Basil Copper

A well—known and highly respected writer of mystery and horror novels, Basil Copper was born in London in 1924. His love of all things mysterious led him to write The Vampire in Legend, Fact, and Art in 1974 to explore the reasons behind the fascination with these dark and evil creatures. This was closely followed by The Werewolf in Legend, Fact, and Art in 1977. In The Werewolf, Copper traces the history of the werewolf legend by bringing together a wide variety of sources to separate the truth from the fiction.

In the following excerpt from The Werewolf, Copper presents the amazing research done by Dr. Lee Illis, who argues that people who were suspected of being werewolves actually suffered from an extremely rare medical condition called congenital porphyria. Illis's work is based on careful analysis...