During the late 1500’s Bedburg Germany was home to Peter Stump who was better known for his alter ego the Werewolf of Bedburg. Stump was accused of killing and disturbingly eating 16 people in the likeness of a wolf. His case remains the most lurid and notorious werewolf trial in history.

Stump was known to practice black magic and allegedly had a belt that was a gift from the Devil. This belt was believed to bestow upon him the ability to transform into a flesh hungry Werewolf. During his trial and under the threat of torture Stump confessed to the killing and eating of 14 children, one of which was his own son, whose brain he admitted to devouring, two pregnant women and their foetuses and to top it all off a incestuous relationship with his daughter.

Stump was executed brutally; put to the wheel where flesh was torn from his body with red hot pincers, his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axe before he was beheaded and then, for good measure, burnt at the stake. The German authorities erected a giant pole at the gates of the city with Stumps head on top of it and a figure of a wolf painted at its base to warn others against similar behaviour.