during the late 18th century. Evidently, the notion of real werewolves has been around for a while.

Few San Antonio residents, however, are aware that the nearby community of Converse boasts its very own man-beast legend. According to the story, which I’ve found attributed to the 1800s and as recently as the 1960s, a local rancher instructed his teenage son to strike out to shoot his first deer (as a passage to manhood, no doubt). The youth was reluctant to bloody his hands, but begrudgingly obeyed his father’s command and journeyed to a wooded place known as Skull’s Crossing. He soon returned home trembling with fright. He explained to his father that he had run across an animal that resembled a werewolf. Thinking that his son was merely making excuses, the rancher forced him out again, stating that he should not return unless he had managed to bag some game. After the sun had set, the father became concerned and set out to locate his missing son. It was then, according to the tale, that the man spotted the lifeless body of his offspring in the arms of a creature that stood eight feet tall, combining the features of a wolf and a gorilla.

Being that the moon was in a full phase this weekend, I decided to head over to Converse to mount my own werewolf hunt (sans the silver bullets). I first stopped at the local City Hall and library to seek more information. But due to poor planning on my part, both had closed early for Easter Weekend. So, I instead decided to search the area around Converse City Park, the only area that remains largely undeveloped with the potential to hide such an elusive creature. I found the park to be quite charming and serene, with colorful wildflowers and fluttering butterflies in abundance. However, my search of the muddy banks of a small lake did turn up one intriguing bit of evidence, an enormous canine track, displaying long claws and pressed an inch into the ground. Admittedly, the spoor more than likely belonged to a very large dog. Still, I like to imagine that behind the legend of the Converse Werewolf lies, perhaps a tiny shred of truth. — Ken Gerhard

^{Top Illustration Credit: Weird Texas: Your Travel Guide to Texas’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. Second Illustration Credit: Werewolf Lurking by chriscalf chrisscalf.deviantart.com/art/Werewolf-Lurking-173947720}


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