According to a Flemish folktale a man no longer wished to be a werewolf. Howling at the moon and terrorising villages were no longer any fun. In fact, it had become boring. To cease to be transformed into a werewolf against his will the man had to revisit all the villages he had brutally attacked. The book the devil had gifted him when he first became a hairy beast had to be attached to a long stick.

And poor villagers! The man who had filled them with terror was back. It isn’t hard to imagine their relief and puzzled astonishment when they realised the wolf wasn’t there to destroy their village.

When the reluctant werewolf arrived in the last village the devil himself appeared in a fiery carriage. Furiously, he snatched the book from the stick and vanished. The werewolf was a werewolf no more.